Breakthrough

I’m sure you’ve heard about The Observer Effect on electrons in quantum physics. (who hasn’t?) To refresh your minds, I’ll give a brief explanation. (This is what I understand and all you’ll need to know.) Physicists did some experiments with a beam of electrons. When they were watching the experiments, the electrons behaved like particles. So far so good, everybody knew they were particles. The big surprise happened when when nobody was watching. Then, the electrons usually behaved like waves. There were a few times it didn’t happen but mostly it did. The scientists shocked the science community by concluding that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the reality. It was big news when it happened and I read about it in a newspaper. When I finished the article, I put my paper down and thought, “I already knew that.”

Okay, maybe I didn’t know it on the subatomic level but I definitely knew it on the big-and-lumbering-atomic level. Of course we behave differently when somebody is watching than when we’re alone. When I’m being watched, I’m a highly engaged and clever girl, when I’m alone…well, I’m just not going to share that with you.

Today I walked into Taradeau along a busy and rather noisy road. On my way back, I thought I’d try walking along the river – surely there’d be access and it would be a more pleasant walk. (In the UK it would be a pretty poor river that didn’t have some sort of public footpath.) So I walked over the bridge and took a dirt road leading downwards. At the bottom, it followed the river for a while and I congratulated myself on my good idea. But then it ended. This is a very shallow river and the bed is lined with small rocks. There wasn’t actually much water flowing and plenty of room to walk on the sides. This looked promising so I proceeded walking along the edges and covered a short distance. Then the bank got steeper and there was no more room to walk without getting my feet wet. There didn’t seem to be a way forward so I started walking back the way I’d come. Then I stopped. I really didn’t like retracing my steps. So I clumsily scrambled up the rocky bank. My foot slipped near the top and I got my hands all muddy trying to catch myself. At the top, there was a bit of a path. So I followed that for a while but it soon deteriorated into nothing but long weeds. I stopped again. Looking down at my feet, I saw that my tights were covered with cockleburs and those stickey seed pellets you often see stuck to dogs. I paused a while and weighed up my options. I figured I was already covered with stickers, I may as well go on. I walked deeper into the weeds but they got higher and thicker making me stop again. This wasn’t going to work. I finally resigned myself to the fact and realized I’d have to go back the way I’d come.

Just as I turned, I heard a deep voice. I looked across the river and directly on the other side was a man giving an interview to another man with a large video camera. It seemed to be for some local TV station or maybe a company promotion film. I suppose I’d been so lost in my stumbling and switching directions and picking stickers out of my tights I hadn’t noticed them. I looked around and realized I hadn’t actually covered a lot of ground. This all happened within easy camera range. Averting my eyes, I pretended not to notice them, stuck my chin in the air and walked out of sight as quickly as I could.

I felt so silly having been observed. What to me had been a rather annoying but typical solitary walk turned into something else when I realized I had been observed. My perception of myself changed. Under observation, I wasn’t just a woman on a walk, I became a sweaty woman stumbling around in weeds in the background of a film walker.

On the busy road again, I reflected on this experience and realized it was actually an experiment. I’ve drawn some dramatic conclusions and want to announce today that I’ve made a breakthrough on The Observer Effect.

Original Theory: In most cases, the very act of being observed affects the subject’s behaviour.
Julie’s Supplement: In the cases where observation doesn’t change the subject’s behaviour, the subject’s perception of the behaviour changes upon realizing that she (the electron) has been observed. Furthermore, the new perception of behaviour replaces the original behaviour. To which we can only conclude that:

There is no truth except a perception of truth

Thank you, please remain seated. I will be submitting my findings to The Science Review tomorrow.