- #1
w5dxp
- 7
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Personally, I have trouble visualizing a flock of birds without the birds. I have the same trouble trying to visualize an EM field without the photons. More than once, I have been hounded off of the ham radio forums for mentioning the word "photon". As one ham radio operator put it, "We don't need no stinkin' photons!" Others conveyed the same feelings with more polite words like, "You've imbued photons with magic properties ('photons go where electrons cannot go') and made assumptions ('The velocity of a photon is the speed of light in the medium')...".
As Feynman implied in "QED", I picture photons entering a coaxial transmission line at the source and being transferred by the free electrons in the coax conductors to the load at the speed of light in the medium, i.e. at the velocity factor of the coax dielectric, and not necessarily in a perfectly straight line. I am told that before I am allowed to visualize an EM field as a cloud of massless photon particles, I must calculate the path of each individual photon which of course is intended to prohibit me from visualizing an EM field in that manner.
My question is: What is so wrong with visualizing EM fields as a cloud of photons?
As Feynman implied in "QED", I picture photons entering a coaxial transmission line at the source and being transferred by the free electrons in the coax conductors to the load at the speed of light in the medium, i.e. at the velocity factor of the coax dielectric, and not necessarily in a perfectly straight line. I am told that before I am allowed to visualize an EM field as a cloud of massless photon particles, I must calculate the path of each individual photon which of course is intended to prohibit me from visualizing an EM field in that manner.
My question is: What is so wrong with visualizing EM fields as a cloud of photons?