#1196 overall
The Messenger Lectures (Leonard Susskind)
Cornell University
1 recommender · 1 thread · recommended in 1 year, 2015 · score 0.7
A set of video lectures by Leonard Susskind, presented at Cornell University, giving an accessible introduction to physics ideas such as quantum mechanics, relativity and the nature of physical laws. The lectures are pitched at a general audience and serve as a quick overview of the subject.
One commenter points to it as a quick overview of quantum entanglement ideas, with Susskind's longer Stanford lectures as the in-depth follow-up.
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What you've quoted there is a good analogy of an entangled state. In reality there are several differences, and the biggest piece of misinformation is that measurement of one system somehow "collapses a wave function" in the other system which isn't the case.
The phenomenon of entanglement is that measurements of certain things are either perfectly correlated or anti-correlated. Eg. Measurement of spin along some axis on electron A will always be -1 when measurement of spin along the same axis of electron B is +1.
The similarity to 2 coins is: if i have a 1972 coin and a 1973 coin, and give one to you randomly, then you go a million light years away and look at your coin and find you have the 1973 coin, you will know I have the 1972 coin. Although this is only a simplified analogy of entanglement the important point is that the state was prepared before we separated, and no information has been communicated. When you try to understand this in terms of classical physics, it's weird. But it's not classical physics. I wrote more about it here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10133674
Also check out the leonard susskind messenger lectures for a quick overview and his stanford continuing ed lectures on youtube for the long version :)