"Electrons aren't actually both particles and waves, that's an oversimplification of what's really happening." "So, what IS really happening?" "No one knows" Glad we cleared THAT up
It's not just that no one know what is "really" happening, it that no one can ever know. Since we can't ever know, in principle, it makes no sense to talk about any underlying "reality", just as it makes no sense to talk about the undetectable luminiferous aether.
No one really knows, but we are making slow progress. Entanglement is the key it seems. For example, an electron is maximally entangled with itself, so it can manifest instant coordinated change over all of space.
@@vendicarkahn4860 you dont seem to know what entanglement is. It is a non-splittable combination of multiple subsystems (a non product state). An electron is indecomposable, so it cannot be entangled by itself. It has no subsystems.
@@schokoladenjunge1 - An electron is always in a superposition of entangled states. If an electron is point like, then there is no explanation for self-interference in the double slit experiment. If an electron is an extended object then interaction is a problem because it must occur over a volume and the finite value of c, causes a problem. Entanglement provides a mechanism for instantaneous change through a volume.
Assaf Wodeslavsky Brother, she barely scratched the surface any deeper than any other pop-sci-tuber. I’ll admit no one is going to read you a text book on camera, though.
@@wabbasMEpern Ofcourse she isn't, but I do like she actually goes further then the usual representation of the problem. Tiny difference, big consequence for me as an interested viewer, now I want to know more as this is how I always got these things explained.
@@wabbasMEpern Probably no one here has the sophistication to understand the mathematics of any text read here. But everyone is interested in understanding how small things behave and why they behave the way they do. No one knows enough to provide such an answer. So no text book is going to contain it either. This problem has persisted since the invention of the subject 100+ years ago. Popular science generally gets the science wrong through oversimplification or plain regurgitation of false ideas trying to explain bizarre observations like the self interference of the double slit experiment and the localized/nonlocalized properties that are manifest for very small objects. Something in our every day experience must be abandoned. It may be the concept of locality, or the concept of location, or the entire concept of matter as consisting of localized things, (Electrons, quarks, photons, etc.) The approach that makes the most sense to me is to focus on fields rather than particles. Particles themselves are only observed when fields are sufficient to form a stable or quasi stable state that can be observed. Electromagnetic oscillations about a nucleus can only take on quantized values because an electron field can not self annihilate, so only fixed wavelengths of field oscillation are permitted around a nucleus corresponding to field configurations that are stable. Non-stable wavelengths that are far from stability are thought to not interact with the nucleus at all, while wavelengths that are close may stick around for a while before the state self interferes away from the nucleus and is lost. Particles in this view are not real things. We imagine them to be real due to historical and training bias, and because of unfamiliarity with small things. But in reality what we consider fundamental "particles" are just the stable solutions to a charged wave in a Coulomb well. The mystery is why the same quantized solutions which are consistent with the fundamental problems are seemingly the same, and why systems that require exact solutions to be stable are accommodating to reacting systems that are not exactly tuned. How is the inexactness compensated for in long lasting reactive systems?
You did a nice job of exposing the unsatisfying part of the epistemology of QM. The wave function and its modulus just tell you the probability, but not what's going on behind the curtain.
@@patrichausammann my teacher said oh this field of science is new don't so..... At that time I thought he knew nothing but now I understand that nobody knows it
The lesson of Relativity and QM is that nothing is going on behind the curtain. What cannot be measured is meaningless. Only what can be measured exists. There are no hidden variables, as what demonstrated by the experimental verification of Bell's Inequality.
I found your channel last night and after binge watching your videos I can say that the world just makes more sense. I had been hearing a lot of poor explanations of QM so I was so confused about it. Thanks!
I've heard this experiment explained so many times but this time I feel like I grasp the concept even more, can't wait to see the video on wave functions!!
I love how thorough you are! Alot of misconceptions arise because of language. Our language is not very well equipped to describe qunatum effects. So when explained in classrooms we take things like spin , particle, and wave literally. Thank you so much for clarifying. I just found you thru you spin video and you jist won a subscriber for life. Thanks!
Most physicists would say that "spin" is an example. As of when she made videos about it a while ago, she was less convinced that "spin" did not mean something pretty close in quantum mechanics to what it means in classical physics. Though the details of that are subtle.
It doesn't make any sense to talk about what quantum things "really are". That alleged reality is totally inaccessible to us. All we can know about quantum objects is what we measure, and, unlike macroscopic objects, we can't measure quantum thingies continuously. In between measurements, we can't say anything at all about those objects. Anything at all.
@@michaelsommers2356 we simulate, we crunch numbers and we do objective science. Our ability to comprehend the universe is always evolving it's just about asking the right questions and reliably being about to predict, manipulate and duplicate experiments. Reality can be even more enlightening no matter what someone believes or doesnt believe. Knowledge is power and technology is the double edged tool of humanity imo
@Halberdier Which interpretations are verifiable? The problem with discovering the "underlying reality" is not a lack of technology, it is fundamental. You cannot measure something when you are not measuring it, and you can't measure electrons continuously (the way you can measure macroscopic objects). There will necessarily be times when you are not measuring the electron, and during those times you simply can't say anything sensible about it. By that I just mean that nothing you say about it can be verified in any way.
@michael sommers Actually Leonard Susskind has proposed an experiment to determine whether quantum entanglement is equivalent to creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge or not after a tear or two of speculation- don’t count out the ingenuity of scientists to verify an interpretation!
@@LookingGlassUniverse Going well thank you, I presented at March Meeting in Boston this year :D I am working on quantum dots at low temperature, specifically non-invasive thermometry of electrons. What is your topic? :)
Does the following quantum model agree with the Spinor Theory of Roger Penrose? Quantum Entangled Twisted Tubules: "A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good." Ernest Rutherford When we draw a sine wave on a blackboard, we are representing spatial curvature. Does a photon transfer spatial curvature from one location to another? Wrap a piece of wire around a pencil and it can produce a 3D coil of wire, much like a spring. When viewed from the side it can look like a two-dimensional sine wave. You could coil the wire with either a right-hand twist, or with a left-hand twist. Could Planck's Constant be proportional to the twist cycles. A photon with a higher frequency has more energy. (More spatial curvature). What if gluons are actually made up of these twisted tubes which become entangled with other tubes to produce quarks. (In the same way twisted electrical extension cords can become entangled.) Therefore, the gluons are actually a part of the quarks. Mesons are made up of two entangled tubes (Quarks/Gluons), while protons and neutrons would be made up of three entangled tubes. (Quarks/Gluons) The "Color Force" would be related to the XYZ coordinates (orientation) of entanglement. "Asymptotic Freedom", and "flux tubes" make sense based on this concept. Neutrinos would be made up of a twisted torus (like a twisted donut) within this model. Gravity is a result of a very small curvature imbalance within atoms. (This is why the force of gravity is so small.) Instead of attempting to explain matter as "particles", this concept attempts to explain matter more in the manner of our current understanding of the space-time curvature of gravity. If an electron has qualities of both a particle and a wave, it cannot be either one. It must be something else. Therefore, a "particle" is actually a structure which stores spatial curvature. Can an electron-positron pair (which are made up of opposite directions of twist) annihilate each other by unwinding into each other producing Gamma Ray photons. Does an electron travel through space like a threaded nut traveling down a threaded rod, with each twist cycle proportional to Planck’s Constant? Does it wind up on one end, while unwinding on the other end? Is this related to the Higgs field? Does this help explain the strange ½ spin of many subatomic particles? Does the 720 degree rotation of a 1/2 spin particle require at least one extra dimension? Alpha decay occurs when the two protons and two neutrons (which are bound together by entangled tubes), become un-entangled from the rest of the nucleons . Beta decay occurs when the tube of a down quark/gluon in a neutron becomes overtwisted and breaks producing a twisted torus (neutrino) and an up quark, and the ejected electron. The phenomenon of Supercoiling involving twist and writhe cycles may reveal how overtwisted quarks can produce these new particles. The conversion of twists into writhes, and vice-versa, is an interesting process. Gamma photons are produced when a tube unwinds producing electromagnetic waves. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Within this model a black hole could represent a quantum of gravity, because it is one cycle of spatial gravitational curvature. Therefore, instead of a graviton being a subatomic particle it could be considered to be a black hole. The overall gravitational attraction would be caused by a very tiny curvature imbalance within atoms. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> In this model Alpha equals the compactification ratio within the twistor cone. 1/137 1= Hypertubule diameter at 4D interface 137= Cone’s larger end diameter at 3D interface A Hypertubule gets longer or shorter as twisting occurs. 720 degrees per twist cycle. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> How many neutrinos are left over from the Big Bang? They have a small mass, but they could be very large in number. Could this help explain Dark Matter?
I just stumbled upon this channel because of my recommendations feed and I dont regret it. You actually explain complex idea's really well when it comes to quantum mechanics. Keep posting vids!
Congratulations! An understandable video that (nearly) explains what we know on the topic and does not want to tell more, especially that we do not know yet. I wish you a good luck! Keep going!
This is a great video! There are a few important things missing, as mentioned at the end, but you presented the topic in an very concise and clear manner. It's about as good as it gets for a 5 min video. I absolutely love when people talk about common misconceptions, especially the ones that don't get the attention they deserve.
THANK YOU! I have had to grit my teeth for years now because people keep saying that electrons are "particles and waves at the same time!" No, the wavy part is NOT the electron itself. The wavy part is not even the probability of the electron being somewhere, it is the square root of the probability. In what way can the square root of a statistic about the behavior of a group of things be called the same as one of the things itself? It makes much more sense to think that each electron is a single particle, and the wave function simply describes the statistics of how multiple electrons will interact with a specific experimental setup. Every time we observe an electron it is a particle. The only waving done is the waving of a statistic tied to the design of the experiment. Here is an analogy. Suppose you have a bunch of identical drivers and identical automobiles driving from the city out to anywhere on the sea shore. There are multiple branching roads and drivers may chose one route or another based on how heavy the traffic is at any intersection. Depending on what roads they choose, any given car may end up at many differing points along the beach. You could write a "wave equation" describing the square root of the probability that a given car or cars would arrive at a given location, but no one would say that the auto became a wave when it started its journey, and then turned back into an auto when it reached salt water. The wave equation is more strongly a descriptor of the roadways than it is of the automobiles.
Doesn't this sort of imply that electrons really do have one 'actual position' at all times? Regardless of it's capability to be measured? Sort of breaks my previous interpretation, that the uncertainty of a particle has nothing to do with measurement, but instead means it truly and absolutely doesn't have a perfectly defined momentum or position. This kind of makes it seem like it does, but that information is fundamentally inaccessible In fact that sounds an awful lot like pilot waves, no?
Yeah, good explanation. Physicists are in their effort to explain by analogy making things just more confusing. For somebody that understands probability theory it's enough to say that there is a random event where electron may end up after passing from one side to the other and there is a probability distribution of that outcome which happen to look like something a wave would produce in a similar experiment.
I absolutely love how focused you are on the deeper meanings of these experiments. I also study physics and am always looking for the greater conceptual understanding. Would very much like to talk physics with you someday.
Oh my goodness I've been watching your channel non-stop for a week now, trying to understand anything at all about these subjects, and now I see your face for the first time, it's like seeing the cheshire cat in real life!
Thank you! One of the more rational physics students I've seen, and you already show more understanding than many physicists I know. Keep your good work!
Thank you. I am sorry I am so late discovering your channel. I hope you plan more videos in the near (very near) future!!! No matter if you do or not, Thank you so much for your contribution! You show what is good about youtube, people and the world.
The best way to look at this problem is through the eyes of QFT. It is difficult to wrap your head around at first, but everything starts making sense once you see the world through it.
Somesh Yadav thanks for pointing out QFT! There are a lot of interpretations, some that don’t even have anything moving, like the Amplituhedron and ADS/CFT ... people are trying to derive space, time, causality and locality out of some more basic now.
@Somesh Yadav : In Quantum Field Theory (QFT) electrons and photons, etc, are vibrations of quantum fields. In other words, they're waves. The question is whether they're highly localized, like particles, or can be spread out or even split in two while propagating through space. For instance, what does the electron in QFT do when it encounters a pair of slits in a wall? Does it pass through only one slit like a particle, or through both slits like a wave? I don't understand how we can observe an interference pattern at the detector array unless something physical/real and wavy passes through both slits. If electrons are particles, how can one interfere with itself?
I just watched your "double-split experiment at home" video. I know that in it you talk about your previous ideas about waves, but interesting to see you have an entire video on the subject!
Thank You! It's November 2020 do I last considered these things in class about 40 years ago and it still feels good on my brain. Thank You for all the work you do! Posting on Facebook...
Thanks for clearing this up... and then complicating it all over again. I guess the saying is true, if you think you know quantum mechanics, then you don't know quantum mechanics. Good luck on your PhD!
I disagree with the literal interpretation of that quote. It's an hyperbole for the fact that if you think you have an intuitive and simple explanation for all the weirdness of QM, then you probably don't understand it at all. QM is unfortunately complicated and counter-intuitive. There's no way around it. Simple explanations are probably just wrong. But it doesn't mean that the theory is impenetrable.
@@LookingGlassUniverse Hi, we have a interesting discussion going on in another comment thread. And UA-cam doesn't let me tag you in arbitrary comment thread. Would love to hear your thoughts :)
@@wood_croft I reckon Quantum Mechanics is not impenetrable for as long as "being penetrable" amounts to "being (somewhat) believable". By that I mean that physicists tend to declare a theory to be comprehensible when it is possible for them to accept its axioms and understand the arising implications in detail (what ever that might mean), which I think is perfectly fine btw. However, I do believe that learning and working with Quantum Mechanics means walking a thin line between required familiarity and growing insensitivity. I think the quote at hand does a nice job condensing this unwieldy statement ;)
I was so thrilled to see his name! He was my professor at Reed nearly 30 years ago! So nice and down to earth. And a master of explaining complicated things simply.
Thanks for making another video! Having watched many of your videos, I can tell you're a fan of the double-slit experiment. ;) It is really fascinating. It's clear to me that there is a great deal of uncertainty that's come from just that one simple experiment. I've read and heard many great physicists debating the philosophical implications of this whole issue. What do you think is the chance that there's some fundamental insight that's been missed that's leading to these conundrums? Good luck with the PhD!
@Piano Slayer : I think an experiment that's better for these purposes is the one in which a laser beam passes through a half-silvered mirror (beam splitter) and the two possible beam paths are directed by mirrors to a second half-silvered mirror, after which there are two detectors. By adjusting the path lengths, the light can be made to always go to one of the detectors with 100% probability, or to the other detector with 100% probability, or to both with non-zero probabilities that sum to 100%. The first two cases correspond to extreme interference: at the detector that has zero probability the superposition of the waves sums to zero, and at the other detector the superposition sums to 100%. It's simpler to analyze than two slits and an array of detectors but still embodies the same fundamental mystery. It's also easy to modify the setup to add Delayed Choice, in which the path lengths are adjusted to select one detector or the other to be 100% after the light has already passed through the first half-silvered mirror. If the light is indeed a particle, then the delayed choice seems to affect its path earlier in time, and that retro-causality is a serious problem with the particle model, but in the "self-entangled wave" model no retro-causality is required.
Appreciation from India. I am doing my masters in Mathematics and recently have taken a very strong interest in learning QM and GTR. I am learning the math part as a part of my course,and going through UA-cam to try to understand the physics part.
This is why I prefer Bohmian mechanics. The wave function is just a probability density function of likely outcomes. The pilot wave goes through both slits. The electron goes through one. The interaction between the particle and the self-interfering pilot wave leads to a chaotic path. Statistical mechanics was never meant to be a description of an underlying reality--rather just a probabilistic tool to predict bulk behavior in a chaotic system. It doesn't tell you why individual particles dance in Brownian motion so why should a theory built on the same underlying mathematics tell you why electrons move the way they do?
But one drawback is that the pilot wave interpretation always needs two entities for one phenomenon (the particle itself and its pilot wave), and another is that AFAIK no LORENTZ invariant version of BOHMian Mechanics is available.
Having two entities instead of one doesn't bother me. I beleive it's technically possible to do away with the particle. Still, a particle necessitates the pilot wave. See the bouncing droplet experiments. Also, look at the IBM short film A Boy and His Atom (here on UA-cam) and pay attention to the background. You'll see a surprisingly similar EM phenomenon associated with each atom under the electron microscope. That Bohmian mechanics isn't fully worked out for all cases does bother me a bit but I expect that's just because hardly anyone has worked on it seriously. The nonlocality doesn't bother me, either, as a relativistic solution to that has been known since the 30s.
@@jensphiliphohmann1876 - In Pilot Wave Theory there is just one physical entity - the particle. The pilot wave that guides the particle manifests in Configuration Space - a complex-valued, infinite-dimensional, non-relativistic domain of superposed probability functions. Unlike electromagnetic waves, pilot waves do not propagate in physical space, the only physical evidence of their behavior manifests in the measurable properties of the particles they influence.
@@FallenStarFeatures Wherever the pilot wave manifests, it must kind of exist because something nonexistent may guide people but not particles which presumably don't have beliefs or something like this... Beside of it, it's non-relativistic which is another drawback.
Thanks. Very nice to hear someone else vocalizing my concerns about this stuff. I wish I understood the math of the wave function and how computations are done with it. I’m wondering, in the double slit experiment, how the wave function is analyzed on the two different sides of the slits, how do the slits alter the wave function, how is that computed? What is the effect of the barrier on the wave function? When the wave function wave reaches the barrier, what does it do?
The electron is so cute when it pulls its mass in ^^ People say working out is hard, well at least you don't have to break the law of conservation of energy to do it...
Hey, nice to see you too as always. Hope everything is going smooth and you're not dealing with some crazy weather there, here it's like switching seasons over night, heh.
Great video, as always! I have a question about the wave model and a possible explanation for a "wave only" interpretation. One way that I've seen the behavior of a an "electron as wave" described is that the electron is wave-like excitation of the electron field with a sin-wave-like pattern with a pretty clear momentum and wavelength, but no clear position. This model argues that when the electron wave hits the detector, it is colliding with a second electron. If the two colliding electrons are both viewed as waves, their collision can be viewed as the superposition of two wave forms. The reason the electron creates an apparent point-like interaction when it hits the detector is because the superposition of the two waveforms results in a new waveform with a spike in localized position and little information about wavelength and momentum. But the point you make about moving mass from a non-localized state to a localized position requiring some energy (and potentially violating the speed of light) is a really compelling one. So I guess my question is this: is there a way to model the collapse of the wave function in a way that doesn't violate relativity and conservation of energy? Presumably, regardless of what the wave function is it carries some energy and information, both of which would require energy to "move" from a sine waveform to a waveform shaped like a spike, no? Does the math behind waveform superpositions say anything about the speed at which the superposition is created and where the energy comes from? Or have I got this completely the wrong way around?
My understanding of it, and bear in mind I'm only a science enthusiast with no post grad science education, is that the wave function doesn't describe where the particle actually is but only where its likely to be. A "collapse" never actually takes place in reality. The particle is where it is and the wave function can't predict exactly where that will be, only where it's likely to be.
The role of mass and gravity in wave function "collapse" is extremely interesting and hopefully the way to understanding the relationship between information, QM, and GR better. I remember reading about Newton-Schrödinger states in a book from Penrose.
Love your videos. Here's how it's starting to seem to me. 1. Everything is in a superposition. 2. Nothing experiences its own superposition. So Schrodinger's cat is in a superposition of being alive and having no idea it's in a superposition, and dead and, um, going on about its dead business as if it weren't in a superposition. Likewise, the electron in the two-slit experiment is in a superposition of various ways it can go on about its business going through one or the other slit. Experientially, being in a superposition is identical to the normalcy you and I are experiencing right now. 3. Entangled things don't experience each other in a superposition. They're well defined to each other as as they are to themselves. In essence, entangled things are a new thing, to which rules 1 and 2 now apply. 4. "Measurement" and "observation" are just fancy words for entanglement. So from my POV, everything in the Universe is either in a superposition, or entangled with me. That's it, those are the possibilities. When I observe / measure / detect the electron, it doesn't lose its superposition; it and I intertwine our respective superpositions. How accurate is that? Close? Anyways, thanks again.
Thanks for this video. This is still a paradox to me. None of my college professors looked like you when I first encountered QM. This is another duality that I now have to deal with.
Double slit experiment is probably the most significant experiment in modern physics. I'm happy to see you explain this this well here on UA-cam. Everyone else on UA-cam keep spreading mumbo jumbo physics. Also anyone reading this, I encourage you to watch Brian Green's video on double slit experiment.
The coolest thing about the DSE is that you can do it in high school. I didn’t understand the repercussions until a few years later, but I can look back on doing it fondly.
If the electron passes through only one of the two slits, why does its wave function become wavy? In other words, doesn't the waviness of the wave function, and the interference pattern that accumulates at the detector array, imply something physical/real went through both slits?
I also find this subject fascinating and thumbs up. But, I was amazed about how much effort you put into this video!!! It must have taken many hours to draw this (all the diffraction patterns in marker). I also liked the Psi at 3:39 that you drew with the face.
One idea (a bit too abstract yet) that popped in my head after watching many videos about electrons & photons, 'particles' waves etc... is like this: If there's a medium even a really tiny (currently undetectable) fraction of it - like a water-droplet for example (though this metaphor is wrong on so many levels :)) ... so if a wave is propagating inside it, it would of course at some point in time reach that 'droplet' border, but it might bounce back, because of lets say the quantum equivalent of a total-internal-reflection. Then that wave would 'travel' inside its droplet of medium and keep bouncing inside it. But then again if the size of this droplet matches the wave length then it could become a static wave - ie that's just an example that such wave doesn't actually travel anywhere, but most likely it's its droplet that has the momentum we associate with motion. Actually I think it's possible to reproduce it in real world with a tiny droplet of water and a photon or a beam of photons inside it - as long as the photons hit the inner surface of the water at a small enough angle (ie far from 90 degrees) it would just bounce back inside the droplet thanks to the total internal reflection (of course it would be technically very difficult that the photons always bounce at such angles, but lets say that we solve the technical difficulties as usual - by throwing more engineers at them :)). Of course my metaphor is way oversimplified and thus wrong at many levels, but here are some ideas what it might actually be made of (instead of water :)): - that medium could be the apparently existing everywhere 'virtual' particles (or vacuum fluctuations of vacuum energy). I put the virtual in quotes because if you can put them to use as in the Casimir Effect, or as in a nonlinear crystals used to split (& entangle) photons then they're very much real. - the droplet could be something like an event horizon of the stuff (or energy) in a given location in that medium (there are some theories that state that there is an event horizon basically around each accelerating object, and event horizon can potentially have physical manifestation - like it does for example in black holes in creating real particles out of virtual ones using the black hole energy)
Terrific info graphics, love the channel. I have always thought the question is not just "what is the electron ?" but also "what are the slits in a wall ?" :) From the perspective of the geometry of the underlying fields in the electrons frame of reference Curious stuff
You explained it so well and cleared the layperson's confused mind on this topic, Mithuna. Thank you. It looks like the electron is camera (observation) shy and doesn't want to show its full nature.
hi i'm a 2nd year physics and math student; i love how you dispel misconceptions without saying things like "because that's ridiculous" or "well, just common sense" and actually going through the logistics of the processes!
This. This answers basically every question I had about quantum mechanics. Like wow. I always thought the wavefunction was tied pretty closely to the state of the electron, but really it seems that it's just an explanation of the electron. Really interesting stuff.
Oop, gonna have to disagree! The electron IS a physical wave! It’s an excitation of the electron field, which classically obeys the Dirac wave equation and quantum-mechanically... well, is still a mess. But it’s sure as heck more wave than anything else! It’s actually a lot like a spin-wave along a grid of spin-coupled qbits, if that’s a statement that makes any sense. Love the channel by the way, don’t take my wavey protestations as a negative review!
Yep. And if the maths shows that a particle is a collapsed wave function, I wonder if particles and waves are actually the same thing (waves), just that particles are like a 'crushed' wave that we are able to know the position of.
Then again, it also gets messy when imagining how the charge distribution exists around the electron itself, since some experiments seem to confirm it's spherical in nature, but to be fair those were constrained electrons in a molecule, and they just measured an electron transition. At the same time, this doesn't mean the electron itself is physically a sphere, since that would force the g-factor to be 1 instead of 2....... Feynman himself also did say that we can never know where the electron is or what it's doing, but wherever it is, it's a point-like charge. So i guess there's really no categorical way to say for sure what these things are. I say we just need more creative experiments to test them somehow, until then it's fun to speculate.
Hello Mithuna I hope your PhD went well. Thank you for introducing us in the life of an electron. It's fascinating to understand that the electron can become a wave than a particule. Splitting in multiple parts to become one again. Thank you.
One of the clearest explanations about this topic I found on youtube! Seems the photon is neither a particle (how should a photon split in half?) nor a wave.
Btw that topic have made me go back to electron-orbitals to hopefully understand better what it actually is, perhaps that would be a nice continuation of the subject for a future video? :) Also a more detailed comparison between electron or photon's waves & other classical ie observable waves would be very interesting, especially in the context of the Pilot-Wave theory which manages to reproduce some quantum phenomenons with classical waves.
Loving the "video burst" method. Allows viewers to mix their own recipe, recombining ingredients to taste. What new connections are possible? We'll see, won't we? Keep 'em coming. Perhaps the only science series where "shuffle" could be a good thing!
Physics with paper cut-outs and little faces drawn on them is best physics. "We don't understand what the wave function is trying to tell us" is probably the best (and most honest) explanation I've heard so far. It really does seem that we're just doing rote equations but don't understand the underlying principle, like calculating planet orbits before Newton.
Love this explanation! I also don’t like when people trying to click bait saying “It’s a particle AND also a wave!” which QM is not saying at all. “Acts”, not “is”.
This needs to be attached to every "double slit experiment" video. The amount of times I have to explain this to other philosophers and pseudophysicists, both inside and outside the internet, is unreal. 😂
Very good simple explanation, and your illustrations add tremendous value to your videos, keep up the awesome work, I'm sure you'll do great in your studies. .....but that electron did seem a bit unhappy with the whole procedure.
these videos are great for all ages, but particularly for younger minds. my kids love them - they dont understand much of it yet, but the animations with clear explanations hold their interest and penetrate and reside in the back of their minds. Thanks
I was reminded of Pusey and Rudolph’s so called PBR theorem while listening to this. Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett, and Terry Rudolph, "On the reality of the quantum state", Nature Physics 8, 475-478 (2012).
Excelent video! I have a question: is it possible that what is waving is not an electron as you say but the probability of finding the electron in a particular place?
Beautifully done. It is very refreshing when a any science video ends with what we do not know. It usually means the preface was telling us why de don't know
Thank You for all the hard work, and good luck on your PhD. You did an excellent job of discussing a subject that is so 'Stilted'. FYI, according to the book 'Seth Speaks' by Jane Roberts, the electron and other subatomic particles phase in and out of space-time. Thus, creating all the duality aspect of wave/particle, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle for that matter. In short, these particles act like longer duration virtual particles with the phasing creating the 'resonance vibration' we see in matter and EMR. As for the interference pattern, that is a result of the Uncertainty Principle and Planks Constant (which are key to QM) and thus related to spectral line emission patters of atoms. But then, I need to show all this mathematically, which I am working on, as other scientist are also for that matter. Again, thank you.
Hello! Came here from the 3B1B video and am starting with this interesting video and looking forward to others I’ve queued up. Total amateur here, but I try to follow along as best as I can. FWIW, my WAG is that the wavefunction is closely connected with de Broglie’s notion of matter waves. Keying off QFT, I wonder if perhaps there is no such thing as “particles” - it’s (matter) waves throughout, but those waves have point-like interactions. The great open mystery remains how that spread out wave “collapses” (spooky action at a distance) and why it picks that particular electron’s wave to interact with. I agree with Philip Ball that maybe what’s needed is a whole new approach. As did Ptolemy, we’ve gotten a good model that’s _almost_ right…
@@TheWyrdSmythe They told you that quanta are small amounts of energy in high school. That is the actual solution. She doesn't know it, either. You are listening to the wrong person. She is simply yet another person airing her own insecurities about high school and undergrad level physics on the internet. ;-)
@@lepidoptera9337 Again, sorry, but no. Quanta aren't "small" amounts of energy, they're the _minimum_ amount possible, and merely handwaving "quanta" doesn't answer any question being asked here. And characterizing someone you don't know is an even bigger error on your part.
@@TheWyrdSmythe There is no minimal amount of energy. Energy is not quantized. Angular momentum and charges are quantized. That quanta are small amounts of energy is the foundation of the theory. You can find it in Heisenberg's matrix mechanics papers. I would suggest you read them before you make irrational judgements about a theory you clearly don't understand. That the lady in the video doesn't understand quantum mechanics, either, is pretty obvious.
Very clear. I have not seen it explained like that before. I am interested in what changes when you observe the wave, and how it changes to a particle. If I look at it, but close my eyes, does it act as a wave again?
I know with your PhD you're super busy, but I would love a video honestly discussing what it's like to earn a PhD in physics. I am currently in the world of chemistry and intending to pursue grad school -- but I am continually drawn to the theoretical world and often think about what grad school for quantum physics would be like and I'd love to hear your perspective. For example: How do you conduct research? What is the process like for developing your thesis? How intense is the environment? Really enjoyed hearing your story in your other video discussing your process of getting to this point.
Hehehehehe! This is really cool! So many books talk about the slit opening experiment that have the bell curve. Then your speech talks about a wave and not a wave. :-) :-). Then that QM doesn't really give a definite answer. All of this is magnificent to know. Thank you for sharing. Please post more...
"Electrons aren't actually both particles and waves, that's an oversimplification of what's really happening."
"So, what IS really happening?"
"No one knows"
Glad we cleared THAT up
Even if it doesn't make sense, the equations work :P 🤷♂️
It's not just that no one know what is "really" happening, it that no one can ever know. Since we can't ever know, in principle, it makes no sense to talk about any underlying "reality", just as it makes no sense to talk about the undetectable luminiferous aether.
No one really knows, but we are making slow progress. Entanglement is the key it seems. For example, an electron is maximally entangled with itself, so it can manifest instant coordinated change over all of space.
@@vendicarkahn4860 you dont seem to know what entanglement is. It is a non-splittable combination of multiple subsystems (a non product state). An electron is indecomposable, so it cannot be entangled by itself. It has no subsystems.
@@schokoladenjunge1 - An electron is always in a superposition of entangled states.
If an electron is point like, then there is no explanation for self-interference in the double slit experiment.
If an electron is an extended object then interaction is a problem because it must occur over a volume and the finite value of c, causes a problem.
Entanglement provides a mechanism for instantaneous change through a volume.
That is the cutest drawing of an electron I've ever seen. I want to give that electron a hug.
You would receive an electric charge! Be careful! (it tickles)
Wow. Finally somebody is actually discussing the meaning of the wave function. keep going. I am interested in hearing you more.
Assaf Wodeslavsky Brother, she barely scratched the surface any deeper than any other pop-sci-tuber. I’ll admit no one is going to read you a text book on camera, though.
@@wabbasMEpern Ofcourse she isn't, but I do like she actually goes further then the usual representation of the problem. Tiny difference, big consequence for me as an interested viewer, now I want to know more as this is how I always got these things explained.
@@VincentGroenewold i just sharted
@@wabbasMEpern Probably no one here has the sophistication to understand the mathematics of any text read here. But everyone is interested in understanding how small things behave and why they behave the way they do.
No one knows enough to provide such an answer. So no text book is going to contain it either.
This problem has persisted since the invention of the subject 100+ years ago.
Popular science generally gets the science wrong through oversimplification or plain regurgitation of false ideas trying to explain bizarre observations like the self interference of the double slit experiment and the localized/nonlocalized properties that are manifest for very small objects.
Something in our every day experience must be abandoned. It may be the concept of locality, or the concept of location, or the entire concept of matter as consisting of localized things, (Electrons, quarks, photons, etc.)
The approach that makes the most sense to me is to focus on fields rather than particles. Particles themselves are only observed when fields are sufficient to form a stable or quasi stable state that can be observed. Electromagnetic oscillations about a nucleus can only take on quantized values because an electron field can not self annihilate, so only fixed wavelengths of field oscillation are permitted around a nucleus corresponding to field configurations that are stable. Non-stable wavelengths that are far from stability are thought to not interact with the nucleus at all, while wavelengths that are close may stick around for a while before the state self interferes away from the nucleus and is lost.
Particles in this view are not real things. We imagine them to be real due to historical and training bias, and because of unfamiliarity with small things. But in reality what we consider fundamental "particles" are just the stable solutions to a charged wave in a Coulomb well.
The mystery is why the same quantized solutions which are consistent with the fundamental problems are seemingly the same, and why systems that require exact solutions to be stable are accommodating to reacting systems that are not exactly tuned.
How is the inexactness compensated for in long lasting reactive systems?
Webbas, there are plenty of UA-cam videos about the subject.
Use the UA-cam search bar on top of your screen.
You did a nice job of exposing the unsatisfying part of the epistemology of QM. The wave function and its modulus just tell you the probability, but not what's going on behind the curtain.
@Chris Maness You are right! This is the point I made when I was 14 years old in physics class, and the teacher hated me for it and let me feel it.😒
@@patrichausammann my teacher said oh this field of science is new don't so.....
At that time I thought he knew nothing but now I understand that nobody knows it
@@soniatiwari9986
This field is a century old lol
The lesson of Relativity and QM is that nothing is going on behind the curtain. What cannot be measured is meaningless. Only what can be measured exists. There are no hidden variables, as what demonstrated by the experimental verification of Bell's Inequality.
How can anyone know what’s going on behind the curtain without looking ? But if you look by definition is no longer behind the curtain.
I found your channel last night and after binge watching your videos I can say that the world just makes more sense. I had been hearing a lot of poor explanations of QM so I was so confused about it. Thanks!
I just found your channel, and I'm literally giddy! Thanks for the awesome content! Love your enthusiasm and teaching style.
Your Channel is absolutely amazing!! Much love for your art work btw
I've heard this experiment explained so many times but this time I feel like I grasp the concept even more, can't wait to see the video on wave functions!!
Good to see a little video from you again. Very interesting topic, as always. Good luck on your PHD!
I love how thorough you are! Alot of misconceptions arise because of language. Our language is not very well equipped to describe qunatum effects. So when explained in classrooms we take things like spin , particle, and wave literally. Thank you so much for clarifying. I just found you thru you spin video and you jist won a subscriber for life. Thanks!
to summarize: physicists like to call things by what they look like, not what they are. see "spin" too afaik.
Most physicists would say that "spin" is an example. As of when she made videos about it a while ago, she was less convinced that "spin" did not mean something pretty close in quantum mechanics to what it means in classical physics. Though the details of that are subtle.
It doesn't make any sense to talk about what quantum things "really are". That alleged reality is totally inaccessible to us. All we can know about quantum objects is what we measure, and, unlike macroscopic objects, we can't measure quantum thingies continuously. In between measurements, we can't say anything at all about those objects. Anything at all.
@@michaelsommers2356 we simulate, we crunch numbers and we do objective science. Our ability to comprehend the universe is always evolving it's just about asking the right questions and reliably being about to predict, manipulate and duplicate experiments. Reality can be even more enlightening no matter what someone believes or doesnt believe. Knowledge is power and technology is the double edged tool of humanity imo
@Halberdier Which interpretations are verifiable?
The problem with discovering the "underlying reality" is not a lack of technology, it is fundamental. You cannot measure something when you are not measuring it, and you can't measure electrons continuously (the way you can measure macroscopic objects). There will necessarily be times when you are not measuring the electron, and during those times you simply can't say anything sensible about it. By that I just mean that nothing you say about it can be verified in any way.
@michael sommers Actually Leonard Susskind has proposed an experiment to determine whether quantum entanglement is equivalent to creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge or not after a tear or two of speculation- don’t count out the ingenuity of scientists to verify an interpretation!
Great video as always. And best of luck with the PhD. I’m 2.5 years into mine and I still find it challenging. Keep going :)
How is it coming :D? It's in physics right? What's the topic?
@@LookingGlassUniverse Going well thank you, I presented at March Meeting in Boston this year :D I am working on quantum dots at low temperature, specifically non-invasive thermometry of electrons. What is your topic? :)
@@hamsterproductionsofficial How has your PhD gone? The way you described what you just said sounds sooooo cool!!
@@fireemblem2770 hahahahha 😂
Does the following quantum model agree with the Spinor Theory of Roger Penrose?
Quantum Entangled Twisted Tubules: "A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good." Ernest Rutherford
When we draw a sine wave on a blackboard, we are representing spatial curvature. Does a photon transfer spatial curvature from one location to another? Wrap a piece of wire around a pencil and it can produce a 3D coil of wire, much like a spring. When viewed from the side it can look like a two-dimensional sine wave. You could coil the wire with either a right-hand twist, or with a left-hand twist. Could Planck's Constant be proportional to the twist cycles. A photon with a higher frequency has more energy. (More spatial curvature). What if gluons are actually made up of these twisted tubes which become entangled with other tubes to produce quarks. (In the same way twisted electrical extension cords can become entangled.) Therefore, the gluons are actually a part of the quarks. Mesons are made up of two entangled tubes (Quarks/Gluons), while protons and neutrons would be made up of three entangled tubes. (Quarks/Gluons) The "Color Force" would be related to the XYZ coordinates (orientation) of entanglement. "Asymptotic Freedom", and "flux tubes" make sense based on this concept. Neutrinos would be made up of a twisted torus (like a twisted donut) within this model. Gravity is a result of a very small curvature imbalance within atoms. (This is why the force of gravity is so small.) Instead of attempting to explain matter as "particles", this concept attempts to explain matter more in the manner of our current understanding of the space-time curvature of gravity. If an electron has qualities of both a particle and a wave, it cannot be either one. It must be something else. Therefore, a "particle" is actually a structure which stores spatial curvature. Can an electron-positron pair (which are made up of opposite directions of twist) annihilate each other by unwinding into each other producing Gamma Ray photons.
Does an electron travel through space like a threaded nut traveling down a threaded rod, with each twist cycle proportional to Planck’s Constant? Does it wind up on one end, while unwinding on the other end? Is this related to the Higgs field? Does this help explain the strange ½ spin of many subatomic particles? Does the 720 degree rotation of a 1/2 spin particle require at least one extra dimension?
Alpha decay occurs when the two protons and two neutrons (which are bound together by entangled tubes), become un-entangled from the rest of the nucleons
. Beta decay occurs when the tube of a down quark/gluon in a neutron becomes overtwisted and breaks producing a twisted torus (neutrino) and an up quark, and the ejected electron. The phenomenon of Supercoiling involving twist and writhe cycles may reveal how overtwisted quarks can produce these new particles. The conversion of twists into writhes, and vice-versa, is an interesting process.
Gamma photons are produced when a tube unwinds producing electromagnetic waves.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Within this model a black hole could represent a quantum of gravity, because it is one cycle of spatial gravitational curvature. Therefore, instead of a graviton being a subatomic particle it could be considered to be a black hole. The overall gravitational attraction would be caused by a very tiny curvature imbalance within atoms.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In this model Alpha equals the compactification ratio within the twistor cone. 1/137
1= Hypertubule diameter at 4D interface
137= Cone’s larger end diameter at 3D interface
A Hypertubule gets longer or shorter as twisting occurs. 720 degrees per twist cycle.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How many neutrinos are left over from the Big Bang? They have a small mass, but they could be very large in number. Could this help explain Dark Matter?
I just stumbled upon this channel because of my recommendations feed and I dont regret it. You actually explain complex idea's really well when it comes to quantum mechanics. Keep posting vids!
Clearly a lot of work went into this video. Thanks a lot for what you're doing. Cheers and Godspeed!
Congratulations! An understandable video that (nearly) explains what we know on the topic and does not want to tell more, especially that we do not know yet. I wish you a good luck! Keep going!
This is a great video! There are a few important things missing, as mentioned at the end, but you presented the topic in an very concise and clear manner. It's about as good as it gets for a 5 min video. I absolutely love when people talk about common misconceptions, especially the ones that don't get the attention they deserve.
Thanks so much :D
Your videos have been soooo helpful! keep up the great work, and the best with your PhD.
I lost your channel for a year and finally found it again.....so relieved. Also it is so nice to see your face finally!!!
Aww! Thank you!!
I am so glad I discovered your channel. You’re awesome! ❤️
Thank you for making a video about the distinction of formalism and the interpretation of it! Too many people haphazardly lump those together.
THANK YOU! I have had to grit my teeth for years now because people keep saying that electrons are "particles and waves at the same time!" No, the wavy part is NOT the electron itself. The wavy part is not even the probability of the electron being somewhere, it is the square root of the probability. In what way can the square root of a statistic about the behavior of a group of things be called the same as one of the things itself? It makes much more sense to think that each electron is a single particle, and the wave function simply describes the statistics of how multiple electrons will interact with a specific experimental setup. Every time we observe an electron it is a particle. The only waving done is the waving of a statistic tied to the design of the experiment. Here is an analogy. Suppose you have a bunch of identical drivers and identical automobiles driving from the city out to anywhere on the sea shore. There are multiple branching roads and drivers may chose one route or another based on how heavy the traffic is at any intersection. Depending on what roads they choose, any given car may end up at many differing points along the beach. You could write a "wave equation" describing the square root of the probability that a given car or cars would arrive at a given location, but no one would say that the auto became a wave when it started its journey, and then turned back into an auto when it reached salt water. The wave equation is more strongly a descriptor of the roadways than it is of the automobiles.
Doesn't this sort of imply that electrons really do have one 'actual position' at all times? Regardless of it's capability to be measured?
Sort of breaks my previous interpretation, that the uncertainty of a particle has nothing to do with measurement, but instead means it truly and absolutely doesn't have a perfectly defined momentum or position. This kind of makes it seem like it does, but that information is fundamentally inaccessible
In fact that sounds an awful lot like pilot waves, no?
@@0xRy4n See my main comment guys ;)
how you explain the de broglie function and wavelength of electron
Yeah, good explanation. Physicists are in their effort to explain by analogy making things just more confusing. For somebody that understands probability theory it's enough to say that there is a random event where electron may end up after passing from one side to the other and there is a probability distribution of that outcome which happen to look like something a wave would produce in a similar experiment.
Cars do not produce diffraction patterns waves do But that wave cannot be smeared out mass and charge
I absolutely love how focused you are on the deeper meanings of these experiments. I also study physics and am always looking for the greater conceptual understanding. Would very much like to talk physics with you someday.
Oh my goodness I've been watching your channel non-stop for a week now, trying to understand anything at all about these subjects, and now I see your face for the first time, it's like seeing the cheshire cat in real life!
Thank you! One of the more rational physics students I've seen, and you already show more understanding than many physicists I know. Keep your good work!
Thank you. I am sorry I am so late discovering your channel. I hope you plan more videos in the near (very near) future!!! No matter if you do or not, Thank you so much for your contribution! You show what is good about youtube, people and the world.
Absolutely awesome video! I just finished a BSc Physics and you've actually answered some of my questions!! Great video!!!!
Your explanations are so great. You cover things in a way no one else does. Vielen Dank!
This is one of the best treatments of this topic I have ever seen - and I have seen a lot of them. I just became a subscriber.
The best way to look at this problem is through the eyes of QFT. It is difficult to wrap your head around at first, but everything starts making sense once you see the world through it.
Somesh Yadav thanks for pointing out QFT! There are a lot of interpretations, some that don’t even have anything moving, like the Amplituhedron and ADS/CFT ... people are trying to derive space, time, causality and locality out of some more basic now.
@Somesh Yadav : In Quantum Field Theory (QFT) electrons and photons, etc, are vibrations of quantum fields. In other words, they're waves. The question is whether they're highly localized, like particles, or can be spread out or even split in two while propagating through space. For instance, what does the electron in QFT do when it encounters a pair of slits in a wall? Does it pass through only one slit like a particle, or through both slits like a wave? I don't understand how we can observe an interference pattern at the detector array unless something physical/real and wavy passes through both slits. If electrons are particles, how can one interfere with itself?
Good to see the camera box and markers pens still in full force. XD
I don't plan on putting them away :)
I just watched your "double-split experiment at home" video. I know that in it you talk about your previous ideas about waves, but interesting to see you have an entire video on the subject!
”I guess that makes sence..”
-me during every lecture of quantum mechanics so far
I appreciate your insight and intellectual perception in refraining from idle speculation. Thank You!
Thank You!
It's November 2020 do I last considered these things in class about 40 years ago and it still feels good on my brain.
Thank You for all the work you do!
Posting on Facebook...
This is such a beautiful channel, you’re doing some amazing work
Thanks for clearing this up... and then complicating it all over again. I guess the saying is true, if you think you know quantum mechanics, then you don't know quantum mechanics. Good luck on your PhD!
Very glad to hear that ;)
I disagree with the literal interpretation of that quote. It's an hyperbole for the fact that if you think you have an intuitive and simple explanation for all the weirdness of QM, then you probably don't understand it at all. QM is unfortunately complicated and counter-intuitive. There's no way around it. Simple explanations are probably just wrong. But it doesn't mean that the theory is impenetrable.
@@LookingGlassUniverse Hi, we have a interesting discussion going on in another comment thread. And UA-cam doesn't let me tag you in arbitrary comment thread. Would love to hear your thoughts :)
@@wood_croft Of course, because it is a BIASED interpretation, violating the Parcimony Principle while Bohmian's Paradigm doesn't; looks to us.
@@wood_croft I reckon Quantum Mechanics is not impenetrable for as long as "being penetrable" amounts to "being (somewhat) believable". By that I mean that physicists tend to declare a theory to be comprehensible when it is possible for them to accept its axioms and understand the arising implications in detail (what ever that might mean), which I think is perfectly fine btw. However, I do believe that learning and working with Quantum Mechanics means walking a thin line between required familiarity and growing insensitivity. I think the quote at hand does a nice job condensing this unwieldy statement ;)
I love your older video style, but this new visual "real life" version is great too!
I'm a simple man, I see Griffiths, I like
I think I have an idea of what this means...
I know. I remember the arduous time spent wrestling with that book. And it blowing my mind, of course.
I was so thrilled to see his name! He was my professor at Reed nearly 30 years ago! So nice and down to earth. And a master of explaining complicated things simply.
Thanks for making another video! Having watched many of your videos, I can tell you're a fan of the double-slit experiment. ;) It is really fascinating. It's clear to me that there is a great deal of uncertainty that's come from just that one simple experiment. I've read and heard many great physicists debating the philosophical implications of this whole issue. What do you think is the chance that there's some fundamental insight that's been missed that's leading to these conundrums? Good luck with the PhD!
@Piano Slayer : I think an experiment that's better for these purposes is the one in which a laser beam passes through a half-silvered mirror (beam splitter) and the two possible beam paths are directed by mirrors to a second half-silvered mirror, after which there are two detectors. By adjusting the path lengths, the light can be made to always go to one of the detectors with 100% probability, or to the other detector with 100% probability, or to both with non-zero probabilities that sum to 100%. The first two cases correspond to extreme interference: at the detector that has zero probability the superposition of the waves sums to zero, and at the other detector the superposition sums to 100%. It's simpler to analyze than two slits and an array of detectors but still embodies the same fundamental mystery. It's also easy to modify the setup to add Delayed Choice, in which the path lengths are adjusted to select one detector or the other to be 100% after the light has already passed through the first half-silvered mirror. If the light is indeed a particle, then the delayed choice seems to affect its path earlier in time, and that retro-causality is a serious problem with the particle model, but in the "self-entangled wave" model no retro-causality is required.
Been on a binge on your videos, absolutely love them keep it up 🔥, wish physics was made this interesting in Uni
I like the way to express the problems as well as I love your the way to speak. Waiting for more video like this.
Me when I'm supposed to be doing work: 3:02
I think I need this on a t-shirt...
Appreciation from India.
I am doing my masters in Mathematics and recently have taken a very strong interest in learning QM and GTR. I am learning the math part as a part of my course,and going through UA-cam to try to understand the physics part.
Me too.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Keep it up
Brief yet informative; I hope you continue your explanation on wave function the same style but with little more details; Good work ..Thank you
Thanks! I will!
Thank you. This short video brings a little more clarity to the question. Wave vs particle and collapse of wave function on measurement
Enjoyed this...hope this month goes well!
This is great, thanks, really breaking it down to as near reality as possible. Don't you dare every stop making these videos, please.
Thanks so much Michael for always leaving such kind comments :)
This is why I prefer Bohmian mechanics. The wave function is just a probability density function of likely outcomes. The pilot wave goes through both slits. The electron goes through one. The interaction between the particle and the self-interfering pilot wave leads to a chaotic path. Statistical mechanics was never meant to be a description of an underlying reality--rather just a probabilistic tool to predict bulk behavior in a chaotic system. It doesn't tell you why individual particles dance in Brownian motion so why should a theory built on the same underlying mathematics tell you why electrons move the way they do?
Transmission Control she has a video on Bohm. Electron could just be a disturbance in a field, not a thing itself (QFT)
But one drawback is that the pilot wave interpretation always needs two entities for one phenomenon (the particle itself and its pilot wave), and another is that AFAIK no LORENTZ invariant version of BOHMian Mechanics is available.
Having two entities instead of one doesn't bother me. I beleive it's technically possible to do away with the particle. Still, a particle necessitates the pilot wave. See the bouncing droplet experiments. Also, look at the IBM short film A Boy and His Atom (here on UA-cam) and pay attention to the background. You'll see a surprisingly similar EM phenomenon associated with each atom under the electron microscope. That Bohmian mechanics isn't fully worked out for all cases does bother me a bit but I expect that's just because hardly anyone has worked on it seriously. The nonlocality doesn't bother me, either, as a relativistic solution to that has been known since the 30s.
@@jensphiliphohmann1876 - In Pilot Wave Theory there is just one physical entity - the particle. The pilot wave that guides the particle manifests in Configuration Space - a complex-valued, infinite-dimensional, non-relativistic domain of superposed probability functions. Unlike electromagnetic waves, pilot waves do not propagate in physical space, the only physical evidence of their behavior manifests in the measurable properties of the particles they influence.
@@FallenStarFeatures
Wherever the pilot wave manifests, it must kind of exist because something nonexistent may guide people but not particles which presumably don't have beliefs or something like this...
Beside of it, it's non-relativistic which is another drawback.
I remember this experiment as a kid, and this is the first time it made so much sense to me. Sign me up for your class. Awesome way to explain this.
That gave me a real lightbulb moment, a deeper and more accurate understanding of wave functions than I had before. Thank you, very clear
Thanks. Very nice to hear someone else vocalizing my concerns about this stuff.
I wish I understood the math of the wave function and how computations are done with it. I’m wondering, in the double slit experiment, how the wave function is analyzed on the two different sides of the slits, how do the slits alter the wave function, how is that computed? What is the effect of the barrier on the wave function? When the wave function wave reaches the barrier, what does it do?
The electron is so cute when it pulls its mass in ^^
People say working out is hard, well at least you don't have to break the law of conservation of energy to do it...
This is amazing, thank you 👌
(Also hi! Nice to see you)
Hey, nice to see you too as always. Hope everything is going smooth and you're not dealing with some crazy weather there, here it's like switching seasons over night, heh.
Great video, as always! I have a question about the wave model and a possible explanation for a "wave only" interpretation. One way that I've seen the behavior of a an "electron as wave" described is that the electron is wave-like excitation of the electron field with a sin-wave-like pattern with a pretty clear momentum and wavelength, but no clear position. This model argues that when the electron wave hits the detector, it is colliding with a second electron. If the two colliding electrons are both viewed as waves, their collision can be viewed as the superposition of two wave forms. The reason the electron creates an apparent point-like interaction when it hits the detector is because the superposition of the two waveforms results in a new waveform with a spike in localized position and little information about wavelength and momentum.
But the point you make about moving mass from a non-localized state to a localized position requiring some energy (and potentially violating the speed of light) is a really compelling one. So I guess my question is this: is there a way to model the collapse of the wave function in a way that doesn't violate relativity and conservation of energy? Presumably, regardless of what the wave function is it carries some energy and information, both of which would require energy to "move" from a sine waveform to a waveform shaped like a spike, no? Does the math behind waveform superpositions say anything about the speed at which the superposition is created and where the energy comes from? Or have I got this completely the wrong way around?
My understanding of it, and bear in mind I'm only a science enthusiast with no post grad science education, is that the wave function doesn't describe where the particle actually is but only where its likely to be. A "collapse" never actually takes place in reality. The particle is where it is and the wave function can't predict exactly where that will be, only where it's likely to be.
Aaah you still make videos! UA-cam didn't show me any for ages! Good luck with everything! I have a lot of content to catch up on now!
:D
The role of mass and gravity in wave function "collapse" is extremely interesting and hopefully the way to understanding the relationship between information, QM, and GR better.
I remember reading about Newton-Schrödinger states in a book from Penrose.
Love your videos.
Here's how it's starting to seem to me.
1. Everything is in a superposition.
2. Nothing experiences its own superposition. So Schrodinger's cat is in a superposition of being alive and having no idea it's in a superposition, and dead and, um, going on about its dead business as if it weren't in a superposition. Likewise, the electron in the two-slit experiment is in a superposition of various ways it can go on about its business going through one or the other slit. Experientially, being in a superposition is identical to the normalcy you and I are experiencing right now.
3. Entangled things don't experience each other in a superposition. They're well defined to each other as as they are to themselves. In essence, entangled things are a new thing, to which rules 1 and 2 now apply.
4. "Measurement" and "observation" are just fancy words for entanglement.
So from my POV, everything in the Universe is either in a superposition, or entangled with me. That's it, those are the possibilities. When I observe / measure / detect the electron, it doesn't lose its superposition; it and I intertwine our respective superpositions.
How accurate is that? Close?
Anyways, thanks again.
Another great video! I love the shot of the Quantum Mech texts in the bookstore,
Thanks for this video. This is still a paradox to me. None of my college professors looked like you when I first encountered QM. This is another duality that I now have to deal with.
Double slit experiment is probably the most significant experiment in modern physics. I'm happy to see you explain this this well here on UA-cam. Everyone else on UA-cam keep spreading mumbo jumbo physics.
Also anyone reading this, I encourage you to watch Brian Green's video on double slit experiment.
The coolest thing about the DSE is that you can do it in high school. I didn’t understand the repercussions until a few years later, but I can look back on doing it fondly.
If the electron passes through only one of the two slits, why does its wave function become wavy? In other words, doesn't the waviness of the wave function, and the interference pattern that accumulates at the detector array, imply something physical/real went through both slits?
I also find this subject fascinating and thumbs up. But, I was amazed about how much effort you put into this video!!! It must have taken many hours to draw this (all the diffraction patterns in marker). I also liked the Psi at 3:39 that you drew with the face.
One idea (a bit too abstract yet) that popped in my head after watching many videos about electrons & photons, 'particles' waves etc... is like this:
If there's a medium even a really tiny (currently undetectable) fraction of it - like a water-droplet for example (though this metaphor is wrong on so many levels :)) ... so if a wave is propagating inside it, it would of course at some point in time reach that 'droplet' border, but it might bounce back, because of lets say the quantum equivalent of a total-internal-reflection. Then that wave would 'travel' inside its droplet of medium and keep bouncing inside it. But then again if the size of this droplet matches the wave length then it could become a static wave - ie that's just an example that such wave doesn't actually travel anywhere, but most likely it's its droplet that has the momentum we associate with motion.
Actually I think it's possible to reproduce it in real world with a tiny droplet of water and a photon or a beam of photons inside it - as long as the photons hit the inner surface of the water at a small enough angle (ie far from 90 degrees) it would just bounce back inside the droplet thanks to the total internal reflection (of course it would be technically very difficult that the photons always bounce at such angles, but lets say that we solve the technical difficulties as usual - by throwing more engineers at them :)).
Of course my metaphor is way oversimplified and thus wrong at many levels, but here are some ideas what it might actually be made of (instead of water :)):
- that medium could be the apparently existing everywhere 'virtual' particles (or vacuum fluctuations of vacuum energy). I put the virtual in quotes because if you can put them to use as in the Casimir Effect, or as in a nonlinear crystals used to split (& entangle) photons then they're very much real.
- the droplet could be something like an event horizon of the stuff (or energy) in a given location in that medium (there are some theories that state that there is an event horizon basically around each accelerating object, and event horizon can potentially have physical manifestation - like it does for example in black holes in creating real particles out of virtual ones using the black hole energy)
Terrific info graphics, love the channel.
I have always thought the question is not just "what is the electron ?" but also "what are the slits in a wall ?" :)
From the perspective of the geometry of the underlying fields in the electrons frame of reference
Curious stuff
You explained it so well and cleared the layperson's confused mind on this topic, Mithuna. Thank you.
It looks like the electron is camera (observation) shy and doesn't want to show its full nature.
Please make a video on wavefunction!!
I will :)
I believe she already has.
Wonderful video. Thank you so much for making and posting these.
Thank you so much :)!
hi i'm a 2nd year physics and math student; i love how you dispel misconceptions without saying things like "because that's ridiculous" or "well, just common sense" and actually going through the logistics of the processes!
I love your videos. I always find it hard to understand quantum mechanics because they use terms without really going in depth.
somebody pleeeeeeeease give this girl a medal
or a gigantic research grant
or at least 114k people worth applause ,
I mean really this video is cool
Good luck on your ph.d, from a b.s. in physics. I really enjoy your videos! They are great.
Bullshit
simp
This. This answers basically every question I had about quantum mechanics. Like wow. I always thought the wavefunction was tied pretty closely to the state of the electron, but really it seems that it's just an explanation of the electron. Really interesting stuff.
Oop, gonna have to disagree! The electron IS a physical wave! It’s an excitation of the electron field, which classically obeys the Dirac wave equation and quantum-mechanically... well, is still a mess. But it’s sure as heck more wave than anything else! It’s actually a lot like a spin-wave along a grid of spin-coupled qbits, if that’s a statement that makes any sense.
Love the channel by the way, don’t take my wavey protestations as a negative review!
I thought the same.
Yep. And if the maths shows that a particle is a collapsed wave function, I wonder if particles and waves are actually the same thing (waves), just that particles are like a 'crushed' wave that we are able to know the position of.
Then again, it also gets messy when imagining how the charge distribution exists around the electron itself, since some experiments seem to confirm it's spherical in nature, but to be fair those were constrained electrons in a molecule, and they just measured an electron transition.
At the same time, this doesn't mean the electron itself is physically a sphere, since that would force the g-factor to be 1 instead of 2.......
Feynman himself also did say that we can never know where the electron is or what it's doing, but wherever it is, it's a point-like charge. So i guess there's really no categorical way to say for sure what these things are.
I say we just need more creative experiments to test them somehow, until then it's fun to speculate.
Hello Mithuna I hope your PhD went well. Thank you for introducing us in the life of an electron. It's fascinating to understand that the electron can become a wave than a particule. Splitting in multiple parts to become one again. Thank you.
Long time no see Mithuna. Highest five for you. 😊😊
One of the clearest explanations about this topic I found on youtube!
Seems the photon is neither a particle (how should a photon split in half?) nor a wave.
I like this new format of making videos too. Looks good! :>
Thank you so much for noticing! It took me so long to do this because I still haven’t gotten hang of the style.
Btw that topic have made me go back to electron-orbitals to hopefully understand better what it actually is, perhaps that would be a nice continuation of the subject for a future video? :)
Also a more detailed comparison between electron or photon's waves & other classical ie observable waves would be very interesting, especially in the context of the Pilot-Wave theory which manages to reproduce some quantum phenomenons with classical waves.
Thanks for clarifying the concept!
Love ur videos!! 😍
And best of luck for ur PhD!!👍
Loving the "video burst" method. Allows viewers to mix their own recipe, recombining ingredients to taste. What new connections are possible? We'll see, won't we? Keep 'em coming.
Perhaps the only science series where "shuffle" could be a good thing!
Physics with paper cut-outs and little faces drawn on them is best physics. "We don't understand what the wave function is trying to tell us" is probably the best (and most honest) explanation I've heard so far. It really does seem that we're just doing rote equations but don't understand the underlying principle, like calculating planet orbits before Newton.
I always have to giggle because of the (super) negative electron face :DDDD at least the wave function seems happy
Love this explanation! I also don’t like when people trying to click bait saying “It’s a particle AND also a wave!” which QM is not saying at all. “Acts”, not “is”.
Drives like a fish. Steers like a cow.
Moves like a wave. Absorbs like a particle.
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR PhD!! You can do it!!!
This needs to be attached to every "double slit experiment" video.
The amount of times I have to explain this to other philosophers and pseudophysicists, both inside and outside the internet, is unreal. 😂
I find it a little frustrating too :P
Very good simple explanation, and your illustrations add tremendous value to your videos, keep up the awesome work, I'm sure you'll do great in your studies. .....but that electron did seem a bit unhappy with the whole procedure.
these videos are great for all ages, but particularly for younger minds.
my kids love them - they dont understand much of it yet, but the animations with clear explanations hold their interest and penetrate and reside in the back of their minds.
Thanks
I was reminded of Pusey and Rudolph’s so called PBR theorem while listening to this. Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett, and Terry Rudolph, "On the reality of the quantum state", Nature Physics 8, 475-478 (2012).
Excelent video! I have a question: is it possible that what is waving is not an electron as you say but the probability of finding the electron in a particular place?
Beautifully done. It is very refreshing when a any science video ends with what we do not know. It usually means the preface was telling us why de don't know
Thank You for all the hard work, and good luck on your PhD. You did an excellent job of discussing a subject that is so 'Stilted'. FYI, according to the book 'Seth Speaks' by Jane Roberts, the electron and other subatomic particles phase in and out of space-time. Thus, creating all the duality aspect of wave/particle, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle for that matter. In short, these particles act like longer duration virtual particles with the phasing creating the 'resonance vibration' we see in matter and EMR. As for the interference pattern, that is a result of the Uncertainty Principle and Planks Constant (which are key to QM) and thus related to spectral line emission patters of atoms. But then, I need to show all this mathematically, which I am working on, as other scientist are also for that matter. Again, thank you.
the content of this channel is SO good!
Hello! Came here from the 3B1B video and am starting with this interesting video and looking forward to others I’ve queued up. Total amateur here, but I try to follow along as best as I can. FWIW, my WAG is that the wavefunction is closely connected with de Broglie’s notion of matter waves. Keying off QFT, I wonder if perhaps there is no such thing as “particles” - it’s (matter) waves throughout, but those waves have point-like interactions. The great open mystery remains how that spread out wave “collapses” (spooky action at a distance) and why it picks that particular electron’s wave to interact with.
I agree with Philip Ball that maybe what’s needed is a whole new approach. As did Ptolemy, we’ve gotten a good model that’s _almost_ right…
We told you how this works in high school. You just didn't listen. ;-)
@@lepidoptera9337 Again, I have to say sorry, but wrong on both counts. Never heard this in HS despite that I did listen.
@@TheWyrdSmythe They told you that quanta are small amounts of energy in high school. That is the actual solution. She doesn't know it, either. You are listening to the wrong person. She is simply yet another person airing her own insecurities about high school and undergrad level physics on the internet. ;-)
@@lepidoptera9337 Again, sorry, but no. Quanta aren't "small" amounts of energy, they're the _minimum_ amount possible, and merely handwaving "quanta" doesn't answer any question being asked here.
And characterizing someone you don't know is an even bigger error on your part.
@@TheWyrdSmythe There is no minimal amount of energy. Energy is not quantized. Angular momentum and charges are quantized.
That quanta are small amounts of energy is the foundation of the theory. You can find it in Heisenberg's matrix mechanics papers. I would suggest you read them before you make irrational judgements about a theory you clearly don't understand.
That the lady in the video doesn't understand quantum mechanics, either, is pretty obvious.
Very good and serious approach! Thank you.
Thanks :)!
Very clear.
I have not seen it explained like that before.
I am interested in what changes when you observe the wave, and how it changes to a particle.
If I look at it, but close my eyes, does it act as a wave again?
Awesome video. I've started math class at university this year, would you help me with tips and tricks ?
Thanks. That does answer some questions I had in my head 😁
Please, dont ever stop making these videos. They really show the real controversies in QM. Thanks
I know with your PhD you're super busy, but I would love a video honestly discussing what it's like to earn a PhD in physics. I am currently in the world of chemistry and intending to pursue grad school -- but I am continually drawn to the theoretical world and often think about what grad school for quantum physics would be like and I'd love to hear your perspective. For example: How do you conduct research? What is the process like for developing your thesis? How intense is the environment? Really enjoyed hearing your story in your other video discussing your process of getting to this point.
That’s a really cool idea! I might do that soon :)
I'm glad to see someone's doing this. It's a bit of a misconception.
That was really good. Please continue!!!
Hehehehehe! This is really cool! So many books talk about the slit opening experiment that have the bell curve. Then your speech talks about a wave and not a wave. :-) :-). Then that QM doesn't really give a definite answer. All of this is magnificent to know. Thank you for sharing. Please post more...