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Alice in Quantumland

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Alice in Quantumland 1. Electrons have no distinguishing features except spin Upon falling into the quantum wonderland while in her living room, Alice finds herself faced with a new reality of existence that seems to baffle her. She is first met with some strange-looking dweller of the new and vastly strange wonderland that she could not make out. She politely introduces herself as Alice, thereby invoking a response from her companion to the effect that it was an electron. Alice also noted that nearby was another similar looking figure to the electron, to which the new acquaintance explained was a different electron. To Alice, the two electrons looked strikingly alike, down to the umbrella they seemed to have been …show more content…

This is verified by the double slit experiment. The experiment yields the phenomenon of interference when electrons are shot out from an electron gun one at a time; they are shot in a beam through an obstacle with two slits and onto a screen. This experiment, and the resulting interference, indicates that each electron passes through the two slits at the same time and essentially interferes with itself. Similar to the other phenomena that Alice encounters, this one is also in direct violation of common sense judgments of observations in the macro-world. In essence, no observable entity in the real world of classical mechanics is capable of doing all things possible at the same time, let alone be in several different positions at the same time. 5. The Copenhagen interpretation and Schrödinger’s cat Alice proceeds to meet with a series of other unusual characters while in the quantum wonderland. One of the most intriguing characters she comes across is undoubtedly Schrödinger’s cat. Alice learns that Schrödinger had left a cat behind with some inhabitants of the quantum wonderland which he used as an experiment to test and prove some of the theories espoused within the larger field of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger set up an experiment in which the cat was to be placed inside a box with a flask of poison, a radioactive source and a mechanism that would ensure

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