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The Physics Teacher

Drama in Quantum Physics Teaching—Following Uncle Albert and Alice into Quantumland

Ann-Marie Pendrill, Henrik Hallström

Published Feb 28, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum mechanics has been enormously successful. The equations and rules enable accurate calculations and predictions of energies and other properties of atoms, molecules, and materials. Quantum-physics-based technology is an integrated part of our daily lives. Still, the understanding and interpretation of quantum physics offer many challenges, with the counterintuitive consequences of the rules, from the mythical “Schrödinger’s cat,” over single-photon double-slit experiments, to the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox, formulated in 1935.

DOI
10.1119/5.0196171

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Quantum mechanics has been enormously successful. The equations and rules enable accurate calculations and predictions of energies and other properties of atoms, molecules, and materials. Quantum-physics-based technology is an integrated part of our daily lives. Still, the understanding and interpretation of quantum physics offer many challenges, with the counterintuitive consequences of the rules, from the mythical “Schrödinger’s cat,” over single-photon double-slit experiments, to the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox, formulated in 1935.
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Quantum mechanics is our most successful physical theory. It underlies our very detailed understanding of atomic physics, chemistry, and nuclear physics, and the many technologies to which physical systems in these regimes give rise. Additionally, relativistic quantum mechanics is the basis for the standard model of elementary particles, which very successfully gives a partial unification of the forces operating at the atomic, nuclear, and subnuclear levels. However, from its inception the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, and the fact that “quantum measurements” in the orthodox formulation appear to require the intervention of non-quantum mechanical “classical systems,” have led to speculations by many physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers of science that quantum mechanics may be incomplete. Among the Founding Fathers of quantum theory, Einstein and Schrödinger were both of the opinion that quantum mechanics is in some way unsatisfactory, and this view has been amplified in more recent profound work of John Bell, among others. In an opposing camp, many others in the physics, mathematics, and philosophy communities have attempted to provide an interpretational foundation in which quantum mechanics remains a complete and self-contained system. Among the Founding Fathers, Bohr, Born, and Heisenberg maintained that quantum mechanics is a complete system, and a number of recent proposals have been made to improve upon or to provide alternatives to their “Copenhagen Interpretation.” The debate continues, and has spawned an enormous literature.
Quantum mechanics is one of the crowning achievements of human thought. There is no theory that is more successful in predicting phenomena over such a wide range of situations—and with such accuracy—than quantum mechanics. From the basic principles of chemistry to the working of the semiconductors in your mobile phone, and from the Big Bang to atomic clocks, quantum mechanics comes up with the goods. At the same time, we still have trouble pinpointing exactly what the theory tells us about nature. Quantum mechanics is hard, but perhaps not as hard as you think.
In 1935, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen ('EPR') reported on a thought experiment that they believed showed that quantum theory provided an incomplete description of reality. Today we know that quantum theory is a complete and correct description of Nature (in flat space-time). The EPR thought experiment is predicted by quantum theory and has since been experimentally confirmed. However, EPR experiments have no physical pictorial explanation, and are considered part of a "paradox". Here I resolve the "paradox". I show independently of any interpretation of quantum theory that EPR (thought) experiments are a direct and compelling consequence of the existence of true randomness and the conservation of energy. It becomes obvious why EPR (thought) experiments allow for the precise prediction of truly random measurement values. Local hidden variables are not motivated.