Yesterday I started studying quantum computing as mandated by my professor (just to let you know I study computer science, not physics and the likes) and couldn’t stop reading about quantum physics, sub-atomic particles, wave-particle duality, etc. I am enthralled to say the least. I have a question for all those a bit more informed, granted I will probably get in trouble with rhetoric/semantics, but I would like to ask: Is it fair to assume that the wave-particle duality is actually the point of interest existing and interacting with other entities? Rather, because the existing thing, or particle, is occupying a place in space-time, it is continually interacting with the particles that inhabit space-time around it. This causes the “waves” that we can measure, much like striking a drum causes a “wave” of sound.
Well, I am self-proclaiming ignorance at this point, but would like to know if my glib interpretation is worth consideration, revision, or do I just need to scrap it and continue learning?
I think the wave-particle duality is over-rated. The historical physical phenomena that phycisists have observed as wave-like, or particle-like, are extremely macroscopic in comparson to quantum level behavior.
Richard Feynman, and I paraphrase here, said, “the quantum level things about which we are to speak don’t behave like anything we’re familiar with.”
MonkeyMensch’s interpretation on that is (as opposed to the Copenhagen interpretation) the POPEYE thing. “I am what I am!”
Someone just gave me this yesterday actually… which spawned my interest in all the other categories mentioned above. Enjoy, it’s the best I could find for us laymen folk.
The thing to remember about quantum physics, is that we have no way to visualize the phenomena being described. The “wave/particle duality” is really just our way of imposing what we know about (waves and particles) onto something our senses cannot detect (subatomic thingies). Is it a wave or a particle? Well it’s probably neither, and we’ll never know.
Hmm… I think you have lost your faith in science and/or will to learn. “We’ll never know”? That’s a bit depressing…
I am young and immortal… therefore stupid. Another duality never thought possible! Immortal and stupid… only in america. “Survival of the fittest, could you please see your way out of the country, your asylum is no longer applicable here.” Anyway, I still think anything is possible.
Do you really think we will never know? What’s your basis… or credentials?
Sorry for the rant. I am going on three days straight with no sleep. Finals suck.
If energy is actually quantized, then there’ll never be any way for us to accurately measure events that take place on the scale of the quantization. (It’s the basic reasoning behind the Uncertainty Principle.)
There’s no way to know. We don’t even really need to know: quantum mechanics gives us a way to consider the statistics of quantum systems, which is all that we need to make meaningful predictions.
We’ll never know for sure, but we’ll get better and better at guessing; that’s how science works (in a completely unacceptable shorthand sort of way).
We’ll never be able to ‘see’ subatomic particles visually because they are just too damn tiny; it isn’t that we lack the ability to magnify the subject, but rather the kinds of media we use for seeing (bombarding the subject with photons or electrons and making sense of the reflections) are not infinitessimally scalable.
We can, though, infer their appearance and behaviour by the way in which they interact (or don’t) with other stuff.
Deathstatic, if like the soundwaves produced by drums, wave-particle duality means waves of particles, you are wrong each individual particle has it’s own wave-like nature.
It is not due to interactions between different particles either. If you were to perform the two slit experiment with alot of particles being sent through the slits at the same tyime you might conclude this, but if you repeat the experiment only sending a single particle through the slits, then you would see that this singlee particle still displays a wave-like nature (i.e. it would be unable to hit the dark areas of the diffraction pattern). However David Deutsch has proposed that the results of the two slits experiment can be explained without the need to give each individual particle a wave-like nature, but his explanation involves ‘dark photons’ and paralell universes.
The problem with QM is that in a very real sense, it doesn’t make sense. The math works out, and the predictions are good, but there’s no intuitive meaning you can assign to it. In other words, you can be really familiar with it, but you can’t understand it the way you can understand Newtonian mechanics.
Exactly. One of my physics proffessors was trying to explain a very complex mathematical construct to us during a QM course. I guess people kept asking what the equations “meant” in a physical sense. At one point he just turned to us and said: “This must really be confusing to those of you who got tricked into majoring in physics by pendulums, springs, and inclined planes.”
Precisely. The equations just describe what happens. We don’t know what’s actually going on at the quantum level, but the equations just allow us to make meaingful predictions about what will occur.
Ultimately, we’re going to have to come up with new concepts – ‘wave’ and ‘particle’ just don’t cut it any more.
I have often wondered whether there could be some physical manifestation of a particle’s wavefunction. IOW, the wavefunction doesn’t simply describe a particle, but in fact is the particle.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, maybe it is a duck.
Deathstatic, you may want to check out The Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukav. It’s a little heavy on the eastern mysticism, but it’s about as layman-y as you’re going to get. Take it with a grain of salt with regards to “visualizing” how the wave-particle (warticle?) thing works, but it’s still useful, and fairly entertaining.
I must say that I don’t really get the OP. The actual issue seems to be
I don’t understand what theory deathstatic is proposing here.
The best explanation of the “wave-particle duality” I’ve seen is that fundamental objects are point-particles which are governed by the dynamics of Schrödinger’s equation rather than Newton’s equations. This means, among other things, that they have positions and momenta specified by distributions rather than by single numbers.
As for a real understanding of QM, I don’t think this is impossible. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics takes the Schrödinger equation literally as an accurate description of physical reality. In principle all of the predictions of quantum-mechanics (including the “world splitting” that gives the interpretation its name) can be derived from that equation alone. In truth you still need to make some metaphysical assumptions about the proper way to calculate probabilities, but I find these to be far less ad-hoc than the additional assumptions required by any other interpretation of QM of which I am aware.
Well then… boy is my face red. The overwhelming consensus: DeathStatic, don’t quit your day job. Well… I don’t have one so the joke’s on you.
Thank you all for the help on this subject. ElJeffe I have actually had a chance to read that book but wasn’t really into eastern mysticism or ready to hear about it… I’m a fundamentalist gone “bad” due to education… but thank you for reminding me of it. Labelled as “next” on the agenda. Wondering… is it not outdated yet? I thought it was from the late 70’s/early 80’s.
december thank you for that column by Cecil. It was friggin hilarious. And thank you to everyone else who also confirmed my silliness.
To the next question… I have a bit of a solid background in statistics, in fact I just aced my advanced statistics final today… please hold the applause. I was wondering, what else would I need to learn to gain a broader understanding of quantum mechanics? COuld you put a link to your favorite web-sites concerning this topic (and book names… thanks agian ElJeffe)? I am particularly interested in the topic of the statistics used.
I went out and bought “The Physics of Consciousness” just a while ago… anyone know if it is any good? I won’t be able to start reading it for another couple days.
The MWI is a fun way to imagine the world, and makes for a great metaphyisical thought exercise. That said, from what I understand of it, it’s pretty useless as an actual scientific hypothesis, because of its fundamental lack of disproveablility. It hypothesizes that the “world” splits into multiple paths of “possibility”, so to speak, to reflect all of the things that could have happened. In essence, all things that can happen do happen, albeit in separate worlds that we can never detect nor interact with. If we can never detect nor interact with these alternate realities, then we can never disprove they exist, which makes for a pretty crappy theory. It ranks just above the theory that there’s an invisible celestial hippo at the center of the universe that precisely accounts for all the dark matter we can’t find. Oh, but you can’t see it, because it’s invisible. And, umm, it puts special Magic Waves ™ that keep you from detecting it by any other means. But oh yeah, it’s there alright.
Jeff
