Saturday, July 12, 2008

in quantum physics, observation changes the event... just like people :)

an interesting educational video about qunatum physics.

when one tries to observe a qunatum event, the event itself changes. just looking at it makes it change… what an amazing thing. how is that possible? how does a qunatum object know that it is being observed? why?

makes you think if perhaps this also happens in regular physics, but just not to the same level as in quantum physics. what if this happend in human behavior? but it does! people behave differently when they are being observed.

C’mon… you know it’s true. if you know that people are looking at you, and you alone, you act differently. you behave in a way not unlike the way you would act if you “knew” you were not being seen by anyone. you dont pick your nose, you don’t fart as loud… you dont steal the grape at the super market.

what is the difference between humans and quantum particles? perhaps not as much as we think...


  1. Great video. Wow , I love when science is broken down like that. Its the only way I can understand it.

  2. Thank you so much for this! I'm trying to wrap my head around Schrodinger's cat and I googled "the observation of an event changes that event" and your blog came up. So awesome.

  3. It's really surprising how I thought I knew all about the double slit experiment until tonight. I knew everything from this video up until the mention of the observer effect. It leaves me thinking about the meaning of all of this. Although it's fun to think of the existence of parallel universes and such (, I think that maybe another kind of interference besides "just observing" is happening. Maybe the observer was omitting something. I can help but think of the TV show Fringe as I type this!