Arvin Ash

Copenhagen vs Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics - Explained simply (2021x2)

Udgivelsesdato: Jan 19, 2021

Try Blinkist free for 7 days: https://www.blinkist.com/arvinash Physicists know how to use the equations of quantum mechanics to predict things, but don't really understand what is fundamentally going on. The primary challenge is that according to the equations of QM, all particles exist in a state of superposition. In fact, before it is measured, the particle is said to be in many states at once. How does one explain the transition from the behavior of objects at quantum scales to their classical behavior upon measurement? The various interpretations of quantum mechanics are attempts to explain this transition. The standard is the Copenhagen interpretation because if was devised in Copenhagen, Denmark by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. This is taught to most students in college. But even a majority of physicists do not agree that this is the correct interpretation. There is no single interpretation that has a consensus agreement. Most interpretations focus on the Schrodinger equation and the wavefunction to explain quantum behavior. This equation was developed by Irish-Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger in 1926. It contains a wave function, represented by the Greek letter psi. German physicist Max Born formulated the interpretation of psi, which is that the square of the norm of psi is the probability of finding a particle in any one particular state if we were to measure it. The concept of measurement was introduced to explain what we actually see when we make an observation. The fact is that even if it were possible for us to directly observe quantum particles, we would never see them being in superposition, we would only observe them being in one state or another. Let’s look at this in terms of the famous Schrodinger’s cat experiment. We have a box with 4 things in it, cat, a radioactive source, a detector with hammer attached and a vial of poison gas. If the detector detects radiation, the hammer will smash the vial of