If light travels in "chunks" could there be a correlation to peaks in waves?

[pittsburghjoe]

So we know light is supposedly simultaneously photons and waves. Have any experiments been attempted to line up the chunks of photons to the peaks in it's wave function?

[swansont]

So we know light is supposedly simultaneously photons and waves. Have any experiments been attempted to line up the chunks of photons to the peaks in it's wave function?

 

 

That doesn't make much sense. The wave function correlates to probability, so without doing anything, most of the photons will "line up" with the peaks and troughs, and none will line up with the nodes.

[pittsburghjoe]

What if the photon actually becomes a wave when we aren't measuring it? I'd like to one day see a spectrogram of the wave if we can ever trick it into divulging that info.

Edited November 22, 2016 by pittsburghjoe

[swansont]

What if the photon actually becomes a wave when we aren't measuring it? I'd like to one day see a spectrogram of the wave if we can ever trick it into divulging that info.

 

 

Kind of an ill-formed statement. A photon represents the particle-like property — quantized energy and localization — but when it's not being measured, you can't assign such properties to it. The wave-particle duality is a placeholder explanation for neophytes until they have the chance to take more advance physics, much like the Bohr model is used to ease people into the idea of QM. It's a bridge, not the destination.

[pittsburghjoe]

Is the problem that we are not asking the correct type of properties it has at the time? Are you saying that you believe it is nothingness when not being observed? Tell me what you use for your own personal placeholder ..a dumbed-down version for a simpleton such as myself.

[swansont]

Is the problem that we are not asking the correct type of properties it has at the time? Are you saying that you believe it is nothingness when not being observed? Tell me what you use for your own personal placeholder ..a dumbed-down version for a simpleton such as myself.

 

 

The simple version is that light acts as a wave and a particle. That was my point. You can't classify it as one or the other. It has properties of both, and what property you see depends on the experiment you do, and if you're not measuring it, you can't assign it one behavior or the other.

[pittsburghjoe]

Doesn't the double slit experiment suggest that it literally swaps between being a wave or particle ..not so much as being both at the same time? You would never see the interference pattern it if was both at the same time.

[swansont]

Doesn't the double slit experiment suggest that it literally swaps between being a wave or particle ..not so much as being both at the same time? You would never see the interference pattern it if was both at the same time.

When it goes through the slits and you don't know which path, it acts as a wave. When it hits the detector, you see the particle behavior.

 

But if you know which slit it went through, it doesn't act like a wave - the interference pattern goes away

[pittsburghjoe]

I'm suggesting that it physically changes from particle to an energy wave dependent on observation. Unless the wave function can somehow focus the movement of the particle when observed.