Warp wrote:
>   Your logic seems to be that since photons do *more* than waves do, in
> other words, photons seems to be a superset of pure waves, then they are
> not waves at all.

No, that isn't my logic. Did you watch the video I linked to, where Feynman 
talks about a few of the things that show why photons aren't waves? Do you 
realize that Einstein got his nobel prize for showing that photons can't be 
waves?

The point is that they aren't waves when you look at more than one at a 
time, because they don't even cause interference patterns like you would 
expect. (Otherwise, lasers wouldn't work.) They aren't waves when you use 
electrons, even though you get "interference" patterns as long as you *only* 
shoot one at a time. One photon traveling through vacuum (or otherwise not 
interacting) follows the same math as a wave. Two photons don't. Two 
electrons don't. A photon interacting with an electron 100 feet down the 
road doesn't act like a wave *here*.

I'll agree it isn't intuitive that the motion of particles obeys some 
unobvious rules. That doesn't make them waves.

>   (I'm not saying that's what's happening. I'm saying that the way you write
> makes it sound like that.)

It's not "too hard to swallow". It's simply counter to experimental 
evidence. The interference has nothing to do with how many slits the photon 
passes through. Indeed, that's the *point* of the two-slit experiment. You 
*only* get "interference" patterns if you *don't look*.  If the 
"interference" patterns were caused by the photon passing through both 
slits, then they would persist if you did something to the photon *after* it 
passed through both slits. But it doesn't.

Indeed, if it was caused by the photon passing through two slits at once, 
you'd expect to get the interference pattern if you closed the slits only 
after you'd measured where the photon landed. But you don't. If you can 
explain that in terms of waves, there's a nobel prize waiting for you.

Is it really that hard to believe that there are multiple ways to come up 
with the same numbers that waves give you?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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