Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is why Copenhagen is the mainstream and other interpretations are less popular it defines the very heart of quantum mechanics and shows that the maths results in only one probabilistic mechanics that can have a hope of modelling the nano scale. At Solvay the big shots had it out, on one side was Schroedinger and Einstein and Lorentz, the old guard on the other were Pauli, Dirac, Heisenburg, Bohr et al.uwot wrote:As far as knowing what the 'wave' is, I think you have to distinguish between epistemology and ontology. Physicists know perfectly well what the wave is, in that it is a certain amount, a quantum, of energy. Like all energy, it is just the power to affect a change, most usefully in the excitation of electrons. The maths describes what happens in terms of the changes in energy levels extremely well and even, I gather, makes some stab at explaining how it got from a to b, which I'm guessing is what the Path-Integral Formulation is all about. The truth is though, at the quantum level, no ones knows.Blaggard wrote:The point about the Copenhagen interpretation is that there is no classical analogue to quantum behaviour, we do not know and can not know what the wave is without measuring it and by doing so we cause indeterminacy that hides its true nature.Quite so, Blaggard; you can't touch the ripples without changing them. (Isn't that Heisenberg rather than Copenhagen?) I think you can stretch the analogy by pretending fundamental particles are whirlpools, they have 'mass', because the water has to change direction. I think that is Higgs in a nutshell. The two slit experiment is much less puzzling in those terms.Blaggard wrote:So a classical analogy might be a blind man reaching down to touch the ripples on a pond, do those ripples stay the same or..?
Seriously, Blaggard, I am, as you say, a maths idiot, although I will try and get my head round that limit stuff. I'm not sure many people here are much better. If you really want to communicate these ideas, you will need to translate them.Then again, there's no guarantee I will understand you in English.Blaggard wrote:Hence the term complementary meaning a classical analogue to quantum stochastic model.
Only one woman there Marie Curie, we sure have come on a long way since then.
Einstein eventually conceded defeat although it was not really a defeat because everyone benefited from that great meeting of minds, Einstein had huge reservations about probability theory until the day he died and Schroedinger famously said "I am only sorry I will not be alive to see the demise of quantum mechanics" his cat in a box analogy was meant to be a wry joke about something being alive and dead at the same time, but physics jokes are an acquired taste.
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I am perfectly willing to explain this stuff, after all the best way to not be shocked by quantum theory is to explain it, so take your time, there really is no hurry it took me a whole year just to wrap my head around calculus, and I am good at maths as I said.