Quantum Freakishness

Whether it seems intuitively plausible that a particle could appear out of nothing might seem impossible to a person who lived only the world of watermelon-sized objects where this does not happen. To a five year old child used to seeing objects and people appear out of nowhere all the time on TV, it would seem obvious it was possible. To a maker of electronic chips, it would just be another thing he had to design for. It is all a matter of which behaviours you are familiar with. People frequently make the mistake of presuming the world of the very small or very big is constrained to work just the same way our watermelon world does.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)