[brownbat]

> i mean, what's the layman's description of a rabi cycle?

Ars technica tackled that without blinking in this article from 2010:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/10/riding-a-rabi-cycle-p...

It's tempting to dismiss lay explanations as impossible when you're assuming the laymen needs a full and complete understanding of every implication. But in lay explanations, you're not graded on completeness, you're just offering a foothold so people know generally what you're talking about and one or two implications.

What are we talking about? Quantum mechanics. What's that? When things are really tiny they seem to obey unexpected rules (of physics). So quantum mechanics describes the behavior of really tiny things. What's a rabi cycle? So you have some of these really tiny things, and they're flipping between two states, like a light switch. Maybe you shine a light on them to get them excited, and when they're excited in a certain way, they flip back and forth between these two states.

What does that get us? Maybe it helps us make lasers that have effects that are more focused than we would expect given diffraction limits--that's the limit of how focused light can get based on the properties of the lens you're using.

[jessriedel]

There's nothing in that article that the layman can use to predict anything, i.e., the reader will not be able to answer any questions afterwards that aren't directly addressed in the original article. That's a sign that those sorts of explanations give the feeling of understanding, but don't actually impart knowledge.

If someone writes "there's a war in Syria", then the reader can accurately predict that there will be an above-average number of bombed out buildings, and probably lots of refugees on the border. But if someone writes "Rabi oscillations are when very tiny things flip back and forth", there are no non-trivial questions the reader can answer. The reason is that the reader knows roughly what "war" is and what a country is and that "Syria" is a country. But when you tell them tiny things are flipping...all they know is that tiny things are flipping. (Ask "do you think you can catch the tiny thing on it's edge part way through it's flip?" Or "Do the tiny things flip faster or slower than sound waves?" The reader will have no idea.)

In other words, "Energy makes it go!": http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

[m3mnoch]

dude! you should update that page! i actually understood what you said!