Can somebody explain the Schroedinger's Wave to me?

[Taverner]

I'm reading Fred Alen Wolff's "Taking the Quantum Leap" and it talks about how an electron is a wave, until it is observed, where it turns into a particle.

Right now I'm having trouble understanding the 'why.'

[taterguy]

1. I could

But I won't

[MrCoffee]

2. Fred Alen Wolff talks out the side of his ass

He wouldn't know a particle wave if it punched him in the face.

[Taverner]

7. It's the best I have right now to explain Quantum Mechanics

Give me a better suggestion - and don't say "Elegant Universe"

I've seen that and read it, and it explains some of it, but not the nuts and bolts

[pokerfan]

20. Here's one

Motion Mountain, chapter 35

It's a free open source physics text that you can download or read on-line: http://www.motionmountain.net

Some things just can't be dumbed down. I am almost always disappointed by popularizations of quantum physics. As Einstein said, "things should be made as simple as possible but no simpler." (paraphrased)

[madinmaryland]

3. Is that when the little guy that plays the piano in the cartoon Peanuts waves

at Lucy to go away??

[KamaAina]

4. Um, actually, sometimes it behaves as a wave, and sometimes as a particle

also, the cat is indeed both alive and dead at the same time. :P

[Duer 157099]

5. um, Spoiler Alert?

sheesh!

[Duer 157099]

6. But the mere fact that you are confused proves

that you understand it just enough

[Taverner]

14. But what is light? Is it a wave? Or a particle?

I don't get it...

[Duer 157099]

15. Yes n/t

[amyrose2712]

28. I like that answer. nt

[MilesColtrane]

19. It's a wave until you go looking for individual photons.

Upon observation quantum decoherence occurs, the wave function collapses and it exists as a photon.

A single photon when fired at a mask that has two openings (the famous double slit experiment) will generate interference with itself, indicating that it has passed through both slits at the same time as a wave, before arriving at a detector again as a single photon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

[pokerfan]

21. Obviously

it's both, implying that we don't yet have a complete understanding of what's really going on. As an engineer, I treat it as a wave when I need to behave like a wave and as a particle (photon) when I don't.

[RagAss]

23. Light enters time and space but exists outside of it.

How else could it travel at a constsnt speed regardless of our movement in relation to it? It's as if it ignores time and space.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. Light is both a wave and a particle.

They are not mutually exclusive.

Other particles, like electrons and protons can also behave like waves, albeit less so.

[Taverner]

37. Is it a particle that acts like a wave, or a wave that produces a particle?

And if the latter, HOW?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

42. It's both. It's both a wave and a particle. Both. Again, they're not exclusive of each other.

Photons are waves because they have wave-lengths, frequency, etc. Light waves can undergo interference. They can be polarized. It has no mass.

Photons are waves because they come in discrete, specifically quantized packets. They can knock electrons out of their orbits, and their ability to knock electrons out of their orbits has to do with how much energy they have (like a fast billiard ball as opposed to a small billiard ball) as opposed to how many photons there are.

None of this is mutually exclusive.

[RagAss]

8. I think the dude had a cat.

[Beetwasher]

9. Why?

That is the question, isn't it? Indeed. You're not missing anything. That's the question. Why? Cuz it's fickle?

[Taverner]

10. But what makes it do what it does?

And, how do we know what its doing when we AREN'T observing it?

[Beetwasher]

16. Ask Yrself This Instead:

What would u do in the same situation? R u a solipsist or something?

[UndertheOcean]

11. You need to understand Hilbert Spaces and linear operators first

Its in the math. So , hit the books

[Taverner]

12. Dude, I couldn't make it past Algebra 2!

And get this - I'm a computer dude!

But there was a huge block in my learning after Polynomials. Everything after that point, I. Did. Not. Get.

Statistics I get just fine

Algebra and Calculus, I am lost

[pokerfan]

35. That does put you at a disadvantage

I'm of the opinion that one can't really understand classical mechanics without a solid understanding of calculus. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be able to sit down and solve a differential equation on the spot, but that you at least understand how functions can depend upon the rate of change of other functions.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson was once asked who's the greatest physicist in history...

Isaac Newton. I mean, just look, you read his writings, hair stands up. I don’t have hair there but if I did, it would stand up on the back of my neck. You read his writings. The man was connected to the universe in ways that I never seen another human being connected. It’s kind of spooky actually. He discovers the laws of optics, figured out that white light is composed of colors. That’s kind of freaky right there. You take your colors of the rainbow, put them back together, you have white light again. That freaked out the artist of the day. How does that work? Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet gives you white? The laws of optics. He discovers the laws of motion and the universal law of gravitation.

Then, a friend of his says, “Well, why do these orbits of the planets, why are they in a shape of an ellipse, sort of a flattened circle? Why aren’t they some other shape?”

Newton said, "You know, I can’t... I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.”

So he goes home, comes back couple of months later, "Here’s why. They’re actually conic sections, sections of a cone that you cut.” And he was asked, “Well, how did you find this out? How did you determine this?”

“Well, I had to invent integral and differential calculus.”

Then, he turned 26. Then, he turned 26. We got people slogging through calculus in college just to learn what it is that Isaac Newton invented there, practically on a dare. So that’s my man, Isaac Newton.

[Taverner]

36. Give the layman a good start to understand calculus without doing differential equations

Is there a way?

I stopped when Algebra stopped making sense

[pokerfan]

38. Here's a good link

It's from the excellent 'Better Explained' blog:

So what’s calculus about?

Some define calculus as “the branch of mathematics that deals with limits and the differentiation and integration of functions of one or more variables."

It’s correct, but not helpful for beginners.

Here’s my take: Calculus does to algebra what algebra did to arithmetic.

* Arithmetic is about manipulating numbers (addition, multiplication, etc.).

* Algebra finds patterns between numbers: a² + b² = c² is a famous relationship, describing the sides of a right triangle. Algebra finds entire sets of numbers — if you know a and b, you can find c.

* Calculus finds patterns between equations: you can see how one equation (circumference = 2 * pi * r) relates to a similar one (area = pi * r²).

Using calculus, we can ask all sorts of questions:

* How does an equation grow and shrink? Accumulate over time?
* When does it reach its highest/lowest point?
* How do we use variables that are constantly changing? (Heat, motion, populations, …).
* And much, much more!

Algebra & calculus are a problem-solving duo: calculus finds new equations, and algebra solves them. Like evolution, calculus expands your understanding of how Nature works.

http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-gentle-introduction-to-learning-calculus">A Gentle Introduction To Learning Calculus

[Taverner]

39. This. Is. Starting. To. Make. Sense.

Thanks :)

[Orsino]

13. No one understands why, We're still learning the how. n/t

[Taverner]

17. AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

No it can't be!

Seriously - how do we know this is such?

[Orsino]

26. Experimental results keep supporting wave-particle duality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

[rug]

18. Off the top of my head, it's like this.

[Mopar151]

22. The best explanation I know of

from Cecil Adams, self-professed omnescient and authour of the "Straight Dope" newspaper column, books, etc.



Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!

Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!

(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verse

Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)

Win saw that the theory that Newton'd invented

By Einstein's discov'ries had been badly dented.

What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don't panic,

No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.

Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articles

Are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.

If that's not confusing, the nuclear dance

Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!

No sweat, though--my theory permits us to judge

Where some of 'em is and the rest of 'em was."

Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck

The comforting linkage of cause and effect.

E'en Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger tried

To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.

Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat,

And inside a tube we have put that cat at--

Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,

A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes

(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em,

One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom

Or atom--whatever--but when it emits,

A trigger device blasts the vial into bits

Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime

Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.

The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. Is

Our pussy still purring--or pushing up daisies?

Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don't

But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.

Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),

Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.

To some this may seem a ridiculous split,

But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough shit.

We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho':

There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.

Shine light on electrons--you'll cause them to swerve.

The act of observing disturbs the observed--

Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testing

To see if a particle's moving or resting

Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!

We know probability--certainty, never.'

The effect of this notion? I very much fear

'Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.

Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,

"We've just flipped a coin and we've learned he's a corpse."'

So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, "You're nuts.

God doesn't play dice with the universe, putz.

I'll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried--

In vain--until fin'ly he more or less died.

Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends,

Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.

Though he doubted my theory, I'll say of this saint:

Ten-to-one he's in heaven--but five bucks says he ain't."

— Cecil Adams

[WCGreen]

24. It's what happens when Schroedinger comes to bat with men on base...

[RagAss]

25. Awareness collapses the wave.

[Taverner]

29. Yes but how does the wave 'know'?

I got the part about shining a light on it, causes the electron to do weird things. That makes sense.

But what if you observe without light?

[RagAss]

31. Awareness doesn't require light.....it is all things and no thing...it is the wave and the particle

and it does not live in your head. You are in awareness...it is not in you.

[PVnRT]

27. The Schordinger equation

describes the most probably location to locate an electron orbiting an atom. Depending on the energy level, it says (for the two closes to the nucleus) that the electrons have the highest probability of occurring in a shape like a sphere at a certain distance from the nucleus.

[hedgehog]

30. Answer me this: is it true that until you place your bare foot on the floor,

that there both is and isn't a hairball sitting there?

[Taverner]

32. HAHAHAHA Schroedinger's Cat's REVENGE!!!

"I'll teach you to joke about my demise! AAAAACKHUTH!"

[Fire Walk With Me]

34. Schroedinger's Wave is when a tiny, tiny football stadium, filled with people

who are all Planck length in height, do the Wave. Or not, it depends entirely upon the observer. I hope that helps. If not, try drugs.

[hunter]

40. If you understand it...

... you don't. (Richard Feynman said something like that...)

I figure it this way: There is no why. It just is. The universe doesn't settle any account unless it has to. If the possibility is Heads or Tails but the answer doesn't matter then the coin is never flipped.

Imagine if the Defense Department wasn't keeping any books, that they just had these blank checks they wrote to contractors. Now imagine the U.S. Treasury wasn't keeping any books either, they'd just cover the Defense Department checks with the blank checks they had.

Then whenever the General Accounting Office or some Congressional Committee came investigating, the Defense Department and the Treasury Department would simply pull some cloud of numbers out of thin air that fit a plausible statistical model just to make the investigators go away. Those numbers there would be your particles.

I suspect that's how the Federal Government actually works. The buck doesn't stop anywhere. It appears from the fog and vanishes back into it. But unlike the Federal Government the Universe itself can't be dishonest and nobody can cheat the system because these numbers the Universe pulls up from nowhere are what actually is. Furthermore, our observation doesn't mean diddly-squat. We're no different than any other chunk of matter in that regard. In this game a pile of dirt has the same powers of observation a human does, the same ability to settle an account.

[Taverner]

41. D00d - YOU DON'T EXACTLY BUILD MY TRUST IN DEMOCRACY!!!!

Stop it!

Stop!

[Fridays Child]

43. Maybe Justin can help you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyNPiDssIYc

[Xipe Totec]

44. Yes, and No n/t

[Swede]

45. It's counterintuitive.

I love this stuff,but it's hard to wrap your head around it.