Using simple elastic bands to explain quantum mechanics: a conceptual review of two of Aert's machine-models

TL;DR

This paper reviews two of Diederik Aerts' elastic band-based machine models that help explain quantum phenomena, including spin measurements and Bell inequality violations, aiming to demystify quantum mechanics.

Contribution

It highlights the significance of Aerts' elastic band models in clarifying quantum behaviors and promotes their recognition in the physics community.

Findings

The spin quantum-machine replicates quantum spin measurement probabilities.

The elastic band water model can violate Bell's inequality.

Models provide structural insights into quantum measurement processes.

Abstract

From the beginning of his research, the Belgian physicist Diederik Aerts has shown great creativity in inventing a number of concrete machine-models that have played an important role in the development of general mathematical and conceptual formalisms for the description of the physical reality. These models can also be used to demystify much of the strangeness in the behavior of quantum entities, by allowing to have a peek at what's going on - in structural terms - behind the "quantum scenes," during a measurement. In this author's view, the importance of these machine-models, and of the approaches they have originated, have been so far seriously underappreciated by the physics community, despite their success in clarifying many challenges of quantum physics. To fill this gap, and encourage a greater number of researchers to take cognizance of the important work of so-called Geneva-Brussels school, we describe and analyze in this paper two of Aerts' historical machine-models, whose operations are based on simple breakable elastic bands. The first one, called the spin quantum-machine, is able to replicate the quantum probabilities associated with the spin measurement of a spin-1/2 entity. The second one, called the \emph{connected vessels of water model} (of which we shall present here an alternative version based on elastics) is able to violate Bell's inequality, as coincidence measurements on entangled states can do.