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Physics World

Quantum tea and toast

Tushna Commissariat

Published Feb 1, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

What’s the first thing you think about in the morning? Do you picture interference patterns as you wait for the kettle to boil, or ponder the photoelectric effect as you go for a run? It's unlikely that quantum mechanics is on your mind, but in his latest book Breakfast with Einstein: the Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects , author Chad Orzel makes an excellent case for why it should be.

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/32/2/35

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What’s the first thing you think about in the morning? Do you picture interference patterns as you wait for the kettle to boil, or ponder the photoelectric effect as you go for a run? It's unlikely that quantum mechanics is on your mind, but in his latest book Breakfast with Einstein: the Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects , author Chad Orzel makes an excellent case for why it should be.
Attitudes toward quantum mechanics differ interestingly from one generation of physicists to the next. The first generation are the founding fathers, who struggled through the welter of confusing and self-contradictory constructions to emerge with the modern theory of the atomic world and supply it with the “Copenhagen interpretation.” On the whole they seem to have taken the view that while the theory is extraordinarily strange (Bohr is said to have remarked that if it didn't make you dizzy then you didn't really understand it), the strangeness arises out of some deeply ingrained but invalid modes of thought. Once these are recognized and abandoned the theory makes sense in a perfectly straightforward way. The word “irrational,” which appears frequently in Bohr's early writings about the quantum theory, is almost entirely absent from his later essays. The second generation, those who were students of the founding fathers in the early postrevolutionary period, seem firmly—at times even ferociously—committed to the position that there is really nothing peculiar about the quantum world at all. Far from making bons mots about dizziness, or the opposite of deep truths being deep truths, they appear to go out of their way to make quantum mechanics sound as boringly ordinary as possible. The third generation—mine—were born a decade or so after the revolution and learned about the quantum as kids from popular books like George Gamow's. We seem to be much more relaxed about it than the other two. Few of us brood about what it all means, any more than we worry about how to define mass or time when we use classical mechanics. In contemplative moments some of us think the theory is wonderfully strange and others think it isn't; but we don't hold these views with great passion. Most of us, in fact, feel irritated, bored, or downright uncomfortable when asked to articulate what we really think about quantum mechanics. I'm one of the uncomfortable ones. If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be “Shut up and calculate!” But I won't shut up. I would rather celebrate the strangeness of quantum theory than deny it, because I believe it still has interesting things to teach us about how certain powerful but flawed verbal and mental tools we once took for granted continue to infect our thinking in subtly hidden ways.
When physics professor Chad Orzel went to the pound to adopt a dog, he never imagined Emmy. She wasn't just a friendly mutt who needed a home; she was a talking dog with an active interest in what her new owner did for a living and how it could work for her. Soon Emmy was trying to use the strange ideas of mechanics for the really important things in her life: chasing critters, getting treats, and going for walks. She peppered Chad with questions: Could she use tunneling to get through the neighbor's fence and chase bunnies? What about teleportation to catch squirrels before they climb out of reach? Where are all the universes in which Chad drops steak on the floor? And what about the bunnies made of cheese that ought to be appearing out of nothing in the backyard? With great humor and clarity, Chad Orzel explains to Emmy, and to human readers, just what mechanics is and how it works -- and why, although you can't use it to catch squirrels or eat steak, it's still bizarre, amazing, and important to every dog and human. Follow along as Chad and Emmy discuss the central elements of theory, from particles that behave like waves and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to entanglement (spooky action at a distance) and virtual particles. Along the way, they discuss the history of the theory, such as the experiments that discovered that electrons are waves and particles at the same time, and Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr's decades-long debate over what theory really meant (Einstein may have been smarter, but Bohr was right more often). Don't get caught looking less informed than Emmy. How to Teach Physics to Your Dog will show you the universe that lies beneath everyday reality, in all its randomness, uncertainty, and wonder. Forget Schrodinger's Cat, says Emmy, quantum physics is all about dogs. And once you see physics explained to a dog, you'll never see the world the same way again.
Physics, to most people, is a completely commonsense, logical and rational subject. Self-confidence in everyday life depends absolutely on the senses, so there is no use asking us to give them up unless there is an absolutely overwhelming need to do so. The new physics has revealed such a magnificently absurd structure to the world about us, that our commonsense mind and its senses cannot possibly appreciate it as a simple, visual, tactile, mechanical picture. The old, or Newtonian, physics believed the universe to be one of predictable, commonsense certainty. Heavenly bodies moved with a magnificent and ponderous evenness; the behaviour of large objects and things seemed to be perfectly understood. All science consists of making models, to see then what fits into the model and what fails to do so.