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has been argued that the act of doing laundry followed the discovery of
clothing by only a few weeks. While this fact has been regarded to be
fantastically trivial, one cannot ignore the enigmas that the act of doing
laundry has created. This is especially true in the age of high-speed
washers and dryers. In the early days, the disappearance of articles of
clothing could simply be accounted for by saying that the sock was lost in
the river. Unfortunately, such excuses can no longer be used today. The
availability of high speed automated washers and dryers has provided a
number of fundamental questions that can not be answered using the classical
laundry theory (i.e., the river washed the sock away). Such questions
include: Where, exactly does lint come from and why does the quantity of
lint change from load to load? If the washing machine is a closed system,
how can socks disappear? When using public washing machines and dryers, why
is it that every once in a while you will find someone else's socks in your
load even when you checked the washer/dryer ahead of time?
The inability to answer these questions
using the classical theory of laundry resulted in the development of new
theories. This paper is a simple introduction to the quantum theory of
laundry. As a result, it only deals with the simplest example in which a
sock is analyzed in either a washer or a dryer. The mathematics involved in
the analysis of a sock in both a washer and dryer and in transition between
the two is left for more advanced laundry courses. The first modern attempt
to explain the fundamental questions of laundry involved the decay theory.
The decay theory states that the quantity of socks in a load can be
expressed as a decreasing exponential function of time, which is analogous
to radioactive decay. The decay theory easily explains the origin of lint
and why new socks tend to release more lint than old socks. However,
according to this theory, socks should never completely disappear, or, more
importantly, reappear. This clearly contradicts everyday experience.
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