physics that makes you say "whaaaaaat?"

[MantisMag]

ok here are the posts from a thread i did. it's got a new title. i deleted the old thread. nobody even looked at it. i think that's a shame. this stuff is really interesting/weird/crazy. i don't know what happened. maybe it was because the whole "IF you e-mail SHE will come" thing was going on at the time. or maybe the old title scared everyone away "theoretical physics". in any case i'm gonna give it another try. if nobody responds to this one then i'll delete this one too and just forget about it. nobody is interested. :( so here goes. last chance physics. fail me again and i abandon you.

[MantisMag]

hey i've been up all night and just read through the historic posts for the first time. i came across this thread http://www.automags.org/forums/show...=&threadid=8948 i think this stuff is fun. can we do it again? i wasn't a member back then.

i'll start it off with an explanation of the basic idea behind quantum physics. the theory behind quantum physics is that everything is both a wave and a particle. most of you know that light is made up of particles called photons. a few of you have heard of the dual nature of light. light acts like a wave even though it's supposed to be made of quantas called photons. well quantum physicists theorize that not only does light act this way but everything exists as both a waveform and as particles. everything exists as a probability wave. it only collapses into a particle when it is observed.

place an object on a table. while you're looking at it you know it's there. when you turn away you're not really sure it's still there are you? but if you look back quickly it's not likely to have gotten very far. if you wait a week then you're not very sure of it still being there at all. you don't know where it is until you find it. so matter exists as a probability wave that spreads with time. as time goes on the object is more and more likely to be somewhere else farther and farther away. when we observe the object it "collapses" the wave form down to a point. THERE. that's where it is. then when you stop observing it the probability wave starts spreading again. this dual nature to everything opens up all kinds of strange possiblities. i'll post some if people are interested.

[MantisMag]

ok here's a little story about a guy named schroedinger and his cat. schroedinger was one sadistic guy. he came up with this story to show... i'm not sure why he made this up. maybe just to mess with people's minds. anyway it goes something like this. set up a chamber, with a divider,a cat, a special particle (i forget what kind), a particle detector, and some poison gas. let the particle bounce around for a while until you don't know where in the room it is. pop up the divider cutting the room in half. the cat is in one half, you don't know which. the particle is in one half, you don't know which one. maybe the particle and the cat are in the same half of the chamber maybe not. turn on the detector. the detector releases poison gas into the side of the chamber where it detects the particle. if the cat happens to be in that half the cat dies. but not really. not yet. actually the particle isn't actually in either half. it's in both! it exists as a probability wave. so the detector detects it as there and not there. the cat dies and lives. all at the same time! hahahaha! both states exist until somebody looks and finds out what happened. then the cat either lives or dies. but wasn't it dead or alive the whole time?

nobody really likes this. einstein argued against the ideas of quantum physics. he HATED quantum physics. matter should have the decency to be either a wave or a particle. not both. but there's proof! there is experimental data proving quantum physics is true. want to hear more?

[gimp]

I think this stuff is interesting, I just need to get some sleep now cause I have a test in statics tomorrow morning.

[MantisMag]

gimp- did you post something similar last time? somebody did. come back and post something later then. thoughts, ideas, questions, anything. magman who started the old thread also posted and said he was on his way out. nobody posted anything constructive. if you're actually interested come back and post something later when you're feeling up to it. otherwise it's gonna go bye bye again and i'm not going to ever post it again.

sorry if i sound harsh but the last thread fell off the first page twice. i got two replies both expressed an interest but neither said anything. i got less than 70 views after almost a week. if people don't reply this thread goes away just like the last one.

[Shaft]

I still have nightmare's of book long test papers and Schroedenger's equations. Thanks for bringing up that hell.

[udtseal]

LOL! This guy got me interested in this stuff like what, a year ago, year and a half? I am fascinated by it. :cool:

[Minimag4me]

Mantis Mag, I know nothing on this subject but it sounds really interesting. Does this mean people(everything, too) are waves and particles also? Is the change(between wave and particle) any way controlable? That cat thing is just messing with me. I read the last post but didnt post anything because i dont know anything about this.

I really am interested in this, please discuss. Ill try to think of more questions.

[MantisMag]

awesome. good questions minimag4me. yes you are made up of a wave and a particle. in fact there is a possibility that you would spontaneously appear somewhere else. it's not very likely though because all your particles would have to decide to do it at the same time.

here's an attempt to explain the second question as well as elaborate on the first. remember tom kayes statistics discussion with the bell curve? think about the probability wave like that. except make it dynamic. every time you define an object's position yank the center of that curve up into a spike. you're certain that the object is in a particular spot. as soon as you stop looking let go of the curve. it starts to settle and spread out. it's still most likely in that spot but the probability that it is somewhere else is increasing. for most objects the graph doesn't settle down like a handkerchief it turns into a ripple like water. a single ripple spreading outward. imagine that bell curve going down and being replaced by two humps moving outward. now make it 2-D and try to imagine it as a donut shaped wave spreading outward. now if you can make it 3-D like a sound wave. in essence what this means that a particle's likelihood of being where you left it decreases and the probability of it being somewhere else increases. the most probable place to find it is in the high point on the graph but it actually could be anywhere and in fact it is. it's everywhere and nowhere (that sounds pretty deep :D) until you find it and determine where it is.

[MantisMag]

since the cat thing messed with you here's a real example of how quantum physics causes crazy things to happen. ever hear the expression "a watched pot never boils?" well in quantum physics that's TRUE. most people know what a half-life is. it's the time it takes for half of a mass of radioactive substance to decay. why does this happen? why half at a time? doesn't that mean it decays slower as time goes on? why yes it does. it has to do with statistics. statistics deals with probabilities. if you've been paying any attention then you know that quantum physics deals with probabilities. each particle has a certain probability of decaying at any one time. some math geek went and determined that he could figure out how long it takes for half of it to decay because the more there is the more likely one particle will decay at any one time.

lemme see if i can come up with a metaphor... ok let's say you're at a roulette table. you place a bet on every single number. whenever a number wins you remove the money. if you lose you replace it until that number wins. let's say it takes an hour until half of the numbers have won. now even though there's less bets on the table now it's still going to take an hour until half of what's left is gone. that's because there's a lot more empty spaces you're going to land on places where you've already taken the money away.

now on to the quantum physics part. some guys wanted to test the whole probability wave collapsing thing. if we collapse the wave doesn't that mean it has to start all over? heeheehee. so they got some radioactive material. each particle has a certain probability of decaying at any one time. as time goes on the probability that it decayed some time in the past increases. *if you keep playing the same number the chances that that number will win at least once increases* ok so what? well if we check to see if it decayed and it hasn't then the probability that it decayed is zero. the probability has to start increasing all over again. they did this with their radioactive material. they kept scanning it over and over again. repeatedly collapsing the probability waves. did it decay yet? no. did it decay yet? no. did it decay yet? no. so what? who cares? the probability that it's going to decay at any single point in time is still the same. they can't affect that. well guess what. it WORKED. they more than quadrupled the half life while only losing a fraction of a percent of the total mass they started with. what? how? well every time they looked at the material the probability wave collapsed. there's very little probability that it will decay at that time. as time increases the probability increases that it happened during that span. they kept collapsing it back to that point of low probability. the odds stay the same like in roulette. but you'll probably win eventually. that doesn't make any sense. that would mean that the material is somehow aware of when you're looking at it. that it's aware of its statistical probability of decaying while you're not looking. that...ummmm (now is where the thread matches its title) WHAAAAAAAAAT? :D

[Minimag4me]

this thread goes down fast

it seems to me that the probability of the object collapsing is(or should be) increased when the object is not alive and not moving. I cant imagine that a person behind me could turn into a wave when im not looking. With an apple or something on a table i could think it would be more probable.

It seems this has a tie into teleportation(or possibility of).

Im out of time here ill be back later

[MantisMag]

actually you're right. awareness does have a lot to do with it. like i said, actually determining where something is collapses the probability wave. you're usually pretty aware of where your own body is. so unless the person behind you suddenly goes brain dead he's not gonna go anywhere. and like i said all the particles would have to go to the same place at the same time. and this does most definitely tie into teleportation.

electrons do it all the time. if you've had highschool chemistry then you should know about energy levels. electrons have different orbits around atoms called energy levels. each energy level is a certain distance from the nucleus (center) of the atom. the higher the energy level the farther away the atom is. weird thing is that you never find electrons between energy levels. as you add energy the probability of the electron being at a higher energy level increases. the probability of finding it at the lower energy level decreases. you never find it on its way there or on its way back. it's always just there. sometimes electrons seem to be at an energy level where they shouldn't be. but they always go back quickly. that's because of changing probability levels. the electron spontaneously appears where ever it wants to. usually it's where it's supposed to be but sometimes it decides to go somewhere else. it normally doesn't stay there very long but it does happen that an electron ends up being somewhere it's not supposed to have the energy for. quantum physics works best with small things. single atoms, electrons, protons, photons, etc. with those things you can get some really wacky stuff to happen using quantum physics. i'll post up some stuff about the wave/particle dual nature of photons after i draw some pictures. thanks for the interest minimag4me. and anybody else feel free to post other weird physics stuff like relativity. this thread wasn't meant to be an ask mantismag. ;)