This is the hardest concept to understand in physics

Whenever any of this comes up I remember that physics professor's speech on first day of quantum mechanics that got viral:
“Nobody understands quantum mechanics. The people who came up with it don't understand it. I will do my best so that by the end of this course you don't understand it either, and so you can got out to the world and spread our ignorance.”
Or something to that effect.
- I'm so good at not understanding stuff. My time has come.
- Quantum mechanics is illogical and stuff that happens makes no sense but can be recrcreated through experimentation....as long as you don't look at it.
  The end
  
  Quantum mechanics is extremely logical - we understand the math extremely well, and the math describes reality better than any other theory.
  It is, however, not intuitive.
  
  It's perfectly logical, what happens makes sense, we just don't know key facts about what is actually happening.
- I'd say we understand quantum mechanics better than most things.
  We know more about the behaviour of an electron than we know about the oceans, the Earth, the sun, the weather, the stock market, the human body, prime numbers, and so on.
  
  We generally have a grasp of "why" for that stuff though, even if the whole picture is currently hidden or too complex.
- Whenever this picture comes up I remember that it's wrong - both electrons on it have the same spin, one is just rotated 180°, but it says +½ for one and -½ for the other, is like a part of the joke?
  
  All electrons have spin 1/2, that's a property of it being an electron. They have a spin vector (the arrow shown) and whether it is in the same direction or opposite direction to the magnetic field it's in determines where it is plus or minus.
  Now you might think "but what if it is not entirely aligned with the field, then it wouldn't be 1/2", which is true, on aggregate for large numbers of electrons, but if you ever look at a single electron its spin will either be "up" or "down" never any other orientation.
  This is the kind of thing people are referring to when they say "no one understands QM", we know it is the case, we can measure it and predict it, but it makes no fucking sense.
- The Many Worlds Interpretation must be rejected because it makes sense and we've already agreed that Quantum Mechanics is not supposed to make sense.
  
  Well put. I will never understand how Bohr managed to persuade so many scientists to commit themselves to not making sense.

Imagine a mathematical concept that approximates a particle across a spherical plane. Now imagine a force emitted from this sphere in a field. Okay, we're ready to talk about why this is wrong, too.
- There's no analogy for any of this that doesn't have some flaw.
  
  All analogies have flaws. If they didn't, they wouldn't be an analogy, they would be describing the very thing itself.
- You lost me at 'spherical plane'
  
  A hollow sphere.
  You could picture this as a spherical cow of uniform density if you prefer.
  
  A circle?

I recall a Richard Feynman video where the interviewer asks him to explain how magnets work.
His answer amounts to "I can't explain that to you because if I gave you an accurate answer it would be too technical for it to make sense to you, and if I simplified it to the extent that you could understand, it would no longer be a meaningful answer."
- All of the most-impactful minds in science were mocked by their contemporaries.
  Think about it.
- His point was that we don't understand the interaction between fundamental forces enough to say, if we were to try and answer the question accurately enough.
  So, in one sense ICP was right that we don't know how magnets work. But also they were wrong that scientists be lying. They shouldn't have been pissed.
- That interview answer always seemed like a cop-out to me. You could make a comparison to gravity to explain how magnetism "just is".
  
  I expect Feynman’s answer, if he had a whiteboard and unlimited time, would’ve been to dive into Maxwell’s equations.
  With that in mind, his answer makes complete sense. Good luck explaining coupled PDEs to people who aren’t mathy in a few sentences without visual aid. The analogy to the gravitational force isn’t on point; there’s a lot more to be said about how magnets tie to into E&M more broadly, compared to gravity.
  Though you’re absolutely right that once you get deep enough into any topic in physics that the answer to “why?” inevitably becomes “it just be like that”.
  
  Here's the video.
  It's been a while since I watched it, so judge for yourself.
  
  To me, there's two ways you could interpret that, one is what are the effects of magnetism which we learn on high school physics, the other other is why does magnetism have those effects which is more something you'd learn in an undergraduate physics or chemistry degree.
  
  I think OP's meme illustrates Feynman's point very well; there comes a stage where if the number of incorrect statements in your explanation outnumber the the correct ones, it's no longer a meaningful explanation.
  
  A lot of Feynman quotes are ultimately just witty cop-outs IMO.
- Uuuh I have to remember that one

Sounds like a class with an attribute called spin.
- It does however also have repercussions that are inline with it being a sphere that is spinning.
  
  Didn't it say it wasn't spinning?
  Also I love your handle.
- The universe is a digital simulation confirmed
  
  The memory required to track all these particles was insane, so we just made a wave of where they were most likely to be and picked a random spot when the exact location was needed. 🤷
  
  there's lots of physics that cannot be described in algorithmic terms, and (as best I misunderstand it) quantum is the most that

https://xkcd.com/895/

There was great episode on PBS space time about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWlk1gLkF2Y
In short it doesn't rotate, it just has magnetic field that behaves as if the source was spinning charge

The electron is rotating in the sense that it resists a tilting force.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdN1mweN2ds
Disclaimer: My knowledge of physics ends at the high school level.
- Apparently there is an experiment where they get an object suspended in water to rotate when being bombarded by electrons with the same spin.
  Although my physics knowledge is probably less than the average highschool level.
- I studied (a single course...) at university level and I think you understood at least as much as I did.

Ok, so is it correct to say it has some rotation properties?
Hahaha, oh no. Nonononono. No. Not at all correct no. However, it's the best we've got so yeah that's what we're going with.

Right-hand rule removed!

imagines a static cube
Ahhh....
- Well... Technically they oscillate at a certain frequency.

Imagine a woman in hot pants with thighs like a Robert Crumb dream woman.
I don't know if it helps with this problem though.
- NoU Imagine a cactus eating a deer.

A ball, however tiny, has 3 dimensions, it has a surface that moves around a mathematical point at the center of the sphere.
A point of zero dimensions has no diameter nor perimeter, no surface with which to spin. Yet when influenced by a magnetic field, a point-like indivisible particle behaves as if it does spin.
As Chief Brody might say, we're gonna need a bigger math!
How about imaginary numbers and the complex plane?
Now add the Uncertainty Principle, just for shits 'n' giggles!
Probability space! Probability amplitudes and polarizations!

Yeah, "spin" was a stupid thing to call it. We have a nice, hard definition of what "spin" is on a macro scale. Why take a complex property of matter that we don't have a name for, and give it the same name as a fairly common, easy-to-understand phenomenon? Extraordinarily smart people being idiots, honestly.

It's only half spinning too.

The way I understood it (probably wrong): imagine if a point like thing, but is actually a wave, hits something else. It will leave a trace on the detector curving in a certain direction. This is interpreted as angular momentum aka spin.
- There are also things like Hydrogen Fine Structure , that behaves as though it is a ball that actually spins. 🤷
  
  ...that is fcking brilliant...
- You must be thinking of the Stern-Gerlach experiment.

Ah yes the spin

The trick is to accept it without thinking about it
- It's actually kind of liberating when you manage to do that.
  It's not true, but if you pretend it is, it allows you to do all kinds of math. Follow the rules as if the spin were real and there were real momentum and it allows you to predict things that you can test. It's almost like looking at a really good magic trick, where you know that what you seem to be seeing isn't possible, but the magician is manipulating things so that your brain can anticipate what's coming next.
- Shut up and calculate!

Is more like a feeling
- electrons be vibin

The middle finger is for B field. The thumb is reserved for force. The index finger is for current. 🎵
- Lozenge's Thumb Rule
- I am imagining a glorious unibrow

I've always understood it more like a cake that's moist, but it's not a cake and it's not moist.

And if you're lucky it doesn't exist at all.

How about:
"Imagine you have ADHD, but you're forced to sit in place."
Would that work?
- No.

I think it's like the magnetic charge of the thing?
- Particle spin and charge are different properties
- Nope, distinct property. I don't think there's any good analogy really (that I've heard).