Interesting Application of My Quantum Mechanics
This afternoon I was trying to measure the partial, intermediate results of something that we're trying to improve the through-put of on a Vendor's package, and I realized that the data I was looking at was really only good in relation to itself - I'd hit on one of the coolest things in Quantum Mechanics: The act of observation alters the system.
I hadn't run into it like this before, but under independent tests, I know that a singular blob could be processed in a little more than a second. But but placing in the outputting of timing results, I saw the combined time raise to roughly three seconds. That's a factor of three. Then it hit me.
You can imagine the issue: by stopping to get the time, more time was taken. Not a lot, but it added up. Fantastic! Thankfully, I didn't require absolute accuracy - I just needed to know the relative times spent on succeeding steps. For that, this was more than good enough. But it was a kick in the pants to see it happen right in front of my eyes. Sweet!