Admin note: Been on the road. It’ll be a while before I’m caught up.

Schrödinger’s cat: A thought experiment in quantum mechanics – Chad Orzel

The narrative is good, the art is good, but I think the depiction of electrons with classical trajectories, both in the double slit and orbiting as in Bohr atoms detracts from this; it arguably sends the wrong message about what’s going on and may reinforce misconceptions. I don’t know if this is simply a problem of illustration, since trajectories are relatively simple, and depicting QM is trickier. It’s not like I have a simple fix for doing the depiction better, though.

(OK, it’s Thursday, but this was supposed to run on Tuesday but didn’t, owing to operator error)

A Clever Rube Goldberg Machine That Runs on Light

The amplified light fuels a number of different elements like a tub of water and a marble moving down a chute, but it all keeps coming back to optics.

(Nit: it’s not amplified, just focused at various points)

The idea that measurement changes what is being measured is the observer effect, not the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. A video explaining the HUP.

A red hot ball of nickel dropped into liquid nitrogen.