exactly where it is
Timothy Sutter
no animals will be hurt during
the course of these next
several sentences.
if you have a bowling ball and
you stick the bowling ball in
a cardboard box in which
a refrigerator came,
then you could say that you know
where the bowling ball is, only
that you don't know exactly where it is,
because you just know that it's
in the cardboard box somewhere.
it's in there somewhere, and given that
you left a lot of packing material in the box,
the ball may not be on the bottom of
the box, but could be anywhere in the box.
it's in there somewhere.
now, you leave the room,
if you feel like it,
but you don't have to,
and someone else comes in and takes
the ball out of the refrigerator box,
and sets it into a color television box.
now, you come back and look at the new box,
and you can say that you know the ball is
in that box somewhere,
and, seeing that the box is smaller,
your knowledge of where the ball is
is a little bit clearer,
but, it's still in there somewhere.
now, your assistant takes the ball
and places it into a small green
trash bag that -just- fits over
the ball, and now, you can prwactically
see the shape of the ball,
and you can say that you know
fairly well where the ball is,
it's right there in the bag.
the container -just- fits over it.
now you start working with
much smaller objects, and
what you find eventually,
is that you cannot make container
small enough for you to have as
clear an image of where the ball
is as you had with the bowling
ball in the trash bag.
this because the stuff you have
to work with to make a box for
your object, itself -contains-
the objects you are trying to observe.
the stuff you have for making containers
has an inherent spacial void which
cannot be overcome by your ingenuities.
so, for these tiny objects,
within their own tiny little containers,
you basically get back to a bowling
ball in a cardboard refrigerator box
and find that the best you can say is;
"it's in there somewhere"
always realizing that the container
is a bit larger that the object,
-but- you can get a fairly, not
so bad, idea of where the refrigerator box is,
or, in this case, the single 'atom' of tungsten.
so, you know where the little particle is.
for all practical purposes,
it's in the little box somewhere.
and you pretty much know where the little box is.
a bowling ball you can hold in your hand.
an electron is already in your hand.
whether there actually is such
an object as an electron, inasmuch
as you can't see it, is moot,
some set of phenomena,
taken together and looked
at independantly, seem to
behave as if such a thing
as an electron does,
in fact, exist.
it's somewhere in the box
and the box is right there.
> and you pretty much know where the little box is.
or, like a bowling ball in a baseball stadium.
and this bowling ball is self propelled
and spinning around the stadium.
you know exactly where the baseball stadium is.
and the bowling ball in there
somewhere,
spinning around.
and, we don't -have- to say
that the baseball stadium
is the size of the perceived universe,
and that the bowling ball is -just-
"somewhere in the universe"
cuz then, of course, we'd be entirely sure,
but we can be quite sure even in baseball stadiums
that are -much- smaller that the perceived universe
and even say that in a baseball stadium
the size os a small glass of water,
there is a clear certainty that -many-
electrons are contained therein.
for a fact.
and believe it or not, we can reduce
the size of that baseball stadium
even further, and know that
some phenomenon
which could be likened to
a spinning bowling ball,
is definitely in there.
see, a snowflake
is your baseball stadium
and you can be sure that there are
quite a lot of many bowling balls
in that baseball stadium
because that baseball stadium is,
itself, -constructed- of things that
behave just like tiny spinning
bowling balls.