I’ve never understood what counts as ‘observing’ in this context… Just looking at the thing, perhaps with some kind of microscope/tool? Does it have to be a person who observes it? How about a dog? Or a paramecium?
It’s any interaction that counts. That could be with your eye, but it’s usually with any other particle that needs to know the position of another. That could be part of a measuring device, or anything else. If information is needed to “do physics” with it then the waveform collapses so the interaction can be performed.
It has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness.
I might be talking out of my ass a bit, but if I remember it correctly the “observer” part was about it being impossible to measure velocity and observe a location of a thing (electron, photon etc. I think) at the same point in time. I don’t think it actually had an effect on the particle, i remember there were some bad experiments where the measurement influenced the the thing because the measurement itself like taking a photo or whatever they did was enough to disturb… stuff.
It’s because in order to measure it you need to see it. If you can see it then light is bouncing off it it and these particles are so small that the energy of a photon bouncing off of it will move it.
Imagine the particles as being so ridiculously tiny that it is impossible to precisely measure both their speed and their location. Because literally any action, even seeing (which depends on photons interacting with those particles), changes both parameters.
‘Measuring’ here is done by letting those particles interact with another; ie., you bump another particle into them. It’s currently the best shot we have. But, the very act of bumping this particle changes the particle.
The more precisely you want to know the location of the particle A, the higher the energy of the particle B(ump) has to be. But the higher the energy, the less certain you are of A’s speed.
View it like playing a game on your phone where the background is all grey. Touching the screen harshly and for shortly, reveals a pretty clear circle. But you don’t know which direction it moves in. If you touch the circle softly but longer, you see a diffuse cloud, but you see clearly how it moves.
If your touch was somewhere inbetween hard-short and soft-long, neither would be particularly clear nor vague. Touch hard and long, and you create new clouds so you don’t see the original one anymore. Touch soft and short, and you only see a diffuse cloud whose movement you don’t know.
I’ve never understood what counts as ‘observing’ in this context… Just looking at the thing, perhaps with some kind of microscope/tool? Does it have to be a person who observes it? How about a dog? Or a paramecium?
I think I’m missing some important piece to this.
It’s any interaction that counts. That could be with your eye, but it’s usually with any other particle that needs to know the position of another. That could be part of a measuring device, or anything else. If information is needed to “do physics” with it then the waveform collapses so the interaction can be performed.
It has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness.
I might be talking out of my ass a bit, but if I remember it correctly the “observer” part was about it being impossible to measure velocity and observe a location of a thing (electron, photon etc. I think) at the same point in time. I don’t think it actually had an effect on the particle, i remember there were some bad experiments where the measurement influenced the the thing because the measurement itself like taking a photo or whatever they did was enough to disturb… stuff.
It’s because in order to measure it you need to see it. If you can see it then light is bouncing off it it and these particles are so small that the energy of a photon bouncing off of it will move it.
Imagine the particles as being so ridiculously tiny that it is impossible to precisely measure both their speed and their location. Because literally any action, even seeing (which depends on photons interacting with those particles), changes both parameters.
‘Measuring’ here is done by letting those particles interact with another; ie., you bump another particle into them. It’s currently the best shot we have. But, the very act of bumping this particle changes the particle.
The more precisely you want to know the location of the particle A, the higher the energy of the particle B(ump) has to be. But the higher the energy, the less certain you are of A’s speed.
View it like playing a game on your phone where the background is all grey. Touching the screen harshly and for shortly, reveals a pretty clear circle. But you don’t know which direction it moves in. If you touch the circle softly but longer, you see a diffuse cloud, but you see clearly how it moves.
If your touch was somewhere inbetween hard-short and soft-long, neither would be particularly clear nor vague. Touch hard and long, and you create new clouds so you don’t see the original one anymore. Touch soft and short, and you only see a diffuse cloud whose movement you don’t know.