4 ms·
> I wonder if schoolchildren in 100 years from now will find quantum mechanics and instantaneous transportation similarly rudimentary and easy to understand. P
by Osmium 14y ago
> I wonder if schoolchildren in 100 years from now will find quantum mechanics and instantaneous transportation similarly rudimentary and easy to understand.
Possibly, but I doubt they'll ever find it intuitive. The fact is, we build up our intuition on the "macroscopic" scale, and that just doesn't apply at the quantum scale. So there'll always be a level of weirdness when you learn about it for the first time regardless of how much further our theories advance beyond what we know now.
- Someone 14y agoI do not think the current teleportation is instantaneous, as that would require baffling the intuition of even the physicists that think about teleportation every day. Also: IF (write that in large font, bold, in capitals) teleportation at macroscopic scales becomes common, say with schoolchildren going to a disco on The moon or on Mars every weekend, they will rapidly build up their intuition around such things, just like the current generation is quite used to "going to Madrid/New York for a weekend".
- jere 14y agoThis is a good point. Newtonian mechanics is fairly simple to understand because it operates at scales and velocities we are familiar with. Hell, I'd say you can grok a lot of it by throwing stuff in the air and thinking carefully about what happens. On the other hand, I'm reminded of the following lecture by Brian Cox. He explains the double-slit experiment, draws things on a board, shows a really nice physical demonstration with water, and.... the person on stage is still completely lost: http://youtu.be/PaGwpbHJWGE?t=1m54s http://youtu.be/PaGwpbHJWGE?t=1m54s I'm not sure how much better that could possibly be explained.