Sorry I don't have a physics background (or basically just a classical understanding) but am curious:
For the Stern-Gerlach experiment, for silver atoms entering the external magnetic field, wouldn't their dipoles (due only to electron spin) simply align to the low-energy parallel orientation? As magnetic dipoles would be torqued by the magnetic field. So wouldn't the expectation be basically a single low-energy point detected, with a very small amount if any detected in the anti-parallel high-energy point?
From Can Stern-Gerlach spin alignment be seen as a result of EM radiation of precessing magnetic dipole? I can see a paper linked which shows how the Stern-Gerlach result can be arrived at, it even says in a weak magnetic field the intrinsic magnetic moment of the electron wave is always oriented parallel to the magnetic field strength vector, which sound like the outcome I would have expected.
So classically, I don't understand how this animation expects a continuous distribution. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Quantum_spin_and_the_Stern-Gerlach_experiment.ogv
