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My understanding as a layperson: probably stuff is probably around here somewhere, probably.
Yeah, basically we normally blast things with photons to measure them, whether that’s in a complex microscope or you just turning on the light, so you can see your measuring stick.
Now, photons are themselves quanta. So, for measuring quanta, we’re blasting quanta at quanta. It’s not quite like throwing a tennis ball at another, because there’s no hard collisions at the quantum level, but the quanta do still interact and kind of push each other around.
So, any time you measure a quantum, you also push it around, which means what you just measured is not anymore true. As a result, you can only determine a probability of where it might now be.
Best advice I’ve probably gotten on any subject ever was in a modern physics course. The professor said to focus on the math first and then, only when you’ve got a solution, think about what it means. If you try to think about it while working it out, your intuitions about what should happen will get in the way and you’ll make mistakes.
The moment you think you understand it, that superposition collapses and you’re back to “huh?”
Every damn time.
I understand it by acknowledging that I don’t understand it.
And honestly that’s not a joke.
I keep reading articles about quantum physics in the hope that some day I’ll spot some kind of pattern that turns out to be the key to understanding it. No luck yet.
What helped me understand QM was spending four years getting a degree in physics then never using it again.
It’s all just magic.
Accept it. Embrace.
I pretend I understand string theory by pretending to explain it.
Somewhere someone else is, also.
