Re: Quantum Mechanics Basics and Refresher Material
Reply #3 –
Now it turns out the spooky particles have some properties that make them have certain behaviors that can be probabilistic modeled. For example, even though the spooky particles can be amorphous in space and time, they tend to present themselves as if they visit certain locations at certain times more frequently than others, hence the Bohr model becomes a nice approximation of the expected average behavior of an ensemble of hypothetical electrons.
By way of analogy, even though we flip a fair coin and might be uncertain whether it will land heads or tails, if we flipped it a million times, we can expect on average the fair coin will land heads 50% of the time. We can measure and observe this sort of expected or average behavior experimentally. The distribution of probabilities of coin flips is easy enough (relatively speaking) using the binomial distribution, but the probability description of quantum systems is substantially harder, it is a quantum leap (pun intended) over simplistic probability distributions.
A non-relativistic model of probabilistic quantum behavior for a wide range of phenomenon is described by Shrodinger's equation. Unfortunately, we are now getting into some nasty details, and from this point on, Quantum Mechanics (QM) starts to become bogged down in a lot of agonizing details. How this all connects to God and intelligent design is not absolutely inferred by quantum mechanics, but is only suggested. It took Griffiths an entire book to connect Schrodinger's equation to the philosophical question of an observer who chooses to look at a quantum system and affix properties to it. This led to Wheeler and Tipler and others to postulate an Ultimate Observer that governs the Universal Quantum System which we call REALITY. Some, like Richard Conn Henry, call this entity "God" or in his exact words "Grand Omni-present Spirit (GOS)".
So, I guess at this point the easy stuff is over.....
Much of the rest of my treatment of Quantum Mechanics will be the Schrodinger Equation:
