Is Quantum Mechanics Just a Math Trick?

[Fishteacher73]

I will grant that my physics training is slight to say the least (a little high school physics in Swedish (Fun to discuss advanced science when you are still learning the language...), Non-Calc. based physics in college (For us that wandered off into the squishy sciences), and just a bit of self-taught.). So perhaps just the math is over my head, but quantum theory just seems flawed. It seems illogical to decide that the rules suddenly don not apply because you can not figure out how it works. It seems odd that the scientific comunity would embrace a theory so full of "hocus-pocus" random constants and theoretical particles just so the "math" will work. It is as if physicists just decided to allow a bit of creationism into their theory. Teleporting electrons and "telepathic" comunication faster than the speed of light to determine spin? Are we going to start putting leaches on our slide-rulers now (Well probably computers at this point.)?

Again I do not mean to bash quantum mechanics, but it just seems unscientific and basically flawed. Anyone got something out there that reconciles this theory?

[sanctus]

The rules weren't changed because they didn't know how it works, but because it was the only way to describe in better agreement the reality.

 

All the QM started by trying to describe the radiation of the black body, Planck introduced his h constant in describing this radiation; he so managed to find a formula that described both the radiation at high and low frequency, before there were two separate laws (one of Wien and the other one I don't remeber whos it was). So he introduced his constant and then the observation was in agreement with the theory.

Not long after Poincaré deduced that quantification of the energy from planck's law.

Soon after came Niels Bohr, who used the quantification of the energy (he used the Sommerfeld condition, which may be applied to multipl periodic systems, integral (p dq)=h nu, with nu the frequency) to make a theory which described the spectra of the hydrogen atom (and the Stark effect). Bohr's theory wasn't able to describe the spectra of the atomes with more than 1 proton. Afterwards came Schrödinger, Heisenberg who is responsible for the introduction of the matrixes (even if it was Jordan an Max Born who recognised his way of calculating as matrix multiplication). And so we come to the well-known schrödinger equation (which exists in the heisenberg and the schrödinger notation), from where were deduced many of this things that you defined as a "bit of creationism".

 

I hope this clarifies it a bit.

[Fishteacher73]

I am not arguing against the results of these experiments, I do find the interpretaion of these results as a bit lacking. (Such as quantum leaps). This concept, and much of the theories that accept this concept into the math and explanation just seem to be poor science. Things do not suddenly teleport to new locations. Perhaps there have more recent experiments that perhaps support quantum leaps, but it seems the most likely explanation is just electrons moving from one orbital to another. It has been a while since I have done any hard-core studying on the issue, but my understanding is that the orbitals of the electrons are just statistical probablities of where an electron with a specific amount of energy should be found. Would it not stand to reason that excited electrons use just plain old motion to shift orbitals? The methodology to deduce how electrons shift orbitals does not seem accurate enough to discern from slight and random movements and a "quantum leap".

Quantum theory has some reasonable ideas, but the theory as a whole seems slightly stung together. Maybe this is one of those things that is just the way it is and i need to get over it and accept it, yet there's a nagging suspicion that we are wandering down the wrong path.

.

[Tormod]

Things do not suddenly teleport to new locations.

 

True. Things don't. Quantum particles do. Tunnelling is a proven part of quantum physics. The sun would not shine without tunnelling.

 

Yes, it is more important for electrons than for other particles, but all sub-atomic particles can tunnell.

 

"Tunnelling" is simply what happens when a particle frees itself from it's physical location even though it theoretically does not have the energy required to do so. It is not magic.

 

No offense, Fish. I would suggest reading more about QM before you "don't" bash it. :hihi:

[maddog]

Tunnelling is a proven part of quantum physics. The sun would not shine without tunnelling.

 

Yes, it is more important for electrons than for other particles, but all sub-atomic particles can tunnell.

 

"Tunnelling" is simply what happens when a particle frees itself from it's physical location even though it theoretically does not have the energy required to do so. It is not magic.

 

No offense, Fish. I would suggest reading more about QM before you "don't" bash it. :hihi:

 

Didn't know that. I remember doing the quantum well of an electron moving an "effectively"

ifninite E-field potential. The essence of tunnelling. We only studied electrons. Though

I guess that could be for any Fermion... Hmmm. I guess, I never really thought about it

before. Kewl! :)

 

Maddog

[Fishteacher73]

No offense, Fish. I would suggest reading more about QM before you "don't" bash it. :hihi:

None taken.

I just really don't have too many people to discuss quantum mechanic with that understand it (Isn't that always the problem?). I am trying to decypher the basics essentailly on my own and this seemed to be the place to bring up some of my concerns about it.

Are there any other competeing theories out there?

[Tormod]

I just really don't have too many people to discuss quantum mechanic with that understand it (Isn't that always the problem?).

 

Yes. It is not easy stuff, especially to laypeople like myself. I have read a lot of books (mostly popular science, some textbooks) on the topic and sometimes I review popular science books on national radio. The quantum mechanics books tend to not make the editor of that program too happy...because people find it difficult to follow.

 

Our last attempt was Kenneth Ford's "Quantum World" which claimed to be "quantum physics for everyone" was both difficult and boring. Definitely not for everyone...

[sanctus]

I don't understand your problem Fishteacher. You say that you accept the result of these experiments, why don't you then accept the theory that explains it as well? If this theory predicts new strange things, either it agrees with reality or it doesn't. Until now it did in all the cases you spoke about (it doesn't for example in the domain where the quantum field theory is applied).

Have you already heard about the teleportation of particles? It has been predicted by the theory and verified by the experience (by my QM professor). You may think it's crazy, but teleportation is just a word, what actually is done is: you take a source that emitts two correlated particles (corelated in a way such that if you know one state you impose the state of the other particle), you then sort of "impose" a state to one particle and therefore the other one will have exactly the state you used to impose the state of the first particle. That means you've got far away exactly the same particle as the one at the start therfore you can say you teleported the particle there, while actually you teleported its state.

there are always such interpretations.

[Fishteacher73]

Possibly my issues with the theory are terminology based and from poor descriptions of the actual phenomenon. These explanations I think are a bit more apt to the reality of what is occurring.

Thanks.

[lindagarrette]

None taken.

I just really don't have too many people to discuss quantum mechanic with that understand it (Isn't that always the problem?). I am trying to decypher the basics essentailly on my own and this seemed to be the place to bring up some of my concerns about it.

Are there any other competeing theories out there?

The definitive resource is Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, David J. Griffiths. It's an undergraduate text that probably weighs more than me and costs over $100 although it's possible to find a used book for around $85. Ebay had what I thought was "it" for only $15 so I bid on it and was amazed to learn I was winner. Eagerly anticipating, every day I would check the mail notices until the day a folder of papers by the same title. arrived -- only it wasn't "it." It was the complete set of problem solutions to the text. Now what?

[Tormod]

It was the complete set of problem solutions to the text. Now what?

 

Now you sit down and write the book yourself. :)

[lindagarrette]

Now you sit down and write the book yourself. :)

 

:):):) ha!ha!

[paultrr]

Its been said before by some of the greatest minds we have had that no one actually understands quantum mechanics. Part of the problem is there are actually many different interpretations of exactly the same effects. At one time there was a lady researcher who came to the same conclusions I and some others did while both parties used different versions of QM (her the more standard text book model and the rest of us where paying around with Bohm's pilot wave model). She managed to publish her findings while the rest of us had simply mentioned such on a website at about the same time. Interesting enough her findings rather back up as did ours the idea of more than one frame of reference(multiverse idea) being the source of the conclusion. Now on a personal level I tend to follow the absorber-emitter viewpoint and actually do not care for the Bohm model that much. But it also showed just how different views can all take the same experimental events, explain them a bit different, and still come to the same conclusion.

 

QM deals with a world that is not our everyday world. When it comes to stating what is going on almost everybody out there has their own ideas and there own ways of explaining things. My best suggestion is study all the different viewpoints and try to understand things from a point of view that makes sence to you.

[CarGrrl]

... Perhaps there have more recent experiments that perhaps support quantum leaps, but it seems the most likely explanation is just electrons moving from one orbital to another. It has been a while since I have done any hard-core studying on the issue, but my understanding is that the orbitals of the electrons are just statistical probablities of where an electron with a specific amount of energy should be found. Would it not stand to reason that excited electrons use just plain old motion to shift orbitals? The methodology to deduce how electrons shift orbitals does not seem accurate enough to discern from slight and random movements and a "quantum leap".

.

 

Electrons only move from one orbital level to another by either absorbing or releasing energy. This energy is only given off in certain discrete amounts, quanta as they're called. There's no such thing as half a quanta. Likewise in absorbing energy electrons either absorb enough energy to go to the next orbital or not, there's no half way or cumulative absorbtion of two lesser quanta. When electricity goes through the filament in a light bulb it excites the electrons in the filament. So the electrons start going out to the next orbital. But they do so only very briefly. When they release the energy they release it chiefly as quanta in the visual light part of the electromagnetic spectrum. And do so at pretty well every possible energy, thus white light. Some of the energy is also given off in the infrared part of the spectrum, which is why lightbulbs get hot. Infrared being the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is responsible for heat transfer.

[RiverRat]

QM deals with a world that is not our everyday world. When it comes to stating what is going on almost everybody out there has their own ideas and there own ways of explaining things. My best suggestion is study all the different viewpoints and try to understand things from a point of view that makes sence to you.

 

The problem lies here. If a theory becomes so complex and abstract that there are multiple solutions and explainations, then in essense we only have an opinion. (And everyone knows about opinions) ;)

 

It's just like other scientific advancements ... QM = work in progress

[Tormod]

It's just like other scientific advancements ... QM = work in progress

 

Right on. ;)