Can two electrons have the same location?

@layman,

The problem of location and of delineating borders transcends both physics and mathematics: it's a problem of logic. So too a number of temporal problems, as well as problems of motion and change which are spatio-temporal.

" What you need to do, boy, is take a physics class. On second thought, forget that. It won't help you any. You need to take a math class!"

This sounds a bit like the "layman" account was highjacked by the robotard. Either that or it's irony mocking the arrogant posturing of the robotard.

1 Reply

@layman,

Quote:

"Miss Johnson, are "points" real? I mean, like, do they exist in the real world?"

She said: "Why, of course they do, Layboy."

I quit school the next day.

And let me guess... now you are an engineer making good money designing robots for NASA

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@puzzledperson,

Quote:

Either that or it's irony mocking the arrogant posturing of the robotard.

Ya think?

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

And let me guess... now you are an engineer making good money designing robots for NASA

Naw, my job is to amuse myself.

I can spend hours contemplating extremely puzzling questions such as:

Does "started moving" mean "started moving?" It's rough, sure, but it keeps me occupied.

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Trying to see if there exists a scenario where Layman & Max could both be correct without resorting to equations. Only one I can think of is where an object is traveling in one direction and at t-1 it begins accelerating in the opposite direction. At t=0, V could then be =0 at some value of A. But assuming constant rate of acceleration, A would be >0 at T=0. That would satisfy Max's contention but in this example, A started before T=0 so Layman's view would be correct.

Is there an english explaination that can resolve the conflict?

Puzzled's explaination for the electron problem doesn't add up in either the field or the 'non-locality' explaination. A 'field' does not in itself contain energy and we can identify it's location in many circumstances. See the recent confirmation experiment for 'entanglement' where they used entrapped electrons and reversed then measured their spins. Hard to do if you can't even know where they are.

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

That would satisfy Max's contention but in this example, A started before T=0 so Layman's view would be correct.

Where do you start, and where do you end?

Say I throw a ball straight into the air. Is there is a point at it's very peak (however "instantaneous"), where you can say the ball is "not moving?" Maybe. Maybe not.

Depends on your perspective, don't it? The ball is still orbiting the sun, participating, through so-called "inertia," in the earth's daily rotation, and moving in god only know how many other "directions."

Notice that if I hit a baseball into the stands, nobody would try to claim that it "stopped" at it's peak.

Me, I don't worry about them kinda details. Throw it straight up, or hit it into the stands. Either way I will say it was "moving the whole time."

If you try to get "instantaneous" about it, then nuthin ever moves nowhere. Just ask Zeno, eh?

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

Is there an english explaination that can resolve the conflict?

I don't see a conflict. Perspective and arbitrary assumptions aside, math aint physics. If they "say" different things, that's because they ARE different things. Hence no "conflict."

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@layman,

What's "out there" is not determined by invented formulas. If there appears to be some conflict, don't look "out there" if you're trying to resolve it. Look at your formula, and/or your subjective assumptions about what's "out there."

Some people (I aint gunna mention no names), like Max for example, think that math dictates the external "facts." Fraid not. The external facts dictate the math, if you're trying to apply it to them.

I already quoted Einstein on the matter above. He said it better than I can.

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

A 'field' does not in itself contain energy and we can identify it's location in many circumstances. See the recent confirmation experiment for 'entanglement' where they used entrapped electrons and reversed then measured their spins. Hard to do if you can't even know where they are.

This paragraph is almost completely incorrect. It is impressively incorrect.

A field does contain energy. There was no experiment (recent or otherwise) that entrapped electrons or reversed anything.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

“Expert (specialist): Someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.” (Somebody, I forget who now, said that)

Some self-appointed experts (aint gunna mention no names) seem to think that the extremely limited range of knowledge they have is sufficient to understand virtually everything. So they get busy, hammering nails.

Quote:

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” (Abe Maslow)

1 Reply

@layman,

The way you get expertise in science is to study science. You take the time to learn the math. You take laboratory classes and do experiments. You read the texts. You struggle though solving problems and you work with professors and other students to gain skills. You pass exams and write papers and get feedback on how well you have mastered what you have learned.

Science is a well developed field of expertise that has been build up over thousands of years of human history. As a field it has been very successful at developing the technology we depend on (including the computer you are using right now) and on explaining the world around us.

However, as a well-developed field, there are right answers and wrong answers. And there are ways to determine what is right and what is wrong... and mathematics is behind all of this. You can't understand mechanics without knowing calculus and you can't understand the science of electrons without understanding Schrodinger's equation.

You can't just make stuff up based on what seems logical to you. That isn't science.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

That isn't science.

Yeah, so? Does "science" pretend to answer all questions? I mean, like, apart from it's most fervent advocates, who subscribe to scientism.

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@layman,

No, science does not pretend to answer all questions.

Science does answer questions about electrons and acceleration. If you are going to have a thread about these topics that is tagged "science" than you should accept the answers to these questions that are scientifically correct.

I wouldn't mind idle musings about what people think should be "logical". I only object when such musings are being labeled "science".

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@maxdancona,

Suppose I am standing on the earth, looking at some heavenly body that is "moving" from my perspective.

Suppose my assumptions lead me to believe that, because of that relative motion, the "moving clock" will run slower.

Suppose I have a very precise formula (call it the Lorentz transformation formula,--LT-- if you want) that tells me just exactly how much slower the moving clock is running.

Now what? Does the LT tell me WHICH clock is the one moving? Do my observations tell me that?

Do my assumptions tell me that. If so, isn't that just "stuff you make up?"

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

@Leadfoot,
Leadfoot Quote:
"A 'field' does not in itself contain energy and we can identify it's location in many circumstances. See the recent confirmation experiment for 'entanglement' where they used entrapped electrons and reversed then measured their spins. Hard to do if you can't even know where they are."

Maxdancona replied:
This paragraph is almost completely incorrect. It is impressively incorrect.

A field does contain energy. There was no experiment (recent or otherwise) that entrapped electrons or reversed anything.

Wow, you changed my whole impression of your credibility in one single post. Read it for yourself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/science/quantum-theory-experiment-said-to-prove-spooky-interactions.html?_r=0

Only hucksters trying to sell perpetual motion generators and such believe electrostatic or magnetic fields contain energy. They only 'make' energy when they are moved or discharged, and even then the energy comes from another source.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

You pass exams and write papers and get feedback on how well you have mastered what you have learned.

Well, aint that special? Does that tell you how to logically evaluate the merit of what you have memorized? Does executing a task you are told to mean that you understand why you are doing it?

What is it that you have "learned?" According to this guy, that may depend on how much logic you bring to the table to begin with, eh?:

Quote:

“Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.” (Ambrose Bierce)

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@maxdancona,

Here's an excerpt in case you aren't interested enough to look it up.

Quote:

The Delft researchers were able to entangle two electrons separated by a distance of 1.3 kilometers, slightly less than a mile, and then share information between them. Physicists use the term “entanglement” to refer to pairs of particles that are generated in such a way that they cannot be described independently. The scientists placed two diamonds on opposite sides of the Delft University campus, 1.3 kilometers apart.

Each diamond contained a tiny trap for single electrons, which have a magnetic property called a “spin.” Pulses of microwave and laser energy are then used to entangle and measure the “spin” of the electrons.

The distance — with detectors set on opposite sides of the campus — ensured that information could not be exchanged by conventional means within the time it takes to do the measurement.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

This is the latest (and coolest) variant of the Bell experiment. And it makes my point perfectly.

1) This experiment is being done by PhDs (and highly advanced PhDs with specialized knowledge) at a university. It is based on Schrodinger's equation and is part of a continual discussion that has been happening in Physics for 100 years which takes some time to understand. These aren't people making idle musings. They are highly educated researchers working on the cutting edge of thousands of years of human discovery.

2) The actual paper (not the newspaper account) is heavily based in mathematics-- specifically the Schrodinger equation. (The newspaper account is a summary and I don't know if you understand what the actual experiment... which involves bombarding diamonds with microwaves and then studying the light that is emitted.. entails).

3) The results are not something that can be reached by logic... in fact that science is counter-intuitive. Quantum entanglement is a mathematical concept that scientists had to discover when their experiments didn't match the predictions of earlier theories. Quantum mechanics is a case where mathematics trump all other considerations.

Science, especially this science, isn't something you make up as you go along. This discovery is based on a rigorous mathematical exploration of a very strange, counter-intuitive, part of our existence.

By the way... this experiment is really cool.

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@Leadfoot,

Of course an electric field contains energy. It IS energy.

http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/06/q-does-an-electric-field-have-mass-does-it-take-energy-to-move-an-electric-field/

As for trapping electrons, we don't have to invoke Bell's Theorem: an ordinary conductor like a copper wire will do just fine, since there are electrons there. But electrons aren't just the matter from which their field is emitted according to the inverse square law; they are also the electric field they emit. And potential energy has mass according to Einstein's equation E = mc(squared). There's a whole specialty in quantum electrodynamic field theory called renormalization that deals with this.

My point is that if the mass of an electron includes its field energy equivalent mass (it does), and if that field is generally everywhere in the universe that an electric field can be (it is, by the inverse square law), then talk about "the location" of an electron is logically inconsistent; it's merely a misleading shorthand reference to the center of that field; and if electric fields co-determine each other through wave interference (they do), then there's really no way to disentangle a "single electron". In fact, that is what Bell's Theorem actually implies.

As for the BT experiment mentioned in the New York Times article, I'll bet you that if you look up the actual peer reviewed journal article you'll find that what is actually being reported is a set of statistical relations between many electrons, to which some fancy analysis has been applied to derive conclusions about pairs of electrons.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
A 'field' does not in itself contain energy and we can identify it's location in many circumstances. See the recent confirmation experiment for 'entanglement' where they used entrapped electrons and reversed then measured their spins. Hard to do if you can't even know where they are.

This paragraph is almost completely incorrect. It is impressively incorrect.

...

"Not even wrong." Wink

0 Replies

Can two electrons have the same location?

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