Quantum weirdness

[runvardh]

Originally Posted by Little Linguist

I *am* quantum weirdness, but it has nothing to do with physics. If you have question regarding this topic, feel free to ask.

Okay, please continue....

Yes, you are a small package and a little strange.

[Little Linguist]

Originally Posted by runvardh

Yes, you are a small package and a little strange.

Hey, sweet, thanks! I'll take that as a compliment!

[ygolo]

I'm watching this now, seems like its going to be good:

+ "In your Face Quantum Mechanics" via Google Video

Edit:Excellent video!
An improvement on Bell's Experiment that is MUCH simpler, a very satisfactory explanation on why the wave function collapses, and even an exposition of randomness from a quantum mechanical perspective.

[Angry Ayrab]

The worst class of my undergrad life was classical quantum mechanics only because I delayed it till my senior year and the last time I took a math class was partial differential equations during my freshman year. The theories I could gobble up in a heartbeat but some of the mathematical manipulations were just so ridiculous without using mathematica or some other math program. I remember one take home question with calculating the dipole from 1S to 3D orbital in the hydrogen atom taking over six pages of calculus with my microfont handwriting (over three days of work on the problem mainly reviewing my calc skills).

The coolest thing about the double slit experiment is that it shat on the idea that we knew everything their was to know about the world, which was hottly becoming a common belief in the late 19th century.

want to have some fun at home, get a cheap laser pointer, shove it between some heavy books to keep it on, and point it at a white flat wall. then get two credit cards (I used text books to stabalize them so they didn't wobble) and have them make an extremely thin (sub millimeter) slit that the laser can see through and then stabalize everything that way. Go to the wall, and you will see a single slit diffraction pattern. Next hang a rock from a string and then hang the string from a platform and have it intersect the laser coming from your slit right in the middle. next do the credit card thing again to the string in the middle to make a double slit. They have to be very close to each other and they have to be close in size and maybe about 2-3feet from the first slit or less if you want, but atleast ten feet away from the wall and wallah, you just proved that light is a wave. Without having two guys to help you or some creative stabalization methods, this easier said than done, but what is more fun than a in home double slit experiment reproduction. If you are interested, I can give more detailed plans or do a you tube video and even show you how to get the cathode ray tube out of an old CRT monitor or tube tv and use the phosphorous screen as a detector for the electron part of the experiment.

Oh yeah and the diffraction pattern will be very small unless your wall is really really really far away and you have a really bad ass laser. have fun.

EDIT: By the way, the heavy handed mathematical manipulations in the class seem to have a knack for taking out all the fun in these theories.

[Babylon Candle]

Originally Posted by Angry Ayrab

The worst class of my undergrad life was classical quantum mechanics only because I delayed it till my senior year and the last time I took a math class was partial differential equations during my freshman year. The theories I could gobble up in a heartbeat but some of the mathematical manipulations were just so ridiculous without using mathematica or some other math program. I remember one take home question with calculating the dipole from 1S to 3D orbital in the hydrogen atom taking over six pages of calculus with my microfont handwriting (over three days of work on the problem mainly reviewing my calc skills).

The coolest thing about the double slit experiment is that it shat on the idea that we knew everything their was to know about the world, which was hottly becoming a common belief in the late 19th century.

want to have some fun at home, get a cheap laser pointer, shove it between some heavy books to keep it on, and point it at a white flat wall. then get two credit cards (I used text books to stabalize them so they didn't wobble) and have them make an extremely thin (sub millimeter) slit that the laser can see through and then stabalize everything that way. Go to the wall, and you will see a single slit diffraction pattern. Next hang a rock from a string and then hang the string from a platform and have it intersect the laser coming from your slit right in the middle. next do the credit card thing again to the string in the middle to make a double slit. They have to be very close to each other and they have to be close in size and maybe about 2-3feet from the first slit or less if you want, but atleast ten feet away from the wall and wallah, you just proved that light is a wave. Without having two guys to help you or some creative stabalization methods, this easier said than done, but what is more fun than a in home double slit experiment reproduction. If you are interested, I can give more detailed plans or do a you tube video and even show you how to get the cathode ray tube out of an old CRT monitor or tube tv and use the phosphorous screen as a detector for the electron part of the experiment.

Oh yeah and the diffraction pattern will be very small unless your wall is really really really far away and you have a really bad ass laser. have fun.

EDIT: By the way, the heavy handed mathematical manipulations in the class seem to have a knack for taking out all the fun in these theories.

i wish there were ways to learn more about physics without needing a PhD in math...

im absolutely horrible at calculus! ...yet i so deeply wish to understand what physics says about the nature of our universe. the hardest part of trying to understand physics on a "made easy level" is that its often wrong. you end up with crap like "what the bleep do we know" which is just physics heresy according to people who know what the hell they are talking about....

physics made easy: that isnt actually wrong or trying to further some new age cult.... thatd be a good book!

[entropie]

Try "The Feynman Lectures on Physics - Volume III - Quantum Mechanics" by Richard Feynman. You can read it without knowing anything from vol. I + II and without knowing anything about math and physics.

It is written pretty clearly and intresting.

[ygolo]

All most all of Feynman's material is accessible to lay-people, even QED, his own theory, is very accessible.

I also recommend Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (also Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher)

Not that this focuses on quantum mechanics, but you'll have an amazingly good micture of the "Standard Model" of physics after reading these.

However, as far as math goes. I suggest you learn about Hibert Spaces at least (just enough to interpret the inner-product style notation). It will save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

[Angry Ayrab]

Originally Posted by Babylon Candle

i wish there were ways to learn more about physics without needing a PhD in math...

im absolutely horrible at calculus! ...yet i so deeply wish to understand what physics says about the nature of our universe. the hardest part of trying to understand physics on a "made easy level" is that its often wrong. you end up with crap like "what the bleep do we know" which is just physics heresy according to people who know what the hell they are talking about....

physics made easy: that isnt actually wrong or trying to further some new age cult.... thatd be a good book!

Lol, technically, its (the video) a pretty good layman example of the double slit experiment in the most genral (ENxP's most favorite thing) way. You get the gist of the results. Also, just to make you happier, you must understand the theory first before you try to explain it mathematically, only issue is you won't pass the class if you don't know the math, because all the questions in these classes are usually solving schrodinger equation... and using fourier transforms or some other thing made to piss off people of a biological background who are not super grounded in differentials.

[Angry Ayrab]

Originally Posted by ygolo

All most all of Feynman's material is accessible to lay-people, even QED, his own theory, is very accessible.

I also recommend Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (also Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher)

Not that this focuses on quantum mechanics, but you'll have an amazingly good micture of the "Standard Model" of physics after reading these.

However, as far as math goes. I suggest you learn about Hibert Spaces at least (just enough to interpret the inner-product style notation). It will save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

I think he is a biochemistry major if I am correct and if so he would be forced to take all the pre-requisites for physical chemistry which is like baby quantum which should have him well on his way to understanding it.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by ygolo

What are people's ideas for why wave functions collapse under observation?

It's not possible to be completely disconnected and still observe an event. I think that our presence alters the event in some fashion, but how exactly? That's beyond my understanding, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's somehow related to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in the 10th or 11th dimension, or something along those lines.