Quantum Mechanics In Layman’s Terms [Up-Goer-Five Compliant]

Someone asked another person to explain Schrodinger’s Cat in layman’s terms. Seeing that the person rather failed at it, I decided to write an Up-Goer-Five compliant [I need to make a post with a glossary of terms that defines this type of jargon I use] thing explaining it. It actually got so long, that I crashed the Up-Goer-Five text editor… twice, with plenty of text to spare. I think it can only handle a thousand words at once. In case you don’t know, the Up-Goer-Five text editor is the ultimate layman’s terms text editor. It forces you to use only the thousand most used words (and their conjugations, plurals, variants, and such if any) so that you would have to “explain it like [they’re] five.” I’m sorry! xD I love xkcd too much! This entire Up-Goer-Five thing itself is an xkcd thing!

Anyways, I explained the uncertainty principle, the wave function (what it represents… briefly), Schrodinger’s cat, probability functions (at least the concept itself… sort of), wave/particle duality (briefly), and more things to the best of my ability, because it literally started to hurt (I was getting dizzy) to write something like this. I’d actually be fifty thousand times more confused if I had to learn things written in in laymanese than in its natural rote format. Three hours doing it. Now I feel stupid, and feel like saying things in tiny words like I just did right now. I’m so used to using the proper, longer terms, that because I had to rewire my brain to force myself to use only the thousand most used words, I feel mind-numb now since the constant buzzing of ideas, thoughts and words in there have died down. How can people live like this? It’s so boring! And painful! And just… numb! I don’t want to have numbness in my mind! I want to have numbers in my mind! Maybe if I wrote one sentence like how I would normally write an explanation of quantum mechanics… maybe string theory… I can jolt my mind back into reality.

“String theory suggests that everything is made up of Planck length sized vibrating one-dimensional pieces of energy known as Superstrings, each of which is curled up into a 11-space manifold known as the Calabi-Yau manifold, that are either open or closed as to attach to space foam or not where closed strings are thought to be gravitons as this would explain gravity’s apparent weakness compared to the three other forces…” alright, I feel better now.

Here’s the Up-Goer-Five compliant explanation of some of quantum mechanics.