Neeum Zawan wrote:
>     Throughout this thread (which I admit I did not read all of), you've 
> stated stuff a bit too definitively for my taste, as if all the top 
> physicists agree on this.

I'm just stating my understanding of the general consensus. I freely admit 
that maybe they're wrong, but when the guy who got the nobel prize for 
explaining to other theoretical pysicists how it works says "It's never ever 
a wave", I'm gonna go with his explanation. :-)

>     I'm guessing that the actual mathematical formalism that we have for 
> QM addresses all that is _needed_, in that it always works, and we know 
> of no phenomenon (except perhaps gravity) that our mathematical 
> formalism fails at. 

The other quantum stuff is similar but not identcail formulas, yes.

> Given that, having an argument about whether it's a 
> wave or a particle is philosophy of the pointless kind. The theory will 
> remain unchanged.

Yep.

> any of you has bothered to *define* what a particle is or what a wave 
> is. 

Well, I tried to indirectly describe things a wave would do that a particle 
doesn't, but yeah.

> We had an illusion that we understood that better merely 
> because we were used to it in our daily lives. But that's just an illusion.

True. It's like asking *why* there are three dimensions, or *why* you 
subtract the square of time instead of adding it in GR.

>     In general, are you sure polarization cannot be described just by 
> waves? If you have waves in 3-D materials? FYI, the standard model for 
> sound waves in solids (i.e. phonons) assumes they have a polarization.

I think the effect of polarization of quanta does stuff that polarization 
based entirely on the directions of waves can't do, like lasing and fermion 
exclusion.

>     I haven't read the book, but my physics professor said that it's THE 
> book to read (QED) if you want to get an understanding of light/EM 
> phenomenon.

Yep. It's awesome, explained by the guy who invented the way to calculate 
the stuff *based* on the explanation. The link to the videos is Feynman 
presenting the lectures that got edited into the book, which is also 
fascinating.

-- 
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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