VI. General Discussion At The Fifth Solvay Conference

Publisher Summary

The chapter presents the general discussion at the fifth Solvay conference. The chapter includes the discussion remarks by Einstein, Dirac, and Heisenberg of the Solvay Report. The chapter presents the most comprehensible parts of Bohr's answers to Einstein and Dirac, and contains reports of various discussions at the meeting. The chapter mentions some general remarks by Einstein related to quantum mechanics. Einstein mentions that with respect to this theory, one can take two standpoints regarding its domain of validity, which he would like to characterize by means of a simple example. One can characterize the two points of Einstein's view as follows: (1) Interpretation I —The de Broglie-Schrödinger waves do not correspond to a single electron, but to an electron cloud, extended in space. The theory does not give any information about the individual processes, but only about an ensemble of infinity of elementary processes. (2) Interpretation II—the theory claims to be a complete theory of the individual processes. Each particle that moves towards the screen as far as one can determine from its position and its velocity is described by a de Broglie-Schrödinger wave packet of small wavelength and small angular aperture. This wave packet is diffracted; after diffraction, it arrives partly at the film P in a resolved state.