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Message: [QUOTE="glen herrmannsfeldt, post: 5163556"] (snip, someone wrote) At some point, coins and dice are also quantum systems, though at the macroscopic level. A photon has two polarization states (once you give a basis), and a coin has two different ground (that is, lying on the ground) states. You put either one in a superposition of states, such that (reference: Schroedinger's cat) when the wave function collapses it ends up on one of the two measurable states with equal probability. A small difference in the ground state energy of the coin can bias the landing. Various details can bias the polarization state of photons. They all have a limit on how fast you can extract randomness. If you try too fast with a coin, it might not flip enough, and so be not random enough. If you try to extract photons too fast, the polarization might not be different enough. It might not be so obvious, but it takes energy to lose information. In this case, to lose the previous state of the system such that the new state is sufficiently random. There have been attempts to predict roulette. Blackjack is known to have less randomness under known conditions. But they are close enough for casinos to make a profit. -- glen [/QUOTE]