How photons move?

[Eren]

Hello everyone;

So, we know that photons can move like a particle or can move like waves. But i didn't understood that does the photons moves as particles in a wave way or they became waves or anything else. My thought is that if there were pure wave they should be energy, and i dont think energy can move my itself without any matter. I mean water or sound waves vibrates atoms and we see but they dont work on space. But light can travel in space so it is a particle. But we also know that it moves like waves because of Double-slit experiment. But i dont understand how a particle becames a wave itself and moves without any matter. 

Thanks for caring.

[Klaynos]

I think a good first step for thinking about photons is to stop thinking of waves and particles. Photons (and electrons etc...) are not classical particles nor waves. They are something difference. Our normal experiences do not observe things like that so we don't really have words or annologies that work. Therefore we have to say things like; photons have wavelike and particlelike properties. 

As an aside, energy is a property of stuff not something itself. 

[beecee]

I was going to say that this is just one of the mysteries of science, and we really do not know the why or how re the duel nature of light. But I checked WIKI and like the following description.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave–particle_duality

Quote

It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.

Here's another that actually explains the goal of science in general.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8

 

and finally recent experiments claim to have observed at the same time, both the particle and wave nature.....here

https://phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html

Quote

The researchers have captured, for the first time ever, a single snapshot of light behaving simultaneously as both a wave and a stream of particles.

 

[sci-man]

In summary, photon is just a model for explaining when electromagnetic wave behaves like particle. ... As the quanta of these waves, photons will also travel at light speed. In special relativity, the energy of a particle is related to its mass via E=γmc2. Photons are massless, but they have finite energy.

Just now, sci-man said:

In summary, photon is just a model for explaining when electromagnetic wave behaves like particle. ... As the quanta of these waves, photons will also travel at light speed. In special relativity, the energy of a particle is related to its mass via E=γmc2. Photons are massless, but they have finite energy.

found this summary on google

[swansont]

1 hour ago, sci-man said:

In summary, photon is just a model for explaining when electromagnetic wave behaves like particle. ... As the quanta of these waves, photons will also travel at light speed. In special relativity, the energy of a particle is related to its mass via E=γmc2. Photons are massless, but they have finite energy.

Photon energy is given by E = pc = hv (p is momentum, v is frequency)

The more general equation is E² = p²c² +m²c⁴ but the mass of the photon, as you note, is zero

[Vmedvil]

1 hour ago, sci-man said:

In summary, photon is just a model for explaining when electromagnetic wave behaves like particle. ... As the quanta of these waves, photons will also travel at light speed. In special relativity, the energy of a particle is related to its mass via E=γmc2. Photons are massless, but they have finite energy.

found this summary on google

No, that is only for particles with rest mass E=γmc²

16 minutes ago, swansont said:

Photon energy is given by E = pc = hv (p is momentum, v is frequency)

The more general equation is E² = p²c² +m²c⁴ but the mass of the photon, as you note, is zero

Yes, that is correct swansont, I just got done bitching about university websites with false information now google, it is the end I say! The more common way of writing that is E=hf

Edited October 3, 2017 by Vmedvil
typo

[sci-man]

On 10/3/2017 at 11:08 AM, Vmedvil said:

No, that is only for particles with rest mass E=γmc²

Yes, that is correct swansont, I just got done bitching about university websites with false information now google, it is the end I say! The more common way of writing that is E=hf

the university's better be a lot better by the time i get there
 

[druS]

On 9/30/2017 at 5:42 AM, Eren said:

Hello everyone;

So, we know that photons can move like a particle or can move like waves. But i didn't understood that does the photons moves as particles in a wave way or they became waves or anything else. My thought is that if there were pure wave they should be energy, and i dont think energy can move my itself without any matter. I mean water or sound waves vibrates atoms and we see but they dont work on space. But light can travel in space so it is a particle. But we also know that it moves like waves because of Double-slit experiment. But i dont understand how a particle becames a wave itself and moves without any matter. 

Thanks for caring.

Eren

Mate, the actual physicians here can have a way of getting to the point of the physics but miss some of the history.

You have discovered a conundrum that did indeed confuse scientists. The experiment used was to take a large alarm clock with bells on top and a little hammer that vibrated against the bells to make the alarm. They then put it in a glass tube, sucked out the air to make a vacuum. And set off the alarm.

Wahey! You can't hear anything because the vacuum removed the air, and the sound wave has nothing to travel through. BUT you could still see the clock and the little hammer striking the bells. They "knew" that light was a wave, so what medium was it travelling through? They hypothesised a "luminescent aether" which must fill the void of space (we get light from stars) and they set out to prove the existence of the aether.

Michelson and Morley are the two guys to look up on Wiki, in the late 1800's. To prove the theory they had to show that light travelled slightly faster with the aether and slightly slower against it. And they proved instead that light traveled at one constant speed no matter the direction. [The equipment they used something like 140 years ago is a fore-runner to the interferometer used at LIGO. Obviously on a much smaller scale.]

This confused the world for a long time, with many scientists trying to postulate an answer - Einstein managed with the special theory of relativity in 1905.

It doesnt explain the wave particle duality, but after the slit experiment have a look at black body radiation, starting with Max Plank, and then further cogitated by Einstein.

Very great minds have been confused by your question!

[DrP]

6 minutes ago, druS said:

Eren

Mate, the actual physicians here can have a way of getting to the point of the physics but miss some of the history.

You mean Physicists...  Physicians are medical people. ;-)

 

[Silvestru]

8 minutes ago, druS said:

Mate, the actual physicians here can have a way of getting to the point of the physics but miss some of the history.

Wow I did not know physicians know so much about physics.

[Strange]

7 minutes ago, druS said:

It doesnt explain the wave particle duality, but after the slit experiment have a look at black body radiation, starting with Max Plank, and then further cogitated by Einstein.

And then Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect.

Also, photons are not particles or waves, they are ... well, photons. They obey their own rules. Sometimes that looks a little bit particle-like to our human intuitions and sometimes it looks a little bit wave-like. It depends what you measure and what model you use to describe light. (There is no point asking what light "really" is. All we can do (with anything) is model how it behaves.)

[swansont]

39 minutes ago, druS said:

"luminescent aether"

luminiferous (transmits light) vs luminescent (produces light)

[interested]

27 minutes ago, Strange said:

And then Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect.

Also, photons are not particles or waves, they are ... well, photons. They obey their own rules. Sometimes that looks a little bit particle-like to our human intuitions and sometimes it looks a little bit wave-like. It depends what you measure and what model you use to describe light. (There is no point asking what light "really" is. All we can do (with anything) is model how it behaves.)

In summary, photon is just a model for explaining when electromagnetic wave behaves like particle. ... As the quanta of these waves, photons will also travel at light speed. In special relativity, the energy of a particle is related to its mass via E=γmc2. Photons are massless, but they have finite energy.

found this summary on google

No, that is only for particles with rest mass E=γmc²

  On 10/3/2017 at 5:01 PM, swansont said:

Photon energy is given by E = pc = hv (p is momentum, v is frequency)

The more general equation is E² = p²c² +m²c⁴ but the mass of the photon, as you note, is zero

Yes, that is correct swansont, I just got done bitching about university websites with false information now google, it is the end I say! The more common way of writing that is E=hf

-------------------------------------------

I do not see what the big difficulty people have with wave particle duality. Is a photon not best viewed as a directional wave travelling through space, which stretches and releases space as it goes like a sound wave in water, E = hf is the most useful definition from the above. Gravity stretches space in an omni-directional way, whilst photons stretch it in a mono directional way. They are both the same effect in space one Stationary the other fluctuating.  

[swansont]

 

 

Quote

 

I do not see what the big difficulty people have with wave particle duality. Is a photon not best viewed as a directional wave travelling through space, which stretches and releases space as it goes like a sound wave in water, E = hf is the most useful definition from the above. Gravity stretches space in an omni-directional way, whilst photons stretch it in a mono directional way. They are both the same effect in space one Stationary the other fluctuating.  

 

 

 

Photons do not stretch space.

 

 

[interested]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

 

 

 

 

Photons do not stretch space.

 

 

Photons are field fluctuations. 

What field is fluctuating if it is not space?

Gravity is a stretching of space, ie a field distortion in space.

What field is distorting if it is not space?

Wave particle duality is better described as different field fluctuations or distortions of space of one form or another.  Photons are directed polarized field fluctuations in the fabric of space, the stretching or fluctuation in space transfers the energy.

All things are field fluctuations of one kind or another, including photons, particles, gravity, magnetic fields, everything. 

At least that is my understanding. 

[swansont]

Just now, interested said:

Photons are field fluctuations. 

What field is fluctuating if it is not space?

Electric and magnetic fields. That's why it's called electromagnetic radiation.

 

[Silvestru]

You can have one photon "occupying some space" and have additional unlimited number of additional photons in the same "space".

 

The photon does not obey the Pauli exclusion principle. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle

Edited October 19, 2017 by Silvestru

[interested]

2 hours ago, Silvestru said:

You can have one photon "occupying some space" and have additional unlimited number of additional photons in the same "space".

 

The photon does not obey the Pauli exclusion principle. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle

The Pauli exclusion principle applies to fermions not bosons.

Bosons can pass through the same space as other Bosons. If Photons are viewed as wave fluctuations in space whose energy is given by E=hf, then they have wavelength they also have a direction waves on the surface of a pond can pass through each other in different directions unlike ships. 

Feynman diagrams may give a better idea of what is going on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_diagram

3 hours ago, swansont said:

Electric and magnetic fields. That's why it's called electromagnetic radiation.

 

What sort of field fluctuation in space do you think a magnetic or electric field would look like?

[Strange]

44 minutes ago, interested said:

What sort of field fluctuation in space do you think a magnetic or electric field would look like?

It would look like light. 

[swansont]

2 hours ago, interested said:

 What sort of field fluctuation in space do you think a magnetic or electric field would look like?

E and B do not have to be field fluctuations (you can have static fields), but if they are, then it's EM radiation (as Strange has pointed out) 

[Silvestru]

16 hours ago, interested said:

The Pauli exclusion principle applies to fermions not bosons.

Bosons can pass through the same space as other Bosons. If Photons are viewed as wave fluctuations in space whose energy is given by E=hf, then they have wavelength they also have a direction waves on the surface of a pond can pass through each other in different directions unlike ships. 

Feynman diagrams may give a better idea of what is going on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_diagram

What sort of field fluctuation in space do you think a magnetic or electric field would look like?

Read what I said again. Especially the does not part.

[interested]

On 10/20/2017 at 8:16 AM, Silvestru said:

Read what I said again. Especially the does not part.

Oops missed that.

The following are a coupe of links on photons that I found interesting, and might be worth discussing on how light moves.

Method to significantly enhance optical force.

https://phys.org/news/2017-10-method-significantly-optical.html#nRlv

Gamma rays reach beyond the limit of light

https://phys.org/news/2017-10-gamma-rays-limits.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter

[interested]

In string theory space I understand is made up of vibrating strings, how does string theory represent a photon and an electron

[Strange]

Particles (not space) are made of strings.Different particles are represented by different vibrational modes of the strings.

[interested]

1 hour ago, Strange said:

Particles (not space) are made of strings.Different particles are represented by different vibrational modes of the strings.

I think you are wrong again space is made of strings in string theory, but I could be wrong. Stringy Gravitons permeate all of space, but then, I could be wrong.

I know all things in string  theory are represented as different modes of vibration, what I was asking was, how does string theory represent a photon and an electron, everyone knows they are vibrations, your answer was pointless unless your aim is to post the maximum number of posts possible without actually answering a question.

I will try google, it may yield a better answer.