Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> For example, there's no known mathematical model to indicate where a 
>> specific electron is, and indeed if I understand correctly, experiments 
>> show there cannot be one.
> 
>   That's a bit like being in the middle of the ocean and saying "there's
> no mathematical model which says where the water is", speaking as if the
> "water" was a point in space and you'd had to locate it at some specific
> coordinates.
> 
>   Your statement is like that. You are starting from the assumption that
> an electron is an extremely small particle with well-defined boundaries,
> approximately equal to a mathematical point, and then you ask for a
> mathematical model to say where that point is in space. As with the
> water example, that's kind of silly.

I guess I was kind of sloppy. I was saying that there's no mathematical 
model that tells you where you will find a specific electron when you 
look for it in a set of places. E.g., if you shoot an electron at a 
flourescent screen, there's no model (and *can* be no model) that tells 
you where on the screen that electron will hit.

>   What the mathematical model *can* do is to give a distribution function
> which tells how the electron is distributed in space (a bit like a
> function which tells how the water is distributed, except that with
> the electron the "density" of the "water" is not constant).

No, actually, it tells you the likelihood of finding it at any 
particular place, were you to look.

There's another distribution function that tells you the likelihood it's 
in a particular place if you *don't* look.

When you put those two together, you get the two-slit experiment.

>   It's not like you could shoot an electron to some direction, and then
> the electron suddenly hits the other side of the Earth (or the solar
> system). It hits a quite accurately calculable place.

No, it doesn't. The probability of hitting anywhere in particular is an 
infinite sum of complex (as in, real+imaginary) probabilities.

Yes, it can actually hit the other side of the Earth. It can also hit a 
week before you shoot it. Very unlikely, but possible.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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