A while back, a mathematician gave me a shirt with an equation on it and the caption “Life’s a wave”. I had no idea what the equation meant. But I knew that the mathematician is pretty geeky and since I’m also pretty geeky, I guessed that the equation had something to do with quantum mechanics.

I started googling things like “h with a slash thru it and “H with a line above it” and “symbol that looks like a trident”. I eventually wound up at Schrödinger equation which showed a similar equation labeled “Time-dependent Schrödinger equation (general)”.

The symbols were:

• i is the imaginary unit (or the square root of minus one)
• ℏ is the reduced Planck constant
• Ψ is the Greek letter Psi and is the “state vector of the quantum system”
• Ĥ is the Hamiltonian operator

I knew about i from grade 10 or 11 math and I’d sorta heard about the Planck constant. “State vector of the quantum system” is just jamming geeky words together and a Hamiltonian operator could just as easily be a $10 bill.

Overall, I’d be lying if I said anything about this other than IDFK.

It’s gonna be AWESOME when I show this to the guys on the cruise.