Bohmian mechnaics is the most naively obvious embedding imaginable of
Schr\"odingers's equation into a completely coherent physical theory. It
describes a world in which particles move in a highly non-Newtonian sort of
way, one which may at first appear to have little to do with the spectrum of
predictions of quantum mechanics. It turns out, however, that as a consequence
of the defining dynamical equations of Bohmian mechanics, when a system has
wave function ψ its configuration is typically random, with probability
density ρ given by ∣ψ∣2, the quantum equilibrium distribution. It
also turns out that the entire quantum formalism, operators as observables and
all the rest, naturally emerges in Bohmian mechanics from the analysis of
``measurements.'' This analysis reveals the status of operators as observables
in the description of quantum phenomena, and facilitates a clear view of the
range of applicability of the usual quantum mechanical formulas.Comment: 77 page