Thanks for the account of your experiment! I most enjoyed it. As to double-slit, I've never built one per se, but I've seen lots of wave interference patterns in other optical experiments. I have no doubt that light is(are?) waves. (By the way, if you shoot a laser through a thick piece of glass into a photo diode which feeds the input of an audio amp which drives a speaker, some most fascinating things can be heard! It's really just interference patterns, but you can hear them as you change the angle of the thick glass.)
As to Stern-Gerlach, doesn't that require an enormous vacuum? I'd never heard of the experiment before you mentioned it, but I've been searching google since then, and find that most sites speak only very abstractly of it. But from what I've gleaned, a diffusion type pump or something that gets to 10-6 Torr is needed. I'm assuming your whole apparatus was inside a vacuum chamber, on the centrifuge.
I guess you must have been detecting the silver atoms with photographic plate and must have done everything in a dark room?
As to light being a wave - I'm certain of that due to interference patterns. As to it being a particle, I'm not convinced. I realize that light does tend to arrive in quantum sizes, but I also know that in many cases it is generated in quantum sizes. For example, any fluorescent or chemically generated light will be due to an electron falling down a quantum number of level(s). What about incandescence? Do we actually know that it doesn't produce light in quantum sizes for its own reasons?
Furthermore, I'm not certain that our ways of detecting a single photon aren't applying their own quantization: If we were to play a low power continuous wave light beam on a photo-sensitive emitter in a photomultiplier tube, how do we know that the atom doesn't start ringing up like the glass in front of the loud voice singer, then finally, like the glass breaking, reach such a high energy state that it throws an electron, thereby quantizing it?
As a matter of fact, if electrons are quantum units, would it not be impossible to know whether the light was quantum or not as long as we're using electrons to convey that information? What if light were not quantum, how would we know it? Would we get an electron and a half off the first plate on the photomultiplier? :-)
Interestingly, some even claim to have demonstrated that super tiny antennas which are half a wavelength of visible light behave with light just like radio waves do with normal antennas.
As to all matter being waves, I'm not ready to accept that one yet. How does the Stern-Gerlach experiment prove that matter is waves? I would be most amused to see some photos of the photo plates from a good Stern-Gerlach experiment, if you know where I might find such a thing.
Thanks very much!
-Jesse
The Stern-Gerlach experiment proves that particles have intrinsic quantum numbers, eg, intrinsic angular momentum or spin. However, the other poster, by reasonings unknown, derives from this result, that matter is made of "waves of nothing." With respect to quantum-mechanical type experiments, people generally say that matter manifests wave-like or particle-like behaviors depending on what you are measuring, and leave it like that. However, to some, this comes to mean, by a slight of metaphysical hand, that matter is made of nothing. We might as well conclude that everything is nothing, and nothing exist. So, the Stern-Gerlach experiment proves that neither you nor I nor the other poster exists. See? That's Science. How can you argue with Science?
Did you know that if you lower the frequency of sound down enough it becomes a discrete sound particle/wavepacket?
As to Stern-Gerlach, doesn't that require an enormous vacuum? I'd never heard of the experiment before you mentioned it, but I've been searching google since then, and find that most sites speak only very abstractly of it. But from what I've gleaned, a diffusion type pump or something that gets to 10-6 Torr is needed. I'm assuming your whole apparatus was inside a vacuum chamber, on the centrifuge.
Yes but the centrifuge is in the vacuum. and the primary problem is getting the d*** atoms to individually go where you want them to go. This is the kind of experiment that really should be done in space.
I guess you must have been detecting the silver atoms with photographic plate and must have done everything in a dark room?
It is all in an evacuated box.
As to light being a wave - I'm certain of that due to interference patterns. As to it being a particle, I'm not convinced. I realize that light does tend to arrive in quantum sizes, but I also know that in many cases it is generated in quantum sizes. For example, any fluorescent or chemically generated light will be due to an electron falling down a quantum number of level(s). What about incandescence? Do we actually know that it doesn't produce light in quantum sizes for its own reasons?
Hmmm, if the double slit experiment doesn't convince you that light is both a wave and a particle how about Planck's formula for black body radiation and Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect? That is what he got his Nobel prize for after all.
This explanation may help. Everything is a wave/particle, particles are emergent properties of waves. Much like water is an emergent property of water vapour and ice is an emergent property of water, each phase has different properties.
Furthermore, I'm not certain that our ways of detecting a single photon aren't applying their own quantization: If we were to play a low power continuous wave light beam on a photo-sensitive emitter in a photomultiplier tube, how do we know that the atom doesn't start ringing up like the glass in front of the loud voice singer, then finally, like the glass breaking, reach such a high energy state that it throws an electron, thereby quantizing it?
LOL Seriously, read Einsteins theory. Your reasoning is very similar. If you had been born a 150 years earlier we might be calling it Mr Jesse's theory : ) I will have to start treating you with more respect.
Interestingly, some even claim to have demonstrated that super tiny antennas which are half a wavelength of visible light behave with light just like radio waves do with normal antennas.
Light and radio waves are the same, just different wavelengths. You are on the right path : )
As to all matter being waves, I'm not ready to accept that one yet. How does the Stern-Gerlach experiment prove that matter is waves? I would be most amused to see some photos of the photo plates from a good Stern-Gerlach experiment, if you know where I might find such a thing.
Stern-Gerlach doesn't prove that matter is waves. It is demonstrating the spin of the particles.
About pictures, I will let you in on a dirty little secret. Except for the double slit experiments all of these QM results are dirty and probabilistic in nature. What you get with the S-G looks like just what you would get if you shot a shotgun twice at a target. Two areas where a lot of the BB's went through and then tons of random holes where the scattered BB's went through.
The result is precisely (and I do mean precisely) what the equations predict, but they don't produce a nice clean image. An analogy is the fuzzy edge to a shadow.
Another oddity of QM is that even though it is fantastically precise it can only provide a probability for any particular event. With a large enough number of events though it makes Newtons equations seem like primitive scribblings. For a particular event though Newton's equations work remarkably well.