Where Does The Weirdness Go? Why Quantum Mechanics Is Strange, But Not As Strange As You Think

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Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 1997-03-20
Publisher(s): Basic Books
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Summary

Few revolutions in science have been more far-reaching-but less understood-than the quantum revolution in physics. Everyday experience cannot prepare us for the sub-atomic world, where quantum effects become all-important. Here, particles can look like waves, and vice versa; electrons seem to lose their identity and instead take on a shifting, unpredictable appearance that depends on how they are being observed; and a single photon may sometimes behave as if it could be in two places at once. In the world of quantum mechanics, uncertainty and ambiguity become not just unavoidable, but essential ingredients of science-a development so disturbing that to Einstein "it was as if God were playing dice with the universe." And there is no one better able to explain the quantum revolution as it approaches the century mark than David Lindley. He brings the quantum revolution full circle, showing how the familiar and trustworthy reality of the world around us is actually a consequence of the ineffable uncertainty of the subatomic quantum world-the world we can't see.

Author Biography

David Lindley, formerly a theoretical astrophysicist at Cambridge University in England and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, has been an editor of the journals Nature and Science and is currently Associate Editor of Science News, in Washington, D.C. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why do I trust my computer? ix
Acknowledgments xv
Dramatis Personae xvi
Act I: Mechanical Failure
The mystery of the other glove
3(5)
In which things are exactly what they are seen to be
8(7)
Block that metaphor!
15(2)
Learning through repetition
17(5)
Coin tossing and weather forecasting
22(4)
Not just electrons
26(4)
Enter the photon
30(5)
So photons are really real, then?
35(4)
Particle or wave?
39(5)
One photon at a time
44(4)
Learning to live with uncertainty
48(5)
Is it or isn't it?
53(2)
Which way did the photon go?
55(7)
No, but really, what really happened?
62(5)
How to make money from quantum mechanics
67(3)
The importance of being rigorous
70(2)
The chronic poor health of Schrodinger's cat
72(7)
Psychophysics, qu'est-ce que c'est?
79(8)
Intermission: A Largely Philosophical Interlude
Does the Moon really exist?
87(4)
The fatal blow?
91(5)
A new spin on the puzzle
96(4)
In which Einstein is caught in a self-contradiction
100(3)
Whose reality is the real reality?
103(1)
In which Niels Bohr is obscure, even by his own standards
104(3)
And how many universes did you say you'd be needing?
107(4)
Indeterminacy as illusion
111(4)
In which seeming virtues are displayed as faults
115(5)
What does determinism mean anyway?
120(1)
You can push it around, but you can't get rid of it
121(8)
Act II: Putting Reality to the Test
A new angle on EPR
129(4)
Fun with algebra
133(6)
And the answer is...
139(2)
In which reality, once changed, can never be changed back
141(7)
The possibility of simultaneity
148(2)
Not at all what Einstein wanted
150(7)
Act III: Making Measurements
An engineer, a physicist, and a philosopher...
157(6)
The one true paradox
163(5)
At a loss for words
168(4)
Can a quantum superposition be seen?
172(5)
Like peas in a box
177(4)
More than you really wanted to know about dried peas
181(6)
A brief digression about time
187(3)
The defining difference
190(3)
At last, the quantum cat
193(6)
The ghost of Schrodinger's cat
199(5)
In which Einstein's Moon is restored
204(4)
What have we learned?
208(5)
What haven't we learned?
213(3)
The last (or first) mystery
216(6)
Will we ever understand quantum mechanics?
222(5)
Bibliography and notes 227(14)
Index 241

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