Especially When You Print A Six THOUSAND Page Report On Accident And Your Coworker Thankfully Catches

Ace of Pentacles

I bet it's a cicada. Those suckers are terrifying.

My friend sent this to her Professor today

You've seen turtle lock, but now prepare for the true measure of a turtle!

The science world is freaking out over this 25-year-old's answer to antibiotic resistance

hey guys! for those of you who may not know me, I am Alexi (@alexistudies) and the long awaited masterpost is FINALLY here on how I study for Organic Chemistry (which i might have to retake lmaooo but that’s a story for a different time). Now, I don’t get the best grades, as my professor’s exams are ridiculously hard, but I have learned the material enough to teach others. If you’re struggling with how to navigate this mind-boggling course that’s pretty much like learning a new language, this post is for YOU! lets gettin it crackin’

Always start by reading the material BUT don’t go in with a cold read (aka just reading the chapter from start to finish) break it into 2 steps: SQ3R and then fully read.

SQ3R: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review

disclaimer: personally i do this method by chapter section so I am not overwhelmed with material!

survey: skim the material. read the titles of the sections and subsections, and glance over the actual material within the chapter. take mental note of weird acronyms you may see or vocabulary that stands out. this will prime your brain for all the information you’re going to get when you go the 3R’s.

question: get some sticky notes and write down questions for each section in the textbook. for example, if you just skimmed the section on “Sn1 Reactions”, write a question down on the sticky note like “what does Sn1 mean? what does its mechanism look like?” and stick it in the corresponding place. even if the section seems direct and you don’t have any questions, create one regardless. This will help the information stick! Don’t worry about answering them just yet.

read: pretty self explanatory but read a section of the textbook. read it twice if things still seem fuzzy after the first read, and this time, go slower. now, there should be a sticky note where you wrote a question during the second part of this process. write the answer in to the question based on your knowledge from your reading. also, feel free to take note of any other things that seem to stand out on this sticky note. again, i do this section by section in my textbook so i don’t get burned out or overwhelmed.

recite: once you’ve done the first three steps for the whole chapter, its time to collect all the sticky notes!!! set them down on a flat surface in their chronological order and get prepared with your notebook/tablet and stylus/etc. now you’ll compile all your sticky notes into reading notes! during this stage, read your sticky notes out loud and supplement your reading notes by copying & annotating examples from the textbook.

At this point, you should have already read and done most of the first step. Now, its time to go back through and really engage with the material. As you skim each section, you’ll answer the questions you wrote on the sticky notes! This is pretty self explanatory, I hope. This will make sure that you engage with the material and not just blankly read it. I’m a person who gets bored with textbook reading fairly quickly, this really helps me. Its okay if you don’t fully understand the concepts during this step because you’re just putting your feet in the water.

Still confused on the material? Have some small concepts you just can’t seem to get yet? Its okay! Now, you’ll get auditory/visual exposure which will probably help. I watch The Organic Chemistry Tutor’s videos whenever I feel stuck and I take notes as I watch the video to ensure I’m really paying attention.

This step is to really see how much you know. Start with examples from the book, as the solutions are usually right there and they will walk you through. Then, move on to practice problems. In my textbook, they have exercises that follow right after most examples to practice that same concept. Once you’ve gone through as many of these as you deem fit, you should do the end of chapter problems! These problems tend to be a little more comprehensive and build on things from previous chapters, while also being more conceptual.

pls do your homework. it will reinforce everything. i’ve realized that the homework is not necessarily what will be covered on the exam, but it’s like … drills to see if you know the basics. but, this really depends on the professor and what they assign as homework! for me, the homework doesn’t even begin to compare to the complexity of the exams. highlight anything you get stuck on and once you’re done, go back and redo those problems + review that section in your notes and textbook!

Review sheets are a life saver because once exams come around, you have one piece of paper you can study from and you don’t have to carry around all your notes! for ochem specifically, i recommend making a reaction sheet that’s a flow-chart (i.e., if i have these reagents, its going to be a hydroboration reaction). this was something i was hoping to do before my final, but i just burned out and never got to it :(( so i need to practice what i preach either when i retake ochem1 or when i move on to ochem2.

bonus tip!

Ask yourself the following questions when you study.

can you name things? (types of reactions, molecules using IUPAC nomenclature, etc)

can you identify things? (stereochemical relationships between molecules, concepts used in a reaction like markovnikov addition, etc)

can you develop things? (desired products for a reaction, etc)

can you interconvert between things? (from wedge dash > newman projection, chair conformation > newman projection, skeletal structure > fischer projection, reaction > energy coordinate diagram)

Hopefully this helps! I enjoyed making this post because I do enjoy organic chemistry, I just really need to do better in the class next semester and better implement these study techniques (and maybe find new ones that work better)!!

Quantum Mechanics Itself as Emergent 'Phenomenon'?

Recently, we've been talking about emergence - more explicitly about emergent phenomena in many body systems. But what if the concept of emergence would not only apply 'within' quantum mechanics but also 'outside' the theory? What if quantum mechanics itself is an emergent theory from a classical-type underlying 'reality'? This is exactly the approach of an interpretation of quantum mechanics, called emergent quantum mechanics (EmQM).

Where is EmQM located in the 'zoo' of interpretations?

The 'zoo' of interpretations and alternative theories of quantum mechanics can be classified by their answers to the violation of Bell's inequalities. Bell's Theorem is a theory-independent result and therefore must hold for any possible approach which reproduces the results of standard quantum mechanics. Roughly speaking, the theorem's consequences are that one either has to give up the traditional understanding of realism, or the idea of locality. E.g. Rovelli's approach and QBism belong to the camp which gives up traditional realism and adheres to locality, whereas Bohmian Mechanics sticks to realism and therefore embraces nonlocality. In general, hidden variable theories belong to this 'realist' camp.

EmQM suspects a locally deterministic theory from which standard quantum mechanics emerges. Walleczek and Groessing (p. 2, [1]) suppose that instead of "absolute quantum randomness" there might be "quantum interconnectedness" - indicating the presence of some kind of nonlocality, e.g. nonlocal causality. Hence, this approach seems to belong to the above called 'realist' camp, in which a traditional understanding of realism is embraced and the price to pay is nonlocality, more neatly called "quantum interconnectedness".

Why EmQM?

Walleczek and Groessing [1] argue that a metaphysical fundament is needed in order to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics. Since general relativity is strictly deterministic and standard quantum mechanics inherently indeterministic, the metaphysical fundament of each theory starkly opposes each other such that the lack of unification seems inevitable. However, setting a microscopically causal fundament for both branches of physics, as well as the focus onto emergent phenomena, might yield a solution. For instance, the theory of quantum gravity already relies on the idea of emergent spacetime - together with EmQM it may be possible to lay a metaphysical framework of 'all physics'. Nevertheless it might be questionable, in my view, how this is supposed to work with an approach as EmQM in which nonlocality is a cornerstone, i.e. possibly causing trouble with causality as we know it from relativity.

EmQM and Bohmian Mechanics

Since EmQm and Bohmian Mechanics (BM) belong to the same, 'realist' camp, both seem to be related. Both claim to describe the underlying 'reality' beneath standard quantum mechanics. Both approaches share the belief that standard textbook quantum mechanics does not have descriptive character regarding the nature of reality, even though the theory is empirically successful. Then, standard quantum mechanics is regarded as an 'effective' theory.

However, two approaches can be well compared by regarding how they attempt to reproduce standard quantum mechanics. One main aspect in this respect is the appearance of randomness. Both approaches claim to be fundamentally deterministic and therefore have to explain why we experience the randomness of standard quantum mechanics in our laboratories. Bohmians do this by introducing so called "absolute uncertainty" [3], which is a consequence of the quantum equilibrium hypothesis. Effectively, this means that a universe in which Bohmian Mechanics governs the dynamics, it is impossible to gain knowledge about the configuration of a system beyond the probability distribution determined by the wave function ρ=|ψ|^2. Hence, the complete configuration of point particles, their positions and velocities do exist, but there is no experimental access to it. This limited knowledge is supposed to be the source of randomness and uncertainty that we encounter in standard quantum mechanics:

"This absolute uncertainty is in precise agreement with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. But while Heisenberg used uncertainty to argue for the meaninglessness of particle trajectories, we find that, with Bohmian mechanics, absolute uncertainty arises as a necessity, emerging as a remarkably clean and simple consequence of the existence of trajectories." (p.864 [3])

Instead of making use of a (more or less ad-hoc) hypothesis, the appearance of randomness in EmQM seems a bit more natural: Only because the underlying dynamics is supposed to be deterministic, this does not imply pre-determination. This is something one can already observe in purely classical systems: The more complex a system is, the more uncertain is the outcome (often referred as "deterministic chaos"). A minor change in the boundary conditions can cause a huge change in the result. Thus, the central point is emergence:

"Critical in this context is that emergent phenomena are subject to unpredictability as a consequence of the intrinsically self-referential nature of the governing dynamics [...]." (p.5 [1])

In comparison, BM formulates its theory in a rather rigid manner. It formulates postulates from which the theory can be deduced. The issue with this is that these postulates have kind of an ad-hoc character. In my view, EmQM circumvents these problems by being less strict/definite. This approach does not seem to have a fixed formalism yet (at least I haven't found analyses on the same level of rigor as there are for BM), while the research seems to be more focused on exploring how emergence can enter the picture - as e.g. 't Hooft does in [2], where he describes explicit examples of possibly emergent symmetries. (Disclaimer: maybe my impression is incorrect, since I have only superficial knowledge about EmQM.)

Regardless of this point, both approaches seem to be interconnected in the end. Walleczek and Groessing (p.2 [1]) claim that a future EmQM would include BM. Hence, in my view, it might be possible that EmQM might support BM in the sense that it lifts the necessity of possibly ad-hoc appearing postulates as formulated in BM. Thus, any theory of quantum mechanics (orthodox or unorthodox) might not only yield emergent phenomena within the theory but quantum mechanics might unravel itsel as an emergent 'phenomenon'.

---

References:

[1] Walleczek, Groessing, Is the World Local or Nonlocal? Towards an Emergent Quantum Mechanics in the 21st Century, arXiv:1603.02862, 2016

[2] 't Hooft, Emergent Quantum Mechanics and Emergent Symmetries, arXiv:0707.4568, 2007

[3] Dürr, Goldstein, Zanghí, Quantum equilibrium and the origin of absolute uncertainty. J Stat Phys 67, 843–907 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01049004

Amazon Unveils a [Horrifying] Fanfic Publishing Platform

Today, Amazon announced the imminent launch of its newest endeavor, Kindle Worlds, a publishing platform for fanfiction. When I read the announcement, I was horrified, then angry, then sad. I want to take a moment to explain why this is such a tragedy.

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how do i break the cycle

prepare yourself for the absolutely insufferable lack of satisfaction found in forgiveness

Contrapoints, “Decrypting the Alt-right”