Classical example that presents quantum aspects

[DaTario]

Hi All,

I think most of you are acquainted with that logical question concerning two guards, one of them always says lies while the other always says the truth.
Each one of these guards stands in front of one door...one of these two doors is the door of GOOD and the other, the door of EVIL. We don't know neither which guard tells the truth nor which door is the GOOD one.

The problem asks us to formulate just one question to be made to just one of these guards in order to provide us enough information to find out with certainty the GOOD door.

The answer or the right question may be: "If you were the other guard which door you would say is the GOOD door ?" And if he says this you should go to the other.

My question is based on the following:

you can make one question to one guard and easily discover if he tells the truth or not. Just ask something like "Do you have skin ? ".

But with this question, you had nothing concerning the doors attributes.

So we have the guards attributes and the doors attributes and with one question we can have precision in one of these two pieces of information but no information at all regarding the other.

Isn't this similar to uncertainty principle ?

Let the nature of the guards be the position information and let the nature of the doors be the momentum information. Let also the question be an experimental interrogation of the system. So, if you aim at position, nothing can be learned about momentum and vice - versa.

I wonder if there is somenthing in this classical context which can help seeing more in HUP.

Best Regards

DaTario

 

[DaTario]

I would add the folowing point to this "not so much answered thread" : )

Is it possible by asking one question, to discover which is the right door and who is the liar ?

It would look like doing one experiment and discover momentum and position (I agree it is a very dangerous metaphore...but logically there seems to be some correlation...anyway..)

Best Regards

DaTario

 

[R0man]

This is a very interesting example that presents quantum aspects. The concept of uncertainty, where one cannot have precise information about both position and momentum simultaneously, is a fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics. In this classical example, we can see how the question asked to the guard is like an experimental interrogation of the system, similar to how measurements are made in quantum mechanics.

The fact that with one question, we can have precision in one aspect but not the other, highlights the idea that in quantum mechanics, the more precisely we know one quantity, the less precisely we can know the other. This is similar to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, where the more we know about the position of a particle, the less we know about its momentum, and vice versa.

Additionally, the idea of the guards representing different attributes or properties of a system is also reminiscent of the concept of quantum superposition, where a particle can exist in multiple states or positions simultaneously. This example also highlights the idea of entanglement, where the state of one particle can affect the state of another, even at a distance.

Overall, this classical example provides a clear illustration of some key aspects of quantum mechanics and how they can be applied to different scenarios. Thank you for sharing this thought-provoking example.