Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Spinors explained

 In quantum mechanics, spinors are the name for this "weird" effect that for certain particles, it takes two "rotations" to return to the same state.  That's because what they're measuring as a "rotation" is really the magnitude of the wave created by a rotation that they are not directly measuring.

As you rotate a circle, the sine starts at zero.  It rises to 1 at a quarter rotation, and then falls back to zero at a half rotation.  Then it drops to negative one at three-quarters rotation, and then returns to zero at one full rotation.

One rotation of a circle, but if you're measuring only the sine (because that's all your instruments will do), you saw it appear to rotate twice, in opposite directions, before returning to the same starting configuration.

Quantum behavior is not rocket science.  It's geometry and trigonometry.

The map is not the territory.  Forget this at your peril.

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