Last night I had a dream I was playing a card game with my son. It was an interesting game: each card had a piece of Dirac notation on it. He was winning.
It could be a real game, I thought, when I woke up. Perhaps there are a few cards on the table that represent some state of entangled particles (not to imply any belief in hidden variables, natch… it’s just a game.) Each player has a hand of bras, kets and operators and they take turns trying to put down a valid expression. If they do, they get to measure the observable in question. The other players then need to play cards to make their own measurements and try to guess the state of the entangled particle. Sort of like Clue crossed with Wff n’ Proof. Or something.
Anyway, I figured it would at least prepare my kids for the bizarre blackboard scrawlings they would face in their graduate quantum mechanics course. But then I decided I’d rather not encourage them into such an ontologically dodgy enterprise anyway.
and I thought I had weird dreams