Science Memes

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A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

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double slit (mander.xyz)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I think the meme is just poking fun at the physics behind the whole thing, but in case anyone doesn’t know:

It’s called the observer effect, and it happens because:

This is often the result of utilizing instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner.

And particularly in the double-slit experiment:

Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the measured results of this experiment.

So for anyone who wants to have a surface understanding of the observer effect, the wiki does a fair job of the basic explanation.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Yep, the observer it is not only observing, it is interacting in order to measure.