Can a Pearl Necklace Explain the Wave-Particle Duality of Light?

[AcEY]

Im only 17 so this theory maybe stupid or something, but i like to think about stuff and i was thinking about light. If you take the wave theory and the photon theory, couldn't you make a theory which could do both. My only thought on this was a sort of pearl neckless where the outline of the pearls and the string connecting is in the shape of a 3d transverse wave and each pearl is a photon:/ i don't know it could be stupid, please pick it apart

 

[Entropy]

Hi, I'm 17 too.

It has been thought that maybe light is a mixture of a wave and a particle but with little success. If light was like a "pearl neckless" like you say it wouldn't have the characterists of a particle, it would be a wave because its just particles "waving" around which is what all wave are thought to be. It is though that light might "wave" through what is called aether, some kind of quintessent substance that runs through the entire universe but its never been detected.

I personally believe that the only thing stopping people from believing that light is purely a wave is the photoelectric effect. I believe that some how the electric/magnetic properties of atoms simply cause light to be absorbed and emitted in such a way it looks like it just bounced off like a particle. I'm just speculating, I can't prove any of this.

 

[Lama]

http://www.geocities.com/complementarytheory/comp.jpg

 

[Entropy]

Whats that have to do with anything, Lama?

 

[Lama]

Complementarity, Entropy


Wave and particle are complementary aspects of a quantum element.

Quantum particles are described by momentum/position or wave/particle duality.

A Langauge which is based on excluded-middle reasoning is not (in my opinion) the appropriate language to deal with quantum phenomena.

In an excluded-middle reasoning two opposites are simultaneously contradicting each other, and the result is no middle.

In an included-middle reasoning two opposites are simultaneously preventing/defining each other, and the result is a middle.

The best known example is the duality of a photon, which has both a wave and a particle properties that preventing (the measurement of its accurate place prevents the accurate information about its momentum, and vise versa) and defining (one property cannot exist without the other) each other.

For example, please see this picture: http://www.geocities.com/complementarytheory/comp.jpg

As you see the two black profiles and the white vase are clearly preventing/defining each other.

Please also see http://www.geocities.com/complementarytheory/CompLogic.pdf , which is a short paper of mine on included-middle reasoning.

 

[jcsd]

Im only 17 so this theory maybe stupid or something, but i like to think about stuff and i was thinking about light. If you take the wave theory and the photon theory, couldn't you make a theory which could do both. My only thought on this was a sort of pearl neckless where the outline of the pearls and the string connecting is in the shape of a 3d transverse wave and each pearl is a photon:/ i don't know it could be stupid, please pick it apart

We do have a theory that "does both" it's called 'quantum physics'. Just because there is an contradiction in classical physics between light having bopth a ewave-like and a particle-like qualities, does not mean there is a simlair contradiction in quantum physics, after all this what quantum physics was formulated to describe.

 

[Entropy]

Oh I see what you mean.