The Best Analogies For Quantum Spin

[@LuigiRosa]

There is a real world 1/2 spin analogy: USB type A connector. You try to plug it, doesn't work You rotate 180 degrees doesn't work You rotate again 180 degrees it works

[@shelley-anneharrisberg7409]

😅😅

[@evilotis01]

omg

[@danfg7215]

It was your comment that finally explained spin 1/2 for me!

[@mischavanasperen3063]

After Murphy's Law, there is now Rosa's Law..

[@DavionStar]

That works entirely too well.

[@robloggia]

I think the most beneficial part of this video is continually reminding us that you're using analogy, and that there is no perfect one to one comparison.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks. I was worried that was going to get annoying to viewers, but it had to be done.

[@robloggia]

@ScienceAsylum Not at all. I still struggle with my natural human desire to know what the quantum world "looks" like, even though I know the question doesn't really apply.

[@BleachWizz]

@@ScienceAsylum nah you've gathered a smater nieche than that xD I'd actually guess most of us are dying for people on our day to day lives to realize what you're talking about... ps.: my fav analogy is the belt.

[@2nd_foundation]

In any case, our brain multimedia driven by the 5 senses is a kind of ergonomic representation of reality, all is analogy, to see reality the true one is our ambition but again who does!

[@tricky778]

@@robloggia the most important thing is that GR and QFT are both models from the perspective "if you couldn't measure more deeply and the measurer is part of the measured system, how would you do the sums to make the most information dense prediction you could without adding features to explain things that you can't measure themselves, and which are mere philosophical preferences. The belt is merely a way to remember, and to use geometrical intuition to match up another geometrical analogy and find a new useful model with some unnecessary philosophical preferences removed.

[@ParadoxProblems]

"Peter, I want those pictures of spinors on my desk before Friday or you're fired!"

[@john_michael_white]

@@ParadoxProblems "But boss, that needs a double quick turn around!"

[@SonicImmersion_]

"Yeeeaaah... Um, did you get the memo? You see, we're putting cover sheets on all of the TPS reports now... So, if you could just... TRY to remember to do that, that'd be great. Okay?"

[@barrypickford1443]

Spins on office chair excitedly

[@anonymes2884]

Appreciate a KZbin video saying up front "There's no picture of QM that's not 'wrong'" (I don't mind when science communicators try to come up with ways of depicting it - that's kinda the job - but too many aren't clear enough that that's _not_ quantum mechanics, it's just a teaching aid). (not having "a picture" is why people with Nobel prizes in quantum mechanics say, with a straight face, things like "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics" :)

[@adb012]

Or, as Richard Feynman reportedly said: "If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics, you don't understand Quantum Mechanics". I am persuaded that what he meant is that a lot of people understand the theory, the math, can make predictions, etc. But nobody understand what that means physically. That is why there are so many different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, all of which are mathematically equivalent and make the same predictions, but have different physical meanings. Most likely they are all wrong.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

@@adb012 "But nobody understand what that means physically." Depends on whart "physically" actually is supposed to mean. I'd say that nobody understands it _intuitively_. "That is why there are so many different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, all of which are mathematically equivalent and make the same predictions, but have different physical meanings." Err, there are also at least two different interpretations of _classical_ mechanics: Newtonian mechanics, based on forces, and Lagrangian/Hamiltonian mechanics, based on the minimality of the action. And these also are essentially mathematically equivalent.

[@adb012]

@@bjornfeuerbacher5514 ,,, Fair, but I would argue that, whether you solve the motion of a pendulum using Newton or Lagrangian mechanics, nobody doubts that there is a steel ball hanging from a 0.4m string oscillation left and right 20 degrees etc etc... We use different math to describe the same reality. (Side note, you can even do the same within Newton, describing the movement of the ball based on the force exerted by the string and gravity, or as an exchange of kinetic and potential energy, which brings up to side note #2, Lagrangian/Hamiltonian mechanics are in some way a spin-off of Newotn, since the "action" is described and calculated in terms of potential and kinetic energy. When you say that an electron exists in a state of superposition until a "measurement" takes place, after which the wave function collapses, everybody uses the same math but nobody knows what really happened there.

[@-danR]

@@bjornfeuerbacher5514 Once again, sigh, there is no clear truth-value to the assertion that they are "essentially" (whatever _that_ means) mathematically equivalent. Google's AI answer says that they are "mathematically equivalent", but LLMs don't actually understand math or physics. Here's a somewhat different take: "Lagrangian mechanics only applies to a subset of classical mechanics problems, but *_when_*_ it does,_ it is mathematically equivalent to Newtonian mechanics (which I take to mean direct application of 𝐹⃗ =𝑚𝑎⃗ )." [emph. added] -- high-value Stack Exchange answer. ("Is the Lagrangian "math" or "science"?)

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

@@-danR "Lagrangian mechanics only applies to a subset of classical mechanics problems, but when it does, it is mathematically equivalent to Newtonian mechanics" Err, yes, I'm aware of that. That's what I meant with "essentially". Your point is what, exactly...?

[@hankseda]

You two have great interaction 👍 The two spin analogies are better than either one alone. Spin isn't an easy concept to grasp.

[@bjre.wa.8681]

I hope their off camera relationship is as good as their on camera relationship.

[@JayLikesLasers]

I like Em. She represents me. In the previous video, you spoke about standard candles, and she had to stop you and ask you to explain standard candles. It seemed you were about to say something like "it's just what it sounds like", before backtracking and actually explaining them. Good job Em.

[@shanxmonappa870]

Em reversed is Me

[@ricardovencio]

These types of videos where you both are having a chat (but structured, not like annoying podcasts) are very very nice, thank you.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Glad you like them!

[@TNaizel]

@@ScienceAsylum the only problem with these videos is that they aren't longer

[@ScienceAsylum]

@@TNaizel This style is _usually_ longer (20 to 30 min), but I've overdone my outline/notes for the last couple conversations. In other words, I've tried to make the conversations about too many things and each thing ends up not getting talked about as much. The next one should go better now that I know what I did wrong 👍

[@rickseiden1]

You two are great together!

[@KingNedya]

Yes, another video on quantum spin! I first found your channel via your previous videos on quantum entanglement and spin because I was doing research for a school paper, and your videos were probably the singular most helpful sources I found. Just want to let you know that you have some of the best explanations of any science channel out there.

[@11B_geek_with_gun]

Not to detract from this awesome channel, but PBS Spacetime covers similar content.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thank you so much for letting me know! It's always nice to hear when my work is helpful.

[@christianadam2907]

Well, maybe you have been living under a rock (or the USA), but watching videos on KZbin is not "research" 🤣

[@KingNedya]

​@@christianadam2907I did more than watch KZbin. I also read articles and scientific papers, and cross-referenced between them. Nick's videos were just the most comprehensive and easy-to-understand of my sources. His videos weren't the only sources I used and cited, but they were the ones I referenced the most.

[@christianadam2907]

@KingNedya 👍

[@gaelonhays1712]

In my opinion, this is why we need _more_ illustrations, all side-by-side, so that we laymen can get an intuition for all of it at once and combine it in our brains while it's fresh. I couldn't understand gravity as spacetime being a different shape until I saw your squirrel illustration alongside the "straight lines in spacetime" graph. Now, I can actually wrap my brain around what it means to deform spacetime.

[@louisnemzer6801]

Imagine a spinning ball. Except it's not spinning. And there's no ball

[@yves4360]

I love this series! It’s such a fun way to explain complex things and M is just the perfect partner for this setup. The energy and great humour. Keep on the good work!

[@ScienceAsylum]

Glad you enjoy it! 🤓

[@David19553]

Live long and prosper.🖖😇

[@PedroNeves_87]

Finally another video Nick, I missed you

[@solapowsj25]

@@PedroNeves_87 both are so wrong.

[@DanielC618]

Man this is amazing. First time I really understand spin. Thanks a lot please keep doing many more videos with your wife. She's amazing too!

[@David19553]

Live long and prosper.🖖😇

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

Paraphrasing Richard Feynman: If you think you understand spin, you don't understand spin. ;)

[@DanielC618]

@ lol unfortunately Feynman is way too right

[@henryginn7490]

Would have happily watched a version of this that was two or three times the length, I hope you make videos on those other topics you mentioned at the end

[@entropyachieved750]

Another great topic to revisit. You can never watch too many vids on the same subject as you will always get a better understanding on the subject

[@ScienceAsylum]

Yeah, I haven't covered spin in a while. It feels like it's time, especially after the videos I just made about white dwarfs.

[@nosouponhead]

I like how much more down to Earth Nick is here.

[@beepbopboop5031]

The way you explain these concepts for dummies is actually beyond incredible. Very special and impressive skill.

[@maus3454]

Probably the best explanation of spin I have come along on KZbin. Thanks and well done!!!

[@usopenplayer]

I love these visualizations. It's actually really useful to have both, because it allows the mind to discard all the extra parts of each individual analogy, and helps build an intuition of the pattern itself.

[@patrick.gilmore]

Love the shout out to my neutron star density comment from the previous video. Thank you!

[@ScienceAsylum]

It was a fair comment 👍

[@hahahasan]

Awesome! in the same vein, quantum superposition is also impossible to draw a perfect analogy to. The whole alive and dead cat thing misses out much of the quantum weirdness that most don't fully appreciate. Feynman's lectures on this stuff is bar none the best introduction to these topics in a "realistic" sense that I've seen. Honestly, I would love your weird and wonderful way of explaining things to be thrown at video-fying Feynman's lectures. Think it'd be a super cool series.

[@ankokuraven]

"spin is the way its connected to the universe and it affects how statistics works with the particle." Thats something I have desperately needed to hear about spin Thankyou That has taken it from a property I know existed but really nothing about aside from it existing to one I have some actual appreciation for. I never want to say I understand something in quantum mechanics or that something in quantum mechanics makes sense But To me, That is now significantly more tangible of a concept as far as what it actually represents.

[@mactavish6236]

being a mechanical engineering student, that gear analogy was just amazing. It just gave me a more better understanding of quantum spin. Thanks man!! Also it makes me wonder the depth of understanding you have about these concepts.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Glad I could help! As for my depth of understanding, I wish it were deeper than it is. Quantum field theory is pretty challenging for me.

[@mactavish6236]

@@ScienceAsylum demmm man!!

[@mactavish6236]

@@ScienceAsylum reminds me of that quote, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know”.

[@SupercriticalSnake]

I demand pretty pictures and practical demonstrations so that I can pretend to know how quantum mechanics works!

[@Svenne23]

@@SupercriticalSnake if you understand quantum mechanics you don't understand quantum mechanics; ;-)

[@at0mly]

That Steampunk joke was great and almost flew under the radar.

[@Mark_Williams.]

I think you did quite a good job of tackling this topic. The Fermion vs Boson thing at the end hit home well as to why they interact differently from experiments. Both analogies together got the point home what's going on. I wouldn't say one is better than the other. Thanks!

[@ScienceAsylum]

You're welcome! Thanks for letting me know it helped.

[@JeffSchwarz]

I’m reminded of a quote that “all models are wrong, some models are useful.” It seems to apply to your animations.

[@mattprueter9231]

You've come a long long way since I had you as a professor in college some-odd years ago. I think I subbed back in 2014 or something, maybe later than that, but holy moly 700k and still killing it! Congratulations!

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks Matt! I took me years to figure out how to do this whole KZbin thing (cameras, microphones, lighting, etc.). I had no idea what I was doing in 2014, but I think I've got a good handle on it now. Anyway, I hope you're doing well these days.

[@PaulMawdsley68]

I LOVE the way you two bounce off of each other!

[@greatPretender79]

"I kind of hate that it doesn't" God I love these videos. If they do half as much for you guys making them as they do for me watching, we could all use more of them!!! 🤩😉

[@Robinson8491]

I love that gear analogy as it actually makes a difference between different spaces: quantum and relativity-ish Also the problem with the belt trick is it shows a continuous rotating object, while spin is either up or down, no matter your orientation, which makes no intuitive or physical visual sense, hence again I like the gear analogy better. Thanks for introducing me to it!

[@PathfinderPhysics]

@@Robinson8491 Spin is not either up or down. The projection of spin is. The spin operator is a projection operator.

[@JesusMartinez-mk6fc]

Amazing video Science Asylum with very practical animations and demonstrations. Kudos! Probably the best video and explation I've watched for quantum spin.

[@jumu7983]

We may demand visuals but the descriptions can be just as useful. The spin being a mathematical description of how different particles are connected to the greater universe is extremely evocative and certainly helped me comprehend some of the things I already knew about spin and spinors better. And I think this top level sketch ultimately helps anyone descending into the math keep mentally organized. Least that's how it is for me conceptually with a lot of things: you organize from the top and you build up from the details. 💎

[@homestylegravy]

Great visuals! Giving someone something to latch onto physically does more to help people find an interest in the topic than any amount of accuracy could.

[@kumerolier11111]

Hey, just wanted to tell you, that I really love your videos and I follow your channel for like couple years at least now. I know that making visual analogies for literally everything might just be kinda tiring, especially when some animation gets popular and then some stupid mainstream media just stoles your animation and officially announces, that this is how XYX looks like (nooo its not :/ ) or something. And even though it might be painful to make those animations, they are providing really nice explanations for specific connection between variables in the equations. People without strong mathematical abstract thinking (and that's most people, including me :D) have really hard time understanding those relationships. What your animations enable us to do, is to think for a moment in a completely different way and to give us the ability to see the world differently, even for a moment. And that's really valuable, because it brings this weird world of abstract mathematics just a little bit closer to our limited brains. Thank you for that!

[@dalriada]

This is one of the best explanations for laypeople that I’ve seen. No bogging down in technical weeds while admitting that we have no perfect theoretical understanding.

[@narfwhals7843]

That's just it, though. We _do_ have a very good theoretic understanding. There's just no good way to translate that into everyday concepts.

[@ScienceAsylum]

It's just the spin-statistics theorem _specifically_ that we don't have pinned down theoretically. The rest of it is solid 👍

[@michaelblacktree]

As a visual thinker, I appreciate the animations, even if they're not completely accurate.

[@evilotis01]

Nick's explanations are great, as always, but if anyone wants a real deep dive into the mathematics of spinors, Eigenchris's "Spinors for Beginners" playlist is really really great, as are Richard Behiel's videos on the topic. it's challenging stuff, but it's worth persevering with.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Eigenchris's playlist is already linked to in the description. Highly recommend.

[@evilotis01]

@@ScienceAsylum oh so it is. sorry, missed that!

[@WrinkleRelease]

I actually found this very helpful. I’ve never heard anyone explain what analogy we use with each spin number to try to understand it. Well done.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Good to hear! Thanks.

[@KeithCooper-Albuquerque]

Fascinating video, Nick and Em!

[@beardymonger]

Watching you both makes me emotional. (The "i am on the spectrum" video made me cry) Thank you! Live long and prosper together!

[@ScienceAsylum]

I'm glad you're enjoying the channel! Peace and long life🖖

[@myqueyo1706]

Dr Lucid, I just read your recent patreon email and I say "GO FOR IT!". I don't know if you're still reading comments on a video from 2 weeks ago... But, go for it man! Most of us fell in love with your channel(s) back when you were doing them the way you like.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks for the encouragement 🙂

[@karatydolphi]

Love your videos

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks!

[@colas6769]

Please don't separate, we love you so much. For some of us, we learned many things from you both since our childhood and you know how life is for geeks/nerds in schools.

[@MrGabrucho]

Loved the vídeo content, but I get to say, the best is watching you two interacting. You are an awesome couple.

[@danilolabbate]

Best explanation I've seen for Quantum Mechanics, don't remember the author, but it was "we know it works, the math definitely works, but we have no idea what's going on down there." It's kinda frustrating not being able to see it, though. 🙃

People like me, who have a visual-spatial type of intelligence, can grasp the concept better and remember the details better when there's some sort of visual representation, even if it is inaccurate in some way. I know for me, I simply make a mental note of which aspects are different from the representation. For instance, take a graphic that shows the inside of a proton as 1 red, 1 green, and 1 blue quark, 2 ups and 1 down. I know that it's not the whole picture, but by envisioning that image, I can remember and have a better grasp of the valence quarks and their relationship to each other.

[@seanmccabe8780]

I love watching these videos. It's an awesome way to explain complicated concepts is explaining to a lay person.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it!

[@gaemlinsidoharthi]

I think your description of spin, many videos ago, was probably the most enlightening of all the descriptions I’ve encountered.

[@Stegosaurus12345]

This was a great explanation. I understand that I can't take the images literally, but it helped me grasp the bigger picture a little better.

[@tommywhite3545]

*I loved that!* I think people watching pop-sci videos or pop-sci articles with lots of fascinating looking pictures should often be made more aware of the fact that thats pretty to very limited. Like analogies can be misleading without a good proper explanation. Even something as simple as a lightcone .. being a hypersurface. I guessing most people aren't aware of since we ar3 so familiar, attached to almost, with Euclidean space. (At least, for those who seriously want true understanding.) PS. Got a whole lot of catching up to do! Been a very busy year. Hope to see you during a lifestream soon! 👍

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks Tommy! I'm glad you loved it. I hope to go into more detail in the future.

[@PathfinderPhysics]

I studied QM and spin for the like of 7 years. I still have to hear what exactly these analogies are missing and why they are "limited". Spin 1/2, so SU(2), is a rotational symmetry. Dirac belt trick, the gears and the other examples show SU(2) rotational symmetry. Period. Nothing missing. Why do we keep mystifying quantum mechanics?

[@tommywhite3545]

@@PathfinderPhysics It's an analogy, they are always limited by definition. That can lead to (stubborn) misconceptions. Specially withouth a good and proper explanation. That's all. Nothing to do with demystifying QM or whatever. Good luck self-studying.

[@PathfinderPhysics]

@@tommywhite3545 Analogies work because they inform us on the nature of things by comparing systems that behave in a similar way. We are told spin is "like" angular momentum but "not really", commonly using as justification some old and mismodeled electron spinning faster than light. Meanwhile, we have the einstein-de haas effect, which essentially tells us spin angular momentum causes macroscopic things to rotate. Where do we draw the line? Where does the "not really" start? Similarly, spin 1/2 is a rotational symmetry. Is it exactly like the dirac belt trick? Yes. As long as we don't think of electrons as literally belts, the way the belt behaves informs us on the way electrons behave.

[@ThomasGutierrez]

Great content as always. I might caution that it is easy to overthink the spinor. The classical representations are perfectly fine and are no worse than representing a vector as an "flawed analogy" of a little arrow in space. We are just more familiar with manipulating and visualizing vectors as arrows, but that's not what they are. The spinor was originally developed by Klein in the 1890s to better describe the dynamics of a spinning top. The idea is that some objects, even classical ones, really do need different degrees of freedom to describe their symmetries under rotations than a single little arrow. The belt trick, tangloids game, a spinning top, and other things highlight this. Andrew Steane has a lovely paper on it called "Introduction to Spinors" that gets into some of this.

[@youtoob1811]

The biggest problem in understanding Spin, is the fact that it's called Spin.

[@i_booba]

Yeah the name itself is an analogy, really, but that’s because it turns out that quantum spin has the same units as regular ol’ angular momentum, which we can thinking about in terms of a spinning object. So it’s called a spin because of that. Mathematically, spin falls out of reconciling special relativity with quantum theory, which is pretty cool, but admittedly I’m not too keen on the details.

[@lanevotapka4012]

I love this topic about quantum spin, anti symmetry, and particle exchange, and would love more videos about it!

[@markonar140]

Another Amazing Informative Video!!! Thanks for Sharing!!! 👍😎

[@ScienceAsylum]

Glad you enjoyed it!!! 🤓

[@georgesokolov4155]

Thank you for the new video. As always, it is very interesting

[@warnelivesey]

Nice to see you back.

[@XL-5117]

I loved the belt illusion that shows the belt doesn’t change! It’s kind of like the inside out duvet cover when you put it on the duvet and it goes on okay. It’s counter intuitive but it works.

[@cw6043]

Awkward Em is amazing and a joy and brilliant and your better half 😊

[@beecat4183]

Love when Em is on the show, she's a perfect avatar for brilliant but confused, like most of your audience 😂

[@DavionStar]

I for one greatly appreciate your efforts to visualize these abstract concepts. Helps me wrap my head around things. I know it's not 100% accurate, I know it's all complicated math in the end, but just a bit of a visual guideline or analogy can help push me over the wall and make the concept click. Or I guess it helps my understanding quantum tunnel through that wall. ;P It's like when I was taking Linear Algebra in college. My first college didn't teach it in a way I could understand and I couldn't ask questions either and ended up failing. When I eventually changed colleges and got a much better teacher, he helped make it all click and I got straight As. So again, thank you so much for those extra steps.

[@terrymiller111]

Emily reminds me of Lori Petty. Thanks for the great vid.

[@kzeich]

You remind me of my best friend Brian. He moved to Florida in 8th grade and we lost touch. 38 now... but you have the same mannerisms and you even look similar. Ive enjoyed watching your channel grow and I think you're a wonderful educator.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks! Glad you enjoy my work. 🤓

[@wesshepard]

Great video guys! Thanks for uploading

[@ScienceAsylum]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@vadymkvasha4556]

My brain says "More!")) I'm happy to see you guys!

[@5001Fergies]

i love pauli’s take on it. We use it because it works. if it stops working, then we can ask why 😂

[@franks.6547]

I think of spin as a spoon attached via a rubber string to some point in space. You can read off three euler angles to describe the orientation of the spoon in space, plus a winding number 0 or 1 of how many times the string is twisted. Since the location is already fixed by the point of attachment, you can always pan the spoon around to keep the winding number 0 or 1 (belt trick). Also, I heard that within the framework of standard QFT, the spin-statistic-theorem is proven albeit complicated. But some miss more fundamental and less technical a connection.

[@ScienceAsylum]

There is a 1951 paper by Julian Schwinger that is usually cited as the first proof, but after a while people noticed it also had made a subtle assumption (just a new one that no one had made before).

[@mcnugget9999]

Ah my favourite duo. Thanks for the upload ladies and gents

[@angeldude101]

One thing I've learned is that in math there are no coincidences. Obviously, particles don't actually have belts attached to them, but I've become convinced that the fact the Dirac belt trick works is itself not a coincidence, but rather a different manifestation of the same math / geometry. One of the reasons I believe this in this particular instance is the fact that computer graphics programmers have been trying to pretend that spin-1/2 doesn't exist and it doesn't always work. Because quaternions, one of the most compact ways to describe a 3D object's rotation (not _orientation,_ but _rotation),_ have the property that they need to be constructed with half the desired angle, and a 360° quaternion is distinct from a 0° quaternion, but a 0° quaternion is _not_ distinct from a 720° quaternion. Yes, quaternions, despite seeming completely unrelated to quantum mechanics, behave more like spinors than anything else. There's also a possible clue in the way hyperbolic angles are measured, which is that the angle is always twice the area of the sector of a unit hyperbola enclosed by that angle. If you try to apply the same thing to a circle, you find that it still works, and the area of a sector of a unit circle is always half the angle of said sector. I don't know _how_ quantum spin could be related to unit circle sector areas, but I would be surprised at this point if they were completely unrelated.

[@PathfinderPhysics]

It's related through the geometry of the 3-sphere, which is one of the spatial solutions to the FLRW metric. Spin is an obvious hint that space obeys the rotational symmetries of a 3-sphere. Coincidentally, the global topology of the 3-sphere has a "twist", which is measured in terms of the cosine of the angle between bivectors (oriented planes corresponding to the circles fibers in the hopf fibration). It's the exact same correlation we get in Bell tests.

[@justinkane290]

I recognize over half the books he has on his shelf from my engineering undergrad. Nice to know they exist in more places than my professors syllabus.

[@mylivingsky]

5:13 is gold!

[@janusu]

I love the interview with Awkward Em format. Thanks guys!

[@xanadu1215]

This is awesome and I’m still freaking out over the belt demonstration lol

[@florian2442]

I have a playlist of videos about space & science. At this point I could rename it the science asylum playlist since it's pretty much just your videos. Thanks again for another fantastic presentation! ❤

[@001firebrand]

Dr. Lucid is our hero! 💖 Love your book, it's brilliant!

[@ScienceAsylum]

Glad you love the book!

[@danfg7215]

Nick, that's all well and good, but what does spinning an electron look like? You tell me "you have to spin an electron twice" as if I do that everyday when I brush my teeth or something. Also, what happens when an electron is spinned (half-spinned?), does its charge invert and it becomes a positron? How do we even detect electron spin? How do we measure the rotation of the spin to establish that it's going around twice? I know some questions might be wrong, because it's just an analogy, but answering them might help constrain the analogy. Please consider answering that in a future video instead of here. btw I've recently learned that photons have spin, and its basically their rotational polarization. My mind melted.

[@gruvhagen]

I love your videos so much, when you're together or any other type, I wish you would upload more but I understand difficult I don't understand how you don't have more followers than MrBeast

[@harthur2010]

Great video, love the "For Reasons" comment. :)

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks Hugh!

[@baldurk.1667]

I love the spin explanation from the channel ScienceClic English. Really great!

[@ScienceAsylum]

Viewers can find a link to it in my video description.

[@baldurk.1667]

I hate KZbin on smartphones...everything lies under heaps of shmoo.

[@ScienceAsylum]

In case anyone else is having a similar problem: kzbin.info/www/bejne/porIg4Zrlph7mKc Good video. Highly recommend.

[@glarynth]

I like the variant of the Dirac belt where you hold a coffee mug and rotate it 720° without letting go.

[@noxikid]

@@glarynth wow, cool :)

[@johngutierrez2687]

The was going to make a comment how are you two are great together and then I saw lots of other people saying the same thing. Add My comment to the pile. I love your videos and everything that you say Makes a very convoluted subject easier to begin to understand.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Thanks. I'm glad you like the video style. They seem to be very popular.

[@SciHeartJourney]

I ❤ this channel! Thank you. Here's what I can't understand about quantum spin: According to Maxwell's laws a spinning charge creates a magnetic dipole. That magnetic dipole is rotating about a nucleus. I think from what I read about the UV Catastrophe that this cause an energy loss. The electron would radiate every photon of every wavelength as it spiralled into the nucleus and meet a proton to annihilate each other. Matter would decay into pure energy. But this doesn't happen!

[@narfwhals7843]

That isn't the UV catastrophe. The UV catastrophe is the fact that classical electromagnetism fails to describe the blackbody radiation spectrum at high energies. Planck solved this with the introduction of Planck's Constant and the E=hf relation. The problem that classical electromagnetism also fails to describe the "orbits" of electrons was one of the first successes of quantum mechanics. Electrons do not orbit. They are in "orbitals" which are probability distributions. That also isn't quantum spin. Quantum spin is the intrinsic angular momentum of an individual particle that isn't due to its motion with respect to anything else. For charged particles this manifests in them acting like magnetic dipoles. This, with the alignments of these dipoles in atomic lattices, explains permanent magnets, which classical electromagnetism also does not account for. All of these are examples of the success of quantum mechanics. An electron would not anihilate with the nucleus. Electrons only anihilate with anti-electrons(positrons). Those are not usually present in atomic nuclei, which consist of protons and neutrons. Temperature is indeed a scalar field. But the way the higgs mechanism gives rise to mass is _really_ complicated and I am far from confident enough to explain it.

[@markusjacobi-piepenbrink9795]

Well done! This rotation thing always been so confusing - same as the rubber sheet for gravity

[@fredg.sanford634]

Thanks! I will use the belt trick to mystify my friend's kids this Thanksgiving! 😜

[@ScienceAsylum]

Glad I could give you something nerdy to talk about at parties 🤓. Also, thanks for the support!

[@Luke-to5sv]

I love the videos with you and your wife! You two have such great chemistry (or is it great physics 😂).

[@wiregold8930]

Nice work, I have a better grasp of what appears to be happening at the quantum scale.

[@CT-pi2gl]

I would love to see a Q&A where Em explains a biology topic to Nick.

[@krakhedd]

I like the colors of your gears!

[@David19553]

Extremely informative. Live long and prosper.🖖😇

[@ScienceAsylum]

Peace and long life🖖

[@averageguy7136]

QM is like a black box full of LEDs and Switches. The math can predict what LED's blink based on what combination of switches you toggle. But it can't explain why or what is inside the black box. That is why showing 'pictures' of concepts in quantum theory are so challenging.

[@dennisestenson7820]

5:30 my all time favorite illustration of spin

[@PhilipSportel]

I love your chemistry together.

[@shreyasrd2034]

I love you guys keep rocking 💓

[@barrypickford1443]

Feels like how I remember peoples names by locking down a story about the moment in which I first meet them and heard their name. And tell them, sharing the story cements the story-name in memory of connection.

[@Uhlbelk]

I like the spin analogy, because similarity to angular momentum holding it in it's orientation works in my mind.

[@IlluminatiBG]

I tried to learn about quantum spin about 10 years ago, and I am still spinning.

[@Brotherdot]

Vi cannot see or measure these particles, so we measure what they do to the space around them and guess what they might be doing. I love it! Hard to wrap your head around.

[@neck_acrobatics]

People demand more Emily & Nick videos!

[@BIBEK1729]

Sir, my name is Bibek, my question is that velocity of the particle at geostationary orbit can be written as V""=√GM/R+h.. where h is the height of that particle from the surface of earth.. Suppose, we have a long rigid rod length (L) and L=h then the formula of the linear velocity is V'=(R+L)w (w= angular velocity of earth) (w=1/R√GM/R ) then the linear velocity will be V'=((R+L)/R)√GM/R.. then V''=V' will be equal because linear velocity is same.. so if we solve both of them then L=h should happen but why is it not happening like this??