Logic - Week 8

Inductive Logic (Generalising)
Definition: Reasoning from the particular to the general.

When the electrons were shot through the two slits and formed a wave pattern, instead of two individual lines on the back board, it was assumed that the electrons were interfering with one another and thus forming the pattern. Yet when a measuring device was used to observe this occurrence near the slits, the electrons in fact changed their paths and formed the two lines that they were originally meant to form.

The idea was proposed as matter is spread out in space, wavy, that is is very difficult to say where it is and what it may do next. This was quantum physics, that there is a huge uncertainty as the effects are so small and changeable that it is stated that nature is a game of chance. There is a real limit to what scientists can know with absolute certainty.

Every time Einstein tried to make sense and reason of certain ideas, people would find ways around it to prove him wrong. He tried extremely hard to show that quantum physics was wrong, yet he did not succeed. Much of physics is probable and unable to reason with.

Deductive Logic (Narrowing down)
Definition: Reasoning from a general premise that is either known or assumed to be true.

An idea that was presented in the first video was that when marbles are shot through a slit, they hit the board in the same line as the slit, then when shot through two slits it forms two lines. When this was applied to quantum physics, electrons were shot through one slit and sure enough it formed one line. So it was assumed that electrons, being tiny particles of matter, would also form two lines. Yet this was proved false. It formed a series of lines, as a wave would.

It was assumed, especially by Einstein that the outcomes of an experiment could not be completely predictable "I can not believe that God plays dice with the universe".

Inside a vacuum electrons perform like solid particles, but when placed in a solid, they perform like waves. Thus was the idea of quantum physics. There came the idea of the particle wave durability of electrons. The transmitter was created for this specific purpose...it was a process of applying quantum theory to practical problems.