Heisenberg, Bohr: the Friendship behind the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- The Copenhagen Interpretation was born of the friendship between Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. How did they meet, how did their friendship change science and how did the outside world damage that friendship? Watch this video and find out!
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I found the Copenhagen interpretation very fascinating, however I had no idea the history behind it. Amazing video!
Cool video. I study at the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen. And have my experimental setup in the very old building where many of these ideas were made. Niels Bohrs office and the old auditorium A remains unchanged to this day.
Loved your video, as usual! As a physicist myself, I always felt like I didn't know anything about the human history of my own field. So I am grateful for videos like yours.
Glad you liked it, I feel it is so sad that we don't teach much history at all in our physics classes.
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics I've uploaded your videos as supplementary material for my Modern Physics course. Thanks a lot!!
This channel is an absolute treasure. Glad you have found it! 👏
You are right!
Kathy, I am blown away with your passionate storytelling about Bohr etc. They inspire me and help me understand the importance of relationships behind the scientific discoveries - I love it. Very original and riveting.
Thank you so much. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Did you watch my video about the history of the Bohr model? I’m very proud of it.
I love the exposure of the interplay between the characters involved. When you beat your head over lines in a cold stolid text book and feel stupid for not seeing it as so easy - it is nice to see that the formulation wasn't so easy in the first place.
I have no idea if it has been translated to English, but there's a great book in Danish: Det Udelelige ("The Undividable") describing this amazing period in physics that people still struggle to understand this day and age
Thank you for filling in so much of Bohr's personal history. I always respected him as a physicist, but was unaware of his heroism during WWII.
I find the personalities behind the science very interesting and you cover that topic as well as can be done in 15 minutes. Who are these people who can come up with such extraordinary scientific advances in a time when the horse was still a major form of transport.
Remember Leonardo designed helicopters. Science only requires freedom to think, which is why it declined under the Inquisition and why the Islamic world is now irrelevant.
I can’t believe I just found out this wonderful channel! Outstanding work, I have spent a lot of time to connect science and history out of personal curiosity and interest, so glad to find someone with this passion and goal. You should be proud of your work Kathy 👏👏👏 absolutely inspiring summary you put together here.
I also have just one suggestion: this has a lot of information, but it may be a bit fast paced (of course it was no issue for me to watch twice, but it may be for others, just a thought).
Excellent story, of how politics changes the curiosity of people and turns them into weapon making ideologues. This should be made into a documentary! Thank you for the lesson.
Absolutely stunning! I just started digging deeper into QM and this vid added so much meaning and fun to those theories. This is just awesome, keep up the good work!😄💎👌👌
Thanks Vishank. If you are looking into QM you might want to check out my videos on Max Planck and how he started this whole mess in the first place (or even the one on spectroscopy which started the whole blackbody radiation story).
Keep it up please, you have a beautiful way of tell these stories! You deserver a lot of subscribers.
Thanks!
After some extra reading on Wikipedia I found something curious that was unknown to me - one of Max Born's grandchildren is Olivia Newton-John, i.e. Sandy from Grease! (among other things)
I have been tempted to mention that for about 2 months now, but it never seems to fit in the story.
Darn! I'm a week late with that fact.
That’s awesome. Great catch!
No wayyyyy!!
Let’s get physics-cal, physics-cal
I think it might add a little more to the story if you also discussed Einstein and Heisenberg's disagreements on the inclusion of only "Observables" in a theory. In it, Heisenberg lays one of greatest burns in science history.
Kathy, I love your videos. You have great enthusiasm for your topics! Your explanations link to the "why" of the names we had to learn!
Fantastic work, as always.
Oh ...Kathy, your my favorite teaser. ( ! ) ... now I'm gonna have to watch your next video ! --- which I'm sure going to love as much as this one. (can't wait !) ..
Awesome! Love your enthusiasm… and the depth of detail…. i am from Copenhagen! So love this story! Nice. Thanks!
Very interesting narration, great job, but I missed a must mention of Louis de Broglie when it comes to the period of 1921-1930. Very nice presentation of historical accounts along with conceptual milestones
Gratitude
Best
Will there ever be a discussion about how Erwin Schrödinger treated young women and girls?
You make fantastic videos. I've learned from and enjoyed every one I've watched!
Madam, Your Effort in research is a very great achievement in itself.
Your channel is awesome Kathy!
You have a wonderful story-telling ability!
This was an interesting topic, usually people don't talk about the history as much as the science, thanks!
Kathy, I love you’re videos!! It would be great if someone (hint) published a RUclips video each week entitled “One Hundred Years Ago This Week in Quantum Mechanics.” It would help slow learners like me. 😊
Sooooo,,, interesting the history behind all this matter and this guys/gals...
and the way you put it is very nice and accessible,,,
now I must go... I need to sniff on all the videos you have already made... ;-)
Hi kathy . Loved presentation very enlightening. 👍👍 Thankyou so much
So glad I found your channel.
Love you and this. Thanks for the wonderfully informative content.
Thanks ❤️
I'm reading "The Age of Entanglement" by Louisa Gilder currently (for the second time) and finding your videos a useful connection to the book. Thank you!
Love your content, Kathy!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
Max Born was the grandfather of Olivia Newton John, and both Olivia and Albert Einstein visited Born's house often. Olivia's (and Einstein's) approaches were "Let's Get Physical," while Born's (and Heisenberg's) approach was "Let's Get Quantum."
Interesting to hear the relationship between these two men. And the comments between their wives about the German government were interesting. And I'll be looking forward to the next one!
I am pretty sure you have seen the "next" one as I filmed the 1941 meeting first and then had this trimmed from the video. However, I am now working on Bohr's 1913 model and why it was so revolutionary (and, as a bonus, no Nazis and yes Rutherford).
Summed up amazingly 💯
11:23 his assumption is most probably right that the neutron is an electron and a proton put together. The SAM or structured atom model explains it clearly. I am almost through all the videos on the channel and of course i did not forget to hit the like button on all of them!
Fascinating explanation!
Glad you liked it
Her content is outstandigng
Great video Kathy. Would be interested in a video about David Bohm, lots of interesting physics and post war politics.
It's not "Lip-sig", it's more like "Lype-sig". Otherwise - a subject that always fascinated me! Thanks!
Thank you, the history of physics and the stories behind it are very valuable.
Glad you liked it
Absorbing stuff and wonderful presentations!
I love your newly found channel
Hi Kathy! First of all I LOVE your videos and use them in my lessons, either for insipation or I show them in my lessons. At the end you usually ask what "we, the audience" would like to know more about. I was wondering about De Broglie and Schrödinger and their connection to Bohr and Heisenberg. I'm still a bit vague about how Heisenberg came up with his uncertainty principle and how Born fits in there. Maybe you could help me.
That's a fascinating story! I would love to see the fallow up!
Great videos. One of the best popular physics series I am aware of. 👍
Wow thanks 😊
Very interesting overview of Copenhagen. Who would have suspected the beauty to follow would be known as 'quantum computing function' and 'determinism'.
The probability of finding the particle in the middle of the box is highest in the ground state which is a half sine wave. So, if we observe the particle in the double-slit experiment, we find it in the middle of the slit.
thanks for your marvelous research
Thanks, great contribution for those who are trying to understand the basics of QM. To a certain extent It explains.well (the first part of the vídeo) why those who think or state they understand QM in fact just help to keep the crowd in the dark.
Glad you liked it.
Thank you! Science, especially physics, takes a lot of work, but the history of it is splendid. Thank you! :)
Very, very good indeed! Congratulations!!!
"Bohr's influence on the physics and the physicists of our century was stronger than that of anyone else, even than that of Albert Einstein."
- Werner Heisenberg -
What a great video!!!
Great video! I'm sad it took so many years to come across your channel! Keep at it! :-)
Great storytelling of an amazing moment in science
History itself is a science based on facts. Mythology is the art of story telling, not a lie but a useful story. We may never know everything about these physicists but you honestly state the facts. Thank you Kathy.
Great talk - great tail hook!
I would appreciate a historic account of how Heisenbergs uncertainty principle was arrived at. Thanks for your explanations.
*Kathy Loves Physics & We love Kathy*
Thanks
Fabulous Kathy, thank you! The more of your videos I watch the more I start to understand the play, which has been made into movies, of course, one with Daniel Craig (007). I’ve never fully bought that Heisenberg did not think to explore the diffusion equation as portrayed in the movie, and therefore miscalculated the critical mass (as he described to colleagues in the secret farmhouse recordings). That he had begun to sympathize with nazi politics is believable esp. if his wife had that leaning. Thanks again.
I think it’s hard for us to admit that someone so brilliant in terms of physics and so personally charming could be OK with fascism. also, Niels Bohr was really difficult to understand even when he was just talking about motorcycles or a movie. He was just a brilliant but out there kind of guy so it’s easy for the story to get misunderstood.
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics I believe Niels pointed out that a lot of the argument boiled down to semantics and even tried to build a new vocabulary to handle the new science, and if it’s anything like my experience, the more I try with things like that the less I am understood, ha ha. As for the fascism, I agree 100%, but I’d point out that although heavily disguised the status quo in many democracies even today bear many of the characteristics of fascism. For example the degree of cronyism, and the revolving door between heads of government, of corporations, and military is fascist by some definitions. But the racism, and anti-semitism is not as acute.
Wow! Thank you for bringing this story to life and sharing. This is exactly what I was curious about, and you went into way more depth than I had hoped to be able to find out.
You are so welcome!
Very good research and shows how co-operation can lead to scientific growth.
Not only are the names Bohr and Born similar, but also is the name Bohm. David Bohm's famous paper was published in Physical Review in 1952, many years after the Copenhagen Interpretation had stabilized. His contribution was to change the interpretation of the Schrödinger equation from being part of a set of somewhat mysterious axioms that had to be accepted on faith to being the root of a sensible and deterministic theory that could be understood without such a big departure from classical physics.
Thank you for such a great content
Copenhagen Interpretation still taught in undergraduate introductory QM courses is what derails the young physics student from a foundational understanding of what the theory of QM can potentially tell us about reality. One exploration of a reality is through the (Everettian) Many Worlds Interpretation of QM, which Bohr vehemently rejected, but today is growing more acceptance in foundational quantum theoretical work.
Universe or Multiverse?
Heard of the Liquid Drop Model Nucleus at University, of course. Now it collates, is in congruence, with the symbolic representation of Euler's Diagrammatic circle of infinite unity, entangled in the i-reflection containment of log-antilog phase condensation modulation cause-effect and the concept of Single Side Band shell horizons prime-cofactor superposition that probably only an Electrical Engineer Radar-Lidar Technician can describe and do justice to, and then there's the Math-Physics of Quantum Chemistry wave-packaging holography, just to top that off.
No University lectures wasted in the formation of this presentation..
I love your videos, and you need not change a thing for my appreciation. In that spirit I would like to make one constructive remark. I think it would be good to pronounce Leipzig with a long I (Lie-p zig). This is not the German pronunciation, but what I believe is a more correct English pronunciation of a very famous city, Leipzig (the rule is: ei and ie combinations take the long sound of the second letter). Impulsively pedantic
1:29 and 10:13 It sounds like "Gottlingen" (with an L, but it's unclear to my ears, it might also be a G or an N), but I suppose you are referring to Göttingen. The letter Ö in German is pronounced something like the vowel English uses in "girl" and "earth".
Also, at 4:50 I hear Margrethe Bohr's given name pronounced sort of like "Margaretha" with an English-style "th" like in "think". But in Danish, "th" does not convey the English "th" sound but is rather more like a "t" or a glottal stop (like the constriction in the middel of "uh-oh").
Further, and this covers most Germanic languages except English, when a word ends in an "e", it's not pronounced like an "a", but imagine rather if the word were given an additional "h" after the "e". So less "Margreta" and more "Margreteh" or indeed "Margreh-eh" (with glottal stop). Same for Lise Meitner, less like "Lisa" and more like "Liseh".
Excellent content, don't let this stop you! Some people struggle with foreign pronunciations, and that's OK.
In year 2002, BBC produced a film with Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig and Francesca Annis, based on the excellent play from Michael Frayn, about the famous meeting of September 1941 between Heisenberg and Bohr.
A televised production of the stage play of 1998 by Michael Frayn.
Kathy. Realy love your work BUT it is hard to follow your posts sequentially. Just watched "Heisenberg, Bohr: the Friendship ...." but not sure which is the second part that you allude to. Thanks
Concerning Heisenberg’s Neutron hypothesis. It’s basically an SU(2) gauge theory. Though initially incorrect turned out to be the basis for Quantum Chromodynamics and SU(3) gauge theory. Basically, reinterpret the SU(2) theory into an SU(3) representation since SU(3) is basically a 3 dimensional expansion of SU(2). In that way, I have found his contributions involving the neutron, though initial incorrect, in the end quite significant. As SU(2) it was wrong but as SU(3) it describes, at the time unrealized, the internal structure of the proton and neutron.
If only Einstein accepted Quantum Mechanics and worked together with Niels, Born, Heisenberg, Pauli. Just imagine the amount of discoveries and theories that would have emerged from that collaboration
I think the story we were told about Einstein and QM is mostly false. Albert Einstein not only accepted much of quantum mechanics but actually created much of quantum mechanics and he was great friends with Niels Bohr. Honestly, I think the Einstein Bohr debates made QM.
Kathy I want to read the letter of Pauli, Written to Heisenberg !! Is there a way to get it ?
Thanks for the great presentation! A question and a spoiler, nevertheless:
* Why is the character of Schrodinger dropped without elaboration? Central to 'Copenhagen' is understanding that his equation offers two solutions. My understanding, btw, is that it was Heisenberg that told his friend that this was okay. Bohr's 'Copenhagen' inclusion was that 2 solutions were necessary per equation.
* Kindly consider or research the possibility that Heisenberg sabotaged the bomb project as a passionate opponent of weaponizing nuclear energy. For example, his 'miscalculation' by a magnitude of 1000 that the bomb was not possible? Are you aware of the 43.5 lb pineapple lecture he gave while under voluntary detention after the war?
Lastly--and i confess to having seen your next presentation-- any conjecture as to what might have been said between 2 old friends is fictional. Therefore, it's only Broadway material suitable for making a point or 2 deemed provocative by theatre goers. It cannot serves as archival veracity.
Between 1933 and 1939 Germany was the world's principal exporter of clever scientists, and there were indeed some very clever people. I wonder if it ever occurred to any of the Nazis or to Heisenberg that maybe there could be something wrong here.
Max Planck actually went to Hitler in 1933 and told him that he had to let jewish scientists stay in Germany or German science would fall apart and Hitler freaked out screamed so much that Planck decided that he was crazy and was gonna go away in a few months. Plank was a decent person who did not have the best political instincts.
Great work at least we are getting not only physics but it seems we are immersed in that time 🙏🙏🙏
Thank you.
Quantum mechanics is utterly bewildering when it is first encountered, and Niels Bohr's ideas are a first step in helping us to make some sense of it. That is why the Copenhagen Interpretation deserves a chapter in every textbook, while other interpretations are best left out to begin with. However I don't think Copenhagen is the last word on the subject. I would like to be able to do computer simulations which make use of a random number generator and where I can do numerical experiments with antimatter before considering real experiments. The Copenhagen Interpretation gives little guidance on what to do, and if it is identified with logical positivism, then it could be telling me not be curious from the very start.
Wondering how molecular energies can be tied into this? Thanks for sharing!
Wasn't the wave-particle thing resolved by deBroglie (another fascinating character) and his deBroglie wavelength for a particle?
I understood that proving the equivalence of the two models was mainly down to Paul Dirac.
Hello from Copenhagen :)
Important note for interested students of physics:
"Copenhagan interpretation of quantum theory" is a very misleading term.
Physical theory is a mathematical framework and physical interpretation that describes how math is connected with experiments. Copenhagen interpretation is an interpretation of math, and is an inherent part of the quantum mechanics.
Heisenberg who coined this term was aware of potential confusion and was explicitely warning about this in the same paper!
The much batter name would be "Copenhagen interpretation of wavefunction".
It opened the pandora box with people who try to create their own "interpretations of quantum theory" - it is impossible from logical point of view. All these "interpretations" are failed, superificial "parasitic theories" that try to survive objective evaluation under the umbrella of term "interpretation".
The really interesting and correct thing are alternative quantum mechanics *formulations*, that give new mathematical frameworks. So we have now Heisenberg (matrix), Shroedinger (waves), Feynmen (path integral). All of them share probabilistic (copenhagen) interpretation that has more modern, but equivalent development called "coherent histories".
Many worlds, pilot wave (Bohm) etc. are scientific junk from day one. They are no interpretations.
Many worlds pretend to be, but in reality it requires new unphysical (unverifiable) axiom independent from others (so no explanation), pilot wave is a toy model for classical theory with hidden variables that mimics some aspects of qm but math works only for single particle and specific observable base and nothing else.
P.S. And never forget that wavefunction is a subjective knowledge of observer that forms the best predictive model for the following experiments, "objective reality" doesn't exists.
Quantum jumps are nothing else than knowledge update through interaction of observer with its envinroment.
en física antigua se podía representar un punto o con una base discreta o con una base continua y no se veía el movimiento aunque daba lugar a la gravedad y electricidad , cuando hay movimiento aparece lo que llaman mecánica-cuántica que es solo una parte de una representación
Margrethe Bohr nursed Schrödinger in Copenhagen when he was about 40? Wild.
los científicos creadores no entendieron con claridad la simple representación de un punto , Galileo inteligentemente dijo que había que conocer el idioma del Universo , entendieron algo mal los científicos este idioma e hicieron una mezcolanza para tratar de entender 2 experimentos básicos , el de las 2 ranuras y el de Michelson-Morley , por eso muchos se sienten raros al ' resolver ' los problemas ligados a esos 2 experimentos
The Copenhagen interpretation is quite low on my list, where I personally sorted interpretations that I know of (and that are not crack-pottery). While I assign a quite low probability that the Copenhagen interpretation is the correct one (if there exists a "correct" interpretation of QM), I am not sure what interpretation I should pick as the most likely. There are numerous reasons to pick one or another, depending if I take the philosophical or mathematical/logical approach. While e.g. the pilot wave theory would be so nice philosophically, I must discard it for its logical inconsistency, not the mention the mathematics. I "hate" the many worlds interpretation philosophically (mostly because it tells me very little to nothing about "my" world), I like its simplicity and logical consistency. I can only hope there is another me that likes it. As a logical consequence, there is a high probability that there is an infinite amount of mes, who like it. And this I do not like. Funny, right?
Good video, thanks :)
Excellent!
Thanks
Love from India ❤️
A Neutron as an electron-proton pair makes sense, since a neutron decays into an electron and a proton. There is a group today working on developing what they call the Structured Atom Model, built on the simple classical premise of an electron, a proton and a neutron, which is an electron-proton pair smushed together. Like others such as Prof Unzicker out of Germany, they feel the modern model of the atom has become a convoluted jumble of ad hoc adjustments.
I love your videos, as they reveal so much about the people involved and this for me has profound context. There is , in my opinion a lack of philosophy in modern science.
Excellent
fantastic
This is the best fairy tales for adults. I'm working on Calculus 2. Thank you!
It's true what Leonard says when Penny asks "so what's new in physics?". Nothing much since the 1930's.
Excellent présentation, however the contribution of Wolfgang Pauli is much more significant.
One of my undergraduate lecturers, Walter Kellermann, was a pal of Born - together with the spy Klaus Fuchs.
Wow! We forget that it wasn’t that long ago
Only if they knew, this mystery wouldn't be solved even 100 years after, and the Copenhagen interpretation would still be in use...
I guess they'd be shocked :) And wouldn't be so disappointed they couldn't solve it :)