I was contemplating about the collapse of the Schrödinger's wave function and trying to see what it could really mean while I happen to engage in a conversation with a friend of mine. He is a physicist and he asked me two questions.
1. Suppose I have an upright glass containing water and I tilt the glass to a 90 degree so that the glass is horizontal and the water is now on the floor. Why is that we don't expect the water to get back to the glass when leaving the glass (horizontal to the floor) and the water as such? By the way, I am not holding the glass and it rests on the floor so no gravity business.
2. Why is that all the air molecules around my location move out to somewhere else so that I die by not able to breathe in any oxygen?
His point was that these things don't happen just because the probability of these things happening is very small. In other words, nature by itself is probabilistic. So does that mean the Copenhagen interpretation of the Quantum Mechanics and the collapse of the wave function is justified? How does it then answer the Schrödinger's cat paradox and the realist views of scientists such as Einstein, who famously declared "God does not play dice".
1. Suppose I have an upright glass containing water and I tilt the glass to a 90 degree so that the glass is horizontal and the water is now on the floor. Why is that we don't expect the water to get back to the glass when leaving the glass (horizontal to the floor) and the water as such? By the way, I am not holding the glass and it rests on the floor so no gravity business.
2. Why is that all the air molecules around my location move out to somewhere else so that I die by not able to breathe in any oxygen?
His point was that these things don't happen just because the probability of these things happening is very small. In other words, nature by itself is probabilistic. So does that mean the Copenhagen interpretation of the Quantum Mechanics and the collapse of the wave function is justified? How does it then answer the Schrödinger's cat paradox and the realist views of scientists such as Einstein, who famously declared "God does not play dice".
1 comment:
What causes a "collapse" of the wave function? Many like to say that a conscious observer is required. Or is it that the measuring or detecting mechanism interferes with what is being measured?
Is measurement or "measurability" possible without interference in some way?
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