In the article is presented the view that the creators of today's physics went far beyond the area of classical physics. They created and developed two theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, and their work was based on the principle: the more complex are the physical ideas and difficult to understand, the better; the more ideas will be introduced to the physics and they will be beyond the reach of human imagination and experience, the better. In short, they created a physics based on chutzpah principles, in which the less logic and cause-effect dependences, the better. Article aims to raise awareness of logically minded physicists that it is time to eliminate chutzpah ideas from physics and replace them by logically associated ones along with experimental facts.
In the article is presented the view that the creators of today's physics went far beyond the area of classical physics. They created and developed two theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, and their work was based on the principle: the more complex are the physical ideas and difficult to understand, the better; the more ideas will be introduced to the physics and they will be beyond the reach of human imagination and experience, the better. In short, they created a physics based on chutzpah principles, in which the less logic and cause-effect dependences, the better. Article aims to raise awareness of logically minded physicists that it is time to eliminate chutzpah ideas from physics and replace them by logically associated ones along with experimental facts.
What is usually called modern physics is based on two theories: relativity, which we have just nished discussing, and quantum mechanics (also called quantum theory). While some of the ideas of relativity, such as time dilation and length contraction, at rst seemed rather strange, we saw that they followed logically from the two postulates of relativity. We will see below that the ideas of quantum mechanics are also strange. Most physicists would agree that they are much stranger than relativity. In fact, we will see that there are no satisfactory explanations. To quote two Nobel Prize laureates, Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman, “Nobody really understands quantum theory.” Despite this, it is one of the best-tested theories that we have. In some cases, the agreement between the theoretical prediction and experiment is better than 1 part in a million. There are many useful devices that are based on quantum mechanics. They include anything that uses microelectronics, such as a cell phone, DVD player, or computer, nuclear reactors, and medical imaging devices such as MRI and PET.
For nearly 100 years, physicists have been trying to „understand“ quantum physics. Up to today no satisfying answer could be given concerning the surprising behavior of nature, especially if looking into microscopic scales. This article identifies an approach towards an answer to the questions arising from the quantum physics effects, which are preposterous to common sense, by first going one-step back: “understanding” as a terminus is defined, as well as the terms analogy, model, concept and theory. In addition, the role of mathematics for the understanding of physics is addressed. This generates a more accurate basis. The limitations of our mind and senses due to the fact that we are living in a mesoscopic world are taken into account. This may lead to an identification of our limits of insight. As an outcome, models may have to be replaced by concepts to achieve a different level of understanding compared to the “classical” expectation.
Even the experts do not understand it the way they would like to, and it is perfectly reasonable that they should not, because all of direct, human experience and of human intuition applies to large objects. Richard P. Feynman Two great intellectual triumphs occurred in the first quarter of the twentieth century: the invention of the theory of relativity, and the rather more labored arrival of quantum mechanics. The former largely embodies the ideas, and almost exclusively the vision, of Albert Einstein; the latter benefited from many creative minds, and from a constant interplay between theory and experiment. Probability plays no direct role in relativity, which is thus outside the purview and purpose of this book. However, Einstein will make an appearance in the following pages, in what some would claim was his most revolutionary role – as diviner of the logical and physical consequences of every idea that was put forward in the formative stages of quantum mechanics. It is one of the ironies of the history of science that Einstein, who contributed so importantly to the task of creating this subject, never accepted that the job was finished when a majority of physicists did. As a consequence, he participated only indirectly in the great adventure of the second quarter of the century: the use of quantum mechanics to explain the structure of atoms, nuclei, and matter.
Relativity and quantum mechanics remain two very binding things, and both are separating either by method or physical experience. In this section, I will make an approach to better facilitate a connection between quantum mechanics and relativity that gives us a new vision on the fact that the two concepts can be related theoretically and experimentally to give birth to the new principles in the physical theory and to better improve theoretical and experimental research. The new conception of this principle develops scientific and technical research better.
Unlike special relativity, quantum mechanics was not the inspired product of one mind. It developed, in fits and starts, over a period of 25 years (1900–1925), and many cooks stirred the broth. Even now, a century later, quantum mechanics raises profound conceptual questions. Every competent physicist can “do” quantum mechanics, and the predictions it makes are in spectacularly good agreement with experimental results; there can be little doubt that quantum mechanics is “right.” On the other hand, as Richard Feynman once remarked, “nobody understands quantum mechanics.” I'll tell the story in two parts. First the history (how the essential pieces of the puzzle were assembled), and then the implications (what the finished picture has to say about our world). Photons Like relativity, quantum mechanics began with the study of light. In both cases, this historical association is misleading. Relativity, really, has nothing to do with light – to be sure, it involves that magic speed limit, c , and of course the most familiar thing that travels at speed c is light. So light is a convenient vehicle for introducing the subject. But it is perfectly possible to imagine a universe in which there is no such thing as light, and yet relativity might still be valid. Quantum mechanics, too, starts with light – in this case the “quantum” of light (the photon). But, as it turns out, this is just one rather specialized example of much more general principles – in fact, a rather bad example, because photons are by their nature relativistic (they travel at the speed of light), and it would be more natural to begin with the quantum mechanics of slow-moving objects, in analogy with Newtonian mechanics.
Quantum theory has created a fundamental change in our ideas as relativity theory had done before. But while relativity theory is essentially classical in its conceptions—it is in fact the culmination of classical physics—quantum mechanics is founded on some new principles. The quantum laws are very different in character from the laws we find in classical theory. In particular, quantum mechanics is a strictly statistical type of theory : from this arises the different conception of causality that marks the new outlook of modern physics. Classical theory describes the so-called macroscopic phenomena, that is, things and events which are more or less of the same size and kind as we find them in ordinary life; and so a description can be given in terms of concepts close to the ones we use in ordinary language. The language of quantum mechanics is based upon a duality principle ; and most of our ordinary language is equally dualistic.