WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

The classic example of a superposition involves firing photons at two parallel slits in a barrier. One fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics is that tiny particles can behave like waves, so that those passing through one slit "interfere" with those going through the other, their wavy ripples either boosting or canceling one another to create a characteristic pattern on a detector screen. The odd thing, though, is this interference occurs even if only one particle is fired at a time. The particle seems somehow to pass through both slits at once, interfering with itself. That's a superposition.

And it gets weirder: Measuring which slit such a particle goes through will invariably indicate it only goes through one--but then the wavelike interference (the "quantumness," if you will) vanishes. The very act of measurement seems to "collapse" the superposition. "We know something fishy is going on in a superposition," says physicist Avshalom Elitzur of the Israeli Institute for Advanced Research. "But you're not allowed to measure it. This is what makes quantum mechanics so diabolical."

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