Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum Acceptance of QM results

It's funny when you deal with QM how certain areas are slow to accept and deal with proven realities.

I laughed when I saw this article published in the chemistry section of phys org.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-weird-world-weirder-anomaly.html

Why laugh ... well its 2011.

QM made the prediction and tested it in 1999
(http://polymer.bu.edu/hes/articles/ms99.pdf)

I guess you could argue the original work was microsized QM and it may have been true at large scales but thats splitting hairs.

Thats 12 years to accept so at that rate it will be about another 5 or 6 before chemistry accepts there are more than 3 states of matter.

Go on! accept your own invitation: tell us how many states of matter there are.

I think the alchemists would have laughed at others who did not follow alchemy. Anyway, alchemy proved one thing. Ultimately, the experiments done in the field of QM will definitely prove something. The only question is: Who will laugh at the end?

Well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter) has got tricky the refer to the 3 chemistry states gas,liquid, solid as classical states.

If I counted correct they list 17 non classical and I can think of a couple of weird ones they didn't list like suprconductivity states.

But some of these get weird because they are only human made QM ones like when they hollow out the electron shells using hard x-rays (http://www.physorg.com/news197123979.html).

So I am guessing 20-30 by end of it all .. bags not teaching it to students, 3 was so much easier :-)

When we get time someone is going to have to work out how to put a nice story together everyone is to busy doing at the moment.

"So I am guessing 20-30 by end of it all .. bags not teaching it to students, 3 was so much easier".

Here I think 'old is gold'. Somebody has said that 'the simplest explanation is likely to be the most appropriate one'; I just don't remember who said that. I think the universe is always 'a system of masses of atoms', as at present. Everything is just atoms packed together; just a very small amount of matter remains as radiations and other particles. Even in the so-called plasma state, hydrogen can exist as atoms; ie, it is possible to propose a suitable model of packing for hydrogen atoms.

If it wasn't William of Ockham, it must have been one of his fan club, but I guess most of us are members of that, so the field is wide open.

Yes, I have heard it in connection with Ockham. An aesthetically beautiful statement, and I believe in it.

What William of Ockham probably said was “Numquam, sine necessitate, pluralitas ponenda sit.” Never let multiples be proposed without necessity; but I think there is a suspicion that this is just someone else’s summary of the general flavour of his work.

It means, I think, 'do not unnecessarily make things complex'. But complexity has a deceptive beauty. And there can be rhetoric regarding the beauty of the complex concept, and unbelievers will be asked to prove it wrong. However, being complex, it will be very difficult to point out where exactly are the black-marks. But with simple concepts, you will be caught red-handed even if there is only a slight tinge of black. Therefore, I think the theories in physics should be simple and devoid of complex mathematics.

The point you are all missing is the states are neccessary because your so called states are supposed to have characteristics.

Glass was the only one historically that presented a problem. I don't know about you but I was taught it was a supercooled liquid and countless other explainations.

There was a push in the 90's to stop the deception I found an old link to the argument from physics FAQ.
http://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physics/General/Glass/glass.html

QM comes along and gives you a pile of new materials and conditions which if you put matter in, break the usual classifications of your classic states.

So what are you going to do now append miles of conditions and if statements into you states of matter just so you can keep 3, thats harder than teaching 17.

There are reasons for the need for the 17 states it's based on classification and what behaviour you expect lets get serious the differences between the states is not minor or semantics.

So give me your states of matter and the logic behind the simplifications?

Edit: I posted earlier in the day but phsyics org just put up a new article that made me chuckle (http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-pair-hydrogen-metal.html).

Unverified yet so be skeptical but that would be a new state they are calling superfluid2 :-)

"So give me your states of matter and the logic behind the simplifications?"

'Hydrogen showing conductivity' - certainly an interesting article, but definitely not any new state of hydrogen. For example, take the case of carbon. Diamond and graphite are solids, but the former is a non conductor and the latter is a conductor. In a way it can be regarded as two different states. However, it is not regarded as different states of matter. Here also, the difference is the same. I do not know why 'hydrogen that can conduct' should be regarded as any new state of matter.

The classification of states as solid, liquid and gas indicates the mobility of atoms. This involves the energy possessed by each atom, and the interactions between the atoms. The gravitational interaction is always attractive. The electromagnetic interactions are both attractive and repulsive. The energy possessed acts as repulsive pseudo force. IMO, the position of atoms will be such that attractive and repulsive are balanced. Thus, depending upon the nature of atoms, and their relative position in a mass like earth, the atoms in the given sample will remain at different distances and have different mobility. Depending on that it is broadly classified as solid, liquid, or gas. Sometimes the arrangement of atoms may result in some properties that are considered to be exotic. The properties exhibited by doped semiconductors were once exotic, but not now. So what I say is that such exotic properties need not be due to exotic states. Or (IMO)exotic states are just figments of imagination.

Millions of school kids in the civilized world will probably seen this experiment

http://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/ooze.html
http://www.planetseed.com/node/19129

There are even exotic chemical commercial versions.

Try making some at home yourself ... is it a solid or liquid ... it's pretty hard to say they are figments of imagination when you are holding and playing with them?

With the advent of meta-materials science many of these weird exotic states are going to come out of the laboratory to a home near you.

Like glass they are enigmas

Edit: A thought occurred to me Finiter there is some merit in your simplicity if we talk about states of matter only for pure atom substances. Once you allow us to mix stuff atoms we can do weird stuff .... can you do it with only pure atoms. Let me go research that.

From your initial post I thought you were referring to some weird QM states of matter, when it will be not in the form of atoms. However, going through the links provided, I could find no mention of any QM effects. Anyway, I thought that there would be some relation mentioned therein which I simply missed due to the quick reference that I made.

But now it became clear that you referred to systems containing atoms (showing weirdness). This has nothing to do with QM. 'Solid- liquid- gas' classification is not concrete, it is rather continuous, and there can be intermediate states that someone may choose to call 'weird'. Science reporters may sensationalize such findings as weird or exotic or new states. But is it right to call them different states of matter?

The plasma state is regarded as an ionized state or fourth state of matter. However, IMO, hydrogen in the interior of stars is in a solid state, packed exactly in a lattice form, and hence plasma state is a temporary phenomenon and need not be regarded as a separate state.

Metamaterials are most definitely QM.

And yes most non-newtonian fluids are caused by QM effects :-)

This is one of the things I think you are struggling with you perceive QM as something that exists only at an atom level it exists way beyond that right up to large visible macroscopic sizes.

We measure and have to use QM to account for behaviour of all sorts of large molecules like plant photosynthesis and the folding and replication of our own DNA.

This is your problem without QM half of the recent developments in chemicals, drugs and materials don't work if you don't use it.

The GPS network, most modern electronics including the computer you are typing on have to take it into account to have been manufactured and need to account for it to work.

What you are saying is almost everything in your life right now needed QM calculations or they don't work but QM doesn't exist we just got lucky thousands of times I guess.

For someone who is clearly not stupid you must realize how utterly crazy that behaviour is and I for the life of me can't see why QM frightens you so much ... is ther such thing as QMPhobia :-)

http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications/1/10_36_cl.pdf

"Initial results suggest that the use of the metaphor, together with other design features of the course, contributed to reduced ‘quantophobia’ and increased confidence with quantitative work."

Look at finiters answer above if the effect wasn't caused by QM it was ok but if it was then it's not okay ... I would say that definitely qualifies as quantophobia because it makes no sense.

I agree. I am saying the same thing: The QM calculations work (because they are based on probability equations that cannot go wrong); but QM is wrong (because the basic concept of instant-duality is wrong).

Why does a QM equation work at the level of particles / atoms? Because the physical rules are deterministic and not probabilistic at the 'very fundamental' level. Without any deterministic basic laws, the probabilistic calculations will not work. So I genuinely doubt the concept of QM.

To make my view clear I will give an example: Consider the case of dice throwing. We can mathematically calculate the probability and the experimental results will agree with it. Why? Because the dice is a perfect cube. If every time we through the dice, the dice alters it shape slightly at random (without our knowledge), you will never get a clear experimental result. So I would say that only basically deterministic laws can produce statistically measurable results.

The whole of my theory (The Finiteness theory) is based on quantum or quantized entities. The fundamental particle of matter is the basic quantum of matter. 'How these can integrate step by step into the universe and how the process is deterministic' is the subject of my theory. The physical structure of a 'quantum of radiation' has also been proposed in my theory. Thus the 'quantum concept' is the very essence of my theory (maybe quantomania).

The term 'quantum mechanics' is misleading to some extent; it is actually 'probability mechanics'.

You are typing on computer with probably an Intel processor in it.

To design that processor on 40nm or 32nm wafers Intel had to deal with that duality issue that frightens you

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/40nm-gate-sb-p-channel-guide.html

Do you think they just guessed the answer?

Almost every new high speed electronic equipment has to take that scary effect into account.

The next generation of processors in the 10Ghz range will not only need to take the effect in account they will be using it in the transistors.

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/06/2nm-quantum-transistors-are-the-worlds-smallest/


Do you understand the joke here ... you are typing messages into the internet built on and using an effect you don't believe is real :-)