Recent content by physics pfan

I believe "entity" is being used abstractly in that article for a class of objects. Substituting one gets: "a particle is something measurable and quantized that resides (extends) in a dimension." Do you object to that statement? This becomes a test for reality modeled after the particle. Can a...

Mastering old [textbook] knowledge is fine; but physics makes no progress that way. 'Entity' is an assumption all physicists make about reality: an entity is something measurable and quantized that resides (extends) in a dimension. Hence the particle's rest mass is an entity and it extends in...

"I mean that “entity” is not a standard scientific term, and often the scientific meaning of a word is different from the non-scientific meaning (eg field). So you are free to change the definition of “entity” to suit your goals." 'Entity' is a scientific term, just at a more abstracted...

We all know that Feynman declared wave-particle duality as the central/only problem of quantum physics. Not sure how to evaluate a recent publication summary on this topic: https://sciencex.com/news/2020-11-wave-particle-duality-entanglement-customary-pitfalls.html Would like others take on...

From the original post denying a duality: "... in quantum mechanics, the description and properties of light has only ONE, single, consistent formulation, not two. This formulation (be it via the ordinary Schrodinger equation, or the more complex Quantum Electrodynamics or QED), describes ALL...

Hi bhobba, Your wrote: "The point though is Dirac's version...meant the issues that birthed it like de-Broglies were consigned to the scrap heap" Please explain the issues. A photon meets a slit, an electron meets a crystal lattice; both photon and electron diffract; hence small matter...

Thanks. I agree. But what about electrons, or protons that are linearly directed?

Quantum electrodynamics "states that any particle (e.g. a photon or an electron) propagates over all available, unobstructed paths and that the interference, or superposition, of its wavefunction over all those paths at the point of observation gives the probability of detecting the particle at...

Kindly explain what you mean by “which-way experiments.” This is a learned, but non-specialist forum; if you are referring to the Mach–Zehnder interferometer experiments then say so. If not, then explain. I assume that when you wrote “slits” you actually meant “paths.” If you place detectors...

Regretfully I find some problems in this post. First, "wave function collapse" is normally equivalent to "collapse of the state vector Ψ" and |ψ|2 gives you the probability of finding an electron in a specific location whereas a photon is subject to Maxwell's equations and the probability of a...

I think the best explanation of this I have read is in Klevgard's book [ http://www.einsteinsmethod.com ] "Einstein's Method: A Fresh Approach to Quantum Mechanics and Relativity" especially pp. 46, and 127. I can try to summarize how it applies to your question. Matter quanta stationary in...

Dr. Z: You have added a lot to this forum and I am in awe of your knowledge. But a couple of small points regarding your post. First you say: "So we instead call it [the photon] a "particle" because when we make some measurements of it, it tends to behave as if it is our ordinary...