January 13, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Copenhagen Interpretation
Last night we had touched upon (just barely
touched) the concept of quantum nonlocality and the foundational discussions it
eventually leads to.
The implications of the world of quantum
mechanics for the real world had always troubled the physicists who study this
subject deeply.
The most popular interpretation, as many of
you would know or at least heard of, is today known as the Copenhagen
interpretation largely defined by the duo of Bohr and Heisenberg.
Karl Popper himself being a physicist and a
mathematician wrote extensively on the Copenhagen interpretation.
The greatest problem, if there actually is
one, with this interpretation is that for the reality to exist there needs to
exist either a conscious intelligent observer or a laboratory device that can collect
data for an intelligent observer to interpret.
It was not to the liking of Karl Popper and
was vociferous critique of the Copenhagen interpretation.
It has been the one constant and consistent
lesson in the history of all our basic sciences, ranging from biology to
cosmology to astrophysics, that we apes are insignificant.
So any interpretation that makes our
position special or unique (such as the Copenhagen interpretation) is bound to
raise questions; not just that, it would almost certainly be implausible.
What Copenhagen interpretation proposes is
that any physical system or object does not possess any definite property prior
to it being measured.
They only exist in the state of
probabilities.
It is the act of measurement that not only
observes the system but affects it by reducing all the sets of probabilities
and collapsing it into one.
This is technically known as wave function
collapse, the wave function being the Schrödinger equation which again many of
you would be familiar with.
Such an interpretation of the wave function
and its collapse makes some wonder whether it is ontic (it exists factually) or
it is some kind of mathematical artifact.
Moreover the mathematical formulations of
quantum mechanics are not only counterintuitive but extremely new and radical
with respect to the mathematics that we are familiar of the classical
mechanics.
The new mathematical formulations were
introduced for the first time by Paul Dirac and the legendary John von Neumann
in early 1930s in terms of operators on a Hilbert Space.
These mathematical formulations of quantum
mechanics are now known as Dirac-von Neumann axioms.
Quantum mechanics and its interpretation
for the real world bring forth to us such propositions that great thinkers like
Popper were forced to reject it.
Not quantum mechanics itself but its real
world interpretations.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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