Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
14 - Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
During the recent presidential election, I dreamt that two of the candidates had concluded from interviews with focus groups that there might be some anxiety among the American public over the foundations of quantum mechanics. Concerned that by homing in on so esoteric a topic they could lose the attention of the people, the two men had made a direct assessment of public interest by quietly employing their rhetorical skills in unpublicized lectures at local events such as church barbecues, farmers’ markets, or demolition derbies. I could never learn soon enough about these performances, always arriving just as a lecture ended. By conducting exit interviews, however, I managed to put together fragmentary transcripts of what took place, which were so vivid that I was able to jot them down in the morning.
In a subsequent dream I read these texts back to my interviewees, who agreed that although I had failed to capture the full brilliance of the argumentation, I had at least succeeded in conveying the flavor of the insight these remarkable men brought to the problems that have puzzled and delighted physicists for so many years.
The candidates’ experiments were not a success. Both men concluded that the time was not ripe to bring these great issues before the public. Indeed, in my third and final dream I was forced to endure an interminable postelection analysis on public TV, in which the panelists concluded that by distracting the two candidates from more pressing issues, their love of quantum mechanics had contributed significantly to their defeat. I'm sure there are lessons for physicists from this cautionary tale, but I offer here only the texts of the lectures themselves, which I believe form an important chapter in the intellectual history of our times.
The first lecture
Now it's really very simple, OK? Over here's an electron, moving toward this wall, kind of like a cur dog slinking toward his kennel. Only there are two doors to the kennel, like the two doors in the wall here in Figure 1.
Now, over here on the other side of the wall's a screen. Now then, the point is, the electron ends up making a mark on the screen, kind of like a fly makes a speck on a kitchen window?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 97 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016