this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five

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ELI5: what is a quantum state? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago by rtxn@lemmy.world to c/explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
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I've been reading a lot about massive stellar objects, degenerate matter, and how the Pauli exclusion principle works at that scale. One thing I don't understand is what it means for two particles to occupy the same quantum state, or what a quantum state really is.

My background in computers probably isn't helping either. When I think of what "state" means, I imagine a class or a structure. It has a spin field, an energy_level field, and whatever else is required by the model. Two such instances would be indistinguishable if all of their properties were equal. Is this in any way relevant to what a quantum state is, or should I completely abandon this idea?

How many properties does it take to describe, for example, an electron? What kind of precision does it take to tell whether the two states are identical?

Is it even possible to explain it in an intuitive manner?

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[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 5 points 1 month ago

So I think where popsci messaging is bad is because they get all mixed up between particles and waves

A superposition isn't a particle, it's a wave. It only has the mass/energy associated with the particle, but it is everywhere it can be all at once

The particle is like... The minimum size the wave can fit into. One photon of light can jump one electron up once energy state, and it has to pick one electron to actually do this

You can channel the wave into a particle long enough to measure it, but to measure any aspect of the wave you have to consume it. Now you've converted the energy from one form into another, so any other information that could have been gained is destroyed

That's my understanding at least, it is very much not digital. There's no either or, it's even more analog than analog