Arnold, the following is more a question than a comment, so this posting may be more applicable to General Questions, but I’m hoping that this comment will at least provoke a different approach to the wave/particle duality paradox.
First the background:
In my college days, I was taking the first of a series of E & M classes in my major (EL – Electronic Engineering not Electrical). I remembered asking the teacher what the “Electric Field” was. He kept telling me that it was manifestation of the E field emanating from the charge. He was rather arrogant with me thinking that how could somebody not grasp this basic concept? Most everyone in the class assumed I was not one of the brighter students (and I wasn’t, by the fact my question was probably phrased pretty poorly, but it still seemed important to me that it be answered). I kept asking the question, and the professor became angry–Finally, someone grasp the essence of what I was saying. That peer of my said, “He’s not asking about what exist between two charges, he’s asking what the stuff between the charges is made of.”
The teacher’s expression changed from one of anger to one of total befuddlement and said, “I don’t know!”. I was feeling pretty intimidated by then, so I just dropped the question.
I finally found the answer in a physics book 10 years later written by Larry Gonick & Art Huffman The Cartoon Guide to Physics. In it, he describes the E field as a manifestation of “virtual” photons, which surround each charge. Each charge has a swarm of these invisible particles coming and going. The closer the virtual photon to the charge, the more energy it has; conversely the further away the less energy it has. The virtual photons are only indirectly detected. To enable them to appear, one needs to move the charge such that the virtual photon can’t return to home. Classic example: Medical X-rays. Slam an electron with 10 to 20 electron kV of into a Tungsten target, and the charges in the inner electron orbits (of W) get rattled. The virtual photons which stayed close to home (i.e., the high energy ones) have no place to go, and shoot on out to be absorbed by the air, tissue, or x-ray film. If it’s a microwave, start twisting a bunch of charges. If it’s a radio wave, start oscillating the charge. In each case, virtual photons of different energies find they’ve been “evicted.”
It’s ironic that Larry & Art’s ‘toon book, which is equivalent to a 1st year college introduction to physics would provide me an answer. None of my actual college physics books (general, modern, solid-state, E & M) ever mentioned this. (Did anyone out there in Dope land learn this in college?)
This of course brings up a duality the magnetic field. What then is the magnetic field? Is there an analogy to the virtual photon? Or a different state of the virtual photon? Does a moving virtual photon field manifest as a magnetic field? Or is there some other character?
Now to the meat of the argument:
I too, having studied that non-intuitive wave particle duality (not only with photons, but any particle in general–electrons, neutrons, protons). And while I’ve grasped it on the periphery, I’ve never been satisfied in the “gut” with it. That’s why I’ve often wondered if one were to describe the wave-particle duality in a “virtual photon” way, if that would provide a simpler, more graceful explanation of this paradox.
Has anyone looked at this approach? Or is my approach going to win an Ignoble Prize in Physics along the lines of squaring the circle with a compass and a ruler?
