Thursday, March 18, 2010

How Would You Know?

I'm looking over some PDFs for a chemistry solutions book, and one of the solutions says:
When a particle is absolutely small it means that you cannot observe it without disturbing it.
When you observe the particle, it behaves differently than when you do not observe it.

How can they possibly know how it behaves when it's NOT observed, since knowing the answer to that would require that you observed something in the first place?! I know there is some scientific rationalization for things that are "not observed" but my Left Brain is going, "Wait... WHAT?!" and threatening to go all Blue Screen of Death* on me.
(Yes, you're right, my brain actually runs on Apple, but if it crashes I blame Microsloth like any other Mac Fanatic. :)
*Credit for BSOD graphic goes to Tully.

3 comments:

wylde otse said...

good point. many pontifications of science have been discarded or revised.

Unknown said...

Ah the old 'if a tree falls...' argument rearing its ugly head again. This is exactly why I pay less mind to science, its too scientific ;-)

draagonfly said...

I've always found science to be astounding but you do have to take it with a grain of Earthly salt. :)