[micheles]

Speaking as a physicist, I have always hated this nomenclature. There is no vacuum at all. The universe is filled with quantum fields, they are the source of the Casimir effect. Terms as "vacuum energy" are simply a bad naming, the energy comes from the quantum field, which is a very physical object even if not intuitive, as anything quantum.

[dumbworld]

I think the quantum universe is simply too difficult to perceive for most people. If you begin to talk about quantum biology or get into specifics like the Vaidman bomb tester or how information propagates logically, most times I’ve either been accused of being mentally ill or not knowing what I am talking about.

I think the key mistake is expecting others to operate at a conscious and curious level.

[As_You_Wish]

I don't really think that it is too difficult. It's like that saying that is around - if you can't explain something simply, then you really don't know the topic well. As Einstein explained relativity to the general public: “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.”

Just use an analogies. Analogies are best, even if they are not 100% accurate, which I guess is the point of analogies - to use something one knows to illustrate a new concept.

To explain, I would tell them that the analogy I'm giving is not exact, but a way to get a general idea. So for quantum fields, one possible way is to explain it like an ocean. I would say that a quantum field can be understood as an ocean that covers the entire universe but too small to see, just like atoms. But it's still there. And, there are 24 of these oceans all overlapping each other, for each type of field, like one for electrons, one for the photons, etc. A photon comes into existence in this ocean when it is excited, similar to a wave on an ocean. This means that there is no such thing as "empty space" or a complete vacuum, it is impossible, the quantum fields permeate everything everywhere.

That's pretty simple to understand, even for a 10-year-old.

Maybe there are better analogies. I'm just using this as one such example, showing how to explain a topic, rather than the topic of quantum fields specifically, although the explanation above does that, too.

On youtube, there are great videos that show how this is done, just search on "explain in 5 different levels of complexity". I think you will be fascinated! :)

Here is the search results for it in youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=explain+in+5+di...