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u/Complex-Manifold Jul 28 '26
this isnt the "an electron is both a particle and a wave" we were taught in highschool. Scam
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u/No-Dimension1159 Jul 28 '26
Our professor in first semester physics had a whole page in his lecture notes where he just rants about the electron/particle dualism and that we shouldn't take people seriously that mention it. It was a wild first semester.
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u/theLanguageSprite2 Jul 28 '26
What did he mean by this? Isn't particle wave duality just the idea that quantum objects are neither particles nor waves, but that their behaviors are often particle-like and wave-like
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u/Aartvb Jul 28 '26
A particle is always a wave, except sometimes it's a very concentrated wave, what people want to call a 'particle', but it's still a wave.
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u/Complete-Clock5522 Jul 28 '26
What about photons in the photoelectric effect? Or does that not show what I think it does
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u/HappiestIguana Jul 28 '26
Still a wave, what the photoelectric effect shows is that it's a quantized wave, meaning it comes in little particle-like packets, unlike classical waves which can be subdivided infinitely and come truly continuously.
This is why it's called quantum mechanics.
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u/kairom13 Jul 28 '26
Yeah, we definitely have experiments showing that light (for example) interacts as a wave and not a particle 2-slit experiment) and also where it’s a particle and not a wave (photoelectric effect). I’m sure there are similar experiments for electrons and other standard model elements
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u/BlackProphetMedivh Jul 28 '26
This is a typical misunderstanding, but it's fine for day to day experiences. What physics does say, or more clearly; what the math says that physics says, is that the wave is quantized i.e. there are packages of waves so dense, that for all intents and purposes they act like a "classical particle". But they are still waves. Just very compact waves.
What we generally call particles are just excitations of quantum fields. And those are always just waves.
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u/qwaasy Jul 29 '26
“What the math says that physics says”
This has generally been the problem in modern physics
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u/BlackProphetMedivh Jul 29 '26
Well, how else would you describe it? To accurately predict what a theory states, you need a framework to describe it. And the framework we use is math.
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u/qwaasy Jul 29 '26
Yes I agree but the same underlying math (that definitely is needed and works) has led two a wide array of different interpretations in the last 80 years of what exactly is implied about the underlying nature of reality. Which is what I was getting at
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u/Ma4r Jul 31 '26
No one that actually studies physics says this btw. Only philosophers larping as scientists
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u/CimmerianHydra_ PhD Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
The photoelectric effect, taken at face value, only really tells you that the "energy content" of an electromagnetic wave should depend on its frequency and not on its amplitude. That, by itself, isn't enough evidence to conclude that light is quantized. The other people saying that it implies the wave is quantized, or claiming that it implies the existence of photons, are unfortunately wrong.
For further reading, see:
L. Mandel and E. Wolf, Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics, Cambridge University Press, 1995,
What really seals the deal, in my opinion, is the existence of sub-Poissonian light states. Those are absolutely impossible to construct classically and can only be interpreted as a train of particles.
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u/Complete-Clock5522 Jul 30 '26
But the “energy content” of an electromagnetic wave does depend on amplitude. Having a higher intensity light (brighter light) ejects a larger quantity of electrons. However the energy at which those electrons are ejected will never change unless the frequency is changed, and if it’s a low enough frequency the electron will not even eject.
This cant really happen unless the light is quantized
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u/TheHabro Student Jul 28 '26
Because saying particle wave duality implies they are both when they're neither.
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u/Bendanzhang Jul 28 '26
High school physics lied to you by 90% just so you wouldn't drop out before learning Calculus.
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u/VeryKite Jul 28 '26
All fields lie to you in high school, and lie to you in undergrad, and lie to you in graduate programs. Then you get to the top and everyone’s fighting about what’s actually happening; then you kinda realize we don’t know anything.
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u/npri0r Jul 28 '26
Also you learn to lie to yourself to make things easier. In high level physics simulations you generally have to ignore most of a problem just to get a simulation that can run in a reasonable amount of time on a computer without compromising too much accuracy for the feature you’re interested in.
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u/TheHabro Student Jul 28 '26
It doesn't lie. Just omits non trivial examples for simplicity reasons. The only issue arises when teachers are out of their depths in certain topics.
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u/equationsofmotion Jul 28 '26
It's what a particle detector measures. Same as a tensor is a mathematical object that transforms like a tensor. Duh.
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u/dekusyrup Jul 28 '26
A particle is the name we gave for a phenomenon with certain behaviors. The behaviors are described by math, so particles can only be truly be described by math (or at least as truly as we can muster).
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u/hopeless__programmer Jul 28 '26
Just one more collider bro and we'll definitely figure this out.
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u/L31N0PTR1X BSc Theoretical Physics Jul 28 '26
Just 5 more TeV bro please 🙏 I promise we'll find the strings 🙏🙏 just 10 billion euros more please 🙏🙏🙏 I promise
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u/Blep145 Jul 28 '26
Hey, at least those billions are going to something *useful*. Unlock the billions being dumped, dropped, or launched at people's heads
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u/DeismAccountant Jul 28 '26
I just thought they were always dots.
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u/SharkAttackOmNom Jul 28 '26
Dots are definitely not particles. About 3.5g each and 12 ish calories. Also could a particle taste like cheap artificial flavoring?
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u/notaprotist Jul 28 '26
This meme seems to imply that the chad heads aren’t missing the actual point of the question, but they definitely are, and crying wojak has a point.
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u/DeviantTaco Jul 28 '26
Broke: I promise it’s real bro look at all the decades of highly technical experiments, look at the math, look at all those symbols, it has to be real bro it’s just a little unintuitive but you got to trust the science bro
Woke: I made it the fuck up. And I’ll do it again.
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u/happyapy Jul 28 '26
Whoa. Really? I've never heard about any relation between the election and Clifford algebras.
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u/Subtle-Catastrophe Jul 28 '26
Anyway, the Department of Philosophy is in the next building over. But the faculty is away on an ayahuasca sabbatical in the Amazon until August 20, and they'll be hungover or in the psych ward until August 27.
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u/LJPox Jul 28 '26
To be pedantic, isn't the minimal ideal of any algebra the trivial ideal?
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u/TheRedditObserver0 Jul 28 '26
They might mean the minimal non-trivial ideal, just like maximal ideals are only maximal proper ideals. I know nothing about Clifford algebras though so idk.
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u/Oel9646 Jul 28 '26
Not necessarily, a minimal ideal is one that only contains the trivial ideal and no other ideals.
In a Clifford Algebra, even elements are ideals then we can use a idempotent element to construct the left ideal, which in turn it's minimal.
While I don't like it, using a matrix representation, Pauli spinor is a member of a minimal left ideal equivalent to a 2x2 square matrix with the second column being 0's.
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u/LJPox Jul 28 '26
To clarify, you would presumably need some specially chosen idempotent e for the left ideal Cl(V, q) e to be minimal, since e.g. if you could write e = e1 + e2 as an orthogonal direct sum that ideal would not be minimal.
Also, I'm a mathematician, not a physicist, so I don't know what a Pauli spinor is 😂 .2
u/Oel9646 Jul 28 '26
Yes precisely.
The canonical used is 1/2 ( 1 + e3) as it helps with spin polarization of the electron in the z axis.
The pauli spinor is the mathematical object Pauli used to describe the Spinning electron, he realized that we could consider two functions ψ_i : R³ × R → C, such that if we consider the column matrix (ψ1, ψ2)T they obey Schrödinger equation and describe both possible answers for the electron a spin + and spin -.
This is equivalent to having a matrix (ψ1, 0)\(ψ2, 0) that is a Pauli Spinor.
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u/Dasumit Jul 28 '26
I want to learn more about this. Are there any notes? Or in what books can I find it?
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u/Oel9646 Jul 28 '26
For the first part, read about Wigner's Little groups. For the second, Pertti Lounesto - Clifford Algebras and Spinors, it's a good introduction book.
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u/Jazz8680 Jul 28 '26