Nice reference to PBS Space Time. The YouTube channel where I just get bullied with science, and for some weird twisted reason I like it.

The prions of spacetime.

Out here folding along.

We have to recycle nowadays. Besides we can't have people throwing away perfectly good electrons. They could end up anywhere.

Actually, it can be there, but then you won't know how fast it's moving.

That's not a good analogy because typically cameras don't change the things they're observing. But, a camera with a flash...

Imagine a guy driving down a dark road at night. Take a picture of him without a flash and you'll get a blurry picture.

Take a picture of him with a powerful flash and you'll get an idea of exactly where he was when the picture was taken, but the powerful flash will affect his driving and he'll veer off the road.

You can't measure something without interacting with it. This is true even in the non-quantum world, but often the interactions are small enough to ignore. Like, if you stick a meat thermometer into a leg of lamb, you'll measure its temperature. But, the relatively cool thermometer is going to slightly reduce the temperature of the lamb.

At a quantum level, you can no longer ignore the effect that measuring has on observing. The twin-slit experiment is the ultimate proof of this weirdness.

Ah let's see, of the top of my head...

~~1s² 2s² 2d⁶ 3s² 2p¹⁰ ...~~

Edited (iirc now, the d block is in the middle with the transition metals, p block with metallics, Halogens, Noble Gases...):

1s² 2s² 2p⁶ 3s² 2d¹⁰ ...

Radiating milk equally in all directions, of course.

Using "+1/2" and "-1/2" as vector labels is fine. Using it on the context of "the spin can have those 2 values here" for laypeople without further explanation is just making the subject less accessible.

Also, yeah, I was too lazy to search for the unicode ħ.

It's because to observe something you have to interact with it. Dealing with particles is like playing pool in the dark and the only way you can tell where the balls are is by rolling other balls into them and listening for the sound it makes. Thing is, you now only know where the ball was, not what happened next.

In the quantum world, even a single photon can influence what another particle is doing. This is fundamentally why observation changes things.

I think a lot of the confusion people have is around the word “observation” which in everyday language implies the presence of an intelligent observer. It seems totally nonsensical that the outcome of a physics experiment should depend on whether the physicist is in the lab or out for a coffee! That’s because it is!

I have this beef with a lot of words used in physics. Taking an everyday word and reusing it as a technical term whose meaning may be subtly and/or profoundly different from the original. It’s a source of constant confusion.