Helgoland

The weird behavior of electrons in atoms was not the only strange and incomprehensible phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century. Others had also been observed. They had one thing in common: they highlighted a curious granularity of energy and other physical quantities. Before the quanta, nobody suspected that energy could be granular. The energy of a thrown stone depends on the velocity of the stone: the velocity can be anything, hence the energy can be anything as well. But peculiar energy behaviors had been appearing in experiments.

To Heisenberg’s obscure idea that the theory only describes observations, and not what happens between one observation and another, we must add the idea that the theory predicts only the probability of observing one thing or another. The mystery deepens.

The ψ wave is something unclear, which determines the probability that the electron will be observed in one place rather than in another. It evolves in time according to the equation written by Schrödinger, as long as we do not look at it. When we look at it, pffft!, it disappears, concentrated into a point, and we see the particle there.

As if the mere fact of observing it was enough to modify reality.