873
Gottem
(mander.xyz)
I have to comment this every time people post it, because they don't actually understand it. They only understand the mystical view of quantum mechanics, which isn't real.
Observation, in the case of this experiment, has nothing to do with humans looking at it. It has to do with the particle/wave interacting with something, which causes the waveform to collapse into a single particle. The reason this happens is because any interaction requires the information to be known, so it can't be wave-like anymore. It has nothing to do with consciousness or anything like that. It only has to do with an interaction that requires information to be discrete.
People keep explaining like it's a huge surprise.
I think I am technically a physicist so this could be a case of xkcd 2501 but it seems obvious enough.
Surely nobody actually believes that is how it works. I think I understood it that way and was mind blown for like 5min before being sceptical and asking for clarification and still being mind blown by how it was actually meant. I was a child when that happened.
All the adults I've spoken to about it learned about it school and understood straight away. That is of course completely biased though.
There are entire new age movements based on the misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.
Off the top of my head: "What the Bleep do we Know?" and "The Secret" are two that come to mind.
Not sure how popular they are these days, but they were huge in the 00s-10s
It's probably (hopefully) not a majority, but a disturbing number of people really do believe it works like that. I've once had someone, whose intelligence I used to respect, calmly explain to me that telekinesis is possible because "QM proves that the mind can influence matter".
I wouldn't be so sure. There's a disturbingly high amount of people (including adults) out there who take Schrödinger's cat literally.
A lot of people do believe it unfortunately.
I may not have been paying attention in school. Once adult, I read about it but wondered what it means "when observed". Couldn't find anywherw that explained it clearly. Figured it was surely related to a physical process necessary to get signals, but I couldn't know what exactly. Now, I know.
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Yeah its about quantum systems interacting, not sentient beings watching.
still pretty mystical though in my book!
Is the thing you’re indicating that it’s interacting with was the slits ?
Or are you referring to something else?
Can you explain further?
No, not the slits. How the "observation" is done is you measure what goes through the slit with a detector just on the other side. The detector has to interact with the photons, so it collapses the waveform, making it behave like a particle, only passing through one slit. If you remove the detector then it has wave-like behavior, as the waveform only collapses once it hits the surface on the far end.
The waveform collapses any time it interacts with something. The experiment just takes advantage of this by making it collapse in a way that creates a different result than if we don't collapse it until later, where the waves can interact.
Ok so technically there are 2 to 3 ways it’s interacting to dissolve here?
1 - the slits 2 - the surface at the far end on which the particles land 3 - whatever method is being used to read it on the other side of the slits?
Just clarifying as the experiment has more than one interaction so when you said interaction I need to clarify which interaction.
Yes, that's correct! Interacting with the barrier that creates the slits we don't care about, but yes, that collapses it too.
Interacting with the surface we're measuring in all the experiments. It doesn't change, so it shouldn't be effecting the results. It does collapse the waveform though, which is how we measure it.
Detecting it at the slit is the part that changes. If we don't do this, we get wave-like behavior, because there's no interaction until it hits the surface at the end. The wave can pass through both slits without any interaction. If we put in a detector, then it must interact with that to pass through, so it collapses the waveform and behaves like a particle at that point. This means it must be at one slit or the other, and not both.
Interacting with the barrier that creates the slits we don't care about, but yes, that collapses it too.
Ok, I see you're ignorant actually. Interactions do not lead to the collapse, they are intrinsic part of quantum fields. Collapse happens when you step out of quantum picture with (mostly)linear equations and try to project the calculations onto the "classical picture", whatever your cult of choice explains how that's actually happening.
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What are the ‘detectors’ that were used?
(Looking at the image up there they have bars placed on the facing side of the slits there, is that the detector they were referring to when they said ‘monitoring’ it in this case?)
Well but this meme is accurate because it said monitoring the situation. So when you start monitoring which slit the particle goes through, you changed the outcome.
It is. I just always feel the need to comment this on these posts because the mystical understanding annoys me, and is surprisingly common. This meme doesn't do that exactly, and it even has an accurate experiment setup.
Maybe they shouldn't have been refering to it as OBSERVATION then poindexters, don't get mad when you confuse the laymen and he get annoyed.
For real, the amount of "smart" people saying this actually had an effect via human sight had me not understand how this shit worked for years cuz that made absolutely no sense, as it turned out all those 'smart' people turned out to just be parrots not understanding wtf they're talking about.
I totally agree. "Observe" was a bad choice of words, but it stuck. It should have been "interacted with", or "measured", or something like that.
BTW, before a detector aparatus can be created, many physics results were (are?) identified through observation, which might include a measurement or might be qualitative.
Sincerely yes, we can just stop saying observation and start saying interaction or something else less confusing
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This is /c/science_memes, not /c/exactly_correct_science_memes
I'm aware. I just hate the mystical way things like this are treated, and there's a lot of uninformed people. I don't care that the meme is wrong. I care that people believe that the experiment says something other than what it says, which is already really cool.
Went here to write this
If only helicopter parents understood the basics of the double slit experiment!
I'm afraid a significant number of them does but prefer the second one. It's easier to predict and less chaotic
Not just the double-slit for quantum mechanics, but it applies to people too. In a workplace, the second you start evaluating performance based on a metric, it ceases to be a useful metric. Why? Because people will shit the bed willingly in every other aspect of their job if it makes the number their boss looks at better. At that point, "highest performers" are really just the best bullshitters who can fake short-term benefits in lieu of long-term solutions, and all of them just make things worse overall.
What’s that weird site where you have to first read the quote below the reply on top?
Xitter
Was it always like this or only since Yilong Ma took over? How ppl are using this shit beats me.
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Yeah but it only works at the subatomic level.
Actually, they managed to see the effect with a 114 atoms molecules
There are no particles, there are only waves
Macrodoses LSD to make it also work with baseballs
Run into a wall fast enough and you can phase through it!!
What if I only get to one of the air pockets in the wall material
This only works with brick walls, not drywall.
I actually think you have to go so slow that your (probable) position extends to the other side of the wall. Unfortunately speeds that slow are incompatible with (the processes of) life.
This is just plain false.
There is no theoretical size limit to unobserved quantum systems, although it is practically hard to achieve large ones.
the largest ones we've managed are over 100 atoms. https://www.livescience.com/19268-quantum-double-slit-experiment-largest-molecules.html
Not necessarily. There was a dude who was studying some plant and was measuring their leaves, and discovered that touching them to measure them stunted their growth. It confused him a lot at first.
I think the plant was mimosa pudica, but I will double check the story when I have had some sleep. I just wanted to add this briefly because it's a very funny story. The dude was super confused when it happened, because I think that science didn't realise the extent to which plants could detect and respond to touch at that time
This has absolutely nothing to do with the meme apart from similar wording. The underlying mechanisms are completely different
Judging from the name of the plant alone, it's just one of these plants where the leaves somehow retract in reaction to some stimuli, right ?
It's in the same genus as species who show this behavior, yes. Not sure if this specific species does it though. In any case, even with non-retracting species the interaction is between plant and observing human. In the meme it is just between particles and their environment in general, not related to an observer.
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"A watched pot never boils." 😤
Nope, the Aussies quantum entangled whole atoms, and were able to do a Bell test on objects with rest mass. It's news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp9n5QwVgu4
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this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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