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Quiz about Ernie and the Baleful Box A Quantum Fairy Tale
Quiz about Ernie and the Baleful Box A Quantum Fairy Tale

Ernie and the Baleful Box: A Quantum Fairy Tale Quiz


Ernie the electron lives in a copper wire in the Department of Fiendish Physics of SU. He watches helplessly as Schroedinger the cat is lowered into the baleful box. Will this be Ernie's fate too? Is it worth taking a (gasp) physics quiz to find out?

A multiple-choice quiz by uglybird. Estimated time: 7 mins.
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Author
uglybird
Time
7 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
173,653
Updated
Apr 10 23
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Average
Avg Score
6 / 10
Plays
3251
Awards
Top 5% quiz!
- -
Question 1 of 10
1. Once upon a time, a little electron named Ernie lived happily in an outer orbital shell of an important copper atom. The copper atom was important because it was part of a wire in the laboratory of the Department of Fiendish Physics of Subatomic University. The wire was frayed, and Ernie had a perfect view of the laboratory. One day, Ernie heard Dr. Max Plankton and the evil wizard physicist, Dr. J Robert Atomhammer, discussing electrons. He heard Atomhammer ask, "Are the little devils particles or waves, that's what I want to know?"

"Ooh, ooh! I know! Electrons are..." Ernie said. But his answer was drowned out in the hum of the machinery. (What did Ernie answer?)
Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. "Did you hear something?" Plankton asked.

"Probably just the ether wind," answered Atomhammer dismissively.

"Let's have a look at the cat," suggested Plankton. Ernie had watched earlier as the two scientists constructed their evil, baleful box and placed their cat, Schroedinger, into it. The box had been calibrated so that there was a 50% probability that high-energy photons from a photon gun would pierce the walls. In the box with the cat, they placed a cyanide capsule that could be pierced by the photon. They closed the box, aimed the photon gun at the capsule inside the box and pulled the trigger. Afterward, they argued for hours about whether, inside that baleful box, there was a live cat or a dead cat. (Ernie could have told them. What would he have said?)
Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. Ernie breathed a sigh of relief when the two men opened the box and pulled out a happily purring Schroedinger. They grilled the cat for hours, asking whether he had been alive or dead before they opened the box. Schroedinger meowed and purred contentedly at first, but eventually he became annoyed with their questions. He scratched out a single equation and stalked off, tail lashing angrily. They asked one of the other laboratory cats, Heisenberg, what he thought. Heisenberg drew out some boxes with figures in them. At first they thought Schroedinger and Heisenberg had given different answers, but when they analyzed the boxes, Heisenberg's boxes reduced to the same equation that Schroedinger had written. (Respectively, what were Schroedinger and Heisenberg's two formulations of quantum mechanics called?) Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. "These are interesting equations," conceded Plankton, looking at Schroedinger and Heisenberg's formulation of quantum mechanics.

Atomhammer's eyes gleamed wickedly. "We could, Atomhammer began, "put an innocent little electron into our box. We could make the walls impenetrable except by an infinitely powerful particle or by a wave that obeyed these equations. According to these equations, at times, if the electron is really a wave, the electron will be out of the box. If we open the box and the electron is gone, we know our cats are on to something."

"What if the electron is there every time we open the box? Plankton asked.

"If he's still there over and over again," Atomhammer grinned malevolently, "we'll annihilate him in the electron-positron collider." (Is there actually such a thing as an electron-positron collider (outside of a fairy tale)?


Question 5 of 10
5. Ernie the electron's blood would have frozen, if electrons had blood. Those fiends! Ernie felt a tug. Suddenly he was ripped from the copper atom's electron shell. In a rush he hurtled down the wire, shot out into black space and then heard the sickening thud of a lid being shut. He was alone in a box delimited by extremely thin, but extremely high energy walls - by a factor of several googolplexes higher than Ernie's energy. Flash! For just an instant he was outside the box and then back in. These momentary escapes occurred repeatedly but not often. He was never out of the baleful box for more than nanoseconds. The odds of Ernie being out of that box when Atomhammer looked in seemed infinitesimal. (The box has seemingly unsurmountable energy walls. How can Ernie be getting out?) Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. If there is a probability, albeit small, that Ernie is outside the box, could that imply that Ernie might be anywhere in the universe at any particular time?


Question 7 of 10
7. Flash! Ernie the electron was outside the box. He found himself right next to another electron. It was his old friend Pauli the electron. Suddenly, a stray alpha particle collided with them. (Of what does the alpha particle consist?) Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. Ernie was pulled toward the alpha particle. His friend tried to follow him, but something seemed to prevent them both from entering the orbital. He noticed that he and Pauli were spinning in the same direction and groaned. In an instant, a different electron was pulled into the orbital with Ernie, and Pauli bounced away. (Why couldn't Pauli be in the same orbital as Ernie?) Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. The alpha particle had gained two electrons. Ernie felt immense relief. He had escaped the box and was floating free in a stable orbital as part of an inert gaseous atom.
(Of what atom is Ernie part?)
Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. Ernie's atom floated over Atomhammer and Plankton. Plankton opened the box and both peered inside. Ernie was gone! "Oh my," exclaimed Plankton, "electrons are waves not particles."

"Unless electrons are both," Atomhammer mused. "And", he added, "if they are waves, they must have wavelength. But how can a point particle have a wavelength?" (Which of the following is true about electrons?)
Hint



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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Once upon a time, a little electron named Ernie lived happily in an outer orbital shell of an important copper atom. The copper atom was important because it was part of a wire in the laboratory of the Department of Fiendish Physics of Subatomic University. The wire was frayed, and Ernie had a perfect view of the laboratory. One day, Ernie heard Dr. Max Plankton and the evil wizard physicist, Dr. J Robert Atomhammer, discussing electrons. He heard Atomhammer ask, "Are the little devils particles or waves, that's what I want to know?" "Ooh, ooh! I know! Electrons are..." Ernie said. But his answer was drowned out in the hum of the machinery. (What did Ernie answer?)

Answer: Both

Quantum theory requires a dualism. One particle can interact with another as either a particle or a wave.
2. "Did you hear something?" Plankton asked. "Probably just the ether wind," answered Atomhammer dismissively. "Let's have a look at the cat," suggested Plankton. Ernie had watched earlier as the two scientists constructed their evil, baleful box and placed their cat, Schroedinger, into it. The box had been calibrated so that there was a 50% probability that high-energy photons from a photon gun would pierce the walls. In the box with the cat, they placed a cyanide capsule that could be pierced by the photon. They closed the box, aimed the photon gun at the capsule inside the box and pulled the trigger. Afterward, they argued for hours about whether, inside that baleful box, there was a live cat or a dead cat. (Ernie could have told them. What would he have said?)

Answer: According to quantum theory, the cat was neither dead nor alive until the box was opened.

Schroedinger's famous thought experiment was similar to that described above. According to quantum theory, the cat's probability wave does not "collapse" until the box is opened. The cat is, therefore, neither alive nor dead until the box is opened.
3. Ernie breathed a sigh of relief when the two men opened the box and pulled out a happily purring Schroedinger. They grilled the cat for hours, asking whether he had been alive or dead before they opened the box. Schroedinger meowed and purred contentedly at first, but eventually he became annoyed with their questions. He scratched out a single equation and stalked off, tail lashing angrily. They asked one of the other laboratory cats, Heisenberg, what he thought. Heisenberg drew out some boxes with figures in them. At first they thought Schroedinger and Heisenberg had given different answers, but when they analyzed the boxes, Heisenberg's boxes reduced to the same equation that Schroedinger had written. (Respectively, what were Schroedinger and Heisenberg's two formulations of quantum mechanics called?)

Answer: Schroedinger's equation and Heisenberg's matrix mechanics

Schroedinger and Heisenberg independently formulated what proved to be equivalent mathematical treatments of quantum mechanics. Both were shown to give correct values for the spectral lines of hydrogen. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle could be viewed as a corollary of the basic equations.
4. "These are interesting equations," conceded Plankton, looking at Schroedinger and Heisenberg's formulation of quantum mechanics. Atomhammer's eyes gleamed wickedly. "We could, Atomhammer began, "put an innocent little electron into our box. We could make the walls impenetrable except by an infinitely powerful particle or by a wave that obeyed these equations. According to these equations, at times, if the electron is really a wave, the electron will be out of the box. If we open the box and the electron is gone, we know our cats are on to something." "What if the electron is there every time we open the box? Plankton asked. "If he's still there over and over again," Atomhammer grinned malevolently, "we'll annihilate him in the electron-positron collider." (Is there actually such a thing as an electron-positron collider (outside of a fairy tale)?

Answer: Yes

Electron-positron colliders, such as the one at CERN, study interactions between positrons and electrons and the new particles created in these interactions.
5. Ernie the electron's blood would have frozen, if electrons had blood. Those fiends! Ernie felt a tug. Suddenly he was ripped from the copper atom's electron shell. In a rush he hurtled down the wire, shot out into black space and then heard the sickening thud of a lid being shut. He was alone in a box delimited by extremely thin, but extremely high energy walls - by a factor of several googolplexes higher than Ernie's energy. Flash! For just an instant he was outside the box and then back in. These momentary escapes occurred repeatedly but not often. He was never out of the baleful box for more than nanoseconds. The odds of Ernie being out of that box when Atomhammer looked in seemed infinitesimal. (The box has seemingly unsurmountable energy walls. How can Ernie be getting out?)

Answer: Ernie's probability wave extends outside the box.

In the quantum world, particles are thought of as being geometric points. The wave function is a three dimensional equation that, if solvable, would give the probability of the particle being at any particular point in the space.
6. If there is a probability, albeit small, that Ernie is outside the box, could that imply that Ernie might be anywhere in the universe at any particular time?

Answer: Yes

According to Schroedinger's equation, the probability of a particle in a box with infinite energy walls being located at some particular set of spatial coordinates is never 0.
7. Flash! Ernie the electron was outside the box. He found himself right next to another electron. It was his old friend Pauli the electron. Suddenly, a stray alpha particle collided with them. (Of what does the alpha particle consist?)

Answer: Two protons, two neutrons

Keep in mind, this is a fairy tale. If you've already accepted a box with infinite energy walls, why not the random collision of an alpha particle with an electron during one of the instants the electron is outside the box?
8. Ernie was pulled toward the alpha particle. His friend tried to follow him, but something seemed to prevent them both from entering the orbital. He noticed that he and Pauli were spinning in the same direction and groaned. In an instant, a different electron was pulled into the orbital with Ernie, and Pauli bounced away. (Why couldn't Pauli be in the same orbital as Ernie?)

Answer: Because of the Pauli Exclusion Principle

The Pauli Exclusion Principle requires that fermions, such as electrons, not share all the same quantum numbers. For an atomic orbital that could contain two electrons, this necessitates that the spin of the two electrons be different.
9. The alpha particle had gained two electrons. Ernie felt immense relief. He had escaped the box and was floating free in a stable orbital as part of an inert gaseous atom. (Of what atom is Ernie part?)

Answer: Helium

An alpha particle is, in essence, a helium nucleus. The other elements are much larger and certainly not inert.
10. Ernie's atom floated over Atomhammer and Plankton. Plankton opened the box and both peered inside. Ernie was gone! "Oh my," exclaimed Plankton, "electrons are waves not particles." "Unless electrons are both," Atomhammer mused. "And", he added, "if they are waves, they must have wavelength. But how can a point particle have a wavelength?" (Which of the following is true about electrons?)

Answer: All of these.

Quantum theory and the General Theory of Relativity have different things to say about electron size and whether an electron is a black hole or a point particle. Only unification of these theories seems likely to harmonize the different pictures they give of the world of very small particles. For practical purposes, like predicting scatter from electrons, the Compton formula for wavelength can be used. Ernie floated peacefully in his comfortable new shell.

He introduced himself to the other electron in his orbital. "I'm Ernie, Ernie the electron," he said.

The other electron replied, "I'm Freda, Freda the female fermion." And Ernie lived happily ever after.
Source: Author uglybird

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