Crazy Mad Science

My friend Ryan sidetracked me quite a bit today when he sent me a link (with regards to some Quantum Mechanics stuff) about these physicists who (for god knows what reason) decided to shoot a particle beam through these two holes or slits with this back wall. The theory goes that if they were shooting particles through the slits the particles would then make a mark in the form of two bands on the wall. However if they were not particles they would create an interference wave pattern.

The gist is that they have some pretty funky machinery out there that measures these things and records the results in a database. All great! The weird thing though, was that every time they viewed a record of the result on the computer the particle that they fired made a mark on the wall, however every time they didn’t view it and instead deleted the record, they only saw interference…

Pretty much what it means is that only if you “observed” the particle would it exist! Kind of like the whole philosophical debate “If a tree falls in a forest but no one is around to hear it, does it actually make a sound?” Except now there was kind of proof for the case, that if you weren’t there to hear the falling tree, then it actually did not make a sound.

When I was younger, in primary school, my friend Jonathan’s dad, Prof Leitch who is a Professor in Physics used to conduct all these crazy experiments. He’d often try to explain these crazy theories to us. But barely being able to grasp the basics of Newton’s Laws. Quantum physics completely made our brains explode! Strangely not much has changed since then.

In my limited understanding of Quantum Physic I gave the link to Ernst, (who really digs the stuff)… in return he sent me a reference about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle which kept me happily occupied, and further distracted me from my real work. Heisenberg describes some pretty interesting stuff with regards to particles; and how if you try to locate a particle, its velocity becomes uncertain; also how if you determine the velocity of a particle, its position then becomes uncertain…

Besides having my brain blasted, I came across a really new and cool coffee place on Kloof Street, in fact it’s so new that it doesn’t even have signage outside yet (perhaps it's because noone had observed the sign yet...). The place is called Java Lounge, Origin one of my favourite coffee spots, supply their beans and train their baristas. Best of all they had a coffee special (I think it ends soon though). R5 for a cappuccino…freakin’ score!