26 September 2011

Clouds of early summer 2011

This cloud formation appeared late one afternoon in June above my humble abode on 12th Ave in old Pine Bluff...




The tree at the bottom is across the street in a neighbor's yard.   In regard to my previous post and Erwin Schroedinger's comment about there being a difference in an out-of-focus photo and a photo of clouds or patches of fog--I guess what he means is the out-of-focus photo is a mistake, and an observer of the photo can tell that, whereas a photo of patches of fog or clouds is not a mistake and the observer can tell that also.  AND the idea of a "fuzzy model" coincides with the cloud/fog photo example.  Still, there's the possibility of an out-of-focus photo of patches of fog or clouds, eh?


Also, an observer can't always tell the orientation of a photo of a cloud if he or she doesn't recall it. This also represents a possible mistake, an interpretational mistake, and how to interpret the Schrodinger cat experiment is very much the problem that has made it so famous and given it such longevity.  As far as my cloud photo is concerned, I had to step outside in my driveway to find the tree branch pattern you can see at the bottom of the photo.  For all I knew, that could have been the side of a tree and not the top.  But the pattern matches the top of a tree across the street, so I could figure out the photo's correct orientation.  For the purpose of art, it doesn't matter, except to the artist.  How much it matters in the case of quantum mechanics is something to ponder.