We can't say, in any satisfying way. The mathematics is uncontroversial, but all of the simple natural-language explanations fail under scrutiny.
Where is the electron in the double slit experiment? Is it a particle or a wave?
Similarly, we can't say. We don't have a good way of talking about this by analogy, or using natural language. As with the bicycle, the mathematics is bulletproof and boring.
This is not to say that quantum mechanics is unmysterious - I think it is very mysterious. However, the bicycle example shows how this characteristic, frustrating elusiveness of good natural-language descriptions is not limited to exotic quantum systems.
I think a significant aspect of this specific problem is that a notion of a "field" is very difficult to translate to everyday language no matter how easy it is for a physicist to conceptualize and model with math. Similar to coming up with a good analogy for a hash function in computer science world. These are largely very foreign concepts for everyday human life experiencers.
The link doesn’t support the notion that we can’t describe why a bike is self-stable. On the contrary, it simply contradicts one popular explanation and offers another one. In fact the story is pretty easy to describe: there are oscillating forces acting on a bike that cause it to right itself. The oscillating forces just aren’t accurately described as gyroscopic, which was one of the previous proposals.
We don’t know that there is no “natural language” story and no analogies for either bikes or quanta, what we know is we have some analogies that don’t work. History is full of instances of things we had incorrect stories for, and then found better ones. We have no reason to believe that won’t happen for photons and electrons too.
Absolutely! This is on my bucket list of home robotics projects. A stretch goal is to get steering during a wheelie, but I think this will be extra difficult. I’m guessing a well tuned PID controller will handle counter-steering just fine, but we’ll see.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1201959
We can't say, in any satisfying way. The mathematics is uncontroversial, but all of the simple natural-language explanations fail under scrutiny.
Where is the electron in the double slit experiment? Is it a particle or a wave?
Similarly, we can't say. We don't have a good way of talking about this by analogy, or using natural language. As with the bicycle, the mathematics is bulletproof and boring.
This is not to say that quantum mechanics is unmysterious - I think it is very mysterious. However, the bicycle example shows how this characteristic, frustrating elusiveness of good natural-language descriptions is not limited to exotic quantum systems.