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Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Naomi Osborne answered on 19 Jun 2014:
I’m afraid not, baadeh – my field of work is microbiology where I work with bacteria. I’m sure one of the physicists will know though 🙂
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Ian Stephenson answered on 20 Jun 2014:
I did a little quantum mechanics when I studied electronics at university. Specifically its used to explain how a transistor works. It’s very strange!!
It’s one of the subjects where you need to trust the maths. A lot of it seems crazy, and makes no sense, but then you work through the maths and it gives you an answer which turns out to be right!
It was good to learn a little about it, as its important to understand how things you use work. I do a lot of computing, which depends on transistors, which depend on QM…
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Edward Hughes answered on 20 Jun 2014:
My work is entirely based on quantum mechanics. I use it every day! It’s a bit strange at first, but actually makes a whole lot of sense.
Quantum mechanics says that when tiny things aren’t being observed, they are spread out. In practice this means you can’t know exactly where something is without looking at it all the time. The only thing you can predict is the chance that a particle will turn up here or there!
This only sounds odd because we’re so used to working at everyday scales, where these effects basically cancel out. But once you get small enough, the universe is fundamentally based on probability.
Once you’ve got used to how it works, quantum mechanics is not much stranger than any other theory. Philosophers have arguments about interpreting the idea, but for me it’s just some good maths that describes the world. End of story!
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