Quantum Mechanics

I'm honestly pretty confused by quantum mechanics, or at least what we have seen of it so far. It's really hard to believe that something (such as light) can actually choose the state it's in when measured. From what it seems, it's all about probability and you can never be sure what something is unless you are not observing it, which is impossible. According to the How Stuff Works video, Heisenberg said, "We may never know what is real." Many of the ideas mentioned, such as Schrodinger's cat and true reality almost seem philosophical.

In a book I am reading currently in English, I'm learning about philosophy and I just noticed a distinct parallel between what we learned and Plato's philosophy of an "eternal form" or "idea". To apply his philosophy, he would think that there is a perfect model of an atom somewhere, but it is impossible for a person to actually find, so we must get the idea of the perfect model by looking at imperfect examples. If this is kind of what is going on, that definitely helps me grasp the idea a little more.

Did you know?

Wow, that was an incredible video. I definitely think it accomplishes a number of things with it's information, inducing awe, realization and even fear. Some of the information makes me think, wow, look at how far we've come, such as the fact about the New York Times and the one about the future jobs kids are preparing for that don't exist yet. How great the human race must be, to have uncovered so much information about the world around us, and to be on a track to discover even more! We must really be awesome.

However, the video also asks the question, how much of this information and technology is being put to good use? Yes, the Internet can be an informational "super highway", but as you can see, it is commonly used for things like social networking websites, texting, and dating sites. Facebook and MySpace are ridiculously popular, and connect over 200 million people; unfortunately, most of those "connections" are through "heyyy bAbe!!!"'s and "jk-lol-rofl"'s and not intellectual advancement or knowledge. Even criminal activity can occur online, in the case of illegal downloading, which has brought a huge decrease in album profits for recording artists. We have so much technology, and for most people, it's put to aWeSomeee! use in our social lives and iPods.

Finally, the video actually strikes me with fear and worry for our future. First of all, the problem of overpopulation stood out to me, and the sheer magnitude of the global population really hit me in the quotes about being "one in a million" in China, the kids in India, and the babies born while the video was watched. Also, the facts about the online-dating-induced marriages and the number of internet devices show how much the internet has infiltrated our daily lives. Also, I am genuinely terrified by the idea of a supercomputer that exceeds the computational abilities of the entire human species; it sounds like the premise of a sci-fi horror movie. This was a really amazing video, even though it brought me through a spectrum of emotion and did not really make me think of any of my classes at GBN in particular.

Oh boy! this is my new blog. yay chemistry!