Quantum Mechanics

So last Chemistry class we were given our first doses of Quantum Mechanics... headaches ensued. One reason for this is that there were many new, radical ideas presented to us, and there wasn't much explanation.



This was one of the videos we watched. This video really makes the reality of it seem weirder than it is, because it is over simplified. It reality, the electrons don't change from being a wave to a particle simply because they know they are being watched... observing a particle requires interaction between the particle and the detector, essentially changing the detector in some way (triggering a 'detection') and also changing the particle itself. Changing the particle could have any number of effects, most of which would likely interrupt the wave-like behavior. Normally on our macroscopic scale, we think that observing something doesn't have to change the object being observed in any way, and that's because truthfully it doesn't noticeably. But I would imagine that one photon of light (what is hitting your eye, the detector) bouncing off of an object(what you are looking at) would somehow alter what ever the photon is actually hitting on the subatomic scale.

The idea that a particle - sorry, particle-wave - like an electron can have all its states in superposition at the same time is an interesting concept. It is like nothing we observe on our macroscopic scale. It almost reminds me of my confusion starting Algebra. I had a little bit of trouble understanding how one variable could represent more than one thing at the same time, especially when you can only evaluate it as one thing at a time. Accepting the concept was no problem at all, but understanding it was. There is definitely a difference between accepting a fact to be true, and actually understanding that fact. Unfortunately, most of quantum mechanics is something we as chemistry students will have to simply accept to be true, no matter how little sense it makes.

Quantum Mechanics is based off another new idea that is unobservable in our macroscopic scale - that the electron energy levels are 'quantifiable' and that there is no 'in between' electron energy levels. This sort of concept, however, is not so hard for me to understand. Relating to stored computer values, there are many types for which there are no 'in betweens'. For instance, certain things can be only true or false. There is no in between true and false, its either one or the other. More commonly, if you thought of letters of the alphabet as values, then there is no letter in between 'a' and 'b', so letters of the alphabet are also similar to quantifiable values. But the fact that the position of the electron physically is quantifiable - that there is no in between electron energy levels - is something not so easily related. There is nothing in the macroscopic scale that works in the same way. To get from a to b, you must go through the space in between a and b (unless a was infinitely close to b). So for an electron to go from a to b, and skip the in between, does not make much sense.

I mentioned in the above paragraph that the behavior of wave-particles is nothing like anything we have on the macroscopic scale, which is yet another thing that fascinates me and at the same time perplexes me further. It's as if the atomic scale is bound by completely different rules than our scale. Like it's a whole extra world. And why? Why should laws which hold true for anything on this scale not apply for the atomic scale? Where is the line drawn?

Finally, I am very reluctant to accept that probability rules over the quantum world. In my mind, probability and 'randomness' are abstract and illogical ideas, that don't truly exist. If you knew enough about a given situation, you could predict it's outcome. The problem with the quantum scale is that it is impossible to know about the given situation in the same way it is on the macroscopic scale. Where as on the macroscopic scale we are limited in predicting the outcome of a coin flip by impracticality, on the quantum world we are limited by the very laws of physics. It is my personal opinion regardless that there is a difference between unpredictability and true randomness.


Despite all the uncertainty, I must say that all the confusion over waves and particles has really helped clear up what exactly was meant by light being a wave. I wasn't quite sure how to interpret or visualize it before, but it is perfectly clear now.



Seriously, if you are reading every word of all these, I'm really sorry and I wish I could make it up to you somehow.

--- Two Months Later ---

*Dusts off blog*

Did you know?

(Just FYI)


This video tells me a few things. The majority of these things are numbers, phrased as facts. But the main ideas it gets across is not all that surprising (if not already known), least ways not as much as the formentioned numbers.

China is becoming a big world player, soon bigger than the U.S. will be. In case you didn't already know. It seems to be commonplace knowledge right now (Southpark has already parodied it), so the real stiff bit delivered from this video are the facts backing it up. Where as previously, being the arrogant Americans that we are: not paying much mind to the world as a whole and what's going on in it, we had to be told about what China is becoming as a nation, and we had to talk other peoples' words for it. The holding of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing was the first stroke of awareness for most people, but China has been in the position it is now for far longer than most were aware of it.

Irregardless, it is now commonplace knowledge that China is becoming a big world player. And in case you had any doubts, or in case you needed to see for yourself just how China is sizing up, this video presented the appropriate numbers.

In addition, numbers were presented relating to an increasingly sporadic job market. This failed to surprise me as well as a new idea - I hear all the time about layoffs. And when one considers how our "Mexican Problem" comes into play, along with outsourcing, it's no wonder that our job market sucks. Given our economic status, it's not getting much better any time soon. But again, a sharp reality of the situation is well delivered in this video using numbers.

"We are living in exponential times" was another message supported by numbers in this video. As biologists will tell you, populations increase exponentially unless limited by some limiting factor, which we humans have yet to encounter. In the video, a lot of numbers are presented showing how things have increased exponentially, or are increasing exponentially. Well given that over time, our world population has increased exponentially from 1 billion in 1804 to our current standing of 6.7 billion, in a short 200 odd years. We have doubled our population in only 38 years! And the amount of time for a doubling to occur will shorten as time goes on; exponential curves are like that. It stands to reason that our technological milestones, being directly related to us humans, should increase exponentially as well, among other things. To me, this video is simply listing off our accomplishments, and predicting some that I can only look forward to.

Finally, the video closes by telling you how many babies have spawned since you started watching the video: in the U.S., in China, and in India. They then tell you how many songs have been illegally downloaded. This struck me as odd, as far as an ending note goes. It sums up the point about our exponentially increasing technology, similarly to how the note about the babies wraps up the points about China and India, but it does so by introducing a different concept of how our technology is being used - as a posed to the milestones that were presented earlier, showing how technology is being used to better ourselves and accomplish more. It presents the darker reality of technology: our increase will affect the negatives just as much as the positives.

Well isn't that just a wall of text... you deserve a prize for reading it all.