POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Quotable : Re: Quotable Server Time
8 Sep 2024 07:16:06 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Quotable  
From: Warp
Date: 2 Jun 2008 13:17:59
Message: <48442b46@news.povray.org>
Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   Your statement is like that. You are starting from the assumption that
> > an electron is an extremely small particle with well-defined boundaries,

> By the way, this is why it's called "quantum" physics. :-) Because it's 
> *not* a wave - there *is* a well-defined particle in a particular place.

  Actually "quantum physics" means that everything is quantified. That is,
there's a minimum amount of everything (for example electric charge and
mass), and everything is an integer multiple of that amount. You just can't
have eg. half of the electric charge of an electron, for example.

  Waves are also quantified for the same reason: There's a minimum amount
of amplitude, for example, and all amplitudes are integer multiples of
that amount.

  These "quants" behave oddly. Sometimes they behave like particles,
sometimes they behave like waves, and sometimes they behave like both
at the same time. Different measurements of the exact same quant can
show wildly different behavior in this respect. (One experiment will
clearly show that light behaves like a wave and not like a stream of
particles, while another experiment will show the exact opposite.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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