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From: brooks@lll-crg.ARPA (Eugene D. Brooks III)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Bell's Inequality
Message-ID: <590@lll-crg.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 17-May-85 21:32:46 EDT
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Posted: Fri May 17 21:32:46 1985
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> > What problem?  Wavefunction collapse is part of the theory
> > of measurement.  The theory works.
> 
> (1) Where can we find a clear exposition of this "theory of measurement"?

Just about any serious book on QM will explain the details, the topic can't
be studied lightly however and requires substatial mathemtical sophistication.

See:  Quantum Mechanics, by Eugen Merzbacher, Look up Measurement of observables
in the index, pp 289-293 is useful.

See: E. P. Wigner, Am. J. Phys, 31, 6(1963) for a review article on the topic

See: Quantum Mechanics, by Albert Messiah, Look up Measurement in the index

I can also dig up some papers describing Quantum NonDemolition Measurement
that are relatively recent works dealing with gravity wave detectors etc
where the object is to measure without disturbing the state being measured
and the constraints that must be placed on the measuring device etc I you
want to read them.  Measurement theory in QM is well developed but is not
well grasped by the physics community in general.

> (2) I know some computer programs that also appear to work but that in
> reality are full of bugs.  Apparent working is not good enough!

If you know that a program has a bug, and you can demonstrate it, then the
program does not appear to work.  Of course the program works with some data
and your analogy to physics is a rather good one.  In the case of QM and the
theory of measurement lets demonstrate the bug before you claim that the theory
is broken.  Claiming that the theory is not intuitive or asthetic is not good
enough.