Posted: Oct 07, 2011 2:52 pm
hackenslash wrote:Teuton wrote:
This means that operators aren't physical quantities (properties) themselves but mathematical representations thereof.
Still getting all your definitions from the dictionary of what colour is my lint.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... moper.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_% ... _Operators
"…The other sorts of mathematical objects which we shall need to know something about are operators.
Operators are mechanisms for making new vectors out of old ones. An operator on a vector space, more particularly, is some definite prescription for taking every vector in that space into some other vector; it is a mapping (for those readers who know the mathematical meaning of that word) of a vector space into itself."
(Albert, David Z. Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. p. 25)
Mappings are functions, functions are abstract mathematical objects, and as such they aren't concrete physical objects.
(See: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Map.html)