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0 pointstexaslonghorn53y ago0 comments

Also copied from a couple blog posts ago he doesn't self-identify as a physicist either.

I also had the following exchange at my birthday dinner:

Physicist: So I don’t get this, Scott. Are you a physicist who studied computer science, or a computer scientist who studied physics?

Me: I’m a computer scientist who studied computer science.

Physicist: But then you…

Me: Yeah, at some point I learned what a boson was, in order to invent BosonSampling.

Physicist: And your courses in physics…

Me: They ended at thermodynamics. I couldn’t handle PDEs.

Physicist: What are the units of h-bar?

Me: Uhh, well, it’s a conversion factor between energy and time. (*)

Physicist: Good. What’s the radius of the hydrogen atom?

Me: Uhh … not sure … maybe something like 10-15 meters?

Physicist: OK fine, he’s not one of us.

0 comments

mdp20213y ago

> radius of the hydrogen atom [...] maybe something like 10-15 meters?

Please fix that into 10^-15 or equivalent expression for 10⁻¹⁵, before somebody gets the idea that "Scott" thought "between 10 and 15".

jks3y ago

The original doesn't say "10-15 meters" but ten to the power of negative fifteen meters, so his guess was off from the Bohr radius of 5.3E-11 in the other direction but by much fewer orders of magnitude than as rendered above.

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