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Sturk200
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I am told that even macroscopic objects like footballs obey the wave equations of quantum mechanics. Is there any experimentally based reason to believe this, or is it just said as a way of generalizing the theory?
Sturk200 said:I am told that even macroscopic objects like footballs obey the wave equations of quantum mechanics. Is there any experimentally based reason to believe this, or is it just said as a way of generalizing the theory?
jfizzix said:If atoms can behave in a wavelike fashion (and experiments do show this), there is no reason to think that macroscopic objects couldn't behave in a wave-like fashion as well.
The problem with actually observing wavelike behavior in macroscopic objects is that the object is made up of a (relatively) gigantic jumble of atoms interacting with each other and with the outside environment (the atmosphere, sunlight, sound, etc). The Schrodinger equation only applies to a closed quantum system (large or small).In order to make a football behave quantum mechanically, you'd have to do two things:
First, you'd have to cool it way way down to a miniscule fraction above absolute zero. In particular, you'll want to cool it down to the point that the football has as little internal energy as possible. As a result, the quantum state of the football will be more like one big wavefunction instead of a jumble of little ones.
Second, you're going to want to isolate that football from any external interactions. That means no air, no sound waves, no light, and no heat (and also no gravity).
So making a football behave like a quantum particle is within the realm of imagination, but not really achievable in the foreseeable future. we're just starting to get large molecules behaving like single quantum particles. (see for example http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v401/n6754/abs/401680a0.html). In the future, we will be able to do better, but it's a long way between interfering objects made of dozens of atoms to interfering objects made of sextillions of atoms. It's fun to think about, though.
Jimster41 said:So is it possible to trade the temperature constraint in the design of the experiment for span in spacetime (honestly I hate to say this, because I am become a broken record)
Sturk200 said:I am told that even macroscopic objects like footballs obey the wave equations of quantum mechanics. Is there any experimentally based reason to believe this, or is it just said as a way of generalizing the theory?
Jimster41 said:What's the difference between cooling it to within nearly zero K and "isolating it from all interaction"?
Jimster41 said:For puposes of the thought experiment, can it be set up just using an object composed of a couple few particles?
Jimster41 said:For puposes of the thought experiment, can it be set up just using an object composed of a couple few particles?
Jimster41 said:So now (after reading it) I'm confused about why jfizzix said that you would need to cool a many QM body thing down to nearly 0K to observe it acting wave-like.
The thing that got me excited about that statement was that I thought I understood how reducing temperature is equivalent to limiting the interaction between the thing and it's environment, thereby preventing decoherence.
Matter waves refer to the concept that all particles, including atoms and subatomic particles, can exhibit wave-like behavior. This idea was first proposed by Louis de Broglie in the early 20th century and has been experimentally verified through various experiments.
One way to experimentally verify matter waves is through the double-slit experiment, where a beam of particles is sent through two small slits and produces an interference pattern on a screen behind it. This pattern is a result of the particles behaving like waves and interfering with each other.
No, matter waves cannot be observed directly because they are a quantum phenomenon and cannot be directly measured. However, their effects can be observed and measured through experiments such as the double-slit experiment.
The experimental verification of matter waves is significant because it provides evidence for the wave-particle duality of matter, which is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. It also helps us understand the behavior of particles at the atomic and subatomic level.
Yes, there are other experiments that can verify matter waves, such as the diffraction of electrons through a crystal lattice and the observation of matter waves in Bose-Einstein condensates. These experiments all demonstrate the wave-like behavior of particles and support the concept of matter waves.