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!

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

You would think.

I grab my Phillips screwdriver, sitting so tragically RIGHT NEXT to the flathead screwdriver. I walk the hall to the bathroom and stoop the stoop that engenders butt-cracks for chuckling children everywhere. And LO! BEHOLD! The screws are flathead screws!

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

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS QUOTIDIAN MISSTEP OF LIFE: Once the screwhead type was observed, the probability field containing vacillating realities of flathead vs Phillips collapsed to the entangled screwdriver in the tool chest, half a house away. Thus, I observe the screw in the panels, the screwdriver I needed--left behind in the tool chest complied--and I was cursed with the wrong one. Yes, Schrödinger, your cat is dead.

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

So 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 and 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; 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.

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

Meow.