A Does Matter Really Move Like a Wave and Hit Like a Particle?

elou
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Waves are a perceptual phenomena, not a physical one
This is meant as a challenge to look more closely than we usually do to the concepts of "wave" and "particle". You often hear that matters moves as a wave but hits at a particle, making it sound like a super Mohamed Ali's "move like a butterfly and sting like a bee".
To give a simple example I would say that, as a group, water molecules move like a wave, but each molecule moves like a particle.
 
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We can physically measure waves with physical devices in a variety of physical experiments, so saying that they are not physical is rather unjustifiable.
 
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What is being measured is of course physical. But what is being measured?
We all know that all water molecules do is move up and down, and hardly forward and backward. We certainly see a wave, but if we slowed down our vision a few million times or more, all we would see are individual molecules moving up and down.
 
elou said:
What is being measured is of course physical. But what is being measured?
A wave. What is measured has all of the properties and behaviors that a wave is supposed to have, so it is a wave.

If an object walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and has all of the other properties and behaviors attributed to ducks then it is a duck.
 
elou said:
You often hear that matters moves as a wave but hits at a particle,
Yes, we often hear that. It is an attempt to simplify quantum mechanics by describing quantum mechanics in layman-friendly language, not an accurate explanation of how quantum mechanics works and the role of "waves" in the theory.

Because the starting point of this thread is a misconception we are closing the thread.
OP is reminded of the forum rule about acceptable sources - "will often hear" is not the starting point for an informed discussion..
 
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Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. Towards the end of the first lecture for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2025, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Olivia Lanes (Global Lead, Content and Education IBM) stated... Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/quantum-entanglement-is-a-kinematic-fact-not-a-dynamical-effect/ by @RUTA
If we release an electron around a positively charged sphere, the initial state of electron is a linear combination of Hydrogen-like states. According to quantum mechanics, evolution of time would not change this initial state because the potential is time independent. However, classically we expect the electron to collide with the sphere. So, it seems that the quantum and classics predict different behaviours!
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