UKH

I posted The Double Slit Experiment just to see what would happen. I also thought it would be funny to waste other people's time, knowing you'd all rush off and google the topic and come back with a load of rubbish; pretending you know all about it. Amazed that so many of you obviously did just that. The modern generation eh! Full of yourselves.

Wild Scallion was special wasn't he/she?

Thank you to those who took a genuine interest in this mind boggling topic! X

I have long (decades)  taken an interest in this stuff, being from a generation who was taught about little solar systems of hard things.

Science education should start with this stuff and build up to other stuff then it would not seem so strange to people

Have you ever met Phil Factor?

I refrained on the other thread from commenting on a point you kept making.  

To paraphrase, your point was “if you can make it make sense there’s a Nobel Prize for you”.

I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.  Nobel Prizes aren’t given for “making sense”, they’re given work relating to testable theories with predictive capability.  That work could be experimental or theoretical.  It’s a very naive view indeed that those theories should “make sense” to a specific instance of a specific species with a specific upbringing and set of experiences.  I think you’re confusing Nobel prize winners and Brian Cox.

You might also be significantly underestimating the number of posters on UKC who can comment quite profusely without recourse to google on this sort of stuff; after all much of it has been around since before we were born.

What next, a thread on negative Kelvin temperatures?  That’s a good one for garnering fake controversy and a spaff load of citations every time someone applies a “wilful misinterpretation” to a different class of applicable system.  

So to recap, you tried to troll UKC on a topic that you thought would be too hard for posters to make any informed comment upon, but in fact plenty of perfectly capable participants had an interesting and stimulating discussion and some people learned new things.  Nice.

It was a nice topic. Shame you had to spoil any good will engendered with this post.

Cool!

Bring it on.

I don't think quantum phenomena seem weird because of the way we teach science, they seem weird because they conflict with our everyday experience of how the macroscopic world behaves. Science education tends to start with phenomena that can be tested and observed in schools and I think that's probably for the best.

Don't you think that if that those phenomena were put into people's minds from an early age we would have different internal responses to what we experience growing up in "everyday life"?  The experience would alter somewhat and perhaps we would be aware of the difference between appearance and what lies beneath earlier on?  Perhaps more questioning of appearance?

Curious posting, What age do you think most people are on UKC? The wording above would imply younger than you wise old person?

For example I graduated with honours in experimental physics and mathematics in the early 1990's, do I fit in with the modern generation you refer to?

Not going to give away my name, but I'm currently sitting in my office in a university particle physics department, the letters after my name are MPhys PhD MInstP and I'm under 30. Do I count as part of the full of myself modern generation for commenting on quantum physics?

It's also pretty unpleasant to sneer at people for being interested in a subject, doing some quick reading on it and trying to test their understanding by talking about it with others.

I'm not sure what it says about the OP that they think showing an interest in the workings of the world is a 'waste of time' but it doesn't reflect well.

Also spending time on UKC is never a waste of time!

Ahem! Yes, I'm sure that is correct!

Yes.

So now you're an expert on Nobel Prizes too. You're special.

I enjoyed it.

I'm not a teacher so I don't really care how people respond to new information. I don't think about it. I was having a bit of fun. That's all.

You miss my point. Yes I've been naughty in doing this but I couldn't help it. TBH I hate social media so I thought I'd have fun with it. I put up a post which had very little relevance to most people and observed a lot of people use up valuable time. Essentially I controlled your life for a very short time, making you waste it when you could have been doing something of value. I find that amazing. 

Are you like this because when you saw the other kids in the street they wouldn't wave, and because you never got a party-call?

Assumptions eh! Expecting a juicy response? I couldn't care less dude. I find this FUNNY

WHOOSH!

Ha! That's better. Now you're getting into the spirit of things! X

My double slit experiment question - based on the positions of the Popular End and Plantation car parks, can we deduce the interference patterns for climbers approaching Stanage and hence predict which buttresses are going to be quiet on a Bank Holiday Sunday?

Bugger! There is a use for this after all!

No but I've heard of Max

Sorry. I couldn't resist. Weakness.

Yes. I agree.

What a strange attitude! Do you do anything to relax or for leisure? As I don't believe in any goal or aim to the universe it is all a waste of time anyway, so much the better for it as well.

No, but I do know a lot about a few of them, and I can google the other awards and then scuttle back to this group to demonstrate my new found knowledge. 

I have worked at UC Berkeley and taken a photo of their special “Reserved for Nobel Laureates” parking spots, so perhaps I am an armchair expert after all.

In the interest of wasting more of Mr Venn's time shall we continue the discussion here?

The thing I always struggle to get my head around is the lack of underlying mechanisms behind quantum effects. This is deeply unsatisfying intellectually. For example Pauli's exclusion principle says that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state. This is mathematically necessary and allows for all the complex behaviours of matter that we see, and yet it can hardly be described as a physical mechanism.

To be honest I find the uncertainty principle far less disturbing.

In my case, I was just having a poo.  I find UKC a helpful bit of “mental downtime” to brighten a loo break in our architect designed monstrosity, between doing stuff not so far removed from the content of your thread.

I agree with you on this; what’s deeply unsatisfying is not known why quantum stuff is as it is.  But is there ever an end to the turning over of stones and finding of more unified, underlying theories?  How can there be a base theory?  How can there not be?  I try not to think about it much as doing so doesn’t help.

But, specifically, exclusion.  Ask yourself; if reality is a manifestation of thermodynamic information,  would a lack of exclusion make sense?  Wolly headed I know.

Ha! Excellent!

I know I have a strange attitude. I'm quirky, I've been told many times.

I do many things to relax and for leisure. But currently injured and trying to find ways of occupying myself. Hence my forum nonsense.

It's interesting that you see the universe as better for having no purpose and a waste of time. Now that's strange. I don't recall meeting some one with this point of view before. 

Ha! Dude.

Pauli is right.

I think the thing about quantum theory is that it provably is the base theory in certain regards, but isn't a terribly satisfying one (to me at least*).

The Bell test is a good example of where people tried to find an underlying mechanism for quantum effects but nature has showed us that these explanations cannot be true.

With regard to the exclusion principle; it has been shown to result in electrons exerting a pressure at the macro scale when you try to push them into the same state. This results in a maximum mass of dwarf star that can be stable (the Chandrasekhar limit), effectively because nature says the electrons simply aren't allowed to get closer together.

*and to Einstein so I guess we are in good company.

You made a few wrong assumptions but mainly that I/others didn't waste any valuable time (a few minutes on my break) and that gaining knowledge about science isn't valuable. Apart from that you come over as a prize plonker.