John Martinis

And you have the electron and you have the proton attracting it.

So the whole waves theory combines all those two and, you know, gives you a description of how the atom works and quite accurate description, too.

Yeah, so if you have an electron just traveling through space, hitting a wall, let's say, there's a little wave packet, wave function to it.

So it's not a single particle.

It has some extent to it.

And what happens is that when that particle hits the wall...

quantum mechanics say there is some amount, small amount of this wave function, or if you like, the particle going through the wall and then to the other side.

Now, most of the time it bounces off, but every once in a while it goes through.

And, you know, this is seen in everyday devices.

If you build a very small memory circuit, you have to worry about electrons tunneling and charge leaking off your capacitor.

They have magnetic memories that depend on these tunnel junctions.

So this is a very well-known phenomenon.

If you make this barrier, this insulator, just 10, 20 atoms thick, then that's thin enough for it to go through.

To go through.

Yeah, that's the idea.

Right.

Yeah.

And again, we've been talking about quantum mechanics is the physics nature at this microscopic atomic scale.

But the question was, if you made a macroscopic object, would it obey quantum mechanics also?

Okay.