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So is this the molecular equivalent of "if a tree falls in the forest does it make any sound"?
Conscious observation exerts enough influence to make something that is everywhere suddenly be only where it is observed? Am I even remotely close??? stressed

arrow Yes, it sounds interesting. The question will be whether or not I can comprehend it! gonk
arrow And although I was up at that time in the morning, It would have been even less understood than now! sweatdrop

I lost you at Alright. 3nodding 3nodding

I'll try to break quantum down as easily as I can, but that's really hard to do because QM doesn't really make much sense in an intuative way. What it really is, is a mathematical representation of nature, so unless you can comprehend the math, the whole thing is kinda pointless. But to really understand the math requires at the very least a course in differential equations and one in linear algebra. >.<

I suppose the best way to start off is to talk about General Mechanics (GM). In this, we can describe a particle by its location and momentum. In GM these are large enough that they're both absolute values.

But as you've already seemed to have garnered, a particle in QM isn't a fixed point. Matter, on subatomic scales, exists as both a particle and a wave at the same time. So how do you describe the position of something that's spread out like a wave? We want to do the same thing (know its position and momentum), but this is a bit trickier to do.

To figure such things out, we start off with what's called the Schrodinger equation (loaded with calculus so I'm not going to bother posting it) which tells us about the total energy of a partice. One of the variables in this equation, called psi, is the wave function. If we solve for this value (which is where the differential equations and linear algebra comes in), we can then begin to know something about the particle because psi is a function that describes the position as a function of time.

Unfortunately, going through all the math doesn't return a unique solution. It returns an infinate series of solutions that are, indeed sin and cos functions. But as you probably are aware, sin and cos functions just go on forever and ever. Thus, the answers make no sense; How can you have a particle that's everwhere in every direction?

The answer is that you can't. That's where the superposition principle comes in. What it says, is that if we add up all the solutions (an infinate number of them, so we're going to be using calculus again), it will give a function that desribes the probability of finding the particle in space as a function of time. But even then, it's spread out like a bell curve. It has a most probable peak, and quickly goes to effectively 0% probability, but there's still a non-zero probability of finding that particle nearby but not at the most probable location.

But again, the particle isn't "everywhere" like "What the Bleep Do We Know?" likes to pretend. It has a very narrow range of locations that it can be with any probability that's worth considering. For something electrons, there's a 95% probability of finding it within 7 x 10^-10m of that most probable location. For something the size of a car it's 10^-28m for the 95% confidence level. Since electrons are about that size (the 10^-10m), they can act like waves hitting eachother, but since cars are much larger than their wavlength, they don't act like waves when they hit. They crash. What the Bleep Do We Know pretends that this works on scales of large objects like baseketballs.

What becomes even more interesting is when adding up all those functions doesn't produce one probable location, but a series of them. This is the reason that we have orbitals in atoms. The superposition of the wave functions of the protons and the electrons adds up in such a way that only certain positions are allowed and there's "gaps" between them.

So what's the problem with "What the Bleep Do We Know?" It presents half truths and doesn't give a full picture. Why? Because it's not trying to teach science. It's trying to teach just enough that it can toss in the new age garbage about being able to influence where the particle ends up being detected with your thoughts. This is then the basis for the introduction to a cult headed by the spiritualist woman, JZ Knight, in the video. Many of the scientists who were interviewed for this movie have noted that their interviews were extensively cut so that the creators could present their falsehoods (most notably David Albert of Columbia University).

It also presents some very bad science such as the Mahasari Effect (4000 people praying and crime "stopped") and the ice crystals that reflect emotions. Both are a perfect example of confirmation bias. They take the result and then find things to fit it against that will confirm their hypothesis, while rejecting all the others.

So while there's bits of decent science in there, it's not enough to understand much of anything and the "rabbit hole" it takes you down is only one of deception and outright lies.

It's been 3 years since I watched it so I can't remember what they said about the Double Slit Experiment so I'll just explain it to clarify incase they got it wrong.

The important thing about this experiment is that it can show an amazing amount of things about the wave properties of light. The first thing that it shows is that it's a wave at all. If light passes through one slit, you just get a blur that's brightest at the center and fades out exponentially from the center.

However, add the second one and you get a sin wave that is bounded by that same exponential decay. If that doesn't make sense, imagine the exponential decay and then fitting a sin curve underneath it that gets squished as the exponential curve goes to 0. That's what the graph of brightness as a function of distance from the center looks like. This is known as a diffraction pattern.

So what that tells us right there is that light behaves as a wave.

However, it was known from other experiments (namely the photoelectric effect, explained by Einstein which is what he got he Nobel Prize for, not relativity) that light is also a particle that comes in discreet packets called photons.

Thus, we could ask what would happen if, instead of letting a massive swarm of photons through the slit all at the same time, we only sent one photon through at a time.

Common sense should tell you that if only one's going through at a time, there's not another going through the other slit that it would interfere with to cause the diffraction pattern. So what we should see is something more like what we'd see if we only let light through one slit.

Yet as we look where each photon landed and get enough to make some conclusions, it becomes apparent that even one photon at a time still gives the diffraction pattern!

This reaffirms that, even as a particle, it still has wave properties and due to this "spread out nature" described by the wave function, the photon is actually going through both slits at the same time and is thus interfering with itself.

The same thing can be done with electrons or other light particles traveling fast enough.

So this, again, sounds like the particle is everywhere which is what I suspect the film tried to play it off as. But what I'm sure they didn't tell you is that if the slits become separated by more than the wavelength of the photon (or the DeBroglie wavelength for particles), the effect vanishes. This, again, shows that the particle is not "everywhere". It's "spread out" in a way that doesn't seem to make sense to humans who live on the macroscopic level, but the fuzziness is still a very localized effect.

And I apologize that I was rather harsh about the movie. The "ban yourself from this forum" wasn't meant to be taken seriously and only to reflect how horrible and misleading that film actually is. About the only thing I find more disgusting is Intelligent Design and Creationism, and then, only because it's suckered even more people with things that sound like good science but are really distortions and lies.

But I'm glad you're asking questions. I'm always happy to answer them. Science is amazingly interesting in that weird kinda way and I like to share it. ^_^

I'm having horrible flashbacks to fall 2007. David Griffiths haunts my dreams...

The slit experiment I know what it is, Shall i Demonstrate it.. It would be really easy to draw but not to describe my friend showed me it, were going to start studying QM.