I love QM threads. So many schizos and misinformed idiots.
>>12471271Observation is a misleading name. To better explain it, think of an old blind man. How can he figure out that there is a table in front of him? He has to touch it. Likewise, we live in a touchy universe. The only way for one particle to know the position and other properties of another particle is to touch it. This is "observation".
Superposition comes in when we do not know the state of a particle - nothing does. A common example is an electron. An electron has two spin states - 1/2 and -1/2.
There exists a complicated method to randomly set the spin state of an electron without knowing what we set it to: 50/50 odds for each state. Ensure that no particles interact with this electron, and it is now in superposition. Both -1/2 and 1/2 at the same time until we check it. We can use this electon as a single qbit, as -1/2 is 0 and 1/2 is 1.
What does superposition do, exactly? It's complicated and rather nonsensical - in fact, it is inherently illogical. For one, quantum computing interacts with a bit in superposition. By doing a large number of flips and operations on the qbits without checking them, we can solve a small subset of problems much faster.
For a more practical example, look up the half mirror/silvered mirror example. Light particles fired in superposition have some interesting behavior.
