11.12.07

Reflecting on the Quantum

On my usual Sunday routine, I typically end up at the excellent tamale stand at the Hollywood Farmer's market, having bought my week's fresh and tasty produce. I end up sitting either on the ground by the road, on a tiny portable chair that I brought myself, or at a table that may have been put out by some of the stall owners. I sit in the sun and listen to the chatter around me, perhaps engaging in a conversation with someone if the opportunity arises and the spirit moves me.

So it was yesterday, and I found myself listening to the talk of two women about this and that. Soon after I was part of the conversation -  one of them was curious about my tamale order, which was as usual delicious, and then we got on to the subject of food of various sorts, and later flowers and gardening. They were both artists  - one a graphic and fine artist and the other a makeup artist in the local Industry (TV).  At one point we chatted for a while about what they do, and they explained a bit here and there.   It was all very pleasant. Eventually, the subject of what I do came around, and I said that I'm concerned with questions about how the things around us fit together, and what they are, and how these questions lead me to ponder, among other things, the very small (particle and nuclear physics), the very large (the whole universe) and the very early (those moments at the beginning of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago).

I waited the usual few moments for the usual running and screaming to be over...

...but there was none, and they were still present (they'd even finished their food from the vegan soul food stand, and so had a legitimate excuse to make their excuses), and so we continued talking.

We talked about physics, and science in general, and art, and the intersection between the two (one of my favourite topics), but one thing struck me about the conversation more than any other. It is something I've noticed before. Just before I explained what I work on, one of my dining  companions was describing some of her artwork as abstract and unconnected to everyday life. Then came for me to talk about my work, and so   I prefaced my remarks with a comment about how what I do can also seem very abstract and unconnected to everyday life (meaning the particular concerns of quantum gravity, black holes, and cosmology, for example), and one of them said "oh, you mean Quantum Physics?", to which I replied "Er, yes, but..." and then launched into an explanation.

What I'm getting at is the fact that she (and many other people, quite commonly)  thinks of quantum physics as somehow not really to do with the real world, or everyday life. This is not surprising, on the one hand, and on the other hand it is. Why? Well, we began to understand that our world is fundamentally quantum mechanical over 100 years ago, and it is still firmly in the popular mind as a sort of fringe and weird thing. This is very much a result of how the subject  is presented. It is very little to do with any intrinsic aspect of the physics itself.

Even for science majors at college, it is very common for the parts of physics that deal with quantum mechanics  to be taught in a rush at the end of a semester long freshman course as  a bit of "modern physics". This persists to some extent beyond freshman years as well. The whole supposed weirdness of it all is over-emphasized and over-blown in class and also in popular presentations (I always argue with my friend the excellent science writer KC Cole about this - I want people to stop prefacing quantum issues with the word "weird", while she says "but it is weird", and I reply "not necessarily"... and so it goes) and so it ends up being perceived as strange, not of this world, and/or totally misused and misapplied (for example by charlatan "new age" film makers and so forth).

The problem is that we all fall into the same trap when teaching about this material. It is always taught as though it were in contrast or in opposition to classical (Newtonian) physics. Way too much time is spent worrying about philosophical implications of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for example. That and other aspects of the physics would not seem so weird if we had not spent all that time prejudicing  the listener with misleading concepts, focusing on entirely irrelevant concepts (given the context) that make them think of electrons and atoms as little billiard balls and so forth. Then we end up with a set of "quantum rules" that seem weird only because we should not have been thinking in terms of  billiard balls in the first place. You can see part of the  problem in the very name of the Uncertainty Principle. This is just the English translation of something that would have been better translated as the Indeterminacy Principle, referring not to being uncertain about the value of a quantity (the position or momentum of some billiard ball like object), but the fundamental fact that  the quantity simply has no meaning in some situations - It cannot be determined. Hence "Indeterminacy". The billiard ball images we insist on using out of context makes us ask the wrong - meaningless -  questions, to which the answers then seem weird. (In several other languages, the Indeterminacy Principle is the common usage.)

Well, this will take me too far afield to discuss in greater detail, for my main point is that quantum mechanics is just as much in our everyday lives as classical Newtonian-type physics. Often more so. So it's frustrating that we teach these things so badly that our college students are confused about its relevance, not to mention random members of the public. What examples did I offer my lunch party at the table? Just the first few that popped off the top of my head: Our entire understanding of why all atoms don't collapse;  the semiconductor technology operating inside our portable electronics sitting in our bags there at the table, or our computers at home; those nice digital cameras that we all use rely on the very photoelectric effect that Einstein explained using quantum mechanics in 1905; how about the lasers in one's DVD player...the list goes on.

Something is definitely wrong with the way we teach basic science if the key concepts that underlie so many of the things that affect our lives are considered to be not part of the everyday. I'm not saying that everyone should know all the details, of course, but this stuff is 100 years old and is the foundation of some of our most important industries and the entire modern information age.  People should know where all those goodies come from.

As educators, writers, program makers, and journalists, we need to do better.

-cvj

Tags: physics, quantum mechanics

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