Über kleine Teilchen und kleine Physiker:innen
New Year’s Eve is approaching and with it the uncontrolled detonation of dangerous explosives. But they light up colourfully and bang loudly, so we don’t care for this one night of the year. But how do the colours get into the fireworks? There is actually quantum physics hidden in something as mundane and huge as a firework display.
I recently read the book “The Circle” by Dave Eggers. It’s about a Facebook-Twitter-like Internet company called “The Circle” that wants to create complete transparency and networking – privacy, unfortunately, falls by the wayside. The quote above is by one of the Circle bosses and he uses it to justify his ubiquitous surveillance. I am sure that we would all answer this question affirmatively. We behave differently under surveillance than when we are alone. So does that mean that pure observation influences our behaviour?
A quantum of happiness, a quantum leap in technology, Firefox Quantum. Quanta seem to be present in our lives: they have entered common speech, the newspapers are frequently reporting about quantum computers. Yet hardly anyone outside physics knows what quanta actually are.