The essence of Quantum Mechanics

How to make sense of weird physics…

If you have ever heard about quantum mechanics, you probably have come across certain buzzwords like “entanglement”, “superposition”, “randomness”, “spooky action at a distance”, and so on. It is likely that whatever you have heard about it, be it from movies or mainstream media; is probably a wrong interpretation of fundamental concepts. For instance, I have come across a lot of rather humorous interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as “consciousness creates reality”. But I am not here to debate why such claims are built upon wrong assumptions and wrong understanding of physics. I am here to tell you what makes quantum mechanics the way it is.

There is a lot that can be explored in this realm, but in this article I would like to focus on one central concept which I think is quite important in its own right: superposition of states. Effectively what makes quantum mechanics different from classical mechanics, which is what we use in daily life and engineering (e.g. Newton’s laws, gravitation, etc.); is the fact that quantum mechanics is all about randomness and chance: things do not exist in a precise or pre-determined state, and only come into a precise state once a measurement is performed on them. By “measurement” here we mean a physical measurement, such as through the use of electronic equipment in a laboratory…