If every time we collapse the wave function of an electron and know for a fact where the little bastard is, how did we come up with the idea of a probability wave in the first place?

If every time we collapse the wave function of an electron and know for a fact where the little bastard is, how did we come up with the idea of a probability wave in the first place?

 

Sorry I don't have a proper answer, but I just had to comment on how much that made me laugh!

 

Thanks!

If every time we collapse the wave function of an electron and know for a fact where the little bastard is, how did we come up with the idea of a probability wave in the first place?

 

It was Max Born's idea. Schrodinger thought that psi was connected to energy density, but Max Born suggested that psi times the complex conjugate of psi represented the probability that the electron would be in some region of space about the proton of a hydrogen atom.

 

Regards

 

Here is a link to Born's probability wave

I read that Afshar's experiment disproved Bohr's Principle of Complementarity. This lends support to the Transactional interpretation.

If every time we collapse the wave function of an electron and know for a fact where the little bastard is, how did we come up with the idea of a probability wave in the first place?

 

When the probability waves aren't collapsed they can interfere with each other, as evidenced by the infamous double slit experiment...

Yes, but the double slit experiment worked only with photons, but with electrons, the moment we turn on a detecting device, it behaves like we assumed it would (no interference). We've never actually seen electrons interferring with each other, because when we turn on the detector, they don't anymore, and since we can't prove they do, why do they do what they do?

Yes, but the double slit experiment worked only with photons, but with electrons, the moment we turn on a detecting device, it behaves like we assumed it would (no interference). We've never actually seen electrons interferring with each other, because when we turn on the detector, they don't anymore, and since we can't prove they do, why do they do what they do?

 

Reference?

 

I've seen electron diffraction off of crystals. I worked on an atom interferometer in grad school (didn't finish it, though. I built that slow atom source for it), and know several people who have done experiments with interfering atoms.

 

You destroy the interference pattern if you know which slit it went through, not merely when you detect them.

Yes, but the double slit experiment worked only with photons, but with electrons, the moment we turn on a detecting device, it behaves like we assumed it would (no interference). We've never actually seen electrons interferring with each other[/b'], because when we turn on the detector, they don't anymore, and since we can't prove they do, why do they do what they do?

 

When you turn on a detecting device the interference pattern disappears, whether it's electrons or photons etc.

 

I think they all "self interfere", the different probabilities of the individual probability wave interfering, and not "with each other", but I am not sure.