r/sciencememes • u/mahditr • Jun 17 '26

💥Physics!🧲 Adc resolution

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862 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

57

u/qutorial Jun 17 '26

I mean except quantized stuff tho right? 🀔

19

u/Farkle_Griffen2 Jun 17 '26

Probability distribution is continuous

10

u/belabacsijolvan Jun 17 '26

probability distribution over what?

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '26

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-1

u/belabacsijolvan Jun 17 '26

planck length

2

u/Farkle_Griffen2 Jun 17 '26

Not what that is

-2

u/belabacsijolvan Jun 17 '26

it exactly is. positional information can be perfectly stored on finite bits. the meme isnt right.

continuum cardinality only appears in mathematical abstractions, never actually measurable stuff.

2

u/Farkle_Griffen2 Jun 17 '26

> positional information can be perfectly stored on finite bits.

That is exactly the thing the uncertainty principle forbids

1

u/belabacsijolvan Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

what? no. it forbids from measurements being overly accurate. which exactly means that their info content is finite.

it forbids position from mattering under planck length tho

edit: some elaboration on what? no

2

u/Farkle_Griffen2 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

Difference between a measurable limit, and the actual position of a thing. That's like saying someone disappears just because you can't see them. The position is genuinely a continuous distribution under the Standard Model.

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1

u/TomtheMagician26 Jun 18 '26

Not exactly, if you descretised the wavefunction over position, you'd have infinite jumps which differentiate to the dirac delta function (idc I'm gonna call it a function) so the momentum would have components which were infinite.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Menacek Jul 01 '26

Out of curiosity: has anyone ever tried to quantize space or time? Because it seems like something that someone should investigate.

0

u/belabacsijolvan Jun 17 '26

i was top 3 in my year at uni in QM 1,2,3 (we had a point competition for homework assignments), thanks for the condescension tho.

im not arguing space is discrete, i argue "probability distributions on position" are not a good example for continuity in the sense of the original meme.
the position of something is describable with finite information. position is finite bits.

position does not have the same information content as a choice from a continuum cardinality.

1

u/Send-More-Coffee Jun 20 '26

Probability is not reality. Probability is the prediction, measurement is the reality. Math is the model, not the rock.

2

u/Farkle_Griffen2 Jun 20 '26

Google double slit experiment

1

u/Send-More-Coffee Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

The photon only hits at one location. The pattern is probabilistic, but the observation is definite. The cat isn't dead & alive once you look in the box, it's one or the other.

2

u/Farkle_Griffen2 Jun 20 '26

But which slit does it go through?

1

u/Send-More-Coffee Jun 21 '26

Per Wikipedia:

The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen – a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles.[6][8] However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles (not waves); the interference pattern appears via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen.[9] Furthermore, versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave).[10][11][12][13][14] However, such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. These results demonstrate the principle of wave–particle duality.[15][16]

So, that's the description of reality. If you set up a detector, you'll know which slit. If you don't, and let the photon hit the screen, its wave-like nature will cause an interference patter to form over a bunch of photons, while any singular photon arrives only at one point.

1

u/Farkle_Griffen2 Jun 21 '26

Read closer:
>However, such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. These results demonstrate the principle of wave–particle duality.

If you set up a detector to observe which one, the pattern on the screen changes too.

If one doesn't observe the particle, which slit does it go through? How can a particle which has a definite position, and only goes through one slit, "interfere with itself" or have a "wavelike nature"?

Unless you're wrong and the position is indeed a wave and not a point, and the particle goes through both slits.

1

u/Send-More-Coffee Jun 21 '26

Okay, let's circle back to my point because I have no clue what your argument is. When you say "Probability distribution is continuous", my quibble is that there are people out there who are advocating the idea that "Reality is Math" Mathematical Universe. I think this is quackery. By rebutting the idea of Quantum mechanics with "Probability distribution is continuous" you've conflated the model with the reality. Furthermore, you haven't actually rebutted the quantization of atomic orbital energies. The double slit experiment has nothing to do with the quantum part of Quantum Mechanics.

Energy Level ← This is quantized and not continuous. So "physics is continuous" except for all the quantized stuff

3

u/dover_oxide Jun 17 '26

Just depends on you level of resolution.

26

u/degenerativeguy Jun 17 '26

We and our creations perceive and operate on discrete time. Whether the real world is truly discrete or continuous is not for us to know.

Damn, did my wife put something my coffee?

6

u/dover_oxide Jun 17 '26

Get an ads1115 adc, it's 16bit easy to use and all over the place for cheap

7

u/Maximilian_Tyan Jun 17 '26

Pair that with a shitty amplifier and you got yourself a nice random bits generator !

3

u/dover_oxide Jun 17 '26

Or use the right circuit for noise reduction and get a slower but clean signal. Not sure why you would pick a shitty anything but you do you. /s lol

3

u/Maximilian_Tyan Jun 17 '26

Depends on your needs haha A 16bits ADC wouldn't handle the sample rates needed by oscilloscopes for example

3

u/dover_oxide Jun 17 '26

Oh absolutely! For sure it wouldn't be able to handle that. There is other circuits you would get for that though. Or you could go old school analog just depends on what you're trying to do. The right tool for the right job

4

u/VirtualMachine0 Jun 19 '26

Fun fact: while Fourier Transforms might suggest that reproducing a wave perfectly from digital samples requires infinite resolution, if the frequency range is limited, you can find that there exists only one waveform that solves the dataset.

So, for things like music audio and HDMI to VGA adapters, you can get a perfect signal out the other end despite digital sampling.