Quantum Waves and Bicycles

Visualize the person moving with a mounted camera following the bicycle race as a wave of riders move along the road. At one juncture, a single rider turns his head to look and smile into the moving camera. As he turns, he slightly loses balance and gently bumps into another rider in the packed bunch of racers.

The interaction is slow at first yet predictable as more of the riders become out of synch with the rapidly moving mass of spinning wheels and physical bodies. Almost, as if pulling of a loose string as it tightens and becomes taut, the result follows a pattern, as the mass of riders gradually fall out of the synchronized paths that each rider follows in the tightly packed assemblage.

Within a few moments, dozens of riders spill to the ground, as others maneuver around the falling mass of tangled wheels, legs, helmets, and bodies.

It’s an actual wave of events. Reminds me of ocean waves, made up of individual droplets that behave in similar manner. Waves coming towards shore unimpeded, fall upon the sand in a predictable manner. However, place an object or boat or other large something in the flow path and the outcome changes.

In the above example, the observer affects the observed. However, this was not a necessary outcome. Often riders ignore the parallel moving observer’s camera. In fact, in most similar instances, the above does not occur. Movie tracts, Olympic races, other sports events, are usually conducted without incident.

In this example, the observer does happen to affect the observed. Yet this could go either way.

So as I understand Quantum Mechanics, we cannot simultaneously track location and velocity with very small micro, sub atomic elements. This allows the notion of randomness and non predictable events.

In the above example of bicycle racers, let’s suppose a gigantic air craft suddenly towers over them. Pretty easy to see how this could well affect the group with a loud, overbearing, foreboding mass, hovering above them.

A large observer thus would seem to necessarily affect a very small observed mass due to physical traits of the relationship. Within a quantum environment, that difference is quite pronounced.

Let’s try to conceptualize the difference in mass. For example: a millimeter is about 1/25 of an inch wide. A human hair is about 1/10 of a millimeter wide.  An atom is about 1/7,000,000 of a millimeter. So then, you could fit approximately 390 billion carbon atoms on the tip (cross section area) of a human hair.

We can pretty much determine the speed and location of the bicycle group of the individual rider because we’re all about the same size.

Would it be even theoretical conceivable to construct a device that could do the same calculation between us and a carbon atom. Kinda doubt it.

It’s really like a different dimension, another realm, another galaxy. What all this means, and why even discuss it, I’m not even sure.

In terms of classical physics, when an object gets dropped, gravity pulls it down. In terms of quantum theory, when an object gets dropped, we can’t be certain of the outcome. But then again, in the quantum world we’re dealing with objects we can’t even see. Sounds kinda odd. Oh well, just live with it.

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