To: Doctor Stochastic
Re:"The interesting part is to describe how a small, random, quantum effect can be converted into a classical situation."
Let me know when you figure it out ;).
However, we know that the classical situations exist and basically still follow the laws of classical physics. Thank goodness, so that engineers can use Newtonian physics for civil engineering, I guess.
So that whatever happens at the quantum level, it does not mess up "reality" as we know it.
And QM does not actually posit that particles behave wierdly at the quantum level. We merely use statistical means to describe their (gross) behavior. That does not imply that particles do not follow some rules of which we are unaware. We call their behavior random because we use statistical means to describe and predict them. Just because queuing theory "predicts" when you and I and dozens of our fellows will appear at the bank in line in the aggregate, does not mean that you and I and the others do not have actual "reasons" for going to the bank when we do. It is just that the bank cannot model that ;)
To: AMDG&BVMH
The QM particles really do a few weird things though. Tunneling is one. The two slit experiment gives some strange behavior. One use really weak beams of light for the two slits so that only one photon per hour goes through. Or even one per day. How does that first photon "know" to set up an interference with the second which may not even show up at all if the lights go off?
The randomness in QM is different from that in ordinary situations. The lack of marginal distributions is the biggest diffence (at least to me) in QM probability and ordinary probability.
134 posted on
03/28/2003 9:53:24 PM PST by
Doctor Stochastic
(Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson