The only way that makes sense as an introduction to QM is if he had immediately afterwards said "Confused? Vaguely frightened? Welcome to the standard state of mind one feels when studying Quantum Mechanics." Otherwise, WTF?

I'm sure he had a point, but I doubt it made any difference.  I think introductory professors just get bored.

The audio of the girl is really annoying.

nmrsnr: The only way that makes sense as an introduction to QM is if he had immediately afterwards said "Confused? Vaguely frightened? Welcome to the standard state of mind one feels when studying Quantum Mechanics." Otherwise, WTF?

That's pretty much what I got from it. "Nothing you've seen or heard so far makes any sense at all in the world that you have always known. Quantum Mechanics is like that."

"I am so confused."

I think this was his entire point.  Quantum Mechanics works incredibly well as a system of predicting measurements.  But nobody understands it. Ignore those string theorists.

Is this... going to be on the test?

Philbb: nmrsnr: The only way that makes sense as an introduction to QM is if he had immediately afterwards said "Confused? Vaguely frightened? Welcome to the standard state of mind one feels when studying Quantum Mechanics." Otherwise, WTF?

That's pretty much what I got from it. "Nothing you've seen or heard so far makes any sense at all in the world that you have always known. Quantum Mechanics is like that."

But that message only gets across if the professor says that's the point (or if you are already familiar with QM in some way) otherwise they just think you're a crazy person.

Also, he could have just as easily spliced together clips of Yo Gabba Gabba and Psycho (or American Psycho if you really wanted disturbing), he didn't have to go with 9/11 and Hitler, which might have come across as offensive.

GAT_00: According to QM, there is a non-zero chance that you can run full speed into a door and go straight through it as if it didn't exist.  It is unlikely, but given enough attempts you should be able to accomplish it.

No, that's like saying that Thermodynamics says there is a small but nonzero chance that the Earth will decide to impart enough kinetic energy to you to launch you into space, highly unlikely, but possible, and still within the classical conception of the Universe.

No, QM says that if you run at the wall enough times you will appear on the other side of the wall because you really were there all along and that makes no sense, and is completely incapable of being explained classically.

nmrsnr: But that message only gets across if the professor says that's the point (or if you are already familiar with QM in some way) otherwise they just think you're a crazy person.

Meh, my QM teacher opened his two-class series by saying that he wanted to teach a subject students wanted to learn.  QM is hard, and it's mathematical.  It's like being a five year old asking your parents "why, Daddy?" and they say "just do it!".

How can you learn QM in an auditorium-style classroom, though?  MIT is OK, Princeton used to be OK for physics.  Any class where you have giggling girls recording the wrong way on iPhones is not an environment where you'll be learning anything about QM.

nmrsnr: Philbb: nmrsnr: The only way that makes sense as an introduction to QM is if he had immediately afterwards said "Confused? Vaguely frightened? Welcome to the standard state of mind one feels when studying Quantum Mechanics." Otherwise, WTF?

That's pretty much what I got from it. "Nothing you've seen or heard so far makes any sense at all in the world that you have always known. Quantum Mechanics is like that."

But that message only gets across if the professor says that's the point (or if you are already familiar with QM in some way) otherwise they just think you're a crazy person.

Also, he could have just as easily spliced together clips of Yo Gabba Gabba and Psycho (or American Psycho if you really wanted disturbing), he didn't have to go with 9/11 and Hitler, which might have come across as offensive.

I understand your point, but we don't know what he went on to say. Of course it could have been done differently and I'm sure it is by other teachers.  It might also have been offensive to some students and I'm not saying it was the right thing to do. But I would bet that almost every student that was there will remember it and some will even pay more attention to the class because of it.

GAT_00: Philbb: nmrsnr: The only way that makes sense as an introduction to QM is if he had immediately afterwards said "Confused? Vaguely frightened? Welcome to the standard state of mind one feels when studying Quantum Mechanics." Otherwise, WTF?

That's pretty much what I got from it. "Nothing you've seen or heard so far makes any sense at all in the world that you have always known. Quantum Mechanics is like that."

If QM makes sense to you, then something is wrong with you.

That's kind of what I was saying. If the first five minutes or so that class made sense to you then it's likely that you are a genius or a seriously disturbed individual. QM makes even less sense.

"In order to learn quantum mechanics, you have to strip til you're raw, erase all the garbage from your brain, and start over again. Um, quantum mechanics... Nothing you have learned in your life til now does in any way help prepare you for this, because everything you do in your everyday life is totally opposite to what you're going to learn in quantum mechanics. And so I've been tasked with the impossible challenge of having to teach you quantum mechanics in one hour, what basically the most brilliant minds, Einstein and so on, couldn't figure out working on it their whole lives. So that's actually a bit of a big goal for today. Um, nevertheless you have to get undergraduate degrees here at Columbia, and you have to pass quantum mechanics in order to get that degree. So it's probably worth looking into this a little bit."

That's what the guy says after his weird brain palate cleansing opener, but to be honest, at the point where he stripped to his underwear, put on a black hoodie, and started walking back and forth across the stage, I would have assumed he was going to pull out an assault rifle and start shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. The kids are laughing about it, but it seriously looked like he was going to commit mass murder.

What are the odds that guy has a dungeon?

Triumph: What are the odds that guy has a dungeon?

Non-zero... but then again, that is true for just about everything else in his class as well.

Triumph: What are the odds that guy has a dungeon?

A dungeon?  In Manhattan?  On a Columbia faculty salary?

Finally, the show was interrupted by ninjas who appeared and smashed puppets onstage.

Weird? I think you mean TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME.

poot_rootbeer: Triumph: What are the odds that guy has a dungeon?

A dungeon?  In Manhattan?  On a Columbia faculty salary?

First, who says he lives in Manhattan? Second, Columbia ranks second in average salary just barely behind Harvard. LINK
If he's tenured, he's prolly pulling down over 200k, much more if he wrote a textbook.

Tenure. It is like pulling the pin on the hand grenade of eccentricities and lobbing it into the light of day.

A combination of strangeness and charm.

isn't that the logo for the Misfits?

GAT_00: According to QM, there is a non-zero chance that you can run full speed into a door and go straight through it as if it didn't exist.  It is unlikely, but given enough attempts you should be able to accomplish it.

Wait, you mean doors are meant to be SOLID?  I've been walking through them for as long as I can remember.

/Would explain the screaming...

blanchae: Philbb:

But I would bet that almost every student that was there will remember it and some will even pay more attention to the class because of it.

I had an English class, in college, start out with something exciting like this - we analyzed The Rolling Stones' Angie song. Unfortunately, that was the ONLY interesting thing in the whole course. The rest of the semester was so boring, we could of died in there!

But of course, until someone opened the classroom door and looked, we were both dead and alive...

Well, has anyone opened the classroom door or are you still just posting from within the classroom?

Pointy Tail of Satan: We all know the Schrodinger cat experiment. But what would happen if one put a dead cat in the box?

Well there's now a non-zero chance the furry bastard could come out alive if the....um, trap went off.

RIGHT!!