Gloves and Socks

Well, happy New Year everybody.

The wind is cold and the ground is muddy so my mind turns to gloves and socks, and .
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quantum mechanics^[1]. Socks, gloves and quantum mechanics I hear you mutter. Let me explain. In quantum mechanics there is a possibility that 2 particles can be entangled. This is a weird state where the 2 particles share some property no matter how far they are separated from each other^[2]. Now the question is, are they like gloves or socks. Intuitively we would say that they must be like gloves. Even if we can't see either of the gloves, when we look at one we immediately know the handedness of the other. If it is a right hand glove then the other must be a left hand glove and vice versa. So, the particles (gloves) already  have a state (handedness) but we just don't know what it is yet. But quantum mechanics isn't intuitive^[3]. It seems that in the quantum world the particles behave more like socks. The 2 socks in a pair are identical - they are neither left footed or right footed. However, if we put one of the socks on our left foot they other one becomes a right sock. The putting on of one sock corresponds to the measurement of one of the particles. Up until you put one of the socks on they are both in a superposition^[4] of states, both left and right footed. But the state can be forced one way are the other by putting one sock on.

[1] I am not a physicist
[2] Well, experiment suggests this is true, but it is hard to check if the other particle is on the other side of the universe.
[3] And why would it be. We have day to day experience of objects from about 1mm upwards. If stuff smaller (much, much smaller in the quantum world) than this behaves diferently then we cannot rely on intuition because intuition is the product of a lifetimes practical experience. Now if we were to take a child at birth and only show them the quantum world... OK, maybe not very ethical, but the point is that they would find the quantum world intuitive and the large scale world very weird indeed.
[4] Superposition is a fancy physicists word meaning in more than one of two opposing states; both red and green, or upside down and right side up, or left and right handed/footed, etc.