Max - I get your point. To the average person, why should they trust a scientist over a preacher? Vast numbers of the population nowadays can't even grasp the simplest of scientific ideas.
On the other hand, even after a Masters in Physics, I will struggle to understand most modern Theoretical physics papers. I can get the gist of it, but that's about it. (Actually a good Maths degree would almost be more useful).
The hardest thing about advanced physics is that our minds cannot visualise relativity or QM is because at our scale and speeds they are insignificant. Take something like temperature though. This is obvious to everyone and seems very intuitive because we are used to it. But if we didn't have organs that sensed temperature, understanding why water is ice in some places would be really difficult and not at all intuitive. The same goes for trying to visualise things in 4 dimensions, which is pretty much impossible due to brain limitations.
Going back to the switch, I don't think it is possible to understand why it can be on and off in the sort of visual way you perhaps want to (and neither can I). What is important is that by modelling reality (in this case) as a wavefunction consisting of two states which follows schroedingers equation, we get repeatable results that indicate that QM is a good model of reality. I also can't visualise an electron in a hydrogen atom as not being in a particular point in space, yet it gives much better results to model it this way than an electron orbitting a proton like the Earth orbits the Sun. (If that were the case it would radiate energy and the orbit would decay in a fraction of a second)
This last part is the most difficult thing to explain to people.
On the other hand, even after a Masters in Physics, I will struggle to understand most modern Theoretical physics papers. I can get the gist of it, but that's about it. (Actually a good Maths degree would almost be more useful).
The hardest thing about advanced physics is that our minds cannot visualise relativity or QM is because at our scale and speeds they are insignificant. Take something like temperature though. This is obvious to everyone and seems very intuitive because we are used to it. But if we didn't have organs that sensed temperature, understanding why water is ice in some places would be really difficult and not at all intuitive. The same goes for trying to visualise things in 4 dimensions, which is pretty much impossible due to brain limitations.
Going back to the switch, I don't think it is possible to understand why it can be on and off in the sort of visual way you perhaps want to (and neither can I). What is important is that by modelling reality (in this case) as a wavefunction consisting of two states which follows schroedingers equation, we get repeatable results that indicate that QM is a good model of reality. I also can't visualise an electron in a hydrogen atom as not being in a particular point in space, yet it gives much better results to model it this way than an electron orbitting a proton like the Earth orbits the Sun. (If that were the case it would radiate energy and the orbit would decay in a fraction of a second)
This last part is the most difficult thing to explain to people.
