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.The Untold Story of Quantum Mechanics (Part 1)
Tags quantum story cat
n.b. This text is intended to be humourous and completely nonhistorical. For those who are interested in the real history of quantum mechanics, try: A Brief History of Quantum Mechanics (Daniel F. Styer), A history of Quantum Mechanics (J. J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson), History of quantum mechanics (Wikipedia).
The Untold Story of Quantum Mechanics (Part 1)
or How an ordinary domestic cat got lost to never be found again
The history of quantum mechanics begins with Max Planck, a German light bulb changer. Planck was an eccentric who did not like continous functions, and it was rumoured he was terrible at calculus. Because of this, he is considered by many to be the pioneer of the modern digital age. Planck was working with simple light bulbs, but he still found them difficult to understand. One day, Planck looked down at his two hands, counted ten fingers and realized there were no fingers between the already present ones. He suddenly got an idea:
"Wouldn't it be neat if ordinary light was arranged in the same way as my fingers? Everything would be much more easy! I just have to come up with a constant and convince everyone that it is real."
In 1900, Planck succeeded with this quantization of light. Soon everybody jumped on the finger counting train, quantum physics was born, and no one was pointing any fingers at anyone.
Max Planck tried to keep his finger counting habit a secret. It was later proven that the number of Planck fingers was invariant under Lorentz transformation; the fingers were vectors in themselves, but the number of fingers was a scalar.
Meanwhile, Albert Einstein, a relatively unknown German patent clerk, started developing his at first not-so-special theory of relativity. As a young child, Albert was fascinated by railway modelling. He showed a particular interest in measuring the length of the small tracks with his wooden ruler. On his 10th birthday he was given a watch, so he could time his model trains to depart and arrive at exact times. Very cute, but what was less cute was the fact that he kept doing this until he was 20. His parents understood that something had to be done about this, so they decided to buy him a bike so he would get out in the real world. This was successful; soon young Albert was biking around, day in, day out, timing himself with his old watch. One day Albert started messing with his watch while biking; he suddenly lost balance, fell, and hurt his leg. At the hospital, the doctor told him he had been lucky and that he should not ride too fast;
"There is always a limit how fast you can go", the doctor said, "and no matter how fast you go, you can't go faster than lightning, chap."
This was of course the spark of relativity, but Albert's thoughts would not mature until he did his military service. There, his theory of relativity became quite special, going through all the Prussian ranks from corporal, sergeant, captain to the final General theory of relativity. Armed with confidence and pride, Einstein boldly challenged the World and stated
"Aether everyone accepts my theory or else..."
Everybody knows that it is not a good idea to upset Germans, and thus, Einstein's terms were accepted. An age of appeasement in physics began; Hendrik Lorentz withdrew his ether theory, Nikola Tesla filed his work at the FBI and Isaac Newton went through a Thomas rotation in his grave. Everything was now considered relative, except the speed of light. And electric charge. And the number of planets (except Pluto, which status later was found to be relative). And the number of people in Einstein's family; they were still relatives, but the connection to the speed of light was unclear.
Albert Einstein riding his bike from the hospital; note the apparent ether wind blowing from the left.
J. J. Thomson was a British Santa Claus fundraiser who in 1904 happened to eat an exceptionally bad plum pudding. Thomson got sick from food poisoning, and during his delusional fevers he got a vision of the atom looking just like a plum pudding. Niels Bohr, a Dane who was more careful with what he was eating, found Thomson's model to be interesting, but wrong. Bohr finally came up with his own model, the Bohr atom, obviously inspired by Galileo and Newton.
"Look at those itsy bitsy electrons", Bohr said, "they move like small planets, isn't it cute?"
It sucked, but it did not suck as much as the plum pudding. Later it would turn out that the model also would disinterest millions of young students throughout the 20th century and beyond (Etymology: the word "bore" is derived from "Bohr"; e.g. "you are bohring me").
Niels boring Einstein with his theories about the atom.
In 1924, someone got the wild idea that since light seem to be both particles and waves, then maybe the case would be the same for matter? You know, for things like you and me. Yes, for real. You and me, both particles and waves. This was the idea of the French (of course) art nouveau sculptor Louis de Broglie. He is responsible for confusing everybody about what is real or not; he was virtually the Uri Geller of physics. But if you think this would be the height of weirdness, you are grossly mistaken...
Louis de Broglie in his art noveau studio. Note the uncertain extent of his hair and the moustache formed like a probability distribution.
Enter Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian part-time philosopher who got inpired by de Broglies' funky waves. Schrödinger's legacy are two equally disturbing things; first, an equation he conjured out of nothing which he claimed controls everything (sounding eerily like one big, wacky conspiracy theory, eh?), and second, a certain cat in a box which is either dead or alive, neither dead nor alive, half dead, half alive, half here, half there, half nowhere, half everywhere. Where Schrödinger got his ideas from, nobody knows; it is rumoured he frequently visited Amsterdam during this period (n.b. I think we are better off without knowing any details, and without making any false accusations).
Anyway, on onesober somber day Schrödinger found out that his cat had escaped - he simply could not find it. He threw in all known facts about his cat into the equation - which supposedly could solve anything - but all he got out was a probability distribution of where the cat could be. He looked in all the most probable places, but he could still not find it. So Schrödinger decided to call his dealer friend, Eugene Wigner, asking him to go look for the cat. Wigner was however suffering from withdrawal occupied with thought experiments, so Wigner asked his probation officer friend, Wagner, to go look for the cat. Wagner finally found the feline; it had been hiding in a tunnel far away. Wagner told Wigner where the cat was and then Wigner called Schrödinger and told him where his pet could be found. Everybody was now presumably safe and happy.
Erwin Schrödinger enjoying a pipe of something in the afternoon. The contents of the glass is not known. The glassware is similar to popular Absinthe glasses at that time.
But alas! The cat was indeed safe, but far from happy; it had been found in a quantum tunnel located exactly on the border between the states of Switzerland and Germany - this meant the cat was now in a state of superposition. And, even worse, locating the cat had required at least four steps of interaction; now there suddenly arose a growing concern that the world had split into at least 24 new worlds. That's what you get when you complicate things too much. It has been said that since then the cat has been spotted in all those 16+ worlds. Others believe the cat committed quantum suicide a long time ago due to the psychological stress from excessive public exposure. For all we know, Schrödinger's cat still lives in some sense; it often pops up in blogs, articles and discussions - that darn cat just refuses to die.
A year later, a German scoutleader heard about the cat incident. It was Werner Heisenberg, who then conjured up an original idea about why Schrödinger was not able to find his cat. Heisenberg claimed
"If you assume that a cat is moving at a particular moment, you can not be sure of its position. And if you assume that a cat is at a position at a particular moment, you can not be sure if it is moving or not."
Thus, the cat did not have any definite position and momentum at the same time at all - that's why the cat could not be found! And that should hold for everything else, right? And thus, in 1927, the Uncertainty Principle was born. What was not uncertain, however, was that things would soon get even more weird.
Werner Heisenberg showing Schrödinger why he could not find his cat; the position and momentum of felines can not simultaneously be known with absolute certainty.
(End of Part 1)
The Untold Story of Quantum Mechanics (Part 1)
or How an ordinary domestic cat got lost to never be found again
The history of quantum mechanics begins with Max Planck, a German light bulb changer. Planck was an eccentric who did not like continous functions, and it was rumoured he was terrible at calculus. Because of this, he is considered by many to be the pioneer of the modern digital age. Planck was working with simple light bulbs, but he still found them difficult to understand. One day, Planck looked down at his two hands, counted ten fingers and realized there were no fingers between the already present ones. He suddenly got an idea:
"Wouldn't it be neat if ordinary light was arranged in the same way as my fingers? Everything would be much more easy! I just have to come up with a constant and convince everyone that it is real."
In 1900, Planck succeeded with this quantization of light. Soon everybody jumped on the finger counting train, quantum physics was born, and no one was pointing any fingers at anyone.
Max Planck tried to keep his finger counting habit a secret. It was later proven that the number of Planck fingers was invariant under Lorentz transformation; the fingers were vectors in themselves, but the number of fingers was a scalar.
Meanwhile, Albert Einstein, a relatively unknown German patent clerk, started developing his at first not-so-special theory of relativity. As a young child, Albert was fascinated by railway modelling. He showed a particular interest in measuring the length of the small tracks with his wooden ruler. On his 10th birthday he was given a watch, so he could time his model trains to depart and arrive at exact times. Very cute, but what was less cute was the fact that he kept doing this until he was 20. His parents understood that something had to be done about this, so they decided to buy him a bike so he would get out in the real world. This was successful; soon young Albert was biking around, day in, day out, timing himself with his old watch. One day Albert started messing with his watch while biking; he suddenly lost balance, fell, and hurt his leg. At the hospital, the doctor told him he had been lucky and that he should not ride too fast;
"There is always a limit how fast you can go", the doctor said, "and no matter how fast you go, you can't go faster than lightning, chap."
This was of course the spark of relativity, but Albert's thoughts would not mature until he did his military service. There, his theory of relativity became quite special, going through all the Prussian ranks from corporal, sergeant, captain to the final General theory of relativity. Armed with confidence and pride, Einstein boldly challenged the World and stated
"Aether everyone accepts my theory or else..."
Everybody knows that it is not a good idea to upset Germans, and thus, Einstein's terms were accepted. An age of appeasement in physics began; Hendrik Lorentz withdrew his ether theory, Nikola Tesla filed his work at the FBI and Isaac Newton went through a Thomas rotation in his grave. Everything was now considered relative, except the speed of light. And electric charge. And the number of planets (except Pluto, which status later was found to be relative). And the number of people in Einstein's family; they were still relatives, but the connection to the speed of light was unclear.
Albert Einstein riding his bike from the hospital; note the apparent ether wind blowing from the left.
J. J. Thomson was a British Santa Claus fundraiser who in 1904 happened to eat an exceptionally bad plum pudding. Thomson got sick from food poisoning, and during his delusional fevers he got a vision of the atom looking just like a plum pudding. Niels Bohr, a Dane who was more careful with what he was eating, found Thomson's model to be interesting, but wrong. Bohr finally came up with his own model, the Bohr atom, obviously inspired by Galileo and Newton.
"Look at those itsy bitsy electrons", Bohr said, "they move like small planets, isn't it cute?"
It sucked, but it did not suck as much as the plum pudding. Later it would turn out that the model also would disinterest millions of young students throughout the 20th century and beyond (Etymology: the word "bore" is derived from "Bohr"; e.g. "you are bohring me").
Niels boring Einstein with his theories about the atom.
In 1924, someone got the wild idea that since light seem to be both particles and waves, then maybe the case would be the same for matter? You know, for things like you and me. Yes, for real. You and me, both particles and waves. This was the idea of the French (of course) art nouveau sculptor Louis de Broglie. He is responsible for confusing everybody about what is real or not; he was virtually the Uri Geller of physics. But if you think this would be the height of weirdness, you are grossly mistaken...
Louis de Broglie in his art noveau studio. Note the uncertain extent of his hair and the moustache formed like a probability distribution.
Enter Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian part-time philosopher who got inpired by de Broglies' funky waves. Schrödinger's legacy are two equally disturbing things; first, an equation he conjured out of nothing which he claimed controls everything (sounding eerily like one big, wacky conspiracy theory, eh?), and second, a certain cat in a box which is either dead or alive, neither dead nor alive, half dead, half alive, half here, half there, half nowhere, half everywhere. Where Schrödinger got his ideas from, nobody knows; it is rumoured he frequently visited Amsterdam during this period (n.b. I think we are better off without knowing any details, and without making any false accusations).
Anyway, on one
Erwin Schrödinger enjoying a pipe of something in the afternoon. The contents of the glass is not known. The glassware is similar to popular Absinthe glasses at that time.
But alas! The cat was indeed safe, but far from happy; it had been found in a quantum tunnel located exactly on the border between the states of Switzerland and Germany - this meant the cat was now in a state of superposition. And, even worse, locating the cat had required at least four steps of interaction; now there suddenly arose a growing concern that the world had split into at least 24 new worlds. That's what you get when you complicate things too much. It has been said that since then the cat has been spotted in all those 16+ worlds. Others believe the cat committed quantum suicide a long time ago due to the psychological stress from excessive public exposure. For all we know, Schrödinger's cat still lives in some sense; it often pops up in blogs, articles and discussions - that darn cat just refuses to die.
A year later, a German scoutleader heard about the cat incident. It was Werner Heisenberg, who then conjured up an original idea about why Schrödinger was not able to find his cat. Heisenberg claimed
"If you assume that a cat is moving at a particular moment, you can not be sure of its position. And if you assume that a cat is at a position at a particular moment, you can not be sure if it is moving or not."
Thus, the cat did not have any definite position and momentum at the same time at all - that's why the cat could not be found! And that should hold for everything else, right? And thus, in 1927, the Uncertainty Principle was born. What was not uncertain, however, was that things would soon get even more weird.
Werner Heisenberg showing Schrödinger why he could not find his cat; the position and momentum of felines can not simultaneously be known with absolute certainty.
(End of Part 1)
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