The modern physics project was completely open-ended; we had to select one topic that physicists today are studying, and study it! There were no guidelines, other than research on that topic must be going on today. I decided to look into quantum entanglement because I had never heard of it before; Mr. Schwartz suggested it. As it turns out, quantum entanglement is an phenomenon on the sub-atomic level where, when two particles of the same type (e.g. two photons, two protons, or two electrons) interact, once they are separated they have identical properties (e.g. spin, momentum, charge, etc.). In fact, if protons A and B become entangled, one cannot refer to one as A and one as B, but instead one must refer to both as A or B. The two entangled particles are a system.
Now, this creates a very peculiar type of quantum superposition. Superposition theory states that, if a particle can be in either state A or B, it is in both state A AND B until a measurement is made, at which point it falls into state A OR B based on probability. In entanglement, the entire system is in superposition so that the particles are always identical. For example, if one proton is measured to be in state A, then even if the other proton is (or should be) in superposition, it will automatically adopt state A to match the first proton. This has been proven through experiment, and has also been shown to occur instantaneously. That's the part that really baffles scientists: not even light is instantaneous, meaning that the protons' interaction is faster than light. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, that shouldn't be possible, and indeed Einstein himself refused to believe that entanglement is possible. He called it, "Spooky action at a distance."
There were two products for the modern physics project: a cartoon illustrating our physics topics, and a presentation to teach the class about our physics topics. My first two attempts to illustrate entanglement did so fairly well, and they illustrated the weirdness of it very well by personifying particles. Unfortunately, the jokes were not so obvious.; trying to make my cartoon funny was one of my greatest challenges from the Modern Physics project. So, for my third (and final) draft, I changed gears completely and didn't even feature particles. I decided that I wanted to focus more on the weirdness of entanglement, so I drew a picture of two angels in heaven who were getting their humor from messing with Earth's physicists. My cartoon is featured at the top.
My presentation was, I'm afraid, a bit monotonous, even though I tried to make it interesting. I went through a thorough description of quantum entanglement, including the man who proved it along with superposition: John Bell. In the middle, I tried to spice my presentation up by having everyone play a game in which the object was to make oneself a point of singularity. Literally, I had everyone stand up and pack themselves into points of singularity. No one won the game; a point of singularity must have all of the involved particles come in contact. I was trying to illustrate the point that everything in the universe (directly after the big bang) should have been entangled, since the big bang was a point of singularity, and that Hawking Radiation should also consist of entangled photons, since a black hole is a point of singularity. Trying to make the presentation interesting was another one of my challenges from this project, though, since the rest of it was raw information.
Now, this creates a very peculiar type of quantum superposition. Superposition theory states that, if a particle can be in either state A or B, it is in both state A AND B until a measurement is made, at which point it falls into state A OR B based on probability. In entanglement, the entire system is in superposition so that the particles are always identical. For example, if one proton is measured to be in state A, then even if the other proton is (or should be) in superposition, it will automatically adopt state A to match the first proton. This has been proven through experiment, and has also been shown to occur instantaneously. That's the part that really baffles scientists: not even light is instantaneous, meaning that the protons' interaction is faster than light. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, that shouldn't be possible, and indeed Einstein himself refused to believe that entanglement is possible. He called it, "Spooky action at a distance."
There were two products for the modern physics project: a cartoon illustrating our physics topics, and a presentation to teach the class about our physics topics. My first two attempts to illustrate entanglement did so fairly well, and they illustrated the weirdness of it very well by personifying particles. Unfortunately, the jokes were not so obvious.; trying to make my cartoon funny was one of my greatest challenges from the Modern Physics project. So, for my third (and final) draft, I changed gears completely and didn't even feature particles. I decided that I wanted to focus more on the weirdness of entanglement, so I drew a picture of two angels in heaven who were getting their humor from messing with Earth's physicists. My cartoon is featured at the top.
My presentation was, I'm afraid, a bit monotonous, even though I tried to make it interesting. I went through a thorough description of quantum entanglement, including the man who proved it along with superposition: John Bell. In the middle, I tried to spice my presentation up by having everyone play a game in which the object was to make oneself a point of singularity. Literally, I had everyone stand up and pack themselves into points of singularity. No one won the game; a point of singularity must have all of the involved particles come in contact. I was trying to illustrate the point that everything in the universe (directly after the big bang) should have been entangled, since the big bang was a point of singularity, and that Hawking Radiation should also consist of entangled photons, since a black hole is a point of singularity. Trying to make the presentation interesting was another one of my challenges from this project, though, since the rest of it was raw information.