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I am a mathematician and a while ago I started studying quantum physics. I know the concept of superposition mathematically, but my question is regarding a famous experiment that Aaron O'Connell performed.

Link to the TED talk that describes the experiment: https://youtu.be/dvYYYlgVAao

He says in this video, "The small piece of metal was vibrating and not vibrating at the same time." I did not understand this phrase because it seems illogical. Can this be explained in the experiment and is his statement correct or is it just to stir up the audience?

  • A verbal explanation will always fail to capture all the details, let alone one given as part of a popular lecture, where you always have to assume one of the goals is to rouse interest in the audience. Are you interested in the mathematical details explaining why he used certain words? Most probably one can be provided, and most probably it won't be as sensational looking as the words used in this lecture :) – Amit Jun 17 '23 at 15:41
  • @Amit Thank you . This is what I always try to say: the mathematical explanation is the one to use, otherwise it will contain logical errors. – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 17 '23 at 16:15
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    It seems this is a duplicated of this question. You might want to read the answers there. – Maximal Ideal Jun 17 '23 at 16:27
  • @MaximalIdeal thanks i will read it . – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 17 '23 at 16:29
  • @MahmoudMrowi It is often possible to give intuitive explanations to physical phenomena and their mathematical models without "cheating". I always mention Feynman as being a master of that, and if he ever 'cheated' he would also say where and how. Unfortunately, in the era since Feynman the prevalent attitude of popular science explainers is to prefer sensationalism at the cost of scientific integrity. I think it does a disservice both to the audiences and to science. – Amit Jun 17 '23 at 17:01
  • He basically just gives you the usual QM 101 misunderstanding of "superposition". A superposition in QM describes the state of the unmeasured ensemble (which is an abstract, it doesn't exist in reality). There is no superposition for the measured single system. That's no different from dice: as long as they are moving all six outcomes are possible. Once a single roll is over, however, the outcome is one of six. The kind of explanation that you are seeing here simply doesn't acknowledge that many dice in motion are logically simply not the same as one that's in its final position. – FlatterMann Jun 17 '23 at 22:21
  • @FlatterMann Thank you . Your answer is helpful – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 17 '23 at 22:36
  • You are welcome. One warning: the rules for the outcomes of dice are fundamentally different from the rules for the outcomes of quantum mechanical measurements. Only the fundamental ontology is similar: every single outcome is unknown before it happens but the averages of many outcomes can be predicted in both cases. – FlatterMann Jun 17 '23 at 23:05

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It is incorrect. A macroscopic object in a superposition like that is theoretically possible, as in the famous example of Schrodinger's Cat. But the environment around it immediately destroys the state. Looking at it would require shining light on it, and that would be the end of the state.

Quantum computers rely on such superpositions. It has proven extremely difficult to make them.


I have watched the video now. I take it back. The video is correct.

tldr: See the last link at the end of this answer for the flavor of what "vibrating and not vibrating" means.

I had in mind a chunk of metal, say the size of a crowbar. Putting that in a quantum superposition like that is theoretically possible, but not remotely practical. But this is not really your everyday macroscopic chunk of metal. While it is way bigger than an atom, it is way smaller than a crowbar.

And even so, it was difficult to put in a superposition state. It had to be carefully isolated from its environment. It was in the dark, in a vacuum, and very close to absolute $0$ temperature.

As Aaron O'Connell said, the metal was both vibrating and not vibrating at the same time. So what does this mean?

One of the comments linked What exactly does Aaron D. O'Connell's experiment show?, which does explain it. But I expect you might want a more intuitive explanation. I will try, but quantum mechanics is notoriously counter intuitive.

It is not that hard to put a single electron or photon is a superposition, so we will start there. First some background.

It is often said that a photon or an electron is sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. While an photon is similar to a classical particle and a classical wave, it is really something different. I explain some of that here. How can a red light photon be different from a blue light photon?. An electron has mass and moves slower than light. But the same idea applies. It is something like a particle and something like a wave.

More massive objects are more like a particle and less like a wave. But even you and I have wave-like properties, even if we can't detect it.

So what is this dual nature? A classical particle is a point. When it moves, it follows a trajectory. You can say exactly where it is and how fast it is going. On the other hand, a classical wave is spread out. It doesn't have a single position. It may be composed of many frequencies. Each frequency may travel at a different speed. Up close, thunder is a sharp crack. If it arrives from in a distance, it is a rumble because different frequencies arrive at different times.

Thinking of an electron as a particle or a wave is sometimes helpful, but often misleading. Like a wave, an electron doesn't have a single position. It doesn't follow a trajectory. You cannot say exactly where it is and how fast it is going. But in a way different from a classical wave. I explain how it is different here. Does the collapse of the wave function happen immediately everywhere?.

When a photon encounters a screen with two slits in it, it passes through both slits at once. It interferes with itself on the other side. If it encounters another screen, you see a diffraction pattern. This is what we expect from a wave. For a photon, the slits need to be small, not too much larger than a wavelength of light. But you can easily make them.

An electron also has a wave nature. You can also pass it through slits and see a diffraction pattern. But the wavelength is much smaller, about the size of an atom. Electrons have been diffracted by the space between the atoms of a crystal. An electron can go through multiple "slits" of that size at the same time.

A crowbar is much larger and has a much smaller wavelength. We cannot make anything with slits so small that we could see quantum effects from being in multiple places at the same time. And of course a crowbar would not fit through such slits.

It was an achievement to see quantum effects from a tiny diving board. It was in two places at the same time by both vibrating and not vibrating at the same time. But this doesn't really mean what it sounds like. So what does it mean?

A photon passes through two slits and on the other side forms an interference pattern. Before it hits the second wall, it is in a spread out state with maxmima in some places and minima in other. But this isn't what you see when a single photon hits the wall. You see a single spot light up. The interference pattern tells you where you are likely to see the spot and where you are not. If you repeat the experiment many times, you will see many spots in the maxima. The maxima will be bright.

And it is in this sense that the diving board is both vibrating and not. While it is in the cold dark vacuum, it can be in this state. But when you probe the vacuum to measure how it moves, you find that it is in one or the other. You can never see it in both.

One more link along these lines. Schrodinger's cat was an example by one of the founders of quantum mechanics to illustrate how weird all this is. It remains useful to this day. In this example, a cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Here Veritasium explains it and uses it to illustrate the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics. Parallel Worlds Probably Exist. Here’s Why

mmesser314
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  • Do I understand from your words that his words “vibrates and not vibrates simultaneously ” are inaccurate and he used them to draw the public’s attention – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 17 '23 at 16:21
  • I did not look at the video. I do not know his motives or understanding of physics. But nobody has seen a piece of metal vibrate and not vibrate at the same time. – mmesser314 Jun 17 '23 at 16:27
  • Thank you very much.
    My brain almost exploded thinking about this thing
    – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 17 '23 at 16:33
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    @MahmoudMrowi "Schrodinger's cat is alive and dead at the same time," "the electron is in the left slit and right slit at the same time," "the atom is in the ground state and excited state at the same time," these are all euphemisms for the idea of quantum superposition. Unfortunately, it is common parlance even among physicists. The naive interpretation of superpositions is that they are states of X and Y simultaneously, and this is how it is described in almost all popular science communication. However, upon further thought, [...] – Maximal Ideal Jun 17 '23 at 16:34
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    @MahmoudMrowi [...] you realize that the formalism of quantum mechanics makes no ontological commitments by itself, so it can't say what superposition is or is not. That's called an interpretation, and no one can agree on that topic. It's not clear if that question is even valid to pose to begin with. – Maximal Ideal Jun 17 '23 at 16:36
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    Given you did not look at the video, how can you say this - whatever "this" is - is impossible? Superpositions of vibrational states of nanomechanical osciallators have been prepared. – Norbert Schuch Jun 17 '23 at 16:38
  • @MaximalIdeal thank you very much . I think we should stick to understanding superposition as a mathematical term and nothing more than that . – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 17 '23 at 16:43
  • @NorbertSchuch - I had not heard that. My bad. You are right, I should have looked at the video first. I tried to look, but it isn't loading at the moment. I will give it another try in a while. – mmesser314 Jun 17 '23 at 16:43
  • @NorbertSchuch If you watch the video, can you please tell me how true the phrase "vibrating and not vibrating at the same time " is, or is it just an inaccurate statement? – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 17 '23 at 16:59
  • @mmesser314 I didn't look at the video either. I was just criticizing that you would give an answer dismissing the claim as wrong without checking what precisely was claimed, when there is the possibility that it is a reasonable statement. – Norbert Schuch Jun 17 '23 at 19:13
  • @MahmoudMrowi See MaximalIdeal's comments above. – Norbert Schuch Jun 17 '23 at 19:59
  • @NorbertSchuch - I have updated my answer. – mmesser314 Jun 18 '23 at 00:17
  • @mmesser314 Isn't it more correct to say that the electron is scattered in several places together instead of expressing two places at the same time before doing measurment and when we make the measurment the wave function collapse and we observe only one particle ? – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 18 '23 at 10:59
  • @mmesser314 And it is in this sense that the diving board is both vibrating and not. While it is in the cold dark vacuum, it can be in this state. But when you probe the vacuum to measure how it moves .Does this mean that they repeated the experiment many times and noticed that sometimes it vibrates and sometimes it does not, which led them to the same conclusion regarding the diffraction that the piece of metal vibrates and does not vibrate? – Mahmoud Mrowi Jun 18 '23 at 11:37
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Can this be explained in the experiment and is his statement correct

Yes.

is it just to stir up the audience?

No. He is being serious, and there is no point in stirring up an audience on quantum physics. The audience tends to already be plentifully stirred up.

I did not understand this phrase because it seems illogical.

That is part of the problem. The logic that applies to quantum physics seems illogical to the human brain. The problem is with the logic that humans use, not with quantum physics. Quantum physics has the correct logic.


It is not very easy to understand what quantum superpositions mean. The mathematics is way too easy compared to the conceptual headaches. But if we are to make sense of quantum physics, we have no choice but to actually take it to be true at its face value.

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