The Observable Collapse of Screwdriver Probability Fields

Quantum mechanics is spooky, as Einstein said. Of course, he was talking about quantum entanglement, in which a particle, observed, determines the status of the particle to which it is entangled.

It is so much the quantum world for screwdrivers as well! Trust me, I've proven it. I cite, for example, a recent escapade involving yours truly and a particularly leaky Jacuzzi pipework apparatus. All was well, until...

I really needed to screw back that access panel under the Jacuzzi. I remember the screws had been hand-fed into their holes but needed professional equipment to see them properly home. A Jacuzzi is a sophisticated machine, so certainly access must be via a panel secured with the sophistication of Phillips screws.

You would think. And so I did.

I grab my Phillips screwdriver, sitting so tragically RIGHT NEXT to the flathead screwdriver I leave behind. I walk to the bathroom and stoop the stoop that has traditionally engendered butt-cracks for chuckling and cackling children everywhere. Alas, LO! BEHOLD! The screws are flathead screws!

That's how my screwdriver probability field collapsed. That's how the quantum cookie crumbles.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS QUOTIDIAN MISSTEP OF LIFE:

Quantum mechanics use quantum toolboxes, right?

Once the screw head type was properly observed, the probability field containing vacillating realities of flathead vs Phillips collapsed into the entangled screwdriver in the tool chest, half a house, and many quanta, away into the exact one I needed.

Thus, I observe the screw in the panels, the screwdriver I needed--left behind in the quantumized tool chest--and I was cursed with the wrong one. Probably every time? Probably? Possibly?

Yes, Schrödinger, your cat is dead.

Or is it? [Meows waft in the æther, somewhere.]

I walk back to the tool chest to retrieve the correct screwdriver. There it is, in all its flathead eventuality. As it turns out, we ourselves are also quantumly entangled with the things we observe, because quantum mechanics is merciful. By all rights, once I left the vicinity of the Phillips screwhead entanglement, the screwdriver in the toolbox should have collapsed into a different type of driver. Or at the very least, assumed a quasi-status of both [flathead + Phillips] in simultaneous shimmer, simply awaiting my observation as I reached for it. Thus, I would be damned to a Hell of walking back and forth forever, eternally having the wrong screwdriver.

Why wouldn't you just grab both screwdrivers at the same time? you ask.

Because I'm a guy. The Y-chromosome forbids such foresight. It's the same mutated allele that forces me to skip the directions for putting together children's toys Christmas Eve. Or worse--wait! nevermind--I have GPS now.

So, I should be damned to a Hell of walking back and forth forever, eternally having the wrong screwdriver. But I wasn't.

Why? Because quantum mechanics strives to get along with us. I had the right screwdriver and walk back to the bathroom and, without any more entanglement, righty-tighty the little fellas home.

So quantum mechanics learned. It established a path of least resistance after just one misstep. Quantum theory says,

"Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on Einstein."

Translated, you're not crazy, you just picked the wrong screwdriver, you idiot; if you do it again, though, then you are crazy.

I now know the screws in my access panel are just one less thing needed to resolve in my life--thanks to my inescapable partner in life, the ol' probability cloud that grants me a Mulligan to garner an Attaboy! each second time around. On to the next entanglement I go. (Will she or won't she?)

And don't worry about feeding the cat. I think.

Meow.