Where Does The Weirdness Go?: Why Quantum Mechanics Is Strange, But Not As Strange As You Think

Few revolutions in science have been more far-reaching,but less understood,than the quantum revolution in physics. Everyday experience cannot prepare us for the sub-atomic world, where quantum effects become all-important. Here, particles can look like waves, and vice versa electrons seem to lose their identity and instead take on a shifting, unpredictable appearance that depends on how they are being observed and a single photon may sometimes behave as if it could be in two places at once. In the world of quantum mechanics, uncertainty and ambiguity become not just unavoidable, but essential ingredients of science,a development so disturbing that to Einstein "it was as if God were playing dice with the universe." And there is no one better able to explain the quantum revolution as it approaches the century mark than David Lindley. He brings the quantum revolution full circle, showing how the familiar and trustworthy reality of the world around us is actually a consequence of the ineffable uncertainty of the subatomic quantum world,the world we can't see.

Table of Contents:
* Introduction Act I: Mechanical Failure * The Mystery of The Other Glove * In Which Things Are Exactly What They Are Seen To Be * Block That Metaphor! * Learning Through Repetition * Coin Tossing and Weather Forecasting * Not Just Electrons * Enter the Photon * So Photons Are Really Real, Then? * Particle or Wave? * One Photon at a Time * Learning to Live With Uncertainty * Is It or Isnt It? * Which Way Did the Photon Go? * No, but Really, What Happened? * How To Make Money From Quantum Mechanics * The importance of Being Rigorous * The Chronic Poor Health of Schrdingers Cat * Psychophysics quest ce que cest? Intermission: A Largely Philosophical Interlude * Does the Moon Really Exist? * The Fatal Blow? * A New Spin on the Puzzle * In Which Einstein is Caught in a Self-Contradiction * Whose Reality Is the Real Reality? * In Which Niels Bohr Is Obscure, Even By His Own Standards * And How Many Universities Did You Say Youd Be Needing? * Indeterminacy as Illusion * In Which Seeming Virtues Are Displayed as Faults * What Does Determinism Mean Anyway? * You Can Push it Around, but You Cant Get Rid of It Act II: Putting Reality To the Test * A New Angle on EPR * Fun With Algebra * And The Answer Is... * In Which Reality, Once Changed, Can Never Be Changed Back * The Possibility of Simultaneity * Not At All What Einstein Wanted Act III: Making Measurements * An Engineer, a Physicist, and a Philosopher... * The One True Paradox * At a Loss for Words * Can a Quantum Superposition Be Seen? * Like Peas in a Box * More than You Really Wanted to Know About Dried Peas * A Brief Digression About Time * The Defining Difference * At Last, the Quantum Cat * The Ghost of Schrdingers Cat * In Which Einsteins Moon is Restored * What Have We Learned? * The Last (or First) Mystery * Will We Ever Understand Quantum Mechanics?

About the Author :
David Lindley, formerly a theoretical astrophysicist at Cambridge University in England and the Fermi National Accelerator labouratory in Illinois, has been an editor of the journals Nature and Science and is currently Associate Editor of Science News, in Washington, D.C. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.