On Sun, Jul 27, 2025 at 9:10 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
> *>>> If it's an unmeasured electron the the chance of UP or DN could be >>> anything. Maybe it's an UP electron from a source that only produces UP >>> electrons.* >> >> > *>> If that is the case then somewhere and sometime in its lifetime the >> electron must've encountered something equivalent to a Stern–Gerlach >> magnet, and so the electron is NOT unmeasured. * > > *> So if I illuminate a piece of iron with some photons that knock out > electrons via the photoelectric effect, then on passing them thru an SG > magnet and detecting their distribution, you say they must necessarily be > 50/50 UP/DN?* > *Not necessarily. Electrons in magnetic iron are not randomly oriented, so the electrons knocked out of the iron may have some preferential spin orientation. Also because angular momentum is conserved, circularly polarized light can preferentially eject electrons of one spin orientation over the other. But both the magnetic orientation of iron atoms and the amount of polarization of the light are known quantities, at least theoretically, therefore the electrons they eject cannot be considered "unmeasured" because sometime somewhere they have encountered something equivalent to a Stern–Gerlach magnet, just as I said.* *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* ed4 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1vs_nUKip97h3E7JAThWritGfX7R-0vkTPJz%2BFDeDyLA%40mail.gmail.com.
