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#37
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ILIEKPEPSEE ONLINE (6 hours ago) [-] This whole "Atoms/particles/etc. act differently when they're being observed" thing is the one thing that confuses me most about quantum mechanics. Can someone explain the phenomenon in some reasonable fashion?
#77 to #37
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meroune (1 hour ago) [-] This isn't quite accurate, but should suffice for getting the general concept idea.
Imagine you have a 6-sided die floating in front of you, spinning so rapidly that you can't really tell which side is facing you at any moment. You can give probabilities (in this case, a 1/6 chance for each side if it's spinning randomly, if it is oriented flat and only spinning horizontally then only 4 sides will ever face you, and so on).
If, at any point, you wanted to check which side was facing you, you would have to stop the die from spinning. If you stopped it and the 5 was facing you, you'd now know the side, but the probability would be changed to 100% for the 5 and 0% for the other sides. By observing it (as in finding a way to measure the information you wanted), you have changed the properties of the die, locking it in place, and when you release it it will start spinning again and become semi-random.
Just replace the die with quantum particles, the only way to measure certain properties is to interact with the particles in such a way that they can't change until you stop measuring.
Imagine you have a 6-sided die floating in front of you, spinning so rapidly that you can't really tell which side is facing you at any moment. You can give probabilities (in this case, a 1/6 chance for each side if it's spinning randomly, if it is oriented flat and only spinning horizontally then only 4 sides will ever face you, and so on).
If, at any point, you wanted to check which side was facing you, you would have to stop the die from spinning. If you stopped it and the 5 was facing you, you'd now know the side, but the probability would be changed to 100% for the 5 and 0% for the other sides. By observing it (as in finding a way to measure the information you wanted), you have changed the properties of the die, locking it in place, and when you release it it will start spinning again and become semi-random.
Just replace the die with quantum particles, the only way to measure certain properties is to interact with the particles in such a way that they can't change until you stop measuring.
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xtnega ONLINE (2 hours ago) [-] Forget the idea of 'observing', replace it with 'measuring' instead. It's bad terminology that just confuses people.
In a quantum system, before a measurement takes place, things just sorta act like a probability - 'you've got a 30% chance of finding this particle here, only a 5% chance over here' etc. Once we try to measure the system, the universe essentially rolls a dice and the particle appears in one of it's possible locations.
In a quantum system, before a measurement takes place, things just sorta act like a probability - 'you've got a 30% chance of finding this particle here, only a 5% chance over here' etc. Once we try to measure the system, the universe essentially rolls a dice and the particle appears in one of it's possible locations.
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randomuploads (4 hours ago) [-]
That's quite the complicated question, I think the most important thing to realise is that you can't observe a quantum system without changing it, as the observer becomes part of the system.
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whitie (5 hours ago) [-] Discovering something like this redefines the way we percieve logic, before the discovery of gravity the idea of an object pulling on you by simply being near you probably sounded pretty silly, one hundred years from now this phenomenon will just be another law of physics
