What Are You Reading?

**Mzo** · 17 Jul 2010, 02:46 AM

This video shows off the double slit experiment so even a kid can understand, and it's kind of rad. Blows your mind.

**Compass** · 17 Jul 2010, 02:46 AM

Originally Posted by Mzo

That page makes sense right to left.

After putting it down and forgetting about it, I went back and reread "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" by John Gribbin. I know it's old (written in the 80s, oh my) and someone even mentioned he wrote a sort of sequel to it, but once you get past the history of quantum physics bit and get slapped in the face with the two-hole electron experiment it is like wow. What the fuck. He's also right about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Princible being taught as more of a you disrupt the experiment type of deal than reality says you can't really "know" this shit deal. Lame, teachers. Lame.

Now I need more, more! I'm going to read some of his suggested texts and sci-fi mentions.

Haha, yes! Two-holes experiment! I love that shit. Never get tired of reading different physicists' take on the whole thing.

I'm telling you, read Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. It's my favorite of these types of books. His writing is incredibly accessible and entertaining, but still deep as hell, and he covers a *lot* of ground. Grobin's Schrodinger's Kittens book is pretty good, too. I think I'm repeating myself from this thread a couple months ago. But you gotta listen, Mzo!

**Mzo** · 17 Jul 2010, 02:54 AM

I WILL GET THEM THIS WEEKEND

**Compass** · 17 Jul 2010, 03:08 AM

OKAY

Originally Posted by Mzo

This video shows off the double slit experiment so even a kid can understand, and it's kind of rad. Blows your mind.

Video is pretty good. Simplifies things nicely. That's one thing I like about strange quantum behavior is that it's not really hard to grasp the what, but fascinating as hell to ponder the how or the why. If that makes sense.

The video covers the modified experiment of installing a detector at each slit, and how the quantum particles "know" the slits are being watched and change their behavior accordingly. One subtlety not covered, though, is how the particles also know when only one slit is being watched. In other words, they make sure to behave like good little particles even when they go through the non-watched slit because they realize the absence of triggering the detector in the other slit is, in itself, incriminating as far as which slit they took.

Obviously I'm anthropomorphizing the particles, but there's not really an analogue to better describe that kind of behavior.

**YellerDog** · 17 Jul 2010, 03:23 AM

Originally Posted by Mzo

This video shows off the double slit experiment so even a kid can understand, and it's kind of rad. Blows your mind.

So cool!

**Doc Holliday** · 14 Aug 2010, 09:38 AM

OK, so like, what Haruki Murakami book should I read first?

**PaCrappa** · 20 Sep 2010, 12:45 PM

I am reading The Simpsons An Uncensored Unauthorized History. It's a great read but my god these typos! Am I being a cranky oldster if I say something along the lines of back in my day every fucking book wasn't full of typos? Seriously though, my spelling has always been rad and I must've read hundreds of books as a youth without ever seeing a typo. Contrarywise just about every book I've read that was published in the last ten years is full of 'em.

**Doc Holliday** · 20 Sep 2010, 01:00 PM

Really? Let the Right One In is one of the few recent books I've read lately, so I haven't noticed it. The "pulp fiction" books of the 30-50's I have been reading are surprisingly well edited. Hubert Selby's 1978 Requiem for a Dream on the other hand, is completely awful. Like, I'm shocked it was published awful.