fleacircus: i think you're asking, how does not knowing the position of something you don't observe make quantum sized-stuff different from regular-sized stuff? that's a pretty good question.
your analogy is slightly off though. the fact that, at quantum level, you don't know the position of something you don't observe is not a fundamental tenet of quantum physics--it's more of a side effect of another phenomenon--ie, the wave/particle duality (that all objects behave both as a wave and a particle). the fundamental rule is not that the unobserved has no position, but that, when unobserved, it behaves as something that cannot be said to have a position (ie, a wave). the card analogy you used is not the appropriate analog, since you're not talking about something having this duality. if quantum effects happened at our level, it would be as if you were in a vacuumed, very very dark room, and threw two identical cards from one end to the other, and found that, by repeating this experiment over and over again throwing exactly from the same positions and the same way, that the card landing positions were not a nice bell-shaped curve but were instead kind of wavy.
If you don't know what wave/particle duality is, ask me.
__________________
oh baby oh baby, i like gravy.
Last edited by rsl12; 04-14-2004 at 08:39 AM..
|