Submitted by Pippa Storey
on January 06, 2024
** QUANTUM SHORTS 2023/2024: SHORTLISTED
>> Read an interview with the author
The history of physics contains ’til this day
A little-known secret surrounding Solvay.
Aside from the talks among Einstein’s old pals,
Were parallel sessions arranged by the gals.
They beat God at dice and exchanged idle chat,
And nursed Erwin Schrödinger’s traumatized cat.
They made snide remarks about Marie Curie,
And bad-mouthed the men over pastries and tea:
Their gripes over prizes and coveted chairs,
Romantic entanglements, steamy affairs,
Herr Pauli’s exclusion from trivia night,
And Planck’s constant rants about quanta of light;
That Erwin was dishy but Niels was a bore,
And Werner would sleep through his lectures and snore.
The girls’ greatest secret undoubtedly, though,
Was Madame de Broglie’s new quantum gâteau.
It’s said those who tried it could not get enough;
It wasn’t like Thomson’s old plum-pudding stuff.
So here we explain the procedures to make
A version of Madame’s original cake.
The optimal order is still in dispute,
But mixing and baking for sure don’t commute.
First preheat the oven to one-eighty C
(Or four-fifty K, give or take a degree).
Beat butter and sugar with integer spin,
Then fold all the other ingredients in.
Don’t measure them, though, or you’ll alter their state;
Just guess the amounts and then leave it to fate.
You might get a cake that’s too dry or too greasy,
But nobody said this was going to be easy!
Now transfer the mix to a suitable pan,
And bake thirty minutes (or less with the fan).
The pan must be deep and have sides that are stout
To prevent the raw batter from tunneling out.
The cake should turn golden and rise as it cooks—
But don’t take a peek to assess how it looks!
Just wait for the specified time to elapse,
Or you’ll trigger the wave function’s fatal collapse.
By quantum mechanics and these simple rules
You can eat the cake hot and still wait ’til it cools.
This feat marks the theory’s preeminent coup:
The proof you can have your cake and eat it too.
Physics references:
Line 2: A reference to the Solvay Conferences, the most famous of which were the conferences of 1911 and 1927, where the world’s leading physicists met to discuss the emerging theory of quantum mechanics. Among them were Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Marie Curie, Wolfgang Pauli, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Louis de Broglie, all of whom are referenced in the story.
Line 5: A reference to Einstein’s contention that God “does not play dice” with the universe.
Line 6: A reference to Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, in which a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously alive and dead because its fate is linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.
Line 7: Marie Curie was the only woman invited to the Solvay Conferences of 1911 and 1927.
Line 10: A reference to quantum entanglement, in which the state of one object is correlated with the state of another (potentially distant) object, although each object exists in more than one state simultaneously. Measurement on one thus instantaneously affects the other, a phenomenon that Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance”.
Line 10: A reference to Schrödinger’s many love affairs. He formulated wave mechanics during a vacation in the Swiss Alps in the company of a Viennese girlfriend.
Line 11: “Pauli’s exclusion from…”: a reference to Pauli’s Exclusion Principle, according to which no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state.
Line 12: “Planck’s constant rants…”: a reference to Planck’s Constant. According to quantum mechanics, light exists in discrete units known as photons, whose energy equals their frequency multiplied by Planck’s Constant.
Line 13: “Niels was a bore”: a reference to Niels Bohr, whose model of the atom underlies our modern understanding of atomic physics. Bohr proposed that electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus, but can jump from one orbit to another by absorption or emission of a photon.
Line 14: “Werner” is Werner Heisenberg, who developed the matrix formulation of quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Line 16: A reference to Louis de Broglie, who proposed that particles have wave properties. The concept of wave-particle duality was further developed by Schrödinger in his formulation of wave mechanics.
Line 18: A reference to Thomson’s 1904 plum-pudding model of the atom, in which negatively charged electrons were hypothesized to be embedded like raisins within a positively charged “pudding”. This model was refuted in 1911 by Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus.
Line 22: A reference to non-commuting operators, which represent the mathematical basis of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In quantum mechanics, measurements are described by operators, which can change the state of the system. If two operators do not commute, it means their order matters and the quantities they represent cannot be measured simultaneously with arbitrary precision.
Line 24: “450 K”: The temperature in kelvin (the number of degrees above absolute zero).
Line 25: “integer spin”: A reference to the intrinsic angular momentum or “spin” of a particle, which is quantized in integer or half-integer multiples of Planck’s Constant.
Line 27: A reference to quantum measurement theory, according to which any measurement or observation on a system can potentially change the state of the system.
Line 30: The constraint phrase required by the competition.
Line 34: A reference to quantum tunneling, a phenomenon in which an object such as an electron passes through a potential energy barrier that, according to classical mechanics, it has insufficient energy to surmount.
Line 36: “Don’t take a peek…”: another reference to quantum measurement theory.
Line 38: Wave function collapse describes the change in the state of a system induced by a measurement or observation on the system.
Line 40: “eat the cake hot and still wait ’til it cools”: a reference to quantum superposition (a phenomenon in which a system exists in different states simultaneously).
Line 42: “have your cake and eat it too”: another reference to quantum superposition.
About the Author:
Pippa Storey earned a master’s degree in physics from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a doctorate in quantum physics from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France. She is now a Research Associate Professor of Radiology at New York University, where she develops techniques for MRI.
