(July 8, 2019 at 7:04 pm)polymath257 Wrote:(July 7, 2019 at 7:36 pm)Fireball Wrote: I'm going to say that the reason we have wave-particle duality for light is because both descriptions work at different times. Which may mean that we just haven't found a "complete" mathematical expression for it. You won't get me denying JC Maxell's work, though.
It isn't just light though. It is *all* quantum particles. We have seen interference effects in *atoms*.
And it isn't just that we see these effects at different times. If you turn down the intensity of the incoming light in the double-slit experiment, you will detect individual photons *and* get an interference pattern building up over time.
The mathematical description we have is quantum mechanics. And the claims that it is incomplete (like those from Einstein) have been observationally shown to be flawed (EPR and Arrow's experiment).
The quantum world simply does not act via classical ideas of 'matter' or 'causality'. Thinking of photons (or electrons, or neutrons) as little balls flying around is just not a good image: it is classical.
Anything I may have learned as an undergrad in my QM classes has evidently run out of my ears when I slept. It has been over 35 years, though. For that matter, I noticed this morning that I misspelled Maxwell, leaving out the "w".
If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.
