Can we believe in electrons if no one has seen them?

[Sitakalyani]

No physicist has ever seen an electron. Yet, all physicists believe in the existence of electrons. An intelligent but superstitious man advances this analogy to argue that 'ghosts' exist even though no one has seen one. How will you refute his argument?

 

[Orodruin]

There is repeatable experimental evidence that support the existence of electrons. There is (so far) no such evidence that requires the existece of ghosts to be well described.

 

[e-pie]

Recently, researchers plotted electron density of an hydrogen atom.

Here,
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/05/snapshot-inside-atomConsiderable experiments provided satisfactory results that did not contradict atomic/sub-atomic models. So Physics infer that the models must be true.

 

[sophiecentaur]

No physicist has ever seen an electron.

You have never seen the back of your neck (directly) but you have lots of evidence that it exists.
'Seeing' is not the only good evidence for the existence of the electron.
You can 'hear' individual electrons in the so-called shot noise that can be heard in valves that were used in sensitive valve audio amplifiers. If you calculate the rate of arrival of electrons at an Anode for a very low current, the grainy noise that can be heard in the background of the sound programme is at the rate that is predicted by the charges carried by individual electrons. Electric Charge is quantised.

 

[e-pie]

Seeing' is not the only good evidence for the existence of the electron.

Actually in QM seeing never is a good evidence.

 

[ZapperZ]

No physicist has ever seen an electron. Yet, all physicists believe in the existence of electrons. An intelligent but superstitious man advances this analogy to argue that 'ghosts' exist even though no one has seen one. How will you refute his argument?

I wrote this article JUST for you!

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/see-an-electron-lately/

Maybe I’ll add this thread to the list.

Zz.

 

[e-pie]

Nice article @ZapperZ

But the link(bold) is empty:

“And speaking of the human eyes as detectors, anyone who has done anything with detection instruments can tell you that the eyes is a very bad detector in many cases. Sure, it has a very high spatial resolution, but man, it sucks everywhere else. For example, look at this figure that shows the sensitivity of the human eye over a range of frequency and also its response sensitivity."

Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/see-an-electron-lately/

 

[sophiecentaur]

@ZapperZ Great article. Amazing that we have survived with such rubbish vision!
But the software that goes with it is quite a bit more advanced than anything that comes with those other devices. And we can walk and chew gum at the same time. That list made me think (yet again) of Top Trumps.

 

[e-pie]

This book gives a lot of insight on the relation between human sense organs and physics. A considerable portion of it is is viewable in Google Preview.

Although much less technical ie less equations.

http://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-1-6270-5675-5

Makes me want to buy it!

 

[e-pie]

rubbish vision

Actually, each of our capabilities like tactile, of olfactory,vision, sense are limited when their full dimensions are exposed with the help of Physics/Chemistry.

I wonder what "god of all creations" was thinking?

 

[sophiecentaur]

Actually, each of our capabilities like tactile, of olfactory,vision, sense are limited when their full dimensions are exposed with the help of Physics/Chemistry.

I wonder what "god of all creations" was thinking?

I guess he farmed the design out to the company with the lowest quote. A bit like Nasa.

 

[e-pie]

Haha! Nice one.

 

[ZapperZ]

The article was originally part of my blog on PF. when that was discontinued, it was ported over as an Insight article and a few of the links went poof! I will have to find them again and get an admin or Mentor to edit the article to insert the links.

Zz.

 

[e-pie]

No harm done for the missing link. Rest is still good!