[sklogic]

Our intuition is so poor that it even gets many classical mechanics problems wrong. Most hilariously the various resonance-related things (my favourite practical example is a pendulum swinging upwards, which looks like pure magic).

Intuition is also very poor in dealing with nonlinear things (think soliton waves and all that stuff). So, trusting an intuition is always wrong and intuition got no place in science anyway, not just in nanoscale.

[VLM]

> Our intuition is so poor

Even better example, "Heavy things fall faster". Or "The sun revolves around the earth".

As a greater cultural trend there is often a bit of quantum-whitewashing that everything in physics is obvious and straightforward except quantum mechanics because I suffered thru the annoying math and need to show off superiority at being one of the few humans (on a percentage of entire population) who understand a good chunk of QM. Relativity gets the same treatment.

However its important to note that none of physics is very intuitive. Heavy things don't fall faster. The sun doesn't orbit the earth. The general public has some peculiar ideas about the laws of thermodynamics. Orbits in space are not perfect circles. Atomic structure is not a fractally small solar system. QM is typical and normal for physics in having non-intuitive dark corners, that's the norm for all of physics not a peculiarity of QM.

There is shibboleth value in that you define a physicist or a dude who knows physics as a guy who walks around saying QM is the only non-intuitive component of physics. Not because its true, but because that's one of the official physicist mating calls or whatever you want to call it, shibboleth I guess.

There is also the deus ex machina aspect that in all forms of non-technical drama (aka all of it) people who like to write magical fantasy have decided to fool us into thinking its new by copy-and-replace word processing "quantum" in for "Tolkienish magic", see also the multiverse people.

[renox]

> Even better example, "Heavy things fall faster". Or "The sun revolves around the earth".

Except that those two particular examples are very easy to explain to (nearly) everybody: 1- you think that heavy things fall faster because this is true when there is air resistance.

2-Q:if you have one 'fixed' object and one rotating object, what do you see from the rotating object? A: the same thing as from the 'fixed' object. So is it the Sun which is revolving or the Earth? You don't feel like the Earth is moving but observation of remotes stars have shown us that this is the case.

Which is NOT the case for QM! A good example: QM 'spooky action at distance', QM predicts that there are non-local instantaneous (FTL) effects, but they cannot be used to send data FTL and this has been measured to be true (mostly).

[sklogic]

> those two particular examples are very easy to explain

Explanations do not affect intuition at all, it's too primal to listen to any reason. Even despite the fact that everybody heard this explanation from the elementary school, watching this in action is still mind-blowing. Check it out yourself [1], and answer honestly - was your intuition puzzled by what you've seen?

[1] http://www.iflscience.com/physics/dropping-bowling-ball-and-...

[4Data]

Can you give an example of a pendulum swinging upwards? Is that an inverted pendulum? [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oGYCxkgnHQ

[sklogic]

Yes, that's a good example. The recipe I used for such demos was based on an old Soviet electric shaver and a standard bicycle wheel spoke, it's a known combination to get an inverted pendulum (even at funny angles, not necessarily entirely upward).

[williamjennings]

Even when intuition fails, intuitionist logic may still prove quite useful.