Warp wrote:
>   My relevant point was, however, that electric charges are quantified.

	I can accept that - I was merely correcting one assertion. However, 
here is your original statement:

"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."

	I believe quantum physics asserts that a number of quantities are 
quantized based on the *system* they're in. An example I often use and 
as Darren pointed out is that of frequency. Frequency is a continuum.

	You can also have any energy you desire - no matter how small. Just 
create a photon with the corresponding frequency.

	However, when you have a certain system, like a harmonic oscillator or 
a finite/infinite well, the energies get quantized, with there being a 
base energy - of which all energies are multiples. The important point 
is that the base energy itself is not a fundamental quantity. If I 
change the dimensions of the system slightly, that base energy will be 
different.

	Also, in case of a finite well, you can get a continuum of energy - 
once the particle has more energy than the strength of the well. A free 
particle can have any energy. We can quibble about whether a particle 
can ever be truly free, but QM allows for this.

	The notion of there being a fundamental unit of charge, etc, is, AFAIK, 
a notion that exists independently of quantum mechanics. QM did not 
introduce it, and nor is it fundamental to QM. In the original 
formulation, and even as it is taught today, space is not quantized (not 
sure if there is universal agreement on there being a fundamentally 
small unit of space).

-- 
Fax me no questions, I'll Fax you no lies!


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