I was considering being an engineer for a while in high school. My physics teacher pulled me aside one day and asked me what I was going to go to college for. I told him I didn't really know, but something like engineering because it involved physics and math, two of my great loves. He said...
Alright, so every time we send a photon through the double slit, we will detect one after the slit? And it's two wave functions describing the photon as it moves through each slit that interfere with each other?
If that's the case, what's the difference between talking about the photon and it's...
In the double slit experiment, when we send out one photon at a time, what does the appearance of minima in our interference pattern mean? When a single photon is fired, I understand (using "understand" very loosely) that the photon will interfere with itself. When this happens, does it still...
I will check that link out. I have a couple more questions (which you can ignore if they're explained in the link).
First, is the reason our ability to measure things appears to be so important in quantum mechanics simply due to the fact that any observation we can ever make about the world...
Thanks! So do we *know* that the world we see is due to decoherence, and not due to actual collapse? How much interaction is necessary for decoherence?
Hi,
I was wondering whether we are sure (I know, strong word) that decoherence is the mechanism that takes us from the quantum world to our classical world. Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically decoherence is a phenomenon where we have a bunch of quantum states that, when piled onto each...
That was absolutely my first thought. Do we have to give up realism and locality, or just one or the other? Aren't we stipulating that it's impossible for one of the particles not to "match" the other in both QM and using locality? It's never possible to have one particle be up-120 and the other...
Does anyone think they could describe a situation in which giving up locality would violate Bell's inequality?
For example, using DrChinese's example above, how can we get less than 33% when we allow for non-locality? I can see how a lack of realism would do this, but I still don't see clearly...
Thanks! I think what still isn't clicking with me is this: wouldn't one of them have been spin up and the other been spin down even with locality? In a non-local theory, would the first particle to me measured have a different set of "choices" to make than in a local theory?
And I understand why the lack of realism would violate the inequality. But what's unclear to me at this point is exactly HOW faster-than-light influences would violate it as well. I'm still missing something...
So we do at least know that the data we actually collect disagrees with Bell's theorem, right? Then we make a conclusion that "spooky action at a distance" is at play. I can see why rejecting objective reality would make our worldview fit with the experimental results better, but why exactly do...
Nugatory, the page you posted helped A LOT. Thanks!
So, I understand now how the lack of objective reality would cause disagreements with Bell, but why would faster-than-light communication between particles do this? Using the example from that page...
I think my lingering question is this: why would something different happen depending on when two particles "decide" what property to exhibit? For example, why would two photons deciding how to be polarized when they reach two lenses be different from them deciding how to be polarized before...