• Heydo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    3 days ago

    Oh man, one of my biggest pet peeves.

    “Observation” should really be called “interaction” when referring to quantum effects. The act of observation is actually an interaction with a quantum object that collapsed the wave to a point. We are affecting the quantum object by making a measurement, not by looking at it. If we don’t measure it the wave function doesn’t collapse until it interacts with the wall. In this case, the wall is the “observation” that causes the wave function to collapse.

    Ok, sorry for the interruption, carry on

    • betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish
      10·
      3 days ago

      Absolutely, especially those electrons in our 5 senses (retina, ear drums, and skin, nose and tongue sensors). They get all excited.

  • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
    16·
    2 days ago

    I’d like to nominate Observer Effect for the Worst and Most Confusingly Named Thing Ever award.

    Funny meme though.

      • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
        10·
        2 days ago

        To a physicist, sure. To the lay public, observe means you’re watching it. If you’re looking away, you’re not observing. When in reality, it doesn’t matter who’s looking, if the particle is interacting with other particles, it’s being “observed”.

  • rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    17·
    3 days ago

    To be fair if the only way to observe you was to smack another person into you or to electrically yank you down a strange corridor then you’d probably change your immediate behaviour.

  • taiyang@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    One of the older social psych frameworks called Social Facilitation says that when we feel watched by others, how comfortable we are with the task determines if we improve or get worse. I’m of course simplifying for Lemmy but you can look to that framework easily.

    They tested it with shoe tying vs putting on lab gear, measuring time to finish in the presence of others. Shoe tying got faster while lab gear, being unfamiliar, was slower.

    I often give a more modern but dated example as when I play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, I tend to choke, because it’s not really my genre, but of the same era I tend to show off and do better if I’m playing Metal Gear Solid 2, except the skateboard level of course.

    Edit: hell, the Wikipedia article is even pretty good at describing it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_facilitation

    • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I’ve never read through the wikipedia article, and wanted to see if it mentioned my favorite fact: cockroaches perform better when observed by other cockroaches. IT DID! So cool!

      …

      and then it said the classical psychology mood killer: no evidence found when the experiment was replicated.

      • taiyang@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Look, you could give me a multi-million dollar grant and I will wouldn’t want to work with cockroaches, lol. (But then again, that’s what grad students are for…)

        • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          For me, that’s the case with basically every animal, buuuuuuuuut… That’s what gloves and secure containers are for in lab work. I am going to bet they never had those roaches ‘free’ at any time. Having them in one secure container that is then attached to another and a panel between them removed would work fine with me.

  • betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish
    6·
    3 days ago

    I would say the overlap is actually complete, unless you have special meanings for “behaving”, “differently”, and “observed”.

    You’re made of electrons after all.

  • HenriVolney@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    I think one of the universal rules in science is that whatever you observe is going to be modified by said observation