Talk:Matrix mechanics

Energy?
The explanation of energy not being locally conserved makes no sense. Especially bizarre is the link to "product recall", which is an economics term!

And since when does energy not commute with spatial position? 198.228.196.84 (talk) 07:06, 22 July 2011 (UTC) Collin237
 * ? July 1925? Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 16:36, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Convoluted history
", and came very close to formulating the Schrödinger equationfact"

The discussion at http://books.google.com/books?id=fV_RrSYE0EQC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=jordan+%22schrodinger+equation%22&source=bl&ots=cIhmCftaxy&sig=hTmTckiIGJbKwsxvvtuww00D0HQ&hl=en&ei=vQHdTuC_M-br0gHNrcDkBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CGUQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=jordan%20%22schrodinger%20equation%22&f=false

shows that the interactions among the several people working on these problems at the time were very complex. It is not at all clear that Jordan got to a near-equivalent of Schrödinger's equation first. Pending citations to prove the assertion I've moved it here.P0M (talk) 20:05, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Duplication from the Werner Heisenberg article
Certain parts of this article are copied from the Heisenberg article, or vice versa. This feels a bit unprofessional and disturbing if you came to this article having just read about Heisenberg. I really do not know enough about this sibject to dare to venture into a fix, but I do think the matter should be adressed in this otherwise good material. -- Egil (talk) 10:50, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * "Unprofessional"??? And you are "disturbed" to read verbatim repetition? And, induced to post at the top of the Talk page, instead of at the bottom, in express contravention to WP practice? It t behoves you to paraphrase these passages, without deleting information, before you solicit random volunteer help.  Let me turn your odd point around: If there were a hypothetical optimal presentation of the same material clearly needed in both articles, why should one of the two article have to stick to a suboptimal one, merely to avoid repetitiveness w.r.t. the other?Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 14:07, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

"describing how the quantum jumps occur"
The second sentence of the second paragraph of the lead currently reads


 * It extended the Bohr Model by describing how the quantum jumps occur.

This strikes me as nonsense. The offensive words are "extended" and "describing how". If it is not immediately evident to you that these words are thoroughly inappropriate here, then I doubt that I would be easily able, in short compass, to persuade you of it.

A further problem with the lead is the clause


 * and is the basis of Dirac's bra–ket notation for the wave function.

of the last sentence of that paragraph. Dirac's notation is for state vectors. It is by further mathematical operations that it refers to wave functions. Moreover, I don't find in the article a reason to believe that the word "basis" is a good description of the relation between matrix mechanics and Dirac's notation. That notation did not appear till 1939. It is for state vectors, which are naturally related to wave functions as well as to matrices for transformations.

I suppose that some editors have special interest in this article, and for the present I defer to them to remedy these defects.Chjoaygame (talk) 19:32, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Editor Cuzkatzimhut for your response, which you describe as 'partial'. Perhaps you are still not done in this?

I think your words "supplant" and "as manifest in" are good.

I have tried to think of a neat replacement for the former words 'describing how', but I have not yet found one that I like. My objection is that, in a certain sense, 'how quantum jumps occur' is utterly mysterious or beyond present knowledge. I think they occur, but how, I would find hard to say. With respect, therefore, I am not persuaded that 'detailing actually how' is a great improvement. I accept that the word 'how' can be read in many ways, and that in some of those ways it may seem fitting, but I think that others of them still could be too easily read into it, and that it would be better avoided or artfully modified. I repeat, I do not have a bright idea for this job. Perhaps you may reconsider it.

Also, it concerns me that Dirac's notation refers immediately to state vectors, but only mediately to wave functions. I think the immediate relatum would be better in the text.Chjoaygame (talk) 08:18, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * OK, I eliminated over-reaching promises. But it would be a bad idea to expand on the Schr/matrix equivalence in the lede.... the whys and hows... Why don't you try to improve the relevant section 2.4 if you had ideas for improvements...Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 11:06, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for this. I am now happy with your version. I agree that it would be a bad idea to expand in the lead. I don't have ideas to improve that section.Chjoaygame (talk) 12:57, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Unnecessary foreign language use
I replaced "inter alia" with English per MOS: This was reverted but I disagree. The Latin only makes the article harder to read. Johnjbarton (talk) 21:00, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * By default, English Wikipedia articles state explicitly to the browser that they are written wholly in English.


 * @ShadyNorthAmericanIPs Johnjbarton (talk) 21:04, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It's in quotation marks, which to me says really clearly "this is the literal text"? 🤷 ShadyNorthAmericanIPs (talk) 21:19, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @ShadyNorthAmericanIPs ok didn't see that thanks Johnjbarton (talk) 21:26, 25 May 2024 (UTC)