Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.
Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.
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I believe that physics is about everything physical but I cannot understand how a quantum wave is a physical thing. Like Einstein's aether it looks immatterial. What is the quantum wave made of? I believe that it is always called the wave function because what we know about it is all mathematical. It is a math mdoel independant of anything directly physical. I may have to give way here to the purely mathematical because I have no understanding of what quantum waves could be physically or as some kind of physical substance.
Anybody here have an opinion?
Mitch Raemsch
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A moving warp in a dimension.
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Roadratray wrote:
A moving warp in a dimension.
I think it is a pilot wave. It is telling the particle how to move. I believe Bohm coined the tern.
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The wave needs to be physical.
Why? Ask yourself how a wave interacts in a Double Slit Experiment. If the wave was not physical, there is no way for that wave to have real physical effects in the world. We know from exprimentation, this is not the case, so their is a physical attribution to the presence of these waves.
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Rich Maesch's question about reality of wave function. We call things which we see, touch, hear, real, but reductionism takes away all that sort of appreciation and understanding and replaces it with a mathematical one. One of the problems with quantum theory is that when the wave function goes from being a linear (unitary) process to being non linear as the wave function collapses, there is no reason given by the theory as to why this sudden change is acknowledged to take place without being explained. Reality cannot be wrong so it must be the theory that is inadequate.
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My previous reply to Mitch Raemsch's question. Sorry, Mitsch. I misspelt your name. To add to what I said, our understanding of the behaviour of quantum objects is pretty well described by standard quantum theory, but the truth about what happens to the objects inbetween certain evants is unknown. The best we can manage is to predict the outcome of a measurement. Any reason why the object behaves as it does is considered to be beyond the physicist,s realm.
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Quantum theory was evolved in the past to explain certain phenomenon unexplained by classical physics, so the formulation was completely mathematatical, Sir Planc himself had considered quantization as a mathematical trick.But Sir Eistein further used the concept to explain other phenomenon and from then on quantization of energy was to be taken as a true process. Only problem was (and 'is') that when it comes to interpret this mathematical formulation in laymen terms we get peculiar and counter-intutive arguments.
In words of Dr. Feynmann
"Things on a very small scale behavelike nothing that you have anydirect experience about. They donot behave like waves, they donot behave like particles, they donot behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or likeanything that you have ever seen.(...) Because atomic behavior is sounlike ordinary experience, it isvery difficult to get used to, and itappears peculiar and mysterious toeveryone--both to the novice andthe experienced physicist. Even the experts do not understand itthe way they would like to, and itis perfectly reasonable that theyshould not, because all of directhuman experience and humanintuition applies to large objects. We know how large objects willact, but things on a small scale justdo not act that way."
Still you could read Q.E.D. and interpret yourself what a quantum of energy means, and then verify.
Last edited by Alanine123 (2011-01-24 00:48:19)
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One of the problems with quantum theory is that when the wave function goes from being a linear (unitary) process to being non linear as the wave function collapses, there is no reason given by the theory as to why this sudden change is acknowledged to take place without being explained.
Last edited by Jesse Marcel (2011-09-25 03:19:29)
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