I have been thinking about your elderly couple of electrons, entering the lecture theatre via one of two doors, I said to Pliny. And it reminds me of the famous Slit Experiment in Quantum Mechanics.
Ah, said Pliny, I know the experiment you mean. When electrons are fired at a screen through one slit they behave like particles, but when they are fired through two slits they behave like waves.
That is the one, I said. You didn't happen to observe whether the elderly couple came in both doors at once, did you?
No, said Pliny, more's the pity. I wasn't looking at the other door.
What a shame, I said. But of course if you had been you would not have noticed anything untoward. The rest of the famous Slit Experiment involves an observer observing one of the slits. And the amazing thing is that when there is an observer, the particles revert to behaving like particles again.
That is not the amazing thing, said Pliny. The amazing thing is how, when you are not watching, they do not.
True, I said. Did you at any point stop watching?
Almost at once, said Pliny. Because the lecture was so interesting.
What interests me is that if the elderly couple had entered unobserved they could well have entered by both doors, like waves, I said. And then of course they would have been able to occupy multiple seats.
Good heavens, said Pliny. Now that I recall, the lecture theatre did seem to contain an inordinate number of them.
Showing posts with label quantum mechanics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quantum mechanics. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Quantum Mechanics
What impossible things you get up to when I am not looking, said Pliny the Elder. RAT DIV-A indeed! Kung Fu shoes! Osoto-gari!
You should pay more attention, I said. They are not such impossible things.
Perhaps not, said Pliny, I am reminded of quantum mechanics. I attended a lecture last night on subatomic particles, and learned that scientists believe electrons behave in just such a way.
What way? I asked.
In this way, that when they are unobserved they are capable of doing impossible things.
What sort of impossible things? I asked.
No one knows, said Pliny. Because they are unobserved.
That doesn't make sense, I scoffed.
That is what I thought, said Pliny, but we were presented with several examples. The first being this: an elderly couple arrived several minutes late to the lecture. They had been orbiting around outside and suddenly decided to come in. It struck me, and doubtless the rest of us, that the couple could be likened to electrons and that we inside had no way of predicting by which of the two doors they would choose to enter.
That makes sense, I agreed. What else?
This one is good, said Pliny. The professor had a series of slides which he projected on to a screen. The tops of all his slides were missing. Thus we were unable to observe some crucial pieces of information. For example, the name of Ernest Rutherford, so that we did not know who it was that discovered the atom was not the basic component of matter, and the words inside the speech bubble of a cartoon cow, which made the joke about the uncertainty principle completely incomprehensible.
Ah, I said. I see. But wasn't the lecturer a physics professor? Was he incapable of adjusting his slides?
I wondered about that, said Pliny. He had been a Chief Scientist, too, in an overseas country, for some unobservable length of time.
You should pay more attention, I said. They are not such impossible things.
Perhaps not, said Pliny, I am reminded of quantum mechanics. I attended a lecture last night on subatomic particles, and learned that scientists believe electrons behave in just such a way.
What way? I asked.
In this way, that when they are unobserved they are capable of doing impossible things.
What sort of impossible things? I asked.
No one knows, said Pliny. Because they are unobserved.
That doesn't make sense, I scoffed.
That is what I thought, said Pliny, but we were presented with several examples. The first being this: an elderly couple arrived several minutes late to the lecture. They had been orbiting around outside and suddenly decided to come in. It struck me, and doubtless the rest of us, that the couple could be likened to electrons and that we inside had no way of predicting by which of the two doors they would choose to enter.
That makes sense, I agreed. What else?
This one is good, said Pliny. The professor had a series of slides which he projected on to a screen. The tops of all his slides were missing. Thus we were unable to observe some crucial pieces of information. For example, the name of Ernest Rutherford, so that we did not know who it was that discovered the atom was not the basic component of matter, and the words inside the speech bubble of a cartoon cow, which made the joke about the uncertainty principle completely incomprehensible.
Ah, I said. I see. But wasn't the lecturer a physics professor? Was he incapable of adjusting his slides?
I wondered about that, said Pliny. He had been a Chief Scientist, too, in an overseas country, for some unobservable length of time.
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