30-Second Quantum Theory by Brian Clegg

Author:Brian Clegg
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2014-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

RELATED THEORIES

QUANTUM DOUBLE SLIT

WAVE-PARTICLE DUALITY

SCHRÖDINGER’S EQUATION

HEISENBERG’S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

3-SECOND BIOGRAPHY

DAVID MERMIN

1935–

American physicist who famously paraphrased the Copenhagen interpretation as ‘Shut up and calculate!’

30-SECOND TEXT

Philip Ball

Complementarity says that light can act as waves (top) or as particles (bottom) but not both simultaneously.

BOHM INTERPRETATION

the 30-second theory

There is an alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation of what happens when an attempt is made to measure a quantum system, causing the wave function to collapse. It states that there is no such measurement problem in quantum physics since particles are only ever in one place at any time even when no one is around to look at them. For example, in the double-slit experiment, particles do not pass through both slits simultaneously, instead each particle only passes through one slit. In this model, the wave function serves to determine the distribution of particles at the end of the experiment and the apparent localized collapse of the wave function is just the result of making a particular measurement at a particular time on discrete particles that were already following clearly determined paths. Such a causal and deterministic approach to quantum mechanics is in stark contrast to the more widely accepted probabilistic treatment. This radically different view is known as the Bohm Interpretation after David Bohm, the American-born theoretical physicist who developed it. Similar ideas were proposed in the early days of quantum mechanics by Louis de Broglie and the explanation is sometimes called the de Broglie-Bohm theory.

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