“That was a most excellent meat loaf, Sis.  Flavor balance was perfect.”

“Glad you liked it, Sy.  Mom’s recipe, of course, with the onion soup mix.”

“Yeah, but there was an extra tang in there.”

“Hah, you caught that!  I threw in some sweet pickle relish to brighten it some.”

“Mommy, Uncle Sy told me about quantum thingies and how they hide behind barriers and shoot rainbows at us.”

Sis gives me that What now? look so I must defend myself.  “Whoa, Teena, that’s not even close to what I said.”

“I know, Uncle Sy, but it’s more fun this way.  Little thingies going, ‘Pew! Pew! Pew!’”

“Hey, get me out of trouble with your Mom, here.  What did I say really?”

<sigh> “Everything’s made of these teeny-weeny quantum thingies, smaller even than a water-bear egg — so small — and they have to obey quantum rules.  One of the rules is, um, if a lot of them get together to make a big thing, the big thing has to follow big-thing rules even though the little things follow quantum rules.”

“Nicely put, Sweetie.”

“And sometimes the quantum thingies act like waves and sometimes they act like real things and no-one knows how they do that.  And, uh, something about barriers making forbidden places that colors come out of and I’m mixed up about that.”

“Excellent summary, young lady.  That deserves an extra —” <sharp look from Sis who has a firm ‘No rewarding with food!‘ policy> “— chase around the block the next time we go scootering.”

“Yay!  But can you unconfuse me about the forbidden areas and colors?”

“Well, I can try.  Tell you what, bring your toy box over by the stairway, OK?  We’ll pick it all up when we’re done, Sis, I promise.  Ready, Teena?”

“Ready!”

“OK, put your biggest marble on the bottom step. Yes, it is pretty.  Now put a tennis ball and that dumbbell-shaped thing on the second step.  Oh, it’s a yo-yo?  Cool.  And that ring-toss ring, put it on the second step, too.  Now for the third step.  Put the softball there and … umm … take some of those Legos and make a little ring inside a big ring.  Thanks, Sis, just half a cup.  Ready, Teena?”

“Just a sec… ready!”

“Perfect.  Oh, Teena, you forgot to tell Mommy about the murmuration.”

“Oh, she’s seen them.  You know, Mommie, thousands of birds flying in a big flock and they have rules so they keep together but not too close and they make big pictures in the sky.”

“Yes, I have, sweetheart, but what does that have to do with quantum, Sy?”

“How would you describe their shapes?”

“Oh, they make spirals, and swirls… I’ve seen balls and cones and doughnuts and wide flowing sheets, and other shapes we simply don’t have names for.”

“These shapes on the stairs are the first few letters in science’s alphabet for describing complex shapes like atoms.  It’s like spelling a word.  That ball on the first step is solid.  The tennis ball is a hollow shell.  Pretend the softball is hollow, too, with a hollow ping-pong ball at its center.  If you pretend that each of these is a murmuration, Teena, does that make you think of anything?”

“Mmm..  There aren’t any birds flying outside of the marble, or outside or inside of the tennis ball.  And I guess there aren’t any flying between the layers in the ping-softball.  Are those forbidden areas?”

“C’mere for a high-five!  That’s exactly where I’m going with this.  The marble has one forbidden region infinitely far away.  The tennis ball has that one plus a second one at its middle.  The softball-ping-pong combo has three and so on.  We can describe any spherical fuzziness by mixing together shapes like that.”

“So what about the rings and that dumbbell yo-yo?”

“That’s the start of our alphabet for fuzziness that isn’t perfectly round.  Math has given us a toolkit of spheres, dumbbells, rings and fancier figures that can describe any atom.  Plain and fancy dumbbells stretch the shape out, rings bulge its equator, and so on.  Quantum scientists use the shapes to describe atoms and molecules.”

“Why the stairsteps?”

“What about my colors?”

~ Rich Olcott