Visualizing E=MC2

[Jarryd]

Hi, before i ask my question i would firt like to explain that i am not a physics student and that my only source for information of wave-particle duality is from the incredibly unreliable internet. Anyway while reading about the quantum theory of the atom and the idea of electrons acting as both particles and waves i have found myself completely unable to picture this in my head (which is something i really need when i learn something fairly abstract in science). This is because my visualization of a wave is simply a movement of matter, and therefore i can't really see how something could be both a particle and a wave or form of energy. This is really confusing me, as i can't even view a single electron as anything but a particle and therefore feel very limited in furthering my understanding of quantum mechanics. Anyway i figured as students/physicis i was wondering how you picture the wave/particle duality in your heads to see if you could possible help me.

Thanks in advance.

[Tom Mattson]

Anyway i figured as students/physicis i was wondering how you picture the wave/particle duality in your heads to see if you could possible help me.

 

Speaking for myself: I don't picture it at all.

 

I adopt the so-called "shut up and calculate" view of quantum mechanics. That wave/particle duality thing is just a descriptive term used to present QM to novices anyway. If you look at the theory itself' date=' there is no dual description of the mechanics of particles.

 

edited to add:

 

PS, the wave/particle duality has nothing to do with E=mc[sup']2[/sup]. The former notion comes from quantum theory, while the latter comes from relativity.

[sanjaygeorge]

isn't wave and particle by the substitution of planks equation and e = mc2

[Tom Mattson]

I can't tell what you're asking.

[Klaynos]

It is genrally considered by most people who study this that it is pretty much impossible for us to picture it as there is no real worldy situation which is similar...

[Mart]

What if the "thing" moves by a wave-like motion. When it's not moving it's size is at a minimum. Think of a worm or an amoeba.

[swansont]

What if the phenomenon has no macrosopic analogue?

[Douglas]

I had read once that Einstein was not much of a mathematician, but he had a unique ability to visualize, he could visualize what would happen if he was riding a beam of light.

 

When I'm doing a calculation (engineering), I find it important to be able to visualize the answer.

[gib65]

Didn't someone come up with the concept of a "probability wave" to resolve this dilemma? That is, particles propogate as probability waves where the peaks of the wave represent the region of highest probability where you will find the particle when you try to measure it.

[eon_rider]

I had read once that Einstein was not much of a mathematician, but he had a unique ability to visualize, he could visualize what would happen if he was riding a beam of light.

 

When I'm doing a calculation (engineering), I find it important to be able to visualize the answer.

 

Totally agree. I was told you'll always understand it better

if you can visualize why the math works this way.

(By my math teachers)

 

Perhaps at very high level maths this is not the way.

I don't know.

 

I think the desire to understanding something conceptually IS

very valid and has merit.

 

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-5/p10.html

 

The above may be of interest to some on Richard Feynman famous phrase.

 

best,

 

Eon.

[Jacques]

wave/particle duality

Can't it be the vibration of the particle ???

Or can it be that particle don't exist as a point but exist only as a standing wave ???

[Bettina]

I had read once that Einstein was not much of a mathematician' date=' but he had a unique ability to visualize, he could visualize what would happen if he was riding a beam of light.

 

When I'm doing a calculation (engineering), I find it important to be able to visualize the answer.[/quote']

 

I do it all the time. Think in pictures and visualize what I'm trying to learn. Drawing pictures in your mind and actually seeing the processes that make it work makes things much easier to understand. When I saw the show about Einstein on Nova, I was surprised to find out that he was one of those kind of thinkers. He was awesome.

 

Bettina

[Douglas]

Bettina and Eon_rider

Yeah, it's interesting, visualization is the key to understanding.

[Royston]

visualization is the key to understanding.

 

I couldn't agree more...I tend to construct models first and fill in the data later. I've created dozens of models in my head and have to verify my visualization by asking questions (mainly on this forum) to make sure i'm getting a true 'picture'. I'm certainly not proclaiming anything here, I'm really bumbling my way through this.

 

I've often overlooked a simple detail...or have had to go back and research where I'm going wrong and this seems to throw out a load more questions or gaps in my knowledge. However these soon dwindle down, and I'm beginning to find the connections between the 'mile stones' in physics / cosmology.

 

By filling the gaps in your knowledge the tighter the model becomes. The trick is to include yourself 'the observer' as part of that model.

[[Tycho?]]

I do my highschool/first year university physics mostly by visualization. I dislike memorizing rules (and I have a habit of not taking notes) so instead of drilling formulae into my head I just think of what is happening, and fill in the equations as needed. This of course works best with classical mechanincs.

[JonM]

Photon^^^

 

that help?

 

 

 

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000198

 

 

 

 

But really its impossible to put an image to a photon or to any subatomic particle... light bounces off of things and that is how we see images, how can light bounce off light?

[Royston]

''] This of course works best with classical mechanincs.

 

I kinda agree, however, where a lot of people slip up in visualizing particles is when they think of a particle as a point. 'Particle' is quite a broad term...

 

I think, with regards to relativity, the cosmological constant is fundamental to understanding that particles 'take up' space...massless or not. Going back to the OP all I can suggest is getting your head round Planks constant, understand the 'exchange' between particles. Then understand massless particles are part of this exchange...photons being the electro-magnetic exchange.

 

I'm yet to study weak and strong nuclear forces but they can both be regarded as 'force carrying particles' with a relativistic mass.

 

If you want to stretch this to quantum mechanics...all I can offer is that energy exchange can be measured through 'quanta'. In that the position and velocity is meaured in units...imagine a car accelerating and determing it's position relative to it's speed. So you'll know it's position at 5 mph then 10 mph and at 15 mph, and so on...but relative to the other forces that are acting upon it at the time, which is why it's a very complicated process and can seem deterministic.

 

This is my understanding 'so far' and I'm sure someone will correct me on the above. However, I'm in the same position, that visualizing is my closest tool to grasping the concepts of physics, and I'm under the ascertian that you can only fully understand the affects by creating a visual model that fits with your knowledge and the gaps are filled with imagination.

 

As 'Tycho' stated above, remembering without understanding won't get you very far at all, and will get forgotten...I seldom make notes, but what makes sense, and what fits with my current understanding seems to connect quite nicely.

[Jarryd]

Well after reading what you have said i do kind of have a visual model that works for me to visualize with although i'm not sure if it is usefull or not. But basically i'm picturing a particle kind of like a strong concentration of magnetic fields (kind of like the atom without the nucleus as everything overlaps) which seems to be good for me to understandi kind of, however this still begs the question of what is creating such fields? but i think that is almost a philosophical question lol

[Royston]

Well after reading what you have said i do kind of have a visual model that works for me to visualize with although i'm not sure if it is usefull or not. But basically i'm picturing a particle kind of like a strong concentration of magnetic fields (kind of like the atom without the nucleus as everything overlaps) which seems to be good for me to understandi kind of, however this still begs the question of what is creating such fields? but i think that is almost a philosophical question lol

 

Hi Jarryd, I've just re-read my post, and it's a pretty poor explanation...if you notice the time of the post (I was up at 5:30 in the morning due to a friend going away for a few months.) I didn't really have my thinking cap on...however this subject is quite dear to me, and I'm sure I'll post more as I learn more, and will try to explain interactions so they can be 'pictured'.

 

Please read my thread on LQG/LQC where I've tried to ask the questions where I think people are having a hard time (myself included) in trying to visualize interactions in space-time. Always cross-reference anything you don't understand until it fits. That's all I can advise at the mo, I'm really quite new to studying this subject, but have had 'models' in my head since I can remember, it's only recently that I've realised how 'useful' they can be.

[john5746]

This is really confusing me' date=' as i can't even view a single electron as anything but a particle and therefore feel very limited in furthering my understanding of quantum mechanics. Anyway i figured as students/physicis i was wondering how you picture the wave/particle duality in your heads to see if you could possible help me.

Thanks in advance.[/quote']

 

Your not the only one. From my limited knowledge, you think of it as either a wave or a particle, depending on the task at hand. Similar to imagining a 4-D object, we just don't have the ability to describe the results. Imagine living in a 2-D world and observing a sphere move through your frame of reference. You would observe some wild results, but would not be able to explain them.

[5614]

You cannot picture wave/particle duality, well, you can, but it WILL be technically incorrect in some way.

 

This is because, like swasont said "the phenomenon has no macrosopic analogue", this is a quantum thing and you cannot imagine it using your classical mechanics view of the world, they quite simply do not apply to the microscopic world of QM. Consequently when you visualise QM using classical mechanics there will nearly always be loopholes in your visualisation.

 

At the same time if you know these loopholes there's no harm in visualising it as long as you know that these loopholes exist and so you can't rely 100% on your visualisation, because sometimes it might not work.

[guardian]

I too find visualisation a very helpful and powerful tool in modelling reality. And I beg to differ in that it could be used to model the quantum world 100%. The problem however lies in understanding and consequently being able to visualise (and model in your mind) that which the quantum world inhabits - space and more precisely dimensionality. Einstein was on the right track and his preoccupation in the famous 1905 paper was with space and how it could be geometrically modelled to represent reality (I recently re-read the 1920 translation for the umpteenth(?) time). Einstein was a great 'visualisation' expert and that no doubt led to his relativity theorems however I believe he was not correct in assuming that space cannot be geometrically modelled and still completely and unequivocally represent reality. Although approximatelly correct his model is not complete. This approximation makes little difference when relativity is applied on the macro scale but as we know it falls apart in QM. This to me suggests that either one (relativity) or the other (QM) are only approximations or both are.

 

Not being able to visualise and subsequently model space correctly has led to the problems we have found ourselves dealing with. Of course this makes a big difference when one tries to visualise particle-wave duality - we and all particles exist in space - if we have that part only approximately right then no wonder we can't visualise what's happening on the quantum level.

[5614]

You talk about being able to visualise the model correctly.

 

This is the point.

 

When you visualise something you are using classical physics... classical rules do not apply in the same way to quantum principles so you cannot visualise QM classically.

 

If your QM visualisation is entirely correct then it's not what most people would call a visualisation.

 

How do you picture a particle going through 2 holes at the same time? As well as every other possible path imagineable... all at the same time?

[Douglas]

How do you picture a particle going through 2 holes at the same time?

I guess most minds can't picture it, but for the mind that can visualize it, probably understands it. Maybe the holes are real and imaginary....like impedances.

[5614]

Anyone can visualise two particles going through 2 holes.. but this is wrong as there are 2 particles. Nobody can really visualise 1 particle going through 2 places at once, it's just like 1 thing, it's 1 point, it can only be in 1 point.

 

Although obviously in QM this is different.

 

I've made a few posts about this and in another thread, so I'm gonna ease off on the topic now, you should get the point - you cannot visualise QM because visualisation is a classical approach and you cannot use classical approaches for QM.