I didn't intend to do this. It sorta just happened but it is
nice to see progress in movie quality after 7 years. Just look
at how things have changed! And yet... it's still the same in so
many ways.

Sadie and Nicole rolled into town and we all hung out for the first
time in many years. We all watched the original jump cut movie
and I said, "Hey, we need to do this again." And for lack of better
things to do as a group we made this.

I have to say that editing jump cuts seems boring at first.
But you reach that critical moment when you sit back and go... wait
a minute this is actually getting entertaining.

(That may just be author's bias.)

But at least you know about jump cuts now.
.. All over again....

You can also watch the original Jump Cut Movie made way back in June 2006:

First, let me say I'm a normal human being.

I find math challenging.
However, I am willing to work. I'm willing to struggle.

I'll venture a guess that you are normal too. Perhaps, we have different
tastes and motivations but basically we are not geniuses. No offense or anything.
I'm claiming this based on statistics.

And we shouldn't care either.

We can't leave the achievements to the few folks that somehow 'get it' immediately.
They're too rare to rely on. We need to develop a slow steady and dependable way forward
without assumptions as to the general intelligence of those on the trail.
My friends, if we can figure out how to-figure-out with
our own non-genius-tools and tactics than I grant you we'll have it made.

We'll pull humanity out of the dust once and for all.

That's the motive behind my logic. The logic that tells me to tell you to get
yourself a-learnin' because we need you.

This post isn't just about Quantum Mechanics.

Actually, it's about the process of teaching yourself things. I figured my
algorithm ought to be written down and shared with the masses. I'm almost certain
that at least someone else who has been down this road before
will get a good chuckle at the similarities of our stories.

You see there are a few truths you uncover when you set out to teach
yourself things.

   1. It's going to take a long time.

   2. You will be frustrated.

   3. You will put it down and pick it up a lot.

   4. You will learn patience.

   5. You will learn focus.

   6. You will learn discipline.

   7. You will succeed one day. 

This is all about you. This is all about your wants and dreams and ideas and
interests. This quest is yours to own and to utilize.

So...

What do you want to know and why?

I'd advise a certain amount of wandering around. I'd tell you to take it all
in, go out and play with each subject and notice the birth of your excitement.
The right spark can start the fire that will light the rest of your life. So
start rubbing things together.

Once, you frame your quest, you ought to size up the challenge. It's akin to
standing at the foot of some vast mountain and looking it up and down. As your
eyes narrow you feel the impending weight of the task at hand.

That's normal.

It means you're on the right track.

As for me, I've always been interested in Quantum Mechanics. In fact, I've always been
interested in science in general. But it was physics that won out in the end.
I was a kid watching the Discovery Channel (back when it was still worth it)
and reading about Richard Feynman's crazy stories at Los Alamos. I'd watch
the doc from Back to the Future and Bill Nye and when I was home sick
I'd watch educational programming.

I could always see my mountain. I just never had what I needed
to climb it.

Until now.

One summer afternoon I was meandering along the physics books on the 3rd floor of
HSU's library. (The physics, math and computer science books are all in the same 3 rows.)
I came across a little book called, "Quantum Theory A Very Short Introduction"
and read through it. To my astonishment I actually felt like I had grasped what it was
saying. It was the first glimmer of hope for me. It was the book that made me think
I could go out and teach myself Quantum Mechanics.

I walked home grinning.

Fast forward a few years and I'm very sick for a very long time. There was little
I could do but stare at my ceiling for months actually.
And when I was strong enough I'd go to the beach and meditate.
I'd be there long enough to see the sun swim and to greet the stars.
I would leave under the moon's watchful gaze as the encroaching tide forced my retreat.

I could not stand wasting my time so I decided that I'd get some math and physics books
and spend those hours reading up on the universe. That's where the small library
of QM books began. Truthfully, I had attempted to learn before but it wasn't until
I was stuck in bed for hours and hours before things began to sink in. (See Step 4)

My goal specifically?

I wished to know the math behind all the theories in order to make up my own mind
when it came time for folks to present the next big theory of the universe. I figured that
if I knew what the well worn theories of the day were saying I'd have a front row seat
to understanding reality. Besides, I was tired of having authors cut up and serve
me 'their' metaphors for these theories. I was tired of hearing the 'quantum-hype' and
the application of the ideas way way out of sync with what the math claimed. [1]

This was the motivation. [2]

Build a Plan.

I had a problem.
I'd read one paragraph and it would look like a Mad Libs fill in the blank.
Every other word was gibberish in the beginning. But I was not deterred.
I knew I needed a plan and a system to handle it.

I realized one day that it was all a matter of organizing definitions.
So, I created a wiki that allowed me to link terms to definitions and then those definitions
had terms that I would link to more definitions.
This progresses until I get all the way back to something familiar. [N]

My point is now that you have a destination you need a road map.
You need a plan. I laid down a bibliography. I had a feeling it would be necessary
to prove what I knew one day so I wanted my reference handy for quoting.

But no number of sources will ever help you if you don't put the time aside to read them.
I ran a few calculations and realized that learning this is a several year endeavor.
Developing and keeping a schedule separates the laid back "sorta going to understand this one day" types
from the "no I'm dead set on using quantum mechanics to invent The Matrix' types.

If you see the value in your subject you'll realize how important it is to get on the trail.
That is, with a carefully set goal, the task becomes easier because you'll find motivation
to work at it everyday.

Maybe, your objective isn't to redesign reality and that's fine. In fact, sometimes I'm just happy
figuring out how to pronounce all those odd esoteric mathematical terms. But it's still easy to
get lost until you have a measure of how far you've gone.

That's why you have to...

Track your progress

In my case, I practice explaining what I find out over and over again. Sometimes I write this down
and it becomes article fodder or later a movie.[3] I also have several notebooks
full of mathematical equations I've jotted down and worked over. You might consider taking audio notes.
Chances are you'll need to pick up where you left off and listening to your own recap is far more
helpful than having to review a scattered collection of sources.

Lately, I've been harping on this flash card system I've grown fond of.
Because after all success is 3 by 5.
I like the way I can add notes and observations to flash cards. I smile when I see them in
my day pack. I enjoy just flipping through them. I'm often surprised how fast I remember things
in card form.

As it turns out, if you don't have
all the details you don't have anything. For too long my understanding of things has been
hazy all because I wouldn't put the time into properly memorizing things. The proper vehicle for
my effort just happened to be 3 by 5 index cards.

Rewriting them and referencing where the data came from becomes a ritual.
The upkeep helps me focus on the specifics. The one problem?
Sometimes information doesn't card-i-tize[4]

My favorite thing is to sit back and watch a stack of my knowledge grow.
Visualize your progress and watch your motivation rev.

Motivation comes in handy because you should..

Expect to be puzzled... Endlessly

Don't worry too much about not 'getting it' because you won't. That's normal.
How well (and how long) you can handle gibberish is a key factor of success here.
Settle in because chances are it will be a long time before clarity shines down
upon you.

I heard QM had something to do with Hilbert Spaces. So naturally, I decided to go
find a math book on Hilbert Spaces. Somewhere, in the later section of the book it decided to
explain a bit of Quantum Mechanics all by itself. That's when I found out what "taking a measurement"
means in the quantum world. I saw the math behind it all.

I still recall where I was when I learned that.
I can see myself standing on the 3rd floor of the library looking at that Hilbert book and flipping
to that point somewhere in the latter two thirds of the book.

Moments of clarity are burnt into my memory.
It's just a another small piece of the picture.
But piece by piece we move on. Each door unlocking yet more doors until material that once was
stone cold glows with new warmth.

Do the work.

Memorize.
Maybe you have memorized lines for a play.
Or the multiplication table.
Or even a human language.

The fact remains that knowing what the symbols mean is crucial.
Even if your reading slows to a crawl. Crawl through it because
rushing the reading won't get you to the finish line sooner.
It will only make you tired.[6]

If you have to spend an entire night on 2 pages.
Then spend an entire night on 2 pages!
That's 2 pages closer to the dream.
That's a 1000 feet to the next base camp.

That's just how it has to be.

It's important to note how different this is from passive
learning. We learn a lot of things by just existing and interacting.
But once we expend the energy, once we stretch our mental muscles we
feel the strain.

Try to solve the problems authors give you.
Try a little each day.

You'll need a lot of days so...

Have Patience.

You get excited. You want to rush it.
Don't.
That's not going to work.

The problem here is that I can't just tell you not to rush.
You have to come to the realization that it won't work that way.
What you're embarking on here is a huge time investment.
It's going to be a process. A growth process.

Of course, I had to learn this the hard way.
I had to get sick and put my life on hold for a long time
before I realized just how much better off I was.
I had to make it a part of the week before I could cover ground.

Growing takes time. "You just can't force force a flower to bloom."[5]

There just isn't a substitute for careful thoughtful research.
The goal is clarity and accuracy not top speed.

Over all it helps to have...

Checkpoints

There is a real danger of learning this stuff wrong.
It's a fact of the trajectory. But we can check ourselves.
And that is the most important part.

But it is also the tricky part.
You have a few options:

One.
You can find a mentor. Someone that you can ask to help tie
you back to reality. They might be online. If you're lucky you might
find someone in person.

Two.
If you wish to remain 100% solo go find a question and answer bank.
Go write software and test run it.
Go solve problems in text books.
Cross check facts in multiple sources.

You can grind and claw your way to confidence with your growing
knowledge base. Each new concept a hard won trophy shined by the effort
to polish it.

Synthesize.

Create.
It is only in the act of creation that we find ourselves.
This might mean solving problems you find in different quantum textbooks or
writing programs to simulate quantum computing or even writing out the proofs yourself.
Regardless, attempting to create highlights the holes in your knowledge and it is the
quickest way to generate questions.

And the research cycle continues.
Research. Work out. Refine your questions. Research. Repeat.
The objective is to build a real skill.
A real skill is something you can use when you want to, a mode you can switch your mind into.

For me, a particular by-product of this quest was
that I was suddenly very aware of a lot of esoteric higher dimensional mathematics.
I would find myself trying to solve other problems with my new knowledge.
(One of which was the split check problem.)

You'll be there when you start to use the higher math to solve other mundane things.
It's not just "doing the work" this is going somewhere else with it. Playing with the ideas.
Applying them.

You'll have to...

Trust Yourself.

You can do it.

A long time ago I was just a little kid writing the same variants of
algebra equations on my driveway all summer. Eventually, I had more meaningful
things to write down but by then I had moved on to chalkboards on a college campus.
The point is that over time you evolve.[G]

Confusion is a passing phase. So long as you stick to the logic, follow the math and
keep traveling you'll get there. You might have to wander out and then come back and
wander back out and then return again but eventually the trail will grow familiar.
You'll recognize those symbols. You'll start to draw connections between Hilbert Space and your
everyday life.

Well, maybe not exactly like that but the point is the power is in you.
Trust me, it is.

Oh, and Hang in there.

It's tough that's for sure but for the hour after hour of frustration it's worth the
moment when something clicks. It's a lot like solving a jigsaw puzzle. They're long periods of searching
punctuated with Ah Ha!s. And then you ride the endorphins until you can
get your next fix. (Assuming you haven't thrown in the towel just yet.)

In those challenging times, it's a good idea to go sit at the beach and take in the sunset.
Watch the prism of the sky rotate into that deep blue and greet the stars as they open their eyes.
The quest is understanding the world. Do you think it would be as wonderful if it wasn't for all it's
delicate complexities?

I find it important to maintain that it's only messy when it hits the math on the page but the
perception and the beauty is ready to be savored while strolling on a warm summer's day.
After all, you're still alive and it's still out there. If you decide to pack up shop and
come back at some future date then that's fine. Just clear your mind and venture back when you're
ready.

I will say this though. If quantum is your game then maybe you'll start to find wonder
in the once mundane world of everyday things.

I find myself smiling at the patterns of color in soap bubbles or the heating up of the iron on the stove.
I smile and whisper to myself, "Ah, Quantum Mechanics."

And then I go find my flash cards.

Good luck.

[1] I wanted to get to a point where I could take an experimental setup
and write down the matrices that represented the system Quantum Mechanically.
That's the finish line in my mind.

[2] It wasn't entirely a pure knowledge quest. I was intending to use it to give myself
the edge regarding quantum computing.

[3] ;)

[4] Turns out, it's hard to spot exactly what you need to remember sometimes.
(I can't fit entire theorems on cards. ) You can't memorize facts you
don't understand the meanings of very well.

[5] Don't know who said this. There was a guy I knew back in college that
used to work in the mail room and he said this to me after I told him how
stressed out I was.

[6] Literally. When I rush though text I don't grasp, it all blurs and I fall asleep.

[N] The problem was that my web wiki was too slow loading for me to make quick
use of it. I haven't gotten around to bringing it back but I have a feeling I will.

[G] Much like the way some fighting monks will punch iron
their whole lives to become as strong as iron you too will forge new talents.

ps. I wrote this article after looking for something like it and not
finding it out there.

I suddenly felt very self-conscience once the giant felt-y microphone was
in my face and she had hit record. I seldom have the chance to be in
something that I haven't conceived of or edited myself. So when Ariel
approached me after Improv and asked me to join her in the endeavor
I was thrilled.

I'm a bit of a fan of hers I suppose. I came across her videos and ever
since then I realized this was the only other person I've met that has
put up a fair number of videos. I suppose I saw a bit of myself in her movies.
I noticed the topical changes over the course of them and knew exactly how
that goes. (The content of your videos tends to evolve as you wander through them.)
And I recognized that journey was happening for her just like it did for me.
Only, we're completely different people of course.

I recommend the Party Album if you have minute. I like the way she reaches out to "click" on
things. I'm going to have to use that for some later videos of my own.

Oh, and there was this little birthday video I once made for her with the help
of all her friends.

I've always made sure to keep my mathematics from getting dusty and asking
hypotheticals is pretty good way to knock the dust off of all that old material
sitting idly by while your neurons take care of other things.
The hard part is finding the right question to ask. I'm not sure why I was
attracted to this one other than the fact that combining Earth and Rockets
sounded like a good idea at the time.

Was it not superman that said:

Give me a lever long enough...
    ...and I shall move the world.

Alright, no, that was Archimedes.
Actually, they tell me he said, "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum
on which to place it, and I shall move the world." But that fulcrum bit
really wrecks the poetic rhythm so I omitted it to sound more awesome.

This question has a lot to do with that lever guy because I needed a lever
for this thought experiment too. And I don't need the fulcrum bit since I have
freakin' rockets!

Warning: Equations Coming

Yes, I'm about to post formulas here but don't worry I'll just wave my hands
around while I give you the basic idea. The important part is the struggle *cough
to arrive at the answer.

Seriously though, if you wish to skip the gibberish just
scroll on. I won't blame you. Sometimes a guy just has to post his math for
all the world to see... er find mistakes with.

Anyway, let me weave the tail of finding out just how many Saturn V's it would take.

Firstly, I'll admit my physics was a bit rusty. I was having trouble translating
the intuition into warm fuzzy equations. I've got several pages of scribbly notes
that attest to this.

Since I was having trouble, I did what any self respecting lay-science-person would do.

I simplified.

I imagined a long rod extending from the Earth all the way into space.
(A long way into space.)
And mounted a single F-1 Rocket Engine on it.

There were 5 F-1 Rockets at the base of the Saturn-V ya know.

Since I knew the thrust that one engine could deliver I could find the torque
and then use the kinematic equations to determine how long before the Earth would stop.
I know. I know this isn't a Saturn V rocket but give me a break, I'm working through the
problem here and trust me. I was just as disappointed as you to have only solved some rough
notion from a pathetic engine on a pole.

The important part was that it was a start.
Let me back up to torque and kinematic equations. (physics.info/rotational-kinematics/)

Torque is what wrenches are all about. You apply a force (your hand) to a wrench in some direction of
rotation some distance (R) and the nut feels a greater force than what your hand feels.

As for the kinematic equations, those are the same ones you found in the dreaded train math
problems of your youth.

Seriously, stop putting trains on the same track. You derive them with calculus but to make
a long story short they relate positions to velocities and accelerations.

They basically are the mathematician's way of saying:

   1 Start here... 
   2 Drive at this Speed 
   3 for this Long
   4 and Tap the Gas this much 
   5 and you'll be Over There.

Only more precise...
We're talking the mathematically kind of precise.

And instead of getting from point A to B on a Straight Line.
We write the same formula for rotating things. With a special t for torque instead of
the F for force.

In this case, the formula says Earth is rotating this fast and I'm using this much torque to slow
it down. That means it slows down at a certain rate which will then take t seconds to bring it to
a stop.

It works out a bit like this....

And with numbers that works out to....

... 52 times the age of the known Universe.

Ok so, that's the original gist. I'm assuming you have an infinite gas tank hooked up to the
engine and that is running pretty much forever to slow down the Earth.

I felt pretty troubled for a couple of days until I finally figured out how to do this in a simpler
more Saturn Five-y manner. I would use Angular Momentum to calculate it instead of the kinematics.

You see, Earth has mass and it spins and that means it's hard to stop. Like REALLY hard to stop.
That's the point of this thought experiment to gather some idea for just how BIG this thing is
by how much effort it would take to halt nightfall.[1]

Luckily there is a pretty fundamental property of the universe we use to talk about
matter in motion it's called momentum and for rotating objects it looks like this:

$L = Iw$

I know how much momentum the Earth has so now I need to know how much each Saturn-V Rocket can
slow it down.

That was a bit tricky because the Saturn V was a 3 staged rocket. Each stage
will burn for a certain amount of time with a certain amount of force.
You add them all up and you have the Impulse side of things.( Force times time)
Once you account for the fact this is happening to a lever nudging the Earth you have
an equation with the same physical units as the spiny side of the Earth.

It took a while to up the thrust and burn times for each stage. But once I had
those numbers it was simple to find the Impulse.

I than figured out how long my rod was if it was extending all the way into
Geo-Synchronous orbit. And if you look closely the number of rockets it will take
is simply the total momentum of the Earth divided by the momentum each Saturn-V can
steal from it.

Meaning.. that if I take Earth's momentum and divide the impulse from 1 rocket I'll
get the number of Saturn V's it took to solve the Earth down.[2]

$\frac{L_e}{\Delta L} = n$

And now I fill in all the numbers!

Take a breath.

And so!

It would take about 20 Quadrillion Saturn-V rockets

nearly 47 times the age of the Universe

to bring the world to a halt!

Quadrillion! I had to go look up the name for all those zeros.

Conclusion?

Earth is big.

[1] Yes, I know it will turn night eventually as Earth rotates around the Sun but
this is a poetic thing to say!

[2] YES. I'm ignoring the mass/fuel of the rocket in this. And yes, that adds up.
It's really 'The Earth' plus 20 Quadrillion rockets only not exactly. I didn't want to
have to pull out calculus for this just yet.

I envision a day somewhere off in the future when someone walks into
my office and asked me about the stacks and stacks of old index cards
lining my walls. They clearly look old and worn out, tired from years of
use and reuse. I smile as I turn to survey them whilst explaining that they are
the physical manifestation of years of careful self directed study.

They stand, a visual monument to the dedication required to understand our best theories
of the universe. They're the footprints along the way to seeing the big picture
as part of daily life. And it all started when I sat down and pondered over how I
was ever going to learn everything I needed to know to really matter in the world.

One day, I realized that I could treat mathematics as one would treat any
other human language. Memorize enough facts and eventually the math books
would unlock their secrets, tell their stories the way someone from a
foreign land would tell theirs.

I figured I wouldn't be falling asleep as much if I could "see" how it all fit together
as I read. I delighted in my newly adopted system because higher
mathematics became knowable. There is a world of difference between "just kind of getting
the big picture" and "knowing all the minuscule details and textures of the ideas."
I found that as I memorized more things specifically and kept them repeating in my mind
I began to gain an intuition I had never noticed.

For once, higher math was knowable because the effort to pick it apart was predictable
and measurable. A stack of cards really means something to you once you've spent the better part of a
month with them.
The challenge became how best to translate the pages of the math books into
card format. I didn't mind though, since I appreciated that my progress was noticeable.
I merely had to expend some extra time to discretized complicated subjects into digestible pieces.
(Which I suppose, is what I've always done, only not very efficiently in the past.)

Furthermore, since there is no pressure to rush the process I can take it all in
with a relaxed playful state of mind. A state more conducive to musing about how the various
remote topics intermesh. I grew excited as I began to see patterns as I studied the cards.

I would sometimes hold up 2 cards and glance back and forth noticing the
relationship between the equations where I had never thought nor remotely even considered.
Spotting connections between seemingly random ideas is where a lot
of inspiration stems from. It was as though I had found a wellspring of ideas
locked away in other ideas. And I could see once more that higher mathematics
was really all about seeing patterns in patterns.

These cards fit neatly into the cracks of my life. Every spare moment I could
shuffle through them and be making use of time that was once dead space in
my day. I would recall Group theory whilst sitting in a waiting room.
I could flip through Quantum Mechanics on my way to lunch. I could wonder
about Complex Analysis while I waited for the bus.

I finally found a road that could take me as far as I wanted to go. And all it
would take was a couple stacks of 3 by 5 cellulose blocks.

...

As I chew my math and physics books into cards I now have a handle on
time required. If one book becomes X cards and I memorize X cards over Y time
then at a set point in the future I'll "know" that material. And once I have it
on my mind I can dig deeper into how it all works out. I could re-write
the cards, make notes on them and outline my own ideas as they unfolded
from my rapidly expanding tapestry of thoughts.

I've been cleaning and polishing ideas as I manage my growing stack.
It's the fact that I can physical touch them that resonates so strongly
with me. While it is true that I'll write up some
digital ways to handle them I still pay tribute to the feel of the cards.
I enjoy feeling them touching the ideas and shuffling as a form of passive meditation.
It's part of the experience for in one moment, I'll recall this or that and stare off
into space pondering and in the next I'll jot down a new note with artistic flare.
Cards just suit me. They're realtime, zero lag and never require a restart.

One day I'll be in that office flipping through cards,
smiling as I let them tell me the story of my own thoughts all over again.

... Just make sure you write the correct things down the first time around...

Love.
It's like flying a kite.

No, really stay with me here. Let's call this my mini-manifesto
on love. It starts with grabbing that old kite from your garage, trudging
out into a windy field and giving it that first breath of life.

At first, it's difficult to get the kite to catch the wind. Since, it's
close to the ground it may veer wildly and crash a few times. But then,
you catch that one perfect gust while your let out just enough line to
launch it into the sky. You feed it more and more a bit at a time
until the kite is just a spec amongst the clouds.

Consider the physics for a moment.

Your adoring kite would not be soaring without the pull of the line you're holding.
Imagine letting go. The kite drops from the sky crying out as it plummets towards the unforgiving
Earth. You have forsaken the poor thing, robbed it of it's rightful place amongst the stars.
And for what? Because you didn't care enough to support it?

The kite needs your help to soar. But it's more than that. You have to give it enough room
to fly. You can't be so worried about your kite that you keep it stuck to the ground. The line
that you dole out lets it know you care. But being too-protective too-careful would keep the kite grounded,
robbing it of it's true destiny.

You see, love is like this kite.

If you really care about someone you'll give them the room they need to succeed.
It's important to be there to support them but never in such a way that hinders their own
journey through life. Never hold them so closely that you prevent them from soaring.

And when there's no wind for them to sail go home
and keep each other company as you wait for another windy day,
a day just right for dreaming in the sky.

Fly the kite and be the kite.

It's a been a while since I produced some videos.
I think "The Friday Post" could be anything it needs to be so
long as it is something with value and posted on Friday.

I'm an "Explainer of Things" after all.
And video is my medium of choice.