Are we sure it's not the sensor that's throwing the experiment off?
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I don't understand the question.
Are we sure we need physics at all.
Math is evil and must be destroyed.
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Imagine the only way you had to figure out what was in a room was throwing bowling balls into it and recording the resulting sound waves. If anyone observed you doing such a fakakta thing, they would have you committed. Especially if it was their room you were hucking bowling balls into. So the act of observation changes the outcome of the experiment for at least 72 hours in most United States jurisdictions.
I don't understand the question.
Are we sure we need physics at all.
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Math is evil and must be destroyed.
It's NOT math. We have a machine that goes ping and everything.
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PING!
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If a tree falls in the woods and hits a mime, does anyone care?
It's NOT math. We have a machine that goes ping and everything.
Math is evil and must be destroyed.
I dunno...
It's NOT math. We have a machine that goes ping and everything.
Math is evil and must be destroyed.
I dunno...
And we find out what x is, it doesn't get defined as some meaningless variable of Y!
If a tree falls in the woods and hits a mime, does anyone care?
The coyotes and vultures.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, what are its pronouns?
Tim/Ber.
Wait, is the tree or the bear physics?
Or are they colluding against physics.
Why do we need physics again?
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NO ONE EXPECTS THE CHEMIST INQUISITION!
Wait, is the tree or the bear physics?
Or are they colluding against physics.
Why do we need physics again?
To make sure the bear and tree don't land on you
So physics will help me murder the bear/tree tag team before they can murder me.
Sounds dark.
And we find out what x is, it doesn't get defined as some meaningless variable of Y!It's NOT math. We have a machine that goes ping and everything.
Math is evil and must be destroyed.
I dunno...
Nope, gotta burn.
So physics will help me murder the bear/tree tag team before they can murder me.
Sounds dark.
Well if it can climb a tree its probably a black bear so....
But, what kind of tree do black bears climb? How dark are those?
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So physics will help me murder the bear/tree tag team before they can murder me.
Sounds dark.
Hmm, Pathfinder murder tree + murder bear + Stealth + darkvision hybrid... {goes to rooftop, turns on the Drejk Signal}
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Tree/bear hybrid: the question “does it s$$+ in the woods” is pre-answered.
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Would you guys turn around and give me a little privacy?
I can't go physics with someone watching.
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Yes, but you can't go WITHOUT somebody watching either...
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Short version: You cannot observe something without interacting with it. By interacting with it you force it into a known state.
The first sentence is the easy one for everyone to understand. To see something visually, a photon has to bounce off of it and reach your eyeball, so it was hit by a photon. To count charged particles, you might set up a magnetic field and read fluctuations in the field, but you'd still be putting the particle through a magnetic field. The act of observing is not passive, but active. From vision to radar to sonar to metal detectors, you're doing something to the thing you're trying to observe. Or more accurately, something is happening to the thing you're trying to observe to allow you to observe it.
The second sentence is the mind-blowing one and the one that's much more difficult to understand. Suppose I turn on a heating element and it starts glowing, so it's emitting photons. Those photons are neither waves nor particles, but in an unknown quantum state of "bothness". If I set up a pair of narrow slits to observe how the photons interact with each other, I'll see a diffraction pattern that tells me I'm looking at waves. Thus, photons are waves. Great! If in that same setup I add a photon counter that counts the number of photons going through one of the slits, BAM! Suddenly the diffraction pattern I'm seeing tells me I'm looking at particles. The act of putting in a measuring tool that's looking for particles somehow transforms the photons into particles. It's a really jaw-dropping experiment you can perform at most undergraduate physics labs, and leads to many accusations of hokery-pokery.
But in general:
(1) A particle is somehow spontaneously generated in the universe, for example, heating a material causes its atoms to become excited and they start spewing photons everywhere.
(2) Those photons are in a "mixed" quantum state of being, and might behave as waves or particles at any time. (And there are far more arcane examples, including particles that teleport around (quantum tunneling), particles that communicate instantaneously (quantum entanglement), and other such nonsense.)
(3) Interacting with a photon to figure out how it's behaving forces it to behave the way we're expecting. It's called "collapsing the quantum state".
Hope that helps!
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Thats a lot of words to explain burnification.
! Suddenly the diffraction pattern I'm seeing tells me I'm looking at particles. The act of putting in a measuring tool that's looking for particles somehow transforms the photons into particles
See that conclussion to me seems too weird to be sufficiently evidenced from what we have there. Why isn't it that a photon moves like a particle sometimes and like a wave at other times? Rather than having to postulate some alternate reality.
! Suddenly the diffraction pattern I'm seeing tells me I'm looking at particles. The act of putting in a measuring tool that's looking for particles somehow transforms the photons into particlesSee that conclussion to me seems too weird to be sufficiently evidenced from what we have there. Why isn't it that a photon moves like a particle sometimes and like a wave at other times? Rather than having to postulate some alternate reality.But whether it behaves like a particle or a wave isn't random, it depends on how you look at it.
It really is that messed up.
Or it reacts like a particle or like a wave under different circumstances.
It isn’t messed up.
It is a category/metaphor error.
Humans say “this is a wave” and “this is a particle” and we mistake those descriptions for absolute categories. And then we try to jam those metaphors onto things that don’t fit them and act like it’s reality’s fault things strike us as odd.
The double/single slit experiments are easily replicated with glass microscope slides, black ink, a razor blade, and a flashlight. Do the experiment and witness the results for yourself without pre-expecting what words you need to shoehorn the results into and maybe it will seem less weird.
Imagine if someone looked at a sleeping snake and said “It must be a solid object” and then the snake slithered off in response to being poked and the person said “It’s a wave too?! Call Deepak Chopra!”
It isn’t messed up.
It is a category/metaphor error.
Humans say “this is a wave” and “this is a particle” and we mistake those descriptions for absolute categories. And then we try to jam those metaphors onto things that don’t fit them and act like it’s reality’s fault things strike us as odd.
The double/single slit experiments are easily replicated with glass microscope slides, black ink, a razor blade, and a flashlight. Do the experiment and witness the results for yourself without pre-expecting what words you need to shoehorn the results into and maybe it will seem less weird.
Imagine if someone looked at a sleeping snake and said “It must be a solid object” and then the snake slithered off in response to being poked and the person said “It’s a wave too?! Call Deepak Chopra!”
It's a nice analogy, but it's not quite that simple because in many quantum cases the act of observing (even if non-interactive, as Nicos pointed out), can permanently collapse the waveform. The snake could become "still" again and go back to being a solid, but many quantum particles, once observed, won't go back to their unknown states.
Schroedinger's Rock is the most familiar of these situations (cat lovers and many physicists object to using a cat because:
(a) It's cruel, and
(b) The cat is an observer.)
Put a rock under a box. Put a radioactive isotope and a detector near the box in such a way that when the isotope decays and the detector detects that decay, the rock is split in half.
Common logic says that in any point in time, the rock is either whole or split in half. In the quantum world, it's both, and nearly a century of experiments have confirmed this view: Until you observe the rock, it's in both a broken and an unbroken state. (And let's be honest, this wouldn't work with an object as large as a rock. We're really talking about subatomic particles here.)
Once you observe the rock and it's either broken or unbroken, you've "collapsed" its state and it will stay that way, whether or not you put the box back over it. (Assuming you turn off the rock-breaking mechanism.)
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My analogy was not meant as a comparison to quantum behavior. It was meant as a comparison to HUMAN behavior.
I maintain it isn’t “weird” or “messed up” or “spooky”. This kind of mystification has led to “quantum” becoming a prime woo/fraud term.
Sorry if I get snippy but there is so much b!#%&%#* that has been foisted on the public by characterizing quantum mechanics as inscrutably weird that it just riles me up. Difficult? Yes. The equations require a fair amount of training. But so mysterious as to allow Deepak Chopra to tell cancer patients to think themselves better and then quietly move on when they die horribly? No.
ALSO: “until *you* observe the rock is a poor choice of phrase. An “observer” in QM is not necessarily a specific conscious human being. A lot of woo slips in through that sloppy language.
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My analogy was not meant as a comparison to quantum behavior. It was meant as a comparison to HUMAN behavior.
I maintain it isn’t “weird” or “messed up” or “spooky”. This kind of mystification has led to “quantum” becoming a prime woo/fraud term.
Sorry if I get snippy but there is so much b*+*~$#$ that has been foisted on the public by characterizing quantum mechanics as inscrutably weird that it just riles me up. Difficult? Yes. The equations require a fair amount of training. But so mysterious as to allow Deepak Chopra to tell cancer patients to think themselves better and then quietly move on when they die horribly? No.
And I have no quibbles with these statements...
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Dammit! I don’t know where this leaves me!
*wave function collapses*
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I maintain that much quantum behavior is deeply weird, even if you can follow the equations.
"Deeply weird" is a subjective statement of an emotional reaction.
I've never found QM to be weird. Everyone went on about how weird it was and I got to it, did the experiments, learned the equations, and thought "Ok. That's how things work."
Not that it's EASY mind you. And on any given day ANYTHING might feel weird. But blanket statements about "your mind" or "our intuitions" don't work for me when they don't seem to apply to MY mind or MY intuitions.
Anyhoo... moving on...
*peeks in*
*leaves promptly!*
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...and now the conversation has been altered by Vidmaster7 peeking in. Will the observative influence never stop?!?
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You want observations?
Tell you what, give me your lungs now, and I'll mail you the observations next week! It's totally legit!!
Most things burn. That's my observation.
I maintain that much quantum behavior is deeply weird, even if you can follow the equations. It's very hard to wrap your mind around, because our intuitions are based on macroscale physics and the same approach just doesn't apply.
I just don't see any cause for reaching the conclusion that i often see given : that its collapsing a waveform that might be one of two things into one rather than Vs. it is certain way and we just don't know it, and that a photon doesn't fit a particle or wave model perfectly.
Well, you did open your eyes again.
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I keep closing my eyes and opening them again, and yet you are still here. This observer effect is bull!
Based on my understanding of quantum mechanics, if you keep one eye open and close the other, you make everything only "half there": still visible but intangible.
...
BRB, going to go make a bank vault intangible so I can walk inside and loot the cash.
I keep closing my eyes and opening them again, and yet you are still here. This observer effect is bull!
Based on my understanding of quantum mechanics, if you keep one eye open and close the other, you make everything only "half there": still visible but intangible.
...
BRB, going to go make a bank vault intangible so I can walk inside and loot the cash.
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An oft overlooked fact is that Erwin Schrödinger may be immortal. He DID have a closed casket funeral...
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*locks eyes; slowly and deliberately knocks Erwin Schrödinger off shelf*