antimatter Posted March 12, 2008 Share Posted March 12, 2008 I need a little help understanding how quanta and elementary particles tie in to quantum mechanics. I understand both of them, but it's the concept of quantum mechanics that gets me, it seems really random. Can someone help explain the concept to me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted March 12, 2008 Share Posted March 12, 2008 Everything is actually waves, and the waves — which represent things like the position/momentum/energy of the entity in question — must conform to boundary conditions. This excludes a great many solutions from being possible; the solutions that are left are discrete. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 12, 2008 Author Share Posted March 12, 2008 Thanks for replying, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "everythng is actually waves", do you mean everything as in energy? And how do waves represent those things? sorry, it takes me a while to get these concepts sometimes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted March 12, 2008 Share Posted March 12, 2008 Everything, as in everything, photons, electrons, buckminster fulleries.... everything is a wave (and a particle) The waves don't represent the things, they are the things! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 12, 2008 Author Share Posted March 12, 2008 Okay, I'm starting to get the idea, but how does quanta play into this? Photons aren't really a wave, are they? I always assumed they were particles, except in space Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Well you see the idea of wave and particle breaks down in quantum mechanics. When we said everything is a wave, we would also have been correct in saying everything is a particle, depending how you measure something it will appear to be either one... Photons are waves, and they are particles, as are electrons... Quantisation comes into play because the energies (and other values) of these particles/waves only have fixed quantised values... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 13, 2008 Author Share Posted March 13, 2008 What measurements make matter appear as a wave? particle? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 well, you can diffract buckminster fullerene. that is wave behaviour. you can also bounce it around. that is particle behaviour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 To add to IA... The two classic examples are the young double slit experiment showing that photons (or lots of other stuff) are waves, and the photoelectric effect, showing that photons only come in discrete packets and are therefore particles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 13, 2008 Author Share Posted March 13, 2008 I've heard that term 'packets' used before, but I don't quite understand what you mean by it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedarkshade Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Two or more waves come together to form a wave packet! Wave Packet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 20, 2008 Author Share Posted March 20, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wave_packet_%28no_dispersion%29.gif So then what are the spaces in between the packets? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Wave_packet_%28no_dispersion%29.gif Image:Wave packet (no dispersion).gif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneSpace Posted March 20, 2008 Share Posted March 20, 2008 i am new here, i was following the thread with great intrest then wham, someone said bullshit and it all fell apart. please continue, what are the spaces inbetween? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted March 20, 2008 Share Posted March 20, 2008 In this case I don't think wave packets is what I meant by the term packet. I meant a lump of energy, a single discrete thing. Not a continuous wave... The space in between, well it depends what medium you're moving through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 20, 2008 Author Share Posted March 20, 2008 oh Okay, so just like one of those big concentrations of waves? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted March 20, 2008 Share Posted March 20, 2008 oh Okay, so just like one of those big concentrations of waves? Or a wave taking up only a small region, as opposed to a long wave-train. Like this 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 20, 2008 Author Share Posted March 20, 2008 Thanks, that actually helps a lot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustkara Posted April 23, 2008 Share Posted April 23, 2008 I am not sure any help for you but I would recommend the textbook Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, 2nd Edition that I use it when i was in university. This is a good quantum mechanice and should be easy to understand. Anyway, wish some help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HannonRJ Posted April 29, 2008 Share Posted April 29, 2008 Everything is actually waves, and the waves — which represent things like the position/momentum/energy of the entity in question — must conform to boundary conditions. This excludes a great many solutions from being possible; the solutions that are left are discrete. Have you read how deBroglie derived his "wave-particle duality" equation? Have you read Planck's article in which he expounded the "quantum"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted April 29, 2008 Share Posted April 29, 2008 Have you read how deBroglie derived his "wave-particle duality" equation?Have you read Planck's article in which he expounded the "quantum"? Yes to the first, no to the second. Why, is that something you feel is important? Original papers are "works in progress." Concepts get refined and errors get corrected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted April 29, 2008 Share Posted April 29, 2008 HannonRJ seems to think you cannot understand a subject unless you look at the older revisions of it where there were errors. as if the newer revisions did not contain everything the old version got right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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