Date of Award

Fall 2007

Document Type

Restricted Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2007 Daniel J. Peterson. All rights reserved. Access to this work is restricted to users within the Swarthmore College network and may only be used for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes. Sharing with users outside of the Swarthmore College network is expressly prohibited. For all other uses, including reproduction and distribution, please contact the copyright holder.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Physics & Astronomy Department

First Advisor

John R. Boccio

Abstract

Quantum mechanics, which has no completely accepted interpretation but many seemingly strange physical results, has been interpreted in a number of bizarre and fascinating way over the years. The two interpretations examined in this paper, Bohr and Ulfbeck's “Genuine Fortuitousness” and Stuckey, Silberstein, and Cifone's “Relational Blockworld” seem to be two such strange interpretations; Genuine Fortuitousness posits that causality is not fundamental to the universe, and Relational Blockworld suggests that time does not act as we perceive it to act. In this paper, I analyze these two interpretations of quantum mechanics, examining the predecessors whose works they drew from, both interpretations' physical and mathematical derivations, and their physical and philosophical consequences. After this intensive review of each interpretation, I determine that, despite the fact that Genuine Fortuitousness and Relational Blockworld make claims that run contrary to common sense, both interpretations are important and interesting ways of looking at the quantum world that may proffer solutions to some of the toughest problems plaguing physics today.

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