On Friday, April 03, 2015 7:30:09 PM Rich Freeman wrote: > Well, the quantum mechanic would say that the position of the ball was > indeterminate until it was measured. The probability of it being in > any particular position is given by some function that agrees with > experiment very well.
And indeed he would be right, in the sense that we cannot determine it. If you measure it many times even though each measurement affect the trajectory you'll learn that some positions are more likely than others and you may even catch it sometimes :) > The problem is that it is really hard to distinguish that "reality" > from a "reality" where the ball followed a well-defined trajectory the > whole time, and we just don't know what it is until we measure it. > > As others have pointed out, the classic quantum mechanics explanation > relies heavily on the concept of an "observer" which is a bit odd. > Should the behavior of a particle depend on whether anybody is > watching it? I agree. And it is especially hard to tell what they mean by those words (just like in technology we use common words with a different meaning) or if they even know what they mean themselves :). Sometimes they use misleading terms in order to make the theory popular (and get funded). -- Fernando Rodriguez
