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Quantum River
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On Particle-Wave duality
In the physicists' eyes there are only two kinds of entities/matter. One and particle and the other is wave. I guess it is difficult to find the third one besides the two.
There are many kinds of particles, with different mass, charge, spin, or others. There are many kinds of waves, such as matter wave, electromagnetic wave, water wave, sound wave, elastic wave, gravitational wave, and many others. Welcome to add much more to the list.
The Universe and the world is composed of only two things, particles and waves. This is my little discovery of physics. Just as the Greek philosophers thought the world is composed of fire, earth, air, water. [1]
Particles are point like, rigid, indestructible (of course today they can change into other particles nowadays). While waves are dispersive in the whole universe, soft and they can wax and wane. The result of adding two particles are two particles. While when you add two waves, you often get one wave. A particle moves in a line. While a wave propagates in every path (Feynman's. I do not know whether there are some path integrals for the light wave or water wave).
If you think you can unite a particle and a wave into oneness, you actually argue water could not quench fire. As the saying "Hot water will quench fire" goes, a particle and a wave could not stay with each other peacefully.
When we talk about Hamilton's old dream and argue about Particle-Wave duality, it is difficult to keep peaceful. Of course there is another way to look at the problem. The new way is Bohr's Complementarity.
Niles Bohr states: There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.[2]
But I still have some problems.
First, is there a third entity, which is impossible to described by as particles and waves?
Second, when does a wave degenerate into a particle? The nature of the Correspondence Principle proposed by Bohr is different from the relation between Classical Mechanics and Special Relativity.
Third, Could one really unite the two into oneness?
[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element#Classical_elements_in_Greece
[2]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarity_(physics )
In the physicists' eyes there are only two kinds of entities/matter. One and particle and the other is wave. I guess it is difficult to find the third one besides the two.
There are many kinds of particles, with different mass, charge, spin, or others. There are many kinds of waves, such as matter wave, electromagnetic wave, water wave, sound wave, elastic wave, gravitational wave, and many others. Welcome to add much more to the list.
The Universe and the world is composed of only two things, particles and waves. This is my little discovery of physics. Just as the Greek philosophers thought the world is composed of fire, earth, air, water. [1]
Particles are point like, rigid, indestructible (of course today they can change into other particles nowadays). While waves are dispersive in the whole universe, soft and they can wax and wane. The result of adding two particles are two particles. While when you add two waves, you often get one wave. A particle moves in a line. While a wave propagates in every path (Feynman's. I do not know whether there are some path integrals for the light wave or water wave).
If you think you can unite a particle and a wave into oneness, you actually argue water could not quench fire. As the saying "Hot water will quench fire" goes, a particle and a wave could not stay with each other peacefully.
When we talk about Hamilton's old dream and argue about Particle-Wave duality, it is difficult to keep peaceful. Of course there is another way to look at the problem. The new way is Bohr's Complementarity.
Niles Bohr states: There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.[2]
But I still have some problems.
First, is there a third entity, which is impossible to described by as particles and waves?
Second, when does a wave degenerate into a particle? The nature of the Correspondence Principle proposed by Bohr is different from the relation between Classical Mechanics and Special Relativity.
Third, Could one really unite the two into oneness?
[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element#Classical_elements_in_Greece
[2]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarity_(physics )
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