Do Atoms Literally Behave as Waves?

[tom.stoer]

It seems to me that you don't want to understand my arguments.

I do not care about your "wave", "oscillation", "particle", "jumping around" etc. These are just words sufficient to describe classical entities but insufficient for qm objects.

If you look at the formalism plus the experiments you will learn that you have to take into account "interference-like terms" of different states in a Hilbert spaces (or path integrals, if you like) in order to calculate (predict) the experimental result - even for single particle phenomena! And you will see that the formalism does not allow for an interpretation in purely classical terms, regardless if you call it "particle", "jumping", "oscillatory", "wave-like" or any thing else.

 

[zonde]

It seems to me that you don't want to understand my arguments.

If you set formalism above experiment and quantum weirdness is basic guideline for your thinking then it might be quite so.

I do not care about your "wave", "oscillation", "particle", "jumping around" etc. These are just words sufficient to describe classical entities but insufficient for qm objects.

If you look at the formalism plus the experiments you will learn that you have to take into account "interference-like terms" of different states in a Hilbert spaces (or path integrals, if you like) in order to calculate (predict) the experimental result - even for single particle phenomena! And you will see that the formalism does not allow for an interpretation in purely classical terms, regardless if you call it "particle", "jumping", "oscillatory", "wave-like" or any thing else.

 

[tom.stoer]

If you set formalism above experiment and quantum weirdness is basic guideline for your thinking then it might be quite so.

I do not set formalism above experiment. I look at experimental results and at the (many many) attempts to explain them based on classical wording. As all these attempts failed so far, I accept that the formalism is sufficient to predict experimental results - being aware of the fact that it is notsufficient to provide an ontological explanation.

I do not know if such an ontological explanation will ever be available. But I am absolutely sure that we will not be able to find it using classical reasoning and wording and denying "quantum weirdness".