Regarding Franko...

[Mordred]

But can an electron be both spin up and NOT spin up?

No?

Then there is no contradiction with the law of negation.

~Up != Down. Up is the opposite of down, not the negation.

Hmmm...I'm not so sure of this. If you have only two possible states, then isn't the negation of one of those states the other state? In other words if an electron is not spin up...it has to be spin down. So when it is both spin up and spin down...it is spin up and not spin up at the same time.

 

[Mordred]

I think everyone must know the answer to that by now.
The question is who didn't need to look up the internet for the answer?

BillyJoe.

I am almost certain of the year, know exactly what he got it for, and know exactly what that paper means. I didn't need to look it up, and since this entire discussion is basically just a rather complex Einstein was right and quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen Interpretation are wrong, damn the evidence tirade...Einstein's Nobel is quite relevant...which makes me wonder why we can't seem to get a simple answer for a very simple question...

 

[Franko]

CWL,

Einstein's nobel prize? Anyone? Perhaps Franko or his young Sorcerer would care to guess?

Why do I need to guess I already know the answer to this question – so does anyone with a brain I suppose.

I have raised this very issue more than once on this very board in fact!

Doesn’t exactly speak well for the A-Theist who hand out the Nobel prize. It took the Catholic Church 400 years to correct their mistake with Galileo, I wonder how long it will take the A-Theists to correct theirs with Einstein?

Why are you even raising this point A-Theist? It certainly doesn’t help Your argument here in this forum? (I never overestimate the A-Theists capacity for stupidity).

 

[Mordred]

So why don't you just answer the freaking question then?

Are you claiming that the Nobel prize committee in 1921 was comprised of atheists who wished to deny Einstein a Nobel for what we now think he truly deserved it for? They went out of their way to give Einstein a Nobel, they chose to do it for work that was 16 years old and much less controversial at the time than general relativity.

Again, why don't you just answer the question? Especially if it doesn't help anyone else's position.

 

[whitefork]

Mordred, I'm very interested in the QM implications of the ************* ******. Nobel awarded in ****.

I started rereading Feynmann's QED last night to get regrounded in these matters, but would you care to offer some more recent insights?

Thank you.

 

[Franko]

whitefork I'm sure he'll let you kiss his ass if you ask nicely.

 

[Mordred]

Franko, why haven't you answered the question? I do not believe it is too much to ask. I have tried in good faith to respond to every question, state clearly my positions, and reply to your criticisms. If you feel my effort is inadequate...that is your opinion. I will leave others who are reading to form their own. However, if you cannot at least return a small portion of the respect that I have attempted to show by answering one simple little question about a historical fact...why should I take any discussion with you seriously?

Please answer the question, or I will when I respond to whitefork's request.

 

[Franko]

http://newton.dep.anl.gov:70/askasci/phy99/phy99078.htm

happy now?

 

[Mordred]

I guess just writing the photo-electric effect was too complicated eh?

Mordred, I'm very interested in the QM implications of the ************* ******. Nobel awarded in ****.

I started rereading Feynmann's QED last night to get regrounded in these matters, but would you care to offer some more recent insights?

Thank you.

I don't think I could offer any more recent insights than Feynmann would if he gave a treatment of the phenomenon. I'm sure he would do it much better than I could. We are really talking about a paper that was written in 1905 after all. The reason it is a very interesting part of Franko's little Einstein demi-god worship is that it was Einstein who helped lay the groundwork for quantum mechanics with his work on the photoelectric effect. He solved a problem by thinking about it in what at the time was a unique way (which is what Einstein was really very good at), and also by applying the previous work of Planck from around 1900 or so. Planck hypothesized that energy might be quantitized. Einstein applied this to the photo-electric effect, and in doing so not only coined the phrase photon (a quanta of light), but also provided a theoretical basis and experimental evidence for quantum mechanics before the theory had even been conceived of...not to mention reopening the question of the nature of light (wave-particle duality) which eventually lead to DeBroglie proposing that all matter had wave characteristics...which leads right into the Schrodinger's wave equation, which accompanied by Heisneberg's uncertainty principle forms the nuts and bolts of quantum mechanics.

 

[whitefork]

Mordred seems to know quite about an area that I'm interested in. He's clear, answers questions, treats people politely, and provides references.

I have the utmost respect for those qualities. Stimpson is an expert in many similar areas, but he does not suffer fools easily (sorry Fool) and can be somewhat abrasive or impatient.

Anyone who can teach me something and will take the time to do so deserves my respect.

I don't need to kiss anyone's ass in order to learn something.

When's the last time you actually learned something? You stop learning, part of you dies.

"Photoelectric effect" - I didn't want to give the answer away.

 

[Q-Source]

It was Einstein who helped lay the groundwork for quantum mechanics with his work on the photoelectric effect.
...
Einstein applied this to the photo-electric effect, and in doing so not only coined the phrase photon (a quanta of light), but also provided a theoretical basis and experimental evidence for quantum mechanics before the theory had even been conceived of...

So, Einstein was not happy with the idea of randomness in the Universe, but at the end (or before that?), he actually provided the theoretical basis for quantum mechanics.

Q-S

 

[whitefork]

Fertile ideas have consequences independent of those who formulate them.

Non-Euclidean geometry needed Euclid, don't you think? I like to think he would have understood it, but probably would have rejected it anyway.

But someone like Kepler, now there's a radical. The astrology and bizarre geometry along with the elliptical orbits. What an intellectual platypus. The last of the great medievalists. What a mind.

 

[Mordred]

So, Einstein was not happy with the idea of randomness in the Universe, but at the end (or before that?), he actually provided the theoretical basis for quantum mechanics.

Q-S

Yes, although to be fair to another great scientist, I would say that Einstein provided the first general implementation of the idea originated by Planck (energy exists in discrete packets, quanta).

Either way all the work that followed flowed naturally from Einstein's. He didn't like the philosophical implications of where others were taking it, but he didn't have any real objection, mathematical or empirical to base this on. I think it had more to do with the fact that, despite the fact he himself ushered in the age of modern physics, he was still classically trained and disliked letting go of the last of the concepts that had seemed so certain just twenty or thirty years ago. Scrhodinger, Heisenber, Fermi, Dirac, etc., being younger and generally more mathematically talented didn't have this problem. They trusted what their equations told them. The issue was solved at least from an operational standpoint in 1927, and after Einstein and what had become the "old guard" died off it really wasn't talked about much outside of philosophical curiousity. It is really a fun topic to discuss.

 

[Q-Source]

Either way all the work that followed flowed naturally from Einstein's. He didn't like the philosophical implications of where others were taking it, but he didn't have any real objection, mathematical or empirical to base this on. I think it had more to do with the fact that, despite the fact he himself ushered in the age of modern physics, he was still classically trained and disliked letting go of the last of the concepts that had seemed so certain just twenty or thirty years ago. Scrhodinger, Heisenber, Fermi, Dirac, etc., being younger and generally more mathematically talented didn't have this problem. They trusted what their equations told them. The issue was solved at least from an operational standpoint in 1927, and after Einstein and what had become the "old guard" died off it really wasn't talked about much outside of philosophical curiousity. It is really a fun topic to discuss.

What is the situation now among the scientific community?
Is it just a philosophical curiousity or is it more than that?

I ask you this, because among general population -without formal education in Physics- is easier to retain or agree with the concepts that Eistein held (I think because he is popular), when in fact -as you mentioned- people like Heisenber and others have contributed with new knowledge about the Universe.

Q-S

BTW, I agree with Whitefork, my respects

 

[whitefork]

Sorry Q-Source, my ass isn't for kissing.

With regard to Einstein, he's so beloved, and everyone knows that E equals MC squared, and sometimes they know about the twin paradox, and they've heard the expression "general relativity" or "theory of relativity", it's sort of like a touchstone of scientific literacy.

I venture to say that far more people have a good knowledge of electricity, but have no knowledge of Maxwell, volts but not Volta, amps, but not Ampere, etc.

Technology is ready to hand. You don't need to know any science to use it. Yet people know far more about the scientists who made the big concepts with few (direct) practical applications (Hawking, Newton, Heisenberg, Einstein - or at least "uncertainty principle") than those whose work we use every day.

We have this paradoxical situation where what's known of science may have no day-to-day effect on the laypeople who know it, and the stuff that makes the modern world is due to the actions of people who are completely anonymous.

A huge oversimplification, I know.

 

[Mordred]

What is the situation now among the scientific community?
Is it just a philosophical curiousity or is it more than that?

There are no doubt some that believe that determinism can still be "salvaged". I've even read some rather complex philosophy that attempts to find a basis for determinism beneath the apparent nondeterminism of quantum mechanics itself. The problem with all this though, in the end is the same as it was for Einstein. They can't prove it. We have no experimental evidence to support these conclusions. Even if hidden variables do exist, if they remain hidden, then we can not say anything about them. Since the equations all seem to work just the way they are without this added assumption of hidden variables...we must conclude that the Copenhagen Interpretation is the superior model.

Basically, no matter what any physicist that I know of believes...what will be taught in a undergraduate or graduate quantum mechanics class will be based on the Copenhagen Interpretation. If the professor is philosophically minded (as physicists often are), then they will likely take a day or two somewhere to mention the EPR paradox, the hidden variable interpretation, and some other interesting topics. But those days are generally kind of, "hey look at this, isn't this kind of weird?" Now for your homework solve the Schrodinger equation for this and this, and so on...

I ask you this, because among general population -without formal education in Physics- is easier to retain or agree with the concepts that Eistein held (I think because he is popular), when in fact -as you mentioned- people like Heisenber and others have contributed with new knowledge about the Universe.

Q-S

BTW, I agree with Whitefork, my respects

First, thanks. Second, you have no idea what you have just done...opened the door for a mini-rant by me about the state of science (particularly physics) education.

In my opinion, the reason that the general population finds it easier to accept Einstein's position, outside of his overblown reputation (by his own admission), is that they generally have zero formal education in modern physics. The majority of the population has either no high school physics, high school physics, or at the most an intro level undergraduate course in physics. These classes generally teach basic Newtonian mechanics, basic treatments of electricity&magnetism, simple optics, and if you're lucky they might passingly mention special relativity and QM without really giving them anywhere near a sufficient mathematical treatment. In other words, they barely teach you anything that wasn't around in the 19th century, and they don't even cover all of that. So if all they really teach you is classical physics, is it any wonder that you would almost certainly side with the classical interpretation? Throw in the fact that the math is above the level that most people are taught (how comfortable are you with complex math and partial differntial equations?), and you have most people saying "how could this be?"

This is why a lot of people have a hard time making the leap from classical physics to relativity and quantum mechanics. Classical physics seems intuitively obvious to a degree. You see it in action everyday. Relativity and QM seem counterintuitive, they result in things that don't seem to make sense based on what we observe every day...but when you start from the concepts that form the basis of those theories, all the conclusions are perfectly logical, and they conform to the experimental evidence.

In a way it is kind of stupid. They teach all these things from day one, and then all of a sudden when you decide to really be a physicist they decide to inform you that everything you have learned up until now isn't really right. It's just an approximation...here is the way things really seem to be, and it looks much different than you think it should. If you can't let go of your conception of what you think should be right, then you will probably never understand it all. There has to be a better way I would think...but that's how it is done.

 

[Mordred]

A huge oversimplification, I know.

But an important idea, one that I was thinking of touching on more in my last post. I mean, walk up to someone on the street and ask them who Albert Einstein was and a good percentage of the people will know. How many nonphysicists would know Dirac, Gamow, Born, DeBroglie, Lagrange, or Hamilton? Much less what they actually did...

I mean, Hamilton practically wrote down the Schrodinger equation in, I believe, the 1850's...but I'd never heard anything about him until I learned Hamiltonian mechanics in my undergrad classical mechanics course.

 

[whitefork]

How many trained scientists are teaching at the high school level? I took calculus and physics senior year, your description of the physics curriculum was very accurate. Old Mr. Taylor had clearly seen better days.

Those that wanted to pursue things seriously went to places like MIT, and they were really smart. I went elsewhere.

I remember way more calculus than physics, oddly enough.

How many masters and doctorates are awarded each year in physics? How many of those graduates go into teaching full time? How many at the secondary school level?

Who can afford to?

No wonder we're such dolts. You can learn some science on your own, I guess, but to do real work, I guess you want that community of peers.

I have a good friend with a doctorate in microbiology. He teaches science at a so-called charter school here. An excellent teacher. Paid a pittance. Kids learn, though.

 

[Mordred]

How many of those graduates go into teaching full time? How many at the secondary school level?

Not a lot...the only people with doctorates that I know who have taught high school did so in private schools for a year or two to make money to live on until they got positions at universities. Not that having a Ph.D. made them great teachers though...in fact above a certain level there is almost an inverse law relating intelligence and lecturing ability among physics professors. Chances are that the guy who is just scary smart probably won't be able to explain much to an undergrad in a way that will be understood. There are of course exceptions (Feynman).

 

[Q-Source]

There are no doubt some that believe that determinism can still be "salvaged". I've even read some rather complex philosophy that attempts to find a basis for determinism beneath the apparent nondeterminism of quantum mechanics itself.

So, determinism is not generally accepted among Physics. I learn something new everyday.

Basically, no matter what any physicist that I know of believes...what will be taught in a undergraduate or graduate quantum mechanics class will be based on the Copenhagen Interpretation.

Well, since they are scientist they have to be objective as well.
But the Copenhagen interpretation is only taught in undergraduate courses in Sciences not in high school courses (I think, I might be wrong).

In my opinion, the reason that the general population finds it easier to accept Einstein's position, outside of his overblown reputation (by his own admission), is that they generally have zero formal education in modern physics. The majority of the population has either no high school physics, high school physics, or at the most an intro level undergraduate course in physics. These classes generally teach basic Newtonian mechanics, basic treatments of electricity&magnetism, simple optics, and if you're lucky they might passingly mention special relativity and QM without really giving them anywhere near a sufficient mathematical treatment. In other words, they barely teach you anything that wasn't around in the 19th century, and they don't even cover all of that. So if all they really teach you is classical physics, is it any wonder that you would almost certainly side with the classical interpretation?

To be fair, general population does not have to know in detail about Physics. Just like you don't have to be an expert in Economics or Literature.

In my opinion, this issue only becomes relevant when we try to comprehend our reality and when we try to approach this reality with theories about the nature of the Universe that Science provides.

Then it is very important to know exactly what science offers and most important to understand and interpret that knowlegde.

Throw in the fact that the math is above the level that most people are taught (how comfortable are you with complex math and partial differntial equations?), and you have most people saying "how could this be?"

This is why a lot of people have a hard time making the leap from classical physics to relativity and quantum mechanics. Classical physics seems intuitively obvious to a degree. You see it in action everyday. Relativity and QM seem counterintuitive, they result in things that don't seem to make sense based on what we observe every day...but when you start from the concepts that form the basis of those theories, all the conclusions are perfectly logical, and they conform to the experimental evidence.

Yeah, it is true. Hey, just my case, I was taught classical physics more than relativity and quantum mechanisc in high school. Before that you mentioned it, I thought that determinism was the rule!. But, as I said above, I am an economist and knowledge in Physics is not relevant unless I have to hold a philosophical and religious posture.

Q-S