05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 Wave-Particle Duality

It did not cause anxiety that Maxwell's equations did not apply to gravitation, since nobody expected to find any link between electricity and gravitation at that particular level. But now physics was faced with an entirely new situation. The same entity, light, was at once a wave and a particle. How could one possibly imagine its proper size and shape? To produce interference it must be spread out, but to bounce off electrons it must be minutely localized. This was a fundamental dilemma, and...
Folksonomies: physics
Folksonomies: physics
  1  notes

The trouble with conceptualizing it.

28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 The Wonder of X-Rays Affecting a Photographic Plate

But in its [the corpuscular theory of radiation] relation to the wave theory there is one extraordinary and, at present, insoluble problem. It is not known how the energy of the electron in the X-ray bulb is transferred by a wave motion to an electron in the photographic plate or in any other substance on which the X-rays fall. It is as if one dropped a plank into the sea from the height of 100 ft. and found that the spreading ripple was able, after travelling 1000 miles and becoming infinite...
Folksonomies: physics x-rays electron
Folksonomies: physics x-rays electron
  1  notes

Bragg compares it to a wave traveling 100 feet to knock a board out of a ship.

28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Sir Bragg on the Wave/Particle Duality

No known theory can be distorted so as to provide even an approximate explanation [of wave-particle duality]. There must be some fact of which we are entirely ignorant and whose discovery may revolutionize our views of the relations between waves and ether and matter. For the present we have to work on both theories. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we use the wave theory; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays we think in streams of flying energy quanta or corpuscles.
  1  notes

Scientist work with them as having one characteristic some days of the week and the other on other days.