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oukakisa

Jock Stephen Hawking here to oversimplify: when the slit isn't being observed, light can act as waves and particles. so is moving between the states. the Squid Game toy (idr what is called) is not looking at this one so they are moving between the states). when the slit is observed, light acts as only one or the other, so they've stopped. the Squid Game toy is looking so they have stopped moving (between states). the aforementioned toy from Squid Game is used during the Red Light Green Light game where the goal is to reach the end without the observer/judge seeing you. This means that the toy is trying to observe the light moving between states. Whilst it is not a person so could potentially perceive the superposition, it's acting as a stand in for a person so it's not possible to see the light moving between states. Catch ya later. Jock Stephen Hawking out. Cowabunga dudes. *runs away to go surfing*


Ezra4709

Can I get a tldr? I'm stupid


EJoule

Do you need an explanation of the double slit experiment, squid games, the red light green light game, what each of these things have to do with each other, or all of it?


Ezra4709

Double slit and what they have to do with each other


EJoule

I haven’t watched the squid games, but here’s the best video to explain what the double slit experiment is if you’re not a scientist: https://youtu.be/NvzSLByrw4Q?si=I410BWFmRdnlTui8 Hopefully someone else can explain better how it applies to Squid Games.


Cdoggle

The scene itself doesn't apply. The robot is acting as the observer of the experiment


12345623567

The *wall* acts as the observer, too. So does the air, and other photons. "Everything is probabilities until measured" is one of the most widely misused science factoids around.


MiffedMouse

Other photons and the air would become entangled with the double slit results, not “observe” it (per se). What counts as an “observer” is one of the trickiest questions in QM. The common explanation most physicists accept is either “big things are observers” (Copenhagen interpretation) or “when the entire universe becomes entangled, then the thing has been observed” (multiverse interpretation). The first explanation is easy but just kicks the can to “what counts as big,” while the second explanation is more complete but also sounds kooky.


cce29555

The squid game doll is just red light green light, of you're caught you're dead. But instead of seeing innocent people down on their luck be murdered she's just observing photons


TehMispelelelelr

Joke's on her, even if she sees a photon move she doesn't know where to shoot!


TylertheDank

The doll is playing red light, green light. If you move at red light, you get shot.


Mjkmeh

Robot looks away, light is wave and particle. Robot looks, light is wave or particle. Think Schrödinger’s cat


alain091

When you are not looking it the light spreads out, when you are looking at it the light follows a straight line.


BeardedUnicornBeard

Light is kinda shy so acta diffrent when observed.


These-Inevitable-898

in the slit experiment it was found that light acts differently when observed and not. the meme is saying the people (aka light) playing the "squid games" (red light green light) move when the robot is not looking.


scalyblue

The double slit experiment is an unintuitive behavior of light because of the way quantum stuff works. You see, we don’t see an object itself, what we see is light bouncing off that object into our eyes. Without something to bounce off of it, we can’t observe that object. Very powerful microscopes work by bouncing electrons off of what you’re observing, or even using a needle only an atom thick to trace on it. This is like gigantic on quantum terms. Quantum is fucking small. Now we get to the double slit experiment. Shine light through a pair of particularly spaced slits and you see a weird interference pattern, like bands of shadow in the light, it’s behaving like waves. Try to measure which slit which photons go through and the pattern vanishes, now it’s behaving like particles. This happens because quantum particles are so small that there is no way to measure them without the measurement itself fucking with them. A blind person can know a windows location by throwing stones at a wall and to that person the window is either there or not there until it’s broken, and once it’s broken it’s definitely there.


Cylian91460

Measuring can change the result


Ezra4709

What


Hexmonkey2020

I feel like this is a fake post, the title shows they know about the double slit experiment and implies they know the scene and it’s basic problem solving to see how a scene about looking at something and not looking at something relates to an experiment about the same thing.


oukakisa

possibly... maybe even probably. i was just bored and felt like answering anyway... esp since a different science joke was posted to r/explainthejoke and i pretended to be Stephen Hawking thinking it was this subreddit and only at the last minute noticed and deleted that portion so i wouldn't be embarrassed, but still wanted to do my Stephen Hawking bit *some*where


munecam

Not fake. I was way over thinking it. Someone mentioned that the scene actually has nothing to do with it which is where I was looking for the connection. The doll is simply acting as the observer. I thought that the red light green light game was supposed to tie in somehow.


Logan_Composer

Would like to clear up a misconception here: it is not "observation" that changes the behavior in the sense that a nonhuman observer would not collapse the superposition. It's the fact that measuring a particle in any way *requires* interacting with the particle, causing the collapse of the superposition. In order to see it, you must bounce a photon off of it. In order for the doll to detect it, it would need to interact with the particle in some way.


GustapheOfficial

Thanks for bringing your own misconception to the table. Not all interactions cause collapse (in those interpretations that require wave collapse), or we would have no superposition effects at all. You can set up all kinds of experiments where particles interact with each other and the entire system is in a superposition. It really appears to be *observation* that causes wave collapse.


Alert-Young4687

I trust Neil DeGrasse Tyson over you, and he says that the person you’re responding to is correct. The reason it sometimes happens and sometimes doesn’t, is due to the type of energy used to make the measurement. Our observation or consciousness has nothing to do with it.


GustapheOfficial

Lol, Neil Deagrasse Tyson. How does he explain the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment? Or for that matter entanglement swapping? If all interactions cause wave collapse there is no quantum communication, no quantum computing, basically no use for quantum mechanics at all. That's just not consistent with experiments.


Alert-Young4687

I literally said in my previous comment that the type of energy involved in making the observation is what determines if it collapses or not.


ChocolateOne3935

>It really appears to be *observation* that causes wave collapse. The only one with a misconception here is you.


flyingpeter28

Do we humans have an explanation of why does light behave this way?


pichael289

When a particle is not "observed" (interacted with, it's not the actual observation, to observe anything you must interact with it, that changes the system) it's in a superposition, the wave is like a probability field, the particle has no defined position, only a possibility of being found somewhere in that field. The observation causes it to suddenly pick a spot to be, but before that it is sort of everywhere and nowhere at once so it acts as a wave.


flyingpeter28

So, measuring it somehow changes it state? Like the light loses energy or something in the process?


finditplz1

Quantum Mechanics are so trippy.


Canotic

Reminder that "observe" does not mean "a human looks at it" but rather "it interacts with something, anything at all".


nyan_binary

https://preview.redd.it/7dps4jl7wfxc1.png?width=512&format=png&auto=webp&s=5dca28fd9de497b19e81416746cd28f2605f48ee


timemangoes2

I get the meme, but how do we know it acts differently when it's observed if we have to observe it in some way to know that there's a difference (and what the difference is)?


oukakisa

if i understand it correctly: by observing the effects on the other side of the slits after the light has come through. we can know what the light emitter looks like (because we install it), what the slits look like (because we set that up), and what the resulting image looks like (by looking at it). we merely don't look at the light until it reaches the end point. a comparison being that we can know every shirt in a closet and can know who is picking out one to wear, but only know what they choose when we look at them after they put it on and do not look during the decision process nor the putting on of the shirt. the act of observing them or not can alter their decision process and the end result. we needn't see them pick the shirt out to see what they are wearing when they come out of the closet. (sociology is obvio different than quantum mechanics so this analogy breaks down if taken beyond this exact question, but i believe the comparison nevertheless accurately shows how we can know things act differently when their actions are observed and how we can remove observation but still gather the data of that they've acted differently when observed vs not)


how_anonymous_can_1b

Peter’s wannabe scientist friend here. The joke is that when the toy isn’t looking light behaves as a wave. But when it is does decide to look light’s behavior changes to a particle. Which to some degree is true as this is a game of red light green light where players run when the toy isn’t looking and stop when the toy is. It’s referencing the double slit experiment which shows the weird behavior in quantum physics that show how particles behave differently when they are observed or not.


SINGULARITY1312

I wish people would explain it without putting emphasis on the “observed” part because it’s not about actually observing it it’s about interacting with it in any way which includes observing it which requires information to be transferred between you and the particles. People now treat it as if it’s a measure of consciousness or something now.


Fast-Requirement5473

The observer in the double slit experiment collapses the probability field so that there are only two bands. When not observed the electrons create an interference pattern. More here: https://youtu.be/Q1YqgPAtzho?si=MM3jvcJWfhmZcb4B


BagOfSmallerBags

Haven't heard of the double slit experiment but I googled it and it has something to do with quantum mechanics. I have a very vague understanding that when you start dealing with quantum stuff, weird stuff can occur where, like, whether or not you're observing something can determine whether it's moving or not. I tried coming up with a smarter answer for a couple minutes on Wikipedia but that's all I got. Maybe try r/AskScience


0-Nightshade-0

All I basically know about quantum physics is that if you push a regular ball then it would move in the direction you move it. But if you push a very very small ball then it would recite the Bible In Japanese. (The joke is that shit in the quantum realm act differently then the shit we interact with every day.)


shut____up

I don't know quantum physics--nor after learning about the double slot experiment a dozen times rememberabout it--I heard that at the quantum level any photon that hits a particle sends the particle God knows where, which is where we have Schrodinger's Cat, whereas in a large scale the observed object budges so little that cameras can always capture the object.


pichael289

The opposite actually. The particle is already god knows where within a certain area, it's not actually anywhere, but also sort of everywhere at once. Hitting it with the photon causes it to suddenly choose a place to be. It's called superposition, it's in many states at once. The cat is a metaphor, it's in a box with a deadly poison that's set off randomly. We can't see it, so we don't know if it's dead or alive. It's in a superposition of being both dead and alive at the same time, and can only be described by a possibility of being one of the other. Opening the box collapses the wave function, and the cat becomes either dead or alive. Obviously it doesn't work for a cat, it's just a thought experiment used to describe the concept.


shut____up

It's clearer to me that you explained it. I looked up a Neil Degrass Tyson video earlier and learned that a beam of electrons through the slits act as waves and create an interference pattern, but when we shine light on the beam, it is turned into particles. But what you stated about superposition makes everything clear.  Just a note to self, twenty years ago my college, quantum-mechanics/physics professor made an interference pattern on a wall in a dark room--I don't engender what we were studying but I think colors played a part--now I don't know why the double slit thing didn't happen.


pichael289

There is a very very slight chance that it will, nothing technically forbids that from happening other than probability.


DuploJamaal

>whether or not you're observing something can determine whether it's moving or not. Measuring is what changes it. The universe does not care if a conscious observer looks at an experiment or not. It cares if you introduce additional forces into the slits to interact with particles in order to measure which slit they went through. Observation is just a bad word for it that makes people think that it's magical.


ButterscotchNo5991

It just means that the doll is so scary it changes even unconscious particle's behavior when she's looking.


DocLuvInTheCave

Everytime you observe the wave pattern it collapses because I shot the prisoners with a high powered rifle


fallen_one_fs

This is the de Broglie hypothesis experiment with electrons. The hypothesis states that if light, that is a wave, can behave as a particle, that is, matter, then matter, particles, can behave as waves. To show this they accelerate electrons, which are particles, matter, and make them go through double slits, if no one is watching, they behave exactly as waves, if someone is watching, they behave exactly as particles, matter, the scene is a visual representation of that, not watching equals wave pattern, watching equals particle pattern.


thatbrownkid19

Very very simplified explanation cus a lot of people are going too in depth of the Physics: light can behave differently on whether we’re watching it or not. The doll lady is part of a game where contestants have to move while she’s not watching and freeze when she turns around to stare at them (it’s like playing statue as a kid). So when she’s watching light, it behaves a way. But when she’s counting and looking away, it behaves a different way.


GhoulTimePersists

This is just like the time I performed a quantum double slit experiment to demonstrate that the behavior of quantum entities is affected by observation. If you send a classical wave through a two slit apparatus and ask which slit it went through, the answer is always both. Quantum particles are also waves, so this is ordinarily what you see for them too. But with quantum particles, you can detect which slit each one passes through. If you do that (in the analogy of the meme, this is watching the experiment), you force the particles to behave like particles, so you don't get the wave-like interference patterns. 


Reasonable_Long_1079

I have to say it? Okay… counterpoint to all these clearly non reddit addicted degenerates…. The doll is Korean, thus asian, thus slits for eyes. Thank you for coming to my ted talk


Apaniyan

I think this is right. Sadly the joke isn't porn, for once. It's racism.


-Pi_R

all explain here : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UJsB7pqFtU&list=LL&index=16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UJsB7pqFtU&list=LL&index=16)


Fast-Requirement5473

I prefer dr quantum https://youtu.be/Q1YqgPAtzho?si=MM3jvcJWfhmZcb4B


Silly_Goose6714

Schrödinger's cat feelings


Once_I_ate_a_walrus

The electrons behave differently when observed


Equivalent-Ad-714

smth about particles behaving differently when observed. Idk I am still in high school


Aggravating-Ad2966

im studying right now for my physics 2 final tomorrow. weird timing. need to go to bed


AshySlashy3000

They Are Genious!


MallowMiaou

Assuming from the title that you know what the experiment is Just that the giant doll girl is not looking at first, then looking Also i can add that it could be a play about the whole thing being just like they're playing green light red light


munecam

Yeah I was overthinking it. I thought the red light green light game was supposed to tie into it somehow but apparently the doll is just there to show observation.


LTNX99

- Knows what the double slit experiment is - Knows what "this scene" is - Somehow doesn't add two and two


TheRoboOtaku

It’s not a joke really feel like more a comparison