I was wondering if somebody could give me a basic overview of what quantum mechanics is all about and what the key theories involved are.
One of the biggest thing's Aurora's thing is missing is info about the Observer effect (link), which is a big piece iirc. Classic example would be Schroedinger's Cat and its variants. A few other sources: Here's a decent book from what I hear (Though the math is... whoa). Of course, it never hurts to go straight to the master: Part 1. Part 2. A good book (this is purely my opinion) is called the Dancing Wu Li Masters. It's not straight QM. Rather, it's QM relating to eastern mysticism. I found it to be a good intro, do to my long standing interest in world religion. Unfortunately, though it provides a lot of good info and experimental examples, it has a tendancy to stray into pseudoscience in some chapters. Grain of salt and all that. Lastly, once your eyes wanna blow up, there's a movie, much like the book above (mysticism, pseudoscience-y) called What the Bleep do we Know that's not bad. Hopefully Higgs will pop up, I think he's got some good stuff on QM.
The whole thing that sparked this question is What the Bleep do we Know. We watched it in Philosophy.
Ok, so all possibilities exist until observed, energy and spatial position for objects in motion cannot both be known simultaneously, all observers affect the observed, light is both a wave and a particle, and energy is broken down in to quanta. How is this important? What is the real-world application of this?
not "Light is a wave and particle". All is Wave and Particle! Real-World applications of QM: Quantum tunneling (probability of electron randomly jumping through matter): MRI Uh...DVDs and Cellphones I suppose... Next-Gen, in-dev. uses: The Quantum Computer. On the basis that all possibilities exist until observed, and the use of quantum entanglement to observe w/out actually observing your subject, we have the qubit -- a quantum bit, which is not a 1 or 0, but can be 1, 0, and everything in between. tl;dr or toostupiddidntread: my name.
Nonlocal correlations cannot be used to transmit information, thus you cannot observe through entanglement. This is surmised thus far because the experiment in 2008 where entangled particles were measured faster than the speed of light only occurred through uncontrollable measurements, thus there was no actual information transmitted. QED, qubit is only useful so long as you want to transmit uncontrolled, essentially arbitrary data that gives no real information. One theory suggests that the entangled particles are actually the same particle manifesting twice on it's "guide" (probability?) wave. In this case, qubits could be useful because you are essentially modifying a single particle regardless of which manifestation you measure and alter. Since the probabilities between the "entangled" manifestations do not manifest, it is still only as powerful as a single bit, albeit a single bit that transcends the speed of light. This is all assuming there is not another use for entangled particle/s that I'm missing.
Basically: you can fantasize about the most amazing things, and it's all real until somebody proves 100% that it isn't possible. Enjoy.
@EMR -.- No they have already developed a 16-qubit "processor" (6 or 16 i dont remember...) Anyways, although I have done little research on it, i'm still certain that i'm right. go eat yourself. Oh and another use: Super-long-distance communication
Then all of these sites are missing some explanations, or I'm not interpreting them the right way. WHY IS THERE NO SUCH THING AS LAYMAN'S TERMS FOR THIS BRANCH OF SCIENCE?!
The Layman will cease to exist on the axis of probability if he was taught Quantum Mechanics Contradictions ftw.
But according to Tychus, you can't fix stupid; so assuming Tychus is right, any kind of stupid is stupid beyond repair, right?
