[ExI] Macroscopic Superposition

[The Avantguardian]

--- On Wed, 9/24/08, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

> > If you had an LED and you turned it on for one second,
> then turned it off for half a second, then turned on for
> 1/4th a second, then turned it off for 1/8th a second and so
> on . . . then at exactly 2 seconds, would the LED be on or
> off?
> 
> This is called "Thompson's lamp".

Actually I think it is a just a little bit sneakier than Thompson's lamp. If the lamp is incandescent, then the answer would be *on*, since whether current is flowing or not, the filiment would not have time to cool down between very small intervals so would continue to glow. Lasers and consequently LEDs do not suffer from this limitation. :-)


Stuart LaForge

"See them clamber, these nimble apes!  They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss."- Friedrich Nietzsche