this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 126 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (7 children)

Whenever any of this comes up I remember that physics professor's speech on first day of quantum mechanics that got viral:

“Nobody understands quantum mechanics. The people who came up with it don't understand it. I will do my best so that by the end of this course you don't understand it either, and so you can got out to the world and spread our ignorance.”

Or something to that effect.

[–] blandfordforever@lemm.ee 43 points 6 days ago

I'm so good at not understanding stuff. My time has come.

[–] LordCrom@lemmy.world 28 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Quantum mechanics is illogical and stuff that happens makes no sense but can be recrcreated through experimentation....as long as you don't look at it.

The end

[–] SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 64 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Quantum mechanics is extremely logical - we understand the math extremely well, and the math describes reality better than any other theory.

It is, however, not intuitive.

[–] LordCrom@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

I was just being cheeky

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[–] SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'd say we understand quantum mechanics better than most things.

We know more about the behaviour of an electron than we know about the oceans, the Earth, the sun, the weather, the stock market, the human body, prime numbers, and so on.

[–] Soggy@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago (9 children)

We generally have a grasp of "why" for that stuff though, even if the whole picture is currently hidden or too complex.

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[–] ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Whenever this picture comes up I remember that it's wrong - both electrons on it have the same spin, one is just rotated 180°, but it says +½ for one and -½ for the other, is like a part of the joke?

[–] Womble@lemmy.world 31 points 6 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

All electrons have spin 1/2, that's a property of it being an electron. They have a spin vector (the arrow shown) and whether it is in the same direction or opposite direction to the magnetic field it's in determines where it is plus or minus.

Now you might think "but what if it is not entirely aligned with the field, then it wouldn't be 1/2", which is true, on aggregate for large numbers of electrons, but if you ever look at a single electron its spin will either be "up" or "down" never any other orientation.

This is the kind of thing people are referring to when they say "no one understands QM", we know it is the case, we can measure it and predict it, but it makes no fucking sense.

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[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 55 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I recall a Richard Feynman video where the interviewer asks him to explain how magnets work.

His answer amounts to "I can't explain that to you because if I gave you an accurate answer it would be too technical for it to make sense to you, and if I simplified it to the extent that you could understand, it would no longer be a meaningful answer."

[–] slackassassin@sh.itjust.works 12 points 5 days ago

His point was that we don't understand the interaction between fundamental forces enough to say, if we were to try and answer the question accurately enough.

So, in one sense ICP was right that we don't know how magnets work. But also they were wrong that scientists be lying. They shouldn't have been pissed.

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (9 children)

That interview answer always seemed like a cop-out to me. You could make a comparison to gravity to explain how magnetism "just is".

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 6 points 4 days ago

https://xkcd.com/1489

Title-Text: "Of these four forces, there's one we don't really understand." "Is it the weak force or the strong--" "It's gravity."

[–] dgdft@lemmy.world 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I expect Feynman’s answer, if he had a whiteboard and unlimited time, would’ve been to dive into Maxwell’s equations.

With that in mind, his answer makes complete sense. Good luck explaining coupled PDEs to people who aren’t mathy in a few sentences without visual aid. The analogy to the gravitational force isn’t on point; there’s a lot more to be said about how magnets tie to into E&M more broadly, compared to gravity.

Though you’re absolutely right that once you get deep enough into any topic in physics that the answer to “why?” inevitably becomes “it just be like that”.

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

The analogy to the gravitational force isn’t on point; there’s a lot more to be said about how magnets tie to into E&M more broadly, compared to gravity.

Yeah, a proper answer would need to dive into how it relates to electricity for sure

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago

I think OP's meme illustrates Feynman's point very well; there comes a stage where if the number of incorrect statements in your explanation outnumber the the correct ones, it's no longer a meaningful explanation.

[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

Here's the video.

It's been a while since I watched it, so judge for yourself.

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[–] Underwaterbob@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 days ago

Yeah, "spin" was a stupid thing to call it. We have a nice, hard definition of what "spin" is on a macro scale. Why take a complex property of matter that we don't have a name for, and give it the same name as a fairly common, easy-to-understand phenomenon? Extraordinarily smart people being idiots, honestly.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Imagine a woman in hot pants with thighs like a Robert Crumb dream woman.

I don't know if it helps with this problem though.

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

NoU Imagine a cactus eating a deer.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

That's a challenging wank.

(RIP Sean Lock)

[–] Hupf@feddit.org 23 points 6 days ago
[–] Chocrates@lemmy.world 29 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Sounds like a class with an attribute called spin.

[–] chortle_tortle@mander.xyz 13 points 6 days ago (4 children)

It does however also have repercussions that are inline with it being a sphere that is spinning.

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[–] underwire212@lemm.ee 10 points 6 days ago (7 children)

The universe is a digital simulation confirmed

[–] chortle_tortle@mander.xyz 4 points 6 days ago

The memory required to track all these particles was insane, so we just made a wave of where they were most likely to be and picked a random spot when the exact location was needed. 🤷

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

imagines a static cube

Ahhh....

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[–] AlDente@sh.itjust.works 13 points 6 days ago

Right-hand rule bitches!

[–] capuccino@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] LiamMayfair@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

electrons be vibin

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

A ball, however tiny, has 3 dimensions, it has a surface that moves around a mathematical point at the center of the sphere.
A point of zero dimensions has no diameter nor perimeter, no surface with which to spin. Yet when influenced by a magnetic field, a point-like indivisible particle behaves as if it does spin.

As Chief Brody might say, we're gonna need a bigger math!
How about imaginary numbers and the complex plane?
Now add the Uncertainty Principle, just for shits 'n' giggles!
Probability space! Probability amplitudes and polarizations!

[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 8 points 6 days ago (3 children)

The way I understood it (probably wrong): imagine if a point like thing, but is actually a wave, hits something else. It will leave a trace on the detector curving in a certain direction. This is interpreted as angular momentum aka spin.

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