Recent content by julianb

Not everyone can dedicate their lives to math, PeterDavis. The whole point of human civilization is specialization so we can do more as a whole. It's also a superbly privileged economic take. :/ If you're not interested with interacting with laypeople, I'm not forcing you to reply to me. I'll...

To reframe and refresh: Yes, I'm questioning the discreetness as an explanation for how things are, rather than how things can be measured. And yes, I realize it's an underlying assumption in physics in the last 100 years. And yes, that's absolutely why I'm asking about it, because I think...

Well, it _has_ been hard to find. That's why I'm asking here. And reframing "energy" as "power" isn't super helpful. I don't appreciate your rudeness. I'm trying to understand, and being brushed off as "mumbo jumbo". I'm sorry if you're not up to answering clarifying questions to people who...

Okay, assume everything I've written for "energy" has to do with "amplitude and frequency of a wave". Essentially... the stuff that would make up photons in packets upon waveform collapse. (Do you get where the word "energy" used in a specific sense can be confusing with multiple contexts here...

Thanks, PeroK. To be clear, when I was writing "1.5 photons of energy", I mean that in terms of a hypothetical amount of energy, not believing or thinking that "waves have photons". I'd like to learn more specifically about how the PE Effect established this. As I understand the PE Effect, it...

Apologies, I don't follow. So, the paper you linked starts off with this assumption: "Consider the well-known processes of emission and absorption of photons by atoms" ... which in turn, I understand, assumes that photons only exist in quantums. I acknowledge that it's been decades since I've...

What are we relying on, then? Also, one could agree that energy is conserved, while also ask if we cannot detect all of the (conserved) energy. Like, hypothetically if a wave has 1.5 photons of energy in it, we could detect 1 photon at the start, 1 photon at the end, and that's conserved. And...

This is exactly what I'm asking about. Ultimately, how do we know that the amount of energy in a (EM) wave must be equivalent to an integer amount of photons? The PE tells us what we can measure is in multiples of photons, but still can't prove that there is not sub-photon levels of energy which...

Thanks again. This is really helpful. I'd be interested to learn more about these experiments. I mean ... it's the boiled down explanation, isn't it? Over and over again, explanations lead to "the quantum nature of light". A cursory google search, just now, to demonstrate how easy and common...

Again, yes, you're understanding me at what I'm trying to prod at.

Thanks, PeterDonis, Either. And this definitely gets to the heart of the question and why I ask. Your last sentence: "... I don't think any actual 2-slit experiment has been done under the conditions of (2) ..." If (2) doesn't exist, and if we're relying on (1) to show that "single photons"...

Thanks, Dale. So, the photoelectric effect is what's used to detect photons in the 2-slit experiment, correct? Doesn't the original question apply to that, as well? (I don't want to sound rude, but, this is exactly what I was not hoping for - restating as fact the assumption I'm questioning...

In the "single photon" 2-slit experiment, I understand one of the basic assumptions is that a photon gun only produces whole photons, or, at least, it's assumed that only whole photons (or waves with whole photon level of energy) make it through the 2 slits. But since a photon detector only...