The maths are based on conservation of energy and the uncertainty principle.
What is unintuitive is any effort to make it intuitive. There is a good reason for this: it is unintuitive to expect a square peg to be a fit for a round hole (the square peg being human 'intuition' and the round hole being reality).
The best explanation of Quantum Mechanics could not be more simple:
It accurately describes and predicts natural phenomena at the sub atomic level.
No other explanation is needed.
As Ant, presumably, exceeds the subatomic level, in terms of size, then the effect referred to in this thread has a zero probability of happening. It is, as stated, preposterous.
As to light being BOTH a particle and a wave, this is also wrong. A photon, a 'quantum' of light, BEHAVES both like a particle and a wave. But it IS neither.
A photon is a photon and nothing could simpler than an object being equal to itself.
This behaviour is the result of the probabilities that are at the heart of Quantum Mechanics. A high spike of probability is 'particle like', whereas an even distribution of probability is 'wave like'.
On a philosophical level, you can say that this probability refers to the fact that some things cannot be predicted exactly.
We all know what a football will do when David Beckham kicks it (it will fly over the top of the goal and England is out of the European Cup: this has a probability of 1, ie, it is certain). However, a football is a very different thing to a quark, and therein lies the conundrum. The same 'intuitive' logic does not apply.
It has to be said that all this refers to prediction rather what has happened. We can know what actually happened with total certainty.
What we cannot do is predict with certainty. We can only calculate probabilities based on the conservation of energy and other such results of the mathematical symmetries of the equations involved.
That should clear it all up...
Andrew
PS: off tonight to Cuba, so this is the last call.
This post was last edited by awrigley, 27 Feb 2010, 14:51
Memory... What was that?
King Tutankhamun: Plagued By Poor Health
27 Feb 2010, 00:57
