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witzvo comments on Ask an experimental physicist - Less Wrong
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Well, that's helpful, but of course, I don't know how you know that the electrons have such and such spin or what superposition has to do with anything. Neither could I reproduce the experiment (someone competent could, I'm sure). Maybe there was a first experiment where they did this and spin was discovered?
EDIT: anyway, I'm tapping out of here and will check out the sequences. Thanks All
Electrons have both electric charge and spin (which is a form of angular momentum), and in combination, these two properties create an intrinsic magnetic moment. A magnetic field exerts torque on anything with a magnetic moment, which causes the electron to precess if it is subjected to such a field. Because spin is quantized and has only two possible values for electrons (+1/2 or -1/2), they will only precess in two discrete ways. This can be used to separate the electrons by their spin values. The first experiment to do this was the Stern-Gerlach experiment, a classic in the early development of QM, and often considered to be the discovery of spin.
Thanks.