excited!

[MikeW]

[MENTION=20947]MikeW[/MENTION], i'm way past my bedtime, and i'm only gonna address this right now: it's because the elementary particles (and even smaller molecules, actually) behave both like a wave and a particle (which is NOT wave). they are definitely particles, but they are also waves. both. but not both at the same time. <---this little part is the crucial part here to understand. (and the wave associated with them is the probability wave).

i want to get back to you on the rest of your post, but i'll do it tomorrow.

Well, for sure I've heard this, but I don't fully understand … which is one of the reasons I'm interested in this subject as well.

So… lets start at the very beginning:

1: What is a "particle"?

I know what a grain of sand is: It's a hard little object made of stone, shell or bone -- and when my mind thinks "particle" it thinks of something small and hard like a grain of sand. But science tells me that this "hard little object" is made up of much smaller little things called molecules. Billions of them. And these molecules are made of yet much smaller things called atoms. A quick google suggests that there are somewhere around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms to a grain of sand. That's a lot of "something" to put in what, to me, is already a very small container.

Science also tells me that these atoms are made of VERY VERY much smaller things called sub-atomic "particles" and THIS is what we're asking about right now. I've even been told the names and some of the properties of these sub-atomic "particles." BUT… we're now talking about something that is beyond my imagining. After all (science tells me) an "atom" is MOSTLY EMPTY SPACE. So… my tiny grain of sand is made up of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms that are themselves 99.9% empty space. Science says that if an atom's nucleus is the size of a period [ . ] then the electron cloud around it is some 5 meters away! And that the electron is so small that it hardly has any "mass" at all.

WELL DUH!

SO… for me… at this point… I'm like… WELL THEN… why think of it as "mass" AT ALL? Ok, so, it exhibits *some* qualities which are "mass like" and it exhibits some qualities that are "wave like" -- but why insist on using words like "mass," "particle," "wave," (we haven't gotten to defining what 'mass' or 'wave' are either here) -- why insist on using words that may be useful in classical physics at our macro-level of the universe to describe "munchkins" at this sub-atomic level?

I would take this even further and not only toss out concepts like "mass" but I'd toss out ALL our macro-univers scale concepts including "space" and "time" as well. I mean, seriously, how long does it take an electron to orbit its nucleus? And how is it that this "orbiting" a "something" (which you, yourself, above posit as a conglomerate of other 'quarks') can happen in a "space" that is so unimaginably small -- and yet be comprised of 99.9 percent "space" itself?

IOW, if we're going to look inside Schrödinger's box and one of the first things we notice is that the very act of LOOKING 'collapses' whatever is going on into an 'event' that had, prior to our observation, only been a potentiality in a conceivably infinite multi-verse -- why wouldn't it occur to us that THE CONCEPTS WE BRING WITH US WHEN WE OPEN THAT BOX ARE THE VERY CONCEPTS WE'RE PROJECTING INTO IT? First there is a cat, then there isn't, then there is -- because "cat" is a property of OUR experience, not this sub-atomic scale of "events".

Why not step back and say, "Oh, far out, it's sorta like mass and wave but isn't really EITHER ONE!"... wouldn't that be a more *accurate* and less of a limiting force on the observation?

[meridannight]

this is elementary particle physics, Mike. and i can't give you a comprehensive course on it, i simply do not have the time. i will try to address some basic tenets though.

first of all, elementary particles are the electron and the quarks (there are more, but it's not relevant to this discussion at the moment, and for clarity i'll keep this list short). a molecule is not an elementary particle. neither is a chemical element (hydrogen, sodium, lithium, etc). when we talk about mass, for example, the electron and the quarks are not known to be ''empty space''. they are (as far as we know) indivisible fundamental things with a known mass, charge, and other characteristics. (and don't confuse electrical charge for the 'wave' that i was talking about before).

a grain of sand is mostly empty space because the distances between the elementary particles in it are very huge compared to the size of the particles themselves. this doesn't abolish mass. this doesn't make it NOT a grain of sand. it is still a grain of sand and it is a chunk of mass, made up of the masses of the particles that it's composed of.

do you understand?

but why insist on using words like "mass," "particle," "wave," (we haven't gotten to defining what 'mass' or 'wave' are either here) -- why insist on using words that may be useful in classical physics at our macro-level of the universe to describe "munchkins" at this sub-atomic level?

do you have a better idea? do you think inventing whole new terms for them will make physics simpler? it doesn't. for one, a lot of these terms have historical background, and this is how all scientists know what other scientists are talking about. it's our common language.

for two, we've put these theories together (and a lot of the used terms) as it is, because like this it is most intuitive for us to think about it. on the most intuitive level we can envisage a mass (i.e. a physical object), and think of other qualities associated with that particular object as arising out of its interaction with other physical phenomena. it could be that for some people that is not the most intuitive way. you can think of particles as just some ''entities'' that assume a mass out of interaction with the force of gravity (which actually is how it is; interaction with the Higgs field is what gives particles their mass).

I would take this even further and not only toss out concepts like "mass" but I'd toss out ALL our macro-univers scale concepts including "space" and "time" as well.

you will have a very difficult time making yourself understood to other people. it would be like inventing a whole new language to speak in instead of using English. so when you go to the store and try to explain to the salesperson what you want to buy they will not understand your invented language.

the microscopic universe and quantum mechanics is not intuitive to human beings anyway. it is counter-intuitive. we use our classical terms because that's all we have. we don't have ''quantum mechanical terms'' and language because we don't experience the quantum mechanical world to know what would be the best ''terms'' for that. substituting our language for some abstract terms will make everything even more difficult to understand than it already is. but this is arguing semantics and usage of terminology, this is outside physics. i don't have a problem with the terminology used, and i don't know that there is better.

P.S. (regarding your previous post) it doesn't matter how visualize the ''particles''. whether you think of them as tiny ''charges'' flying around with a mass to them (and not all of them carry an electric charge, by the way) or as tiny masses flying around with a ''charge''. what matters is that there are basic fundamental constituents of matter with consistent characteristics that don't change (e.g. charge) from one experiment to another. they can be thought of as inseparable from one another. an electron can as a matter of fact be x+y+z-a*b*c, but for all intents and purposes you do not see 'x' or 'y' or 'b', what you always consistently see is x+y+z-a*b*c. it has a characteristic mass and a charge. in that sense it is immutable. this is why it's called an elementary particle.

but if you want to view all matter as ''charge'' then you have a problem explaining those particles that don't have a charge at all: neutrinos, for example. they have a mass but carry no electrical charge. they are electrically neutral, and do not feel the electric forces (an electron does).

[meridannight]

[MENTION=20947]MikeW[/MENTION], i just got through the first lecture, and Galitski actually addressed the question you asked about. he asked which picture is more fundamental: particles* or waves**, and that waves are more fundamental than particles (we can't represent waves in terms of a particle, but we can represent particle in terms of waves).

*has a defined position (location), velocity.
**localization is spread, (it is delocalized), has velocity.

according to quantum mechanics this is a fully valid interpretation. it doesn't mean that we can't speak of any particles at all. it means that sometimes we have to think of particles as particles, and sometimes we have to think of them as waves. but on a fundamental level they are waves more than they are particles. (i think this actually paints a rather beautiful picture of the physical world).

i hope this helps a little.

[MikeW]

i hope this helps a little.

It does kinada sorta. Clearly I'm a very long way from understanding all of this… but it *is* interesting. Its just that when we get down to the super-micro level of the universe, clearly there are some "surprising" things going on. Surprising to us, at least, based on our scale of experience.

But that's what is so very odd about all this -- the magnitudes of difference in the scales of space/time from the subatomic to the intergalactic.