Schrodinger's Gat by Robert Kroese Read Free Book Online Page A

travels through each slit, and afterward the two parts come together as a single particle before hitting the screen. Why they should do this is unclear, but it would explain the disparate observations.
    To determine whether this is the case, the experimenter decides to observe the photons as they travel through the plate. To her surprise, the experimenter finds that a photon always travels through one slit or the other – never both. Not only that, but when the photons are observed, the interference pattern goes away. Simply observing the photons as discrete particles causes them to act like discrete particles. If the experimenter does not observe the photons as they travel through the plate, however, the light reverts to acting like waves.
    The critical point here is that the behavior of light is affected by the way in which the experimenter chooses to observe it . The observer can decide whether or not to put detectors into the interfering path. That way, by deciding whether or not to determine the path through the two-slit experiment, she can decide which property can become reality. If she chooses not to put the detectors there, then the interference pattern will become reality; if she does put the detectors there, then the beam path will become reality.
     
    The author makes it clear that this strangeness doesn’t arise simply from the detection equipment somehow interfering with the particles, causing them to behave differently. It’s not the detector that causes the light to act weirdly, it’s the observation. If you set out to demonstrate that light is made up of particles, you will find that it is made up of particles (and not waves); if you set out to demonstrate that light is made up of waves, you will find that it is made up of waves (and not particles). The fact is that logically, light can’t be both waves and particles, and it isn’t. It’s one or the other, and which one it turns out to be depends on which experiment you decide to perform. You, as the observer, determine the answer by deciding which question to ask.
    While pondering this, I fall asleep on my air mattress.
    I feel a little better the next morning. The school has finally stopped calling; maybe they’ve gotten the hint. I do some more brushing up on quantum jumps and Planck’s Constant and then force myself to write a few more pages of my novel. It’s mostly crap, but I tell myself I’ll fix it on the rewrite. At five o’clock I quit for the day, shower, shave, and put on the least wrinkled clothes I have. Time to meet Tali. I feel giddy, like a high school kid picking up his date for the prom. It’s been a long time since I’ve met a pretty girl for dinner.

     
    Part Three: Indeterminacy
    There ’s only one Garibaldi’s in Fremont. I’ve checked three times now. It’s six forty p.m. and Tali’s not here. I’ve been stood up.
    That ’s my first thought, anyway. And my third, fifth, seventh, etc. In between bouts of self-pity, I consider the possibility that something has happened to her. Like what? Murder, rape, kidnapping. Or the more prosaic possibilities: she got in a car wreck, she came down with the flu. She couldn’t call me because she doesn’t have my number. Or even my last name. Nor do I have hers. Still, she knew where I’d be; she could have called the restaurant. She hasn’t.
    I describe her to the waiter on the off-chance he might remember her. Presumably she ’s been to this place before, and she’s a pretty girl; hell, I’d remember her. No luck, though. Having filled up on Heineken and bread, I leave a twenty on the table and walk out.
    I sit in my car in the parking lot and feel like crying. Self-pity is like an old pair of slippers to me these days. But as comfortable as it is, something doesn ’t feel right. She had been worried about me not showing up, worried that I’d re-enact my performance at the BART station. I’m looking forward to seeing you , she’d said. You’d have to be one cold