Physics Error in A Serious Man

[essentialsaltes]

(imagine CBG voice)

I watched A Serious Man, never expecting to be confronted by a mathematical-scientific error of such magnitude as to dispel the suspension of disbelief, and nearly turn my stomach.
How could one possibly believe that a professor of physics, even an untenured one, would make such an error in computing the uncertainty in the momentum operator?



This erroneous formulation is clearly and trivially zero. Duh.

And yet, a few moments later, we are presented with this altered view, as though it could erase the howling error from our minds, still reeling from the previous ludicrous mathematical abomination:



Worst. Physics-Related-Continuity-Error. Ever.

Comments

[my-wits-end.livejournal.com]

Haha, I just saw that movie not too long ago. So what should it really be - is he just missing subscripts there?

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

The delta-p is like a variance or standard deviation, so it should have < p^2 > - < p >^2 in it. So it's been fixed in the second shot.


ETA: arg! html

[my-wits-end.livejournal.com]

Oh! I see.