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Bradfordly1
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Are photons(when described as a particle) considered objects? You can't see them on an individual level, but they hit you and interact with gravity. Might be a silly question, but was just debating it with a friend.
Photons are real and I think it's fair to consider them as objects, but they are not the little billiard balls that you sometimes see them represented as and light does not travel as photons. It travels as a wave and it is the wave that "hits" you. A photon is the result of the wave interacting with a particle (of your skin or your retina or a phosphorous screen, etc.)Bradfordly1 said:Are photons(when described as a particle) considered objects? You can't see them on an individual level, but they hit you and interact with gravity. Might be a silly question, but was just debating it with a friend.
It's not a silly question.Bradfordly1 said:Might be a silly question, but was just debating it with a friend.
That's true. But there are other ways to detect them, see e.g. these linksBradfordly1 said:You can't see them on an individual level
Abstract said:A review is given of recent theoretical studies devoted to the problem of generating radiation fields that exhibit the opposite of the well-known bunching of photons observed in light from thermal sources, the so-called antibunching effect. It is made clear that this phenomenon reflects the corpuscular nature of light and, hence, cannot be interpreted in terms of classical electrodynamics, needing, instead, the quantum-mechanical formalism for its description.
Delta² said:A photon doesn't have dimensions like an object big or small has(of course then again it depends how you define an object). A photon is a point particle. It does NOT have mass either (though it interacts with gravity but this is due to the curvature of space time due to gravitational field). So a photon doesn't have two of the most (at least according to me) important properties of an object, that is dimensions and mass, so I doubt we can consider a photon to be an object.
Bradfordly1 said:What about Gluons?(the other massless particle) do they have dimensions?
phinds said:and light does not travel as photons. It travels as a wave and it is the wave that "hits" you. A photon is the result of the wave interacting with a particle
electro-physics said:Does that mean photon is part of matter to which light hits and not part of light wave itself?
Photons are particle as well as waveBradfordly1 said:Are photons(when described as a particle) considered objects? You can't see them on an individual level, but they hit you and interact with gravity. Might be a silly question, but was just debating it with a friend.
shadab ansari said:Photons are particle as well as wave
Well, "replaced" isn't quite the right concept, it was just dropped since it was not correct. Quantum Mechanics says that EM radiation is not a particle or a wave, it is a quantum object and will exhibit wave characteristics if you measure for wave characteristics and it will exhibit particle characteristics if you measure for particle characteristics but neither of those types of measurements means that the quantum object is a particle or a wave.SleepDeprived said:But seriously, if wave-particle duality is an outdated concept, what has replaced it?
Delta² said:No all the elementary particles of the standard model regardless if they are fermions like electron and quark, or bosons like photon and gluon are all considered to be point like particles.
Even if we are to make a modification of the standard model where the elementary particles have dimensions they would be very small for the current technology to see it (dimensions of the order of ##10^{-100}## or even smaller). However the main argument against such modification is that if an elementary particle has dimensions, then it should consist from other smaller particles which have even smaller dimensions and these smaller particles if they have smaller dimensions they should consist from other particles with even smaller dimensions and so on, so we are like forced to accept that if a particle is elementary then it has no dimensions, it is point like.
The short answer is "yes".Bradfordly1 said:So because all of these point like elementary particles don't have dimensions, does this also mean that they have no volume as well?
Wave-particle duality is part of the "old quantum theory" which was replaced by the modern theory of quantum mechanics; the key papers of the modern theory were published starting in 1925, and the new theory was largely complete by 1933 or thereabouts. Even then, however, the theory did not allow for the effects of special relativity, so could only be used when the speeds involved were small compared with the speed of light and the energies involved were small compared with the ##E=mc^2## energies of the particles involved. Of course, neither condition applies to photons (##m=0##, and their speed is the speed of light); it took another decade or so of work to hammer out quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theories to arrive at the modern understanding of photons.SleepDeprived said:But seriously, if wave-particle duality is an outdated concept, what has replaced it? Could you provide a link
That video is not exactly wrong (it's more of a lie to children) but it's also not a serious explanation of what the science really says. Sources like this are not acceptable references under the Physics Forums rules - sometimes there's no substitute for the real thing.There is a online video at World Science Festival where Brian Green, Sean Carroll ... and others talk about how they are still struggling trying to explain the wave-particle duality I guess there are still a lot of "we just don't know yet".
There are no outdated concepts...please qualify by quoting the current concept. All current physics txt books refer to wave-particle duality in their explanation of modern physics. Which ones should we ignore ??weirdoguy said:No they are not. Wave-particle duality is an outdated concept.
lychette said:There are no outdated concepts...please qualify by quoting the current concept. All current physics textbooks refer to wave-particle duality in their explanation of modern physics. Which ones should we ignore ??
Are you suggesting that wave - particle duality has no place in modern teaching of physics. Should it be transferred to teaching of history?Nugatory said:You will find the modern form of the theory (which isn't that new - about 85 years old new) in many texts - https://www.amazon.com/dp/9810241054/?tag=pfamazon01-20 is a good one.
There are certainly modern textbooks that refer to wave-particle duality, but most of them do so only as part of the historical summary that they use to motivate the development of QM.
Exactly.lychette said:Are you suggesting that wave - particle duality has no place in modern teaching of physics. Should it be transferred to teaching of history?
Seriously? Phlogiston? Flat Earth? The luminiferous aether? You think these are not outdated concepts?lychette said:There are no outdated concepts ...
Whatphinds said:Seriously? Phlogiston? Flat Earth? The luminiferous aether? You think these are not outdated concepts?
They are all concepts that help to explain modern physicsphinds said:Seriously? Phlogiston? Flat Earth? The luminiferous aether? You think these are not outdated concepts?
Photons are particles of light that have no mass and travel at the speed of light. They are the fundamental units of electromagnetic radiation and can behave as both particles and waves.
In the field of physics, the term "object" typically refers to something that has mass and occupies space. Since photons have no mass, they are not considered objects in the traditional sense. However, they do have energy and momentum, which can be described as properties of an object.
Photons exhibit both wave-like and particle-like behavior, depending on the experimental conditions. They can be described as a wave when traveling through space, but can also interact with matter as individual particles.
Yes, photons can be observed through various experiments and technologies. However, they cannot be seen with the naked eye because they have no mass and do not interact with the electromagnetic radiation in our eyes.
Photons are the particles that make up light. When an atom or molecule absorbs energy, it can emit photons that travel at the speed of light, creating electromagnetic radiation. Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye.