How can something be both a wave and a particle?

An electromagnet has two components: a coil and a core. So an electromagnet is both, a wave and a part.

So energy is also both, a wave and a photon at the same time. The wave is coiled and the so called photon is the core of the coil. Energy is at the same time both a wave and a particle. This is how I see it.

It doesn't bother me if scientists say this can not be worked out mathematically. Working on the math gives them something to do.

While they are at it, they might want to reexamine their concept of "mass" as well.

Originally posted by kevinbr4

It doesn't bother me if scientists say this can not be worked out mathematically. Working on the math gives them something to do.

you probably have seen it, but What the Bleep? down the rabbit hole did a pretty good job of explaining this to me.






all particles move in waves. this is because of string theory. EVERYTHING is entangled, thus, connected via strings, and i think on the most basic level, this is "relative magnetism". the butter fly effect shows this quite well, and the wave function is just the strings being plucked and thus particles will appear to "wave"

[edit on 11-11-2008 by drsmooth23]

reply to post by kevinbr4


Doc Quantum does a great job of simply explaining the double slit experiment:

reply to post by karl 12


haha great minds think alike! have you seen the whole film? after watching it and all the bonus discs i was left with even more questions,

Originally posted by drsmooth23
reply to post by karl 12

 

haha great minds think alike! have you seen the whole film? after watching it and all the bonus discs i was left with even more questions,

Aha~sorry I thought you´d posted a different video
The Doc Quantum cartoons are great to understand various aspects of quantum science but as for the film WTBDWK,I thought it was a bit .....well crap.
I´d read (before I watched it) that many scientists claimed it misrepresented,misconstrued and misinterpreted Quantum science so forgive my cynicism.
If you´ve not seen it before then this film is a good one:
vids.myspace.com...
and this link has some interesting vids:
www.pbs.org...
Cheers Karl

awesome, ill be checking those out now. Michio Kaku is one of my heroes! thanks for your input.

peace

Originally posted by kevinbr4
An electromagnet has two components: a coil and a core. So an electromagnet is both, a wave and a part.

So energy is also both, a wave and a photon at the same time. The wave is coiled and the so called photon is the core of the coil. Energy is at the same time both a wave and a particle. This is how I see it.

It doesn't bother me if scientists say this can not be worked out mathematically. Working on the math gives them something to do.

While they are at it, they might want to reexamine their concept of "mass" as well.

I can't really see how you are deducing that an electromagnet is a wave. Note that an electromagnet is nothing more than a wire wrapped around the core. The wire does not oscillate.

Not only does the electromagnet lack oscillations*, but if you throw an electromagnet towards a double slit apparatus, not part of the electromagnet will go through the slits, and the electromagnet will not interfere with itself, thus it is not a wave.

Also, energy is not waves and particles either as energy is a scalar quantity.

Lastly, photons do not have a wave wrapped around it, the photon is the wave(and particle), and yes it can all be derived from mathematical expressions, in fact, in any physics course, you will be introduced to theory first, and then you will confirm theory experimentally before making any claims. Both wave nature and particle nature claims have been confirmed plenty of times.

*(actually all particles oscillate and exhibit the dual nature, but you can't see that on the macroscopic level so is irrevelant in this case)


[edit on 11-11-2008 by daniel_g]

reply to post by daniel_g

I wonder if you can explain what happens to the photons when they encounter various particles. For example, if you point a flashlight beam at the living room wall, the people in the adjacent bedroom can't see the light. But if you cover the flashlight with a very thin piece of paper an turn the switch on, you can see a dim light circle on it.

I guess that photons encounter first the electron field, and some photons make it through and some don't. What happens to those photons that don't make it? Is the electron responsible for the demise of the photon? If so, what does exactly take place when a photon collides with an electron?

reply to post by stander


A wall is denser than a sheet of paper. A thin sheet of paper has tiny holes in it. The light passes through the holes.

Some of the photons that don't get through the holes are reflected, some of them are absorbed. The ones that are absorbed create heat.

reply to post by Phage


Just adding to your response:

Photons can be absorved(and emitted) by particles smaller than the wavelength of the photon, this includes atomic nucleus and electrons.

This does not always happen, as the photon energy needs to be high enough to be absorved by certain materials. An usual example is ordinary glass, visible light does not have enough energy to break the bonds between atoms and it's orbiting electrons so it's not absorved, but UV light does have the required energy hence we can use glasses to prevent UV radiation from doing damage to our eyes.

[edit on 12-11-2008 by daniel_g]

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by stander

 

A wall is denser than a sheet of paper. A thin sheet of paper has tiny holes in it. The light passes through the holes.

Some of the photons that don't get through the holes are reflected, some of them are absorbed. The ones that are absorbed create heat.

I was hoping for a quantum mechanics backed answer, but since you added something to your explanation in a separate post, it seems that photons have variable energy. The lower energy photons "bounce" off the electrons, which is perceived by us as a reflected light, but high energy photons seem to go through. Since they encounter the same environment, the energetic photons must "break through" the electron field. Does that mean these photons annihilate those electrons in their way, or do they just force their way through, temporarily or permanently affecting the electron orbit. If the latter is true than very energetic photons can cause matter to heat up due to the electrons jumping their orbits. If I'm right, is there any observable example of this scenario happening? I'm thinking the beach sunburn. Could this be the prime example?

reply to post by stander


Yes, photons have variable energy. Such energy depends on it's wavelength:

E = constant/wavelength

Anyways, photons do not anihilate the electrons, it just moves them to a higher energy state(temporary), or in some cases, breaks the bonds between electron and nucleus, leaving free electrons along the way (permanent and the electron will very likely find a new host).

The energy that is nesessary to absorb a photon is very unique to the elements that receives a beam of light. Here is an example for a Hydrogen atom: astro.unl.edu...

And you are right, electrons that absorb the energy of photons will cause observable phenomena(I don't know about sunburns but you may be right). For example, there are materials known as photoconductors, when exposed to light they free up so much electrons that electric current is possible. Various applications can be found towards the botton of this page:
en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 12-11-2008 by daniel_g]

reply to post by daniel_g


That means when high energy photon collide with an electron, it knocks it off the orbit around the nucleus. But that also means the photon should lose some of its energy, if the classic mechanics applies to the case. So when this particular photon with less energy left collides with another electron, it bounces off. If this collision takes another amount of energy from the photon, it will eventually decay inside the electron field going to a zero wavelength. During this gradual energy loss, the photons should become the careers of visible light. If my way to describe the demise of photons is right, then a favorable transparent matter could light up when bombarded with high energy photons, like gamma rays, that carry invisible light. Is this practically possible to observe?

What is the constant in E = constant / wavelength? Is it the Planck's constant or something else?

reply to post by stander


Classic mechanics don't really apply for these cases(atomic scale require quantum mechanics). The electron will either absorb all of the photon's energy or none of it. But I bet if classical mechanics did apply then we would see something like what you described.

Here something interesting though:
If a photon causes an electron to move to a higher energy level, the electron might eventually want to return to the previous state. Returning to that previous state requires it to lose all the energy it gained, and there are two ways it can do so:

1- By emitting a photon with exactly the same energy it absorved

2- By emitting a photon + heat

If heat is emitted, then the emitted photon must have less energy that the one that was absorved. The equation E = constant / wavelength states that the wavelenght must have increased in order to decrease energy(the constant has to remain the same), thus we see a color that's different than the one that was absorved. This is basically how fluorescent stuff works.

The constant is hc, c is speed of light, and h is planck's constant.





[edit on 12-11-2008 by daniel_g]

Originally posted by daniel_g
reply to post by stander

 

Classic mechanics don't really apply for these cases(atomic scale require quantum mechanics). The electron will either absorb all of the photon's energy or none of it. But I bet if classical mechanics did apply then we would see something like what you described.

It looks like that in quantum mechanics electrons play pac man with higher energy photons: an electron swallows a photon. If the electron doesn't like the taste (being in the state of a higher energy level), it can spit out the photon.

But I don't exactly understand the case of the reflected visible light. There are materials that partially reflect light, say 5% of the intensity of the original beam of light. So we have a visible light where its careers encounter the electron field of that material. 95% of the photons never make it back. Those 5% reappear presumably as a result of the collision between them and the electrons that cannot absorb the photons; these photons seem to bounce off the electrons. But what is the fate of those 95% of the photons that get buried inside the electron field? They cannot be absorbed by the electrons because the light has a single origin and all photons have identical energy. That means the result of the collision between all the photons and electrons should have an identical character. What happens to those 95% of photons? Do they keep bouncing off the electrons without losing their energy hoping to bounce off in the right direction to escape from the electron field, like those 5% that we can see coming back?

Here is a naive question with an intuitive answer: The photons don't seem to be independent particles. If you turn the flashlight off, do you expect that those 95% of the photons are still inside the electron field doing the bouncing? I don't think it's so. Given all the chances, we would see some of the lucky ones getting back out of the electron field later. But that can't be the case; no one ever saw anything like that. That means the photons cannot have an independent energy; they have to be somewhat connected to the source of their energy, and the source had to be the battery in the flashlight. But what is the line that caries the energy?

I think that photons cannot be symbolize like this: 000000000000. They should look like this: 0_0_0_0_0_0.

What is the nature of the line that connects the photons to be constantly charged with energy?

I'm not sure if all my assumptions that lead to the question are correct, but you surely got my drift.


[edit on 11/13/2008 by stander]

It looks like that in quantum mechanics electrons play pac man with higher energy photons: an electron swallows a photon. If the electron doesn't like the taste (being in the state of a higher energy level), it can spit out the photon.

Actually, an atom will only last a very short time in the excited state, metastable systems are kind of uncommon.

Take a black shirt for example, the reason people say not to wear it on hot sunny days, is because it will absorb the light and then turn most of it's energy to heat.

But I don't exactly understand the case of the reflected visible light. There are materials that partially reflect light, say 5% of the intensity of the original beam of light

Are you talking about transparent, translucent, or opaque objects?

Anyways, the energy of all photons emitted from a single source, say a lightbulb, is not the same. The power source is usually bloated with small fluctuations and to that we have to add temperature fluctuations, chemical reactions that happen spontaneously (ie. oxydation in the wires), noise from other sources, etc.

If we were to assume that all the photons did indeed have the same energy, we still need to take in account that the target (again the black t-shirt) is not consistent in it's chemical structure. Perhaps 25% of the shirt is plagged with impurities so we may see 5% of the light reflecting from those impurities. The rest(20%) is randomly scattered and either goes through the shirt, or gets absorbed by other atoms.

I guess a tricky question would be, what makes glass different than a white wall? Neither the white wall nor the glass seem to absorb most of the visible light, but glass allows the photons to get through while the wall doesn't.

To understand this, you must first understand the concept of transmittance, absorvance, and specular reflection. Wikipedia does a fair job explaining them:
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

What you should get from it is that a wall basically acts like a mirror(though you can't see yourself because the light gets scattered), a glass(some photons will go through it), and an absorver(light that hits the surface, or light that penetrates is will eventually absorved: Beer–Lambert law)

The Beer-Lambert law explains that absorption is proportional to the concentration of absorbing species in the material, thus if a white wall did not have any impurities, it would be transparent, though light would still be scattered thus making it a translucent material.

So the final question should be, what is responsible for scattering light?
The answer is the wavelength of the incident light and the size of the particles on which it collides. The refractive index of the particles also plays an important role.

Scattering of electromagnetic radiation by particles smaller than the wavelength of the incident light is known as Rayleigh scattering.

For equations on Rayleigh Scattering see here: en.wikipedia.org...

There is also Raman scattering, a topic I'm not familiar with, but you may want to check here:
en.wikipedia.org...



[edit on 13-11-2008 by daniel_g]

Originally posted by stander

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by stander

 

I was hoping for a quantum mechanics backed answer, but since you added something to your explanation in a separate post, it seems that photons have variable energy. The lower energy photons "bounce" off the electrons, which is perceived by us as a reflected light, but high energy photons seem to go through. Since they encounter the same environment, the energetic photons must "break through" the electron field. Does that mean these photons annihilate those electrons in their way, or do they just force their way through, temporarily or permanently affecting the electron orbit. If the latter is true than very energetic photons can cause matter to heat up due to the electrons jumping their orbits. If I'm right, is there any observable example of this scenario happening? I'm thinking the beach sunburn. Could this be the prime example?

The photons go through the paper because the paper has holes in it large enough for the photons to get through. You could have a monochromatic light shine on the paper, and light would still be reflected, some absorbed, and some would pass through. There isn't really a need for a quantum explanation for the problem. Now for a high enough energy photon, yes, it could punch right through the paper. X-rays can go right through flesh and plastic, even. But that's not relevant in this example. None of the photons from a regular light are likely powerful enough to punch through paper by sheer brute force.

Also: no, electrons aren't annihilated. And yes electrons can be perturbed from their orbits by absorbing a photon. The electron will proceed to return to it's original orbit, releasing a photon with similar (the same or less) energy to the one that kicked it out of it's orbit. Either that, or if the photon isn't energetic enough to move the electron out of it's orbit, but is still absorbed, the atom will gain kinetic energy. With high enough energy, a photon can actually knock an electron out of an atom, ionizing it. That is, in fact what causes sunburns. But again, visible light doesn't have the energy to do that; it takes ultra violet radiation or higher.

Note that with light, energy is separate from intensity. The energy of light is it's color. It goes from radio to gamma rays. A blue light has more energy per photon than a red light. making the red light brighter doesn't change a thing, there's just more red photons. You can shine all the visible light you want onto a person, but none of it is energetic enough to cause sunburns. Shine a little UV, though, and they'll be roasting in no time..

reply to post by daniel_g

It looks like Raman spectroscopy is a bridge between spectroscopy and the quantum mechanics representation of the latter. Raman surely found the way to teach light how to spy on matter.

The problem with quantum mechanics is that its offices are not located on the first floor -- you need to take an elevator to get there. If you want to take a conceptual trip just to look around, then Wikipedia is not the best-suited vehicle for the trip. But the problem with a conceptual approach is that it requires simplification and there is little or no warning about the point ahead where simplification could turn into trivialization, which leads to wrong assumptions.

The photon is like a person. You can't tell much about the psychology of an individual without letting him or her interact with other people. The problem is that you need to know something about the other individuals as well, and so the whole inquiry can get very complex.

Also, in quantum mechanics, intuitive thinking based on the experience with the realities as they occur in my kitchen may not entirely apply, which may lead to another set of wrong assumptions.

I found an article which shouldn't be simplified further, because it would obscure the mysterious property of the photon.
www.play-hookey.com...

The mystery manifests itself, as it usually does, with a set of questions:

1. Where is the missing energy, when it is not part of the photon? You are not allowed to send it to the future or take energy from the past; it must be somewhere in the present. You also can't send it to another photon, since you can't tell how many photons will be present. In fact, in a laser beam, all photons are in phase with each other, so they must all gain or lose energy at the same time.

2. Why doesn't the photon simply vanish when its energy reaches zero? Or, if you prefer, why does the energy return to the photon after it has all left?

3. What is the complete, closed energy system that includes the photon?

4. Why has nobody ever described such an ancillary adjunct to the photon?

I will try to understand the questions, but the attempt will send me to Wikipedia for reference, so it would take some time before I'll be able to comprehend -- if ever.

Maybe you should write some overview of the above issues.

Science is a very restrictive method of investigation, as I'm learning; it doesn't give you the freedom of thought to deal with stuff as the OP method does.

Originally posted by stander
reply to post by daniel_g

 

The problem with quantum mechanics is that its offices are not located on the first floor -- you need to take an elevator to get there. If you want to take a conceptual trip just to look around, then Wikipedia is not the best-suited vehicle for the trip.

Also, in quantum mechanics, intuitive thinking based on the experience with the realities as they occur in my kitchen may not entirely apply, which may lead to another set of wrong assumptions.

Science is a very restrictive method of investigation, as I'm learning; it doesn't give you the freedom of thought to deal with stuff as the OP method does.

fantastic thoughts!!! quantum possibilities are new and will be subject to debate for a long time!!!!