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Thursday, October 24, 2013

Feynman's Arrows : What are the Complex Numbers?


;; Feynman's Arrows : What are the Complex Numbers?

;; I've lost count of the number of times I've met physicists and even
;; professional mathematicians who think there's something a bit
;; spooky and unreal about the complex numbers.

;; There isn't.

;; Imagine that you're sitting in front of a photo-manipulation
;; program, and you're able to enlarge a photograph by a factor of
;; 2, and rotate it 30 degrees clockwise.

;; I don't think anyone is going to find that spooky. If you do, go
;; find a photo manipulation program and do it a couple of times.

;; If you do it twice, then you'll find that that gives you the same
;; effect as enlarging the photo by a factor of four and rotating it
;; 60 degrees clockwise.

;; In fact, how would we get our original photo back? My first guess
;; would be that I should shrink it by a factor of four and rotate it
;; 60 degrees anticlockwise. And that's the right answer. Go and try
;; it if it's not obvious.

;; And if you have your head round that, then you understand the
;; complex numbers.

;; If the mathematicians of the 16th century had been thinking about
;; how to use photoshop, instead of worrying about how to solve cubic
;; equations, then they'd have come up with the complex numbers in
;; about fifteen minutes flat, and they'd have thought they were the
;; most obvious thing in the world, and it would never have occurred
;; to them to talk about 'imaginary numbers', and an awful lot of
;; terror and confusion would have been avoided over the years.

;; And if the complex numbers had been found that way, then I think
;; we'd teach them to little children at about the same time we teach
;; them about fractions, and well before we teach them about the
;; really weird stuff like the square roots of two.

;; And the little children would have no problem at all with them, 
;; and they would think that they were fun, and easy.


;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;; In his wonderful little book QED, Richard Feynman managed to ;; explain the soul of Quantum Field Theory without using the complex ;; numbers at all. ;; Instead he talks about little arrows, which rotate like the hands ;; on a stopwatch, and occasionally he needs to add them up and rotate ;; them to work out what light and electrons are going to do. ;; Before we talk about the complex numbers, let's think about ;; Feynman's arrows. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;; GRAPHICS CODE ;; I'd like to draw some pictures. And I'd like to use my ;; 'simple-plotter' library, which is on clojars: ;; https://clojars.org/simple-plotter ;; This is probably the most complicated bit of this post, but it's ;; just graphics, and it doesn't matter in the slightest, so feel free ;; to skip over it unless you're interested in how to draw little ;; arrows on a computer. ;; You can add this: ;; [simple-plotter "0.1.2"] ;; to your project file and restart everything, or if you are wise and ;; have the incomparable pomegranate on your classpath you can do: (require 'cemerick.pomegranate) (cemerick.pomegranate/add-dependencies :coordinates '[[simple-plotter "0.1.2"]] :repositories {"clojars" "http://clojars.org/repo"}) ;; Either way, once the library is added to classpath (use 'simple-plotter) ;; We can use it to draw arrows with tiny heads on them, so: (defn draw-offset-arrow [[a b][c d]] (let [headx (+ a c) heady (+ b d)] (line a b headx heady) (line headx heady (+ headx (* -0.086 c) (* -0.05 d)) (+ heady (* 0.05 c) (* -0.086 d))) (line headx heady (+ headx (* -0.086 c) (* 0.05 d)) (+ heady (* -0.05 c) (* -0.086 d))))) ;; And we'll usually think of our arrows as having their tails at [0,0] (defn draw-arrow [[a b]] (draw-offset-arrow [0 0] [a b])) (defn make-blackboard [title size] (create-window title 400 400 white black (- size) size (- size) size) (axes) (ink yellow)) ;; END OF GRAPHICS CODE ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;; So, with a few bits of graphics code so that the computer can do ;; what Feynman could do on a blackboard: ;; Let us make a blackboard: (make-blackboard "Arrows!" 10) ;; This arrow points roughly northeast (3 miles east and 4 miles north, in fact) (def arrow1 [3,4]) ;; put it on the blackboard (draw-arrow arrow1) ;; And this one points more southeast (4 miles east and -3 north, or 3 miles south) (def arrow2 [4,-3]) ;; put it on the blackboard (draw-arrow arrow2) ;; And we can add these arrows in what I'd hope is a really obvious way. (defn add-arrows [arw1 arw2] (mapv + arw1 arw2)) (add-arrows arrow1 arrow2) ;-> [7 1] ;; Draw that too, but in red chalk (do (ink red) (draw-arrow (add-arrows arrow1 arrow2))) ;; This addition rule looks very simple in terms of coordinates, and geometrically it's ;; very simple too. ;; You draw one arrow (it's already there actually) (do (ink yellow) (draw-arrow arrow1)) ;; And then you draw the second one, but starting at the head of the first one: (do (ink green) (draw-offset-arrow arrow1 arrow2)) ;; And the sum is the arrow (in red) that points at the head of the ;; second green arrow.
;; It works the same whichever order you do the drawing in. (make-blackboard "sworrA!" 10) (draw-arrow arrow1) (draw-arrow arrow2) (ink green) (draw-offset-arrow arrow2 arrow1) (ink red) (draw-arrow (add-arrows arrow2 arrow1)) ;; It shouldn't be too hard to see how that's going to work for any ;; two arrows to produce a new one. And it should come as no surprise ;; that it works the same way whichever order you add the arrows in. (add-arrows arrow2 arrow1) ;-> (7 1) (add-arrows arrow1 arrow2) ;-> (7 1) ;; So the addition of arrows is fairly straightforward, and it gives a ;; way of talking about moving around in the plane. It works exactly ;; as it works for vectors. ;; Now we're going to do something slightly weirder, but in the same spirit. ;; Adding two arrows went like (a,b)+(c,d) -> (a+b, c+d) ;; But we'll say that to multiply two arrows, ;; (a,b)*(c,d) -> (ac-db, ad+cb) ;; This rule looks a bit odd, but it turns out to be the way to think ;; about composing zooms and twists that I was talking about above, ;; that the ancient philosophers might have come up with if they'd ;; spent their days messing about with photoshop rather than dying of ;; plague or being set on fire by religious people. ;; At any rate it's a very easy rule to explain to a computer: (defn multiply-arrows[[a b][c d]] [(- (* a c) (* d b)) (+ (* a d) (* c b))]) ;; And, like arrow-addition, it's also symmetric. ;; Do a few by hand to see how it works! ;; Here's what we get if we multiply our two favourite arrows. (multiply-arrows arrow1 arrow2) ;-> [24 7] (multiply-arrows arrow2 arrow1) ;-> [24 7] ;; Here's another way of saying the same thing (defn multiply-arrows[arrow1 arrow2] [(reduce - (map * arrow1 arrow2)) (reduce + (map * arrow1 (reverse arrow2)))]) (multiply-arrows arrow1 arrow2) ;-> [24 7] (multiply-arrows arrow2 arrow1) ;-> [24 7] ;; You might be able to see that there's a sense here of multiplying things, ;; and of exchanging x coordinates and y coordinates, and taking pluses to minuses. ;; You might notice above that arrow2 [4, -3] is arrow1 [3,4] rotated by 90 degrees, ;; and that to get one from the other (3,4) -> (-4, 3), we exchange x and y and ;; swap +4 for -4. ;; In fact, we've encoded the idea of 'rotating and zooming' into our multiplication law. ;; Let's draw our example arrows and what they multiply to (do (make-blackboard "Arrow1 * Arrow1" 30) ;; <- Much bigger blackboard needed! (ink yellow) (draw-arrow arrow1) (draw-arrow arrow2) (ink red) (draw-arrow (multiply-arrows arrow1 arrow2))) ;; It turns out that the product of [3,4] and [4,-3] is a gigantic arrow. (multiply-arrows arrow1 arrow2) ;-> [24 7] ;; The two arrows we started with were five long, but the result of multiplying them is 25 long. ;; Of course, we could have guessed that. 500% zoom followed by 500% zoom is 2500% zoom! ;; What happens, if, instead of taking arrow1 and arrow2 we multiply ;; arrow1 by a much smaller arrow, so that it will not grow so much? ;; Arrow 3 will be a tiny arrow, just a bit longer than 1 mile long, and ;; just a bit to the north of due east. (def arrow3 [1, 1/10]) (do (make-blackboard "Arrow3 * Arrow1" 10) (ink yellow) (draw-arrow arrow1) (ink cyan) (draw-arrow arrow3) (ink red) (draw-arrow (multiply-arrows arrow3 arrow1))) ;; Arrow 3 represents a very small turn anticlockwise, and a very small zoom
;; Look at what happens if we keep multiplying arrow1 by arrow3 (ink red) (draw-arrow (multiply-arrows arrow3 arrow1)) (draw-arrow (multiply-arrows arrow3 (multiply-arrows arrow3 arrow1))) (draw-arrow (multiply-arrows arrow3 (multiply-arrows arrow3 (multiply-arrows arrow3 arrow1)))) ;; and so on (def arrows (iterate (fn[x] (multiply-arrows arrow3 x)) arrow1)) (draw-arrow (nth arrows 3)) (draw-arrow (nth arrows 4)) (draw-arrow (nth arrows 5)) (doseq [ i (take 100 arrows)] (draw-arrow i)) ;; By repeatedly applying very small turns and very small zooms, we've ;; made a beautiful expanding spiral. ;; And I think, I genuinely think, that you might be able to get small ;; children to play with these arrows and to make this pretty spiral, just ;; after you've taught them about fractions.

1 comment:

  1. This series is a great contribution to mankind, thanks for making it.

    I found that I had to use:
    (use 'simple-plotter.core)
    When I just had "(use 'simple-plotter)", I got a FileNotFound.

    I also found that, like most other sites with Blogger.com stuff, I couldn't post a comment at all with FireFox


    ReplyDelete

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