Thought Experiments Vs Real Experiments
"Thought" experiments are situations created in one's mind, asking a question akin to "suppose you are in this situation, assuming such is true, what would follow?". They are usually created to investigate phenomena that are not readily experienced in every-day situations. Famous examples of such thought experiments are Schrödinger's cat, the EPR thought experiment, simple illustrations of time dilation, and so on. These usually lead to real experiments designed to verify that the conclusion (and therefore the assumptions) of the thought experiments are correct. The EPR thought experiment led to the Bell inequalities, which were then tested to various degrees of rigor, leading to the acceptance of the current formulation of quantum mechanics and probabilism as a working hypothesis.
Read more about this topic: Theoretical Physicist
Famous quotes containing the words thought, experiments and/or real:
“Struck in the wet mire
Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city
I thought of Troy, what we had built her for.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“My experiments did not turn out quite like yours, Henry. But science, like love, has her little surprises.”
—William Hurlbut (1883–?)
“Much of the pressure contemporary parents feel with respect to dressing children in designer clothes, teaching young children academics, and giving them instruction in sports derives directly from our need to use our children to impress others with our economic surplus. We find “good” rather than real reasons for letting our children go along with the crowd.”
—David Elkind (20th century)