Escape From Shadow Physics

Author: Adam Forrest Kay

Through my younger son’s interest in Physics, I have enjoyed a second look into the wonderful world of Physics. Every now and then I get him to explain some new concepts of Quantum Mechanics to me. When I saw the review of this book in the Wall Street Journal I jumped at the opportunity to learn something new and maybe have something to explain to him for a change. 

One of the challenges I have with Quantum Physics is visualizing the duality of light’s particle and wave nature. It turns out that back in 2005, a couple of French scientists discovered that adding a tiny droplet of silicone oil to a vibrating bath of the same oil resulted in the droplet bouncing around amidst the wave that was in the oil bath. While this was quite a cute visualization of the particle and wave duality, it turns out that a lot of the quantum analytics equations had an analogue in this bouncing oil droplet world. The author, Adam Forrest Kay is fascinated with this finding and believes that this might be a path to end the “Dark Ages of Quantum Theory”.

Much of the book is a rant on how Neils Bohr held enormous sway on the Physicist group-think. According to Bohr and all the leading physics of the last several decades, the wave and particle nature of light are both valid, but only one or the other can be validated in any particular experiment.  Mr. Kay really wants us to believe that there is some unknown underlying mechanism that gives rise to this dual way of interpreting light. He says that even Einstein had the same belief when he responded to Bohr with his now famous “God does not play dice” quote. 

With the recent discoveries in hydrodynamic quantum analogs (vibrating oil bath experiments), Mr. Kay is very hopeful that it will create a path to lead us out of the Dark Ages of Quantum Theory. However, this book meanders along and doesn’t make a compelling case that there is light at the end of the proverbial quantum tunnel.