[Novice] Young's Double Slit Experiment and the Quantum Cult

[JDude13]

Whilst skulking through Youtube videos for a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics I noticed that vidoes offering accurate, legitimate, remotely-science-based information were few and far between.

The rest seemed to be videos of people saying that we, as thinking beings, create the universe simply by believing it exists and that electrons, protons, photons, planets, stars, solar systems and people only exist because we think and understand that they do. As if Young's experiment meant that we are all gods, creating this virtual plane of existance with our minds.

Are these merely misunderstandings on their part or am I mistaken?

[alxm]

Yeah, there's a load of bunk on YouTube. No offense, but I really don't understand why anyone would look there in the first place. ("Kids these days! Back in my day, we had these things called 'libraries'..")

Seriously though, you can't really learn that way. If you're serious about learning QM, you should find an introductory textbook. (Do a search and you'll find many many threads with recommendations) If you want a popular-scientific overview, there are many good books by renowned physicists. Although I'd like to just underline that one shouldn't confuse their analogies and descriptions of the physics for the actual physics. If you want to learn the latter, you need a textbook. Nobody ever learned physics just from watching videos or lectures. You have to sit down and do the math and work problems. Because that's basically how physics works.