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arXiv · 1809.10725

Three weird facts about quantum mechanics: What Bohr, Schr\"{o}dinger, and Einstein actually said

M. A. Reynolds
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Abstract

The procedure used to "do physics" in the macroscopic world is familiar: You take an object, start it off with a particular position and velocity, subject it to known forces (say gravity or friction, or both), and follow its trajectory. You then measure the dynamical properties (say position or energy) of that object at a later time and compare those measurements with the prediction using Isaac Newton's laws of motion. Newton's laws directly predict what those quantities should be at that later time, so the comparison is straightforward. However, the microscopic laws of physics, quantum mechanics, aren't so simple. The quantum concepts are so alien and counterintuitive that the language used to describe the mathematics and physics is often ambiguous and confusing. Therefore, for you to \emph{really} understand what is going on, some mathematics must be used. This is my attempt to explain some "weird facts" using a minimum of mathematics, yet eliminating as much ambiguity as possible.

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M. A. Reynolds. 2018-09-27. Three weird facts about quantum mechanics: What Bohr, Schr\"{o}dinger, and Einstein actually said. https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.10725

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