Tom Jonard's Quantum Mechanics Page
Classical
physics was replaced as our best description of physical reality in the
first quarter of the 20th century by Quantum Mechanics (QM) -- a system
so weird that Einstein himself who won a Nobel prize for his
contribution
to the field truly believed reality could not be this way.
You
would never know this from my education and I suspect most other
people's
experience is the same. When I studied Physics in high school and
later in college we spent a lot of time on inclined planes, levers and
pulleys. We studied force, energy and work. We learned
about
electricity, magnetism and thermodynamics. Toward the end we got
around to nuclear physics if there was time. If we learned of
Plank's
constant and the photoelectric effect it was not preceded by the
warning,
"Now this is really weird!". Had it been so we all might have
paid
closer attention and there might be more scientists in the world today.
It
was decades before I began to read some of the weird experimental
results
that forced QM into the forefront of Physics. The results were no
less startling than the interpretations they were given by physicists.
I
am not going to claim to understand QM. I am not a
scientist.
I don't have the background in mathematics (and I've forgotten a lot of
what I did learn in mathematical logic) needed to tackle most source
texts
on QM so I rely on popularizations. Nevertheless and with the
hope
I do not mislead anyone I am going to jump into the deep end of the
pool
and make some statements about what I think QM says and means:
| #1 | All matter and energy come in discrete quanta. | |
| #2 | Classical models of the world do not work. | |
| #3 | Physical reality is not local. | |
| #4 | How physical reality is related to what we perceive it to be is unknown. |
Here
is a QM FAQ.
Here
are some books on Quantum Mechanics.
 |
Because QM is a mathematical model it can be viewed philosophically as a kind of Idealism. Here are some thoughts on Idealism. |
