Wavefunction collapse at the Noches de los (muy jovenes) Investigadores (2016)

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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-2.jpg|The team: Erwin Sanchez, the know-it-all, Elena as heself, and Isaac the unconvinced, inquisitive classical mind.
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-2.jpg|The team: Erwin Sánchez, the know-it-all, Elena as heself, and Isaac Lòpez the unconvinced, inquisitive classical mind.
 
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-1.jpg|Ready to explain what is a wavefunction and how it collapses.
 
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-1.jpg|Ready to explain what is a wavefunction and how it collapses.
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-3.jpg|It deals with light as color corpuscules so Isaac was happy about that.
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-3.jpg|It deals with light as color corpuscules so Isaac L. was happy about that.
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-5.jpg|Erwin explain
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-6.jpg|Elena formulating the problem.
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-5.jpg|Erwin S. explaining the superposition.
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-15.jpg|Isaac L. presenting his point of view.
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-4.jpg|Julia attentive to the public's reactions.
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-16.jpg|The public was called to participate and to "make a measurement".
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-7.jpg|Also the theory was important.
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-8.jpg|The "show" was repeated over and over the whole evening, for an audience of about this size each time.
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-9.jpg|The moment of truth: observing the system...
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-12.jpg
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-10.jpg|And collapsing!
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-13.jpg
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-11.jpg|This time the measurement turned out to be a green balloon.
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-14.jpg
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-12.jpg|Discussions on the interpretation... the classical world is not too happy about that.
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-15.jpg
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-13.jpg|At any level of discussion, quantum mechanics involves some handwaving arguments at some point...
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-16.jpg
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-17.jpg|Summarizing the theory.
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-17.jpg
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-14.jpg|Now trying to convince the public!
File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-18.jpg
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File:NochesInvestigadores-Madrid-2016-18.jpg|Not everybody buys quantum jumps so easily, and the state was not even entangled! Maybe next year.
 
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{{wl-publish: 2016-10-12 14:40:09 -0400 | Laussy }}

Revision as of 18:40, 12 October 2016

This year's European Research Night in Madrid (see [3]) was oriented to the very young public (at least this how the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid understood it, see [4]).

Our group, that is generously funded by the EU, participated this year again to this event (see here for our last year's input), this time with Elena, Carlos & Camilo impersonated herself, Schrödinger & Newton, respectively, to explain the wavefunction collapse.

Explaining such a concept that is still not very well understood by the most experts in the field, to young people is a real challenge. This was brilliantly tackled with things that really collapsed when probed hard enough: balloons.

This is a gallery of the event.