At the 1927 Solvay conference, Albert Einstein presented a thought experiment intended to demonstrate the incompleteness of the quantum mechanical description of reality. In the following years, the experiment was modified by Einstein, de Broglie, and several other commentators into a simple scenario involving the splitting in half of the wave function of a single particle in a box. This paper collects together several formulations of this thought experiment from the literature, analyzes and assesses it from the point of view of the Einstein–Bohr debates, the EPR dilemma, and Bell’s theorem, and argues for “Einstein’s Boxes” taking its rightful place alongside similar but historically better known quantum mechanical thought experiments such as EPR and Schrödinger’s Cat.
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February 2005
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February 01 2005
Einstein’s boxes
Travis Norsen
Travis Norsen
Marlboro College, Marlboro, Vermont 05344
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Am. J. Phys. 73, 164–176 (2005)
Article history
Received:
April 02 2004
Accepted:
September 10 2004
Citation
Travis Norsen; Einstein’s boxes. Am. J. Phys. 1 February 2005; 73 (2): 164–176. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1811620
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