Talk:Wave-particle duality

[The stuff below this line is misleading or wrong, I would recomend deleting it. The measurement problem is far more general then what is touched on here, and the ``rule of thumb is just plain wrong.]

Mathematically, electrons and other such creatures are modelled as waves. The question is, then, why they appear to be particles in certain experiments. This is called the measurement problem, and is solved differently in different interpretations of quantum mechanics.

An extremely simple (and possibly overgeneralised) layman's rule of thumb is that when fast and small, think "wave". When slow and big, think "matter".

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Agreed that this is highly misleading

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Why is the rule of thumb wrong? Are there situations where it is advantageous to model, say, a cow as a wave? --AxelBoldt

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There are a number of problems with the rule of thumb. The big problem is that the key difference between what we normal think of "matter" and "energy" has nothing to do with particle/wave duality but rather the difference between fermions and bosons and the pauli exclusion principle. Also the rule just doesn't work. A standing radio wave is big and slow but you can think of it as a wave. A beam of X rays is fast and small, but is best conceptualized as a stream of particles.

-- Chenyu

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I'd like to see more explanation of what Wave-Particle duality means and less incomprehensible history of how it was discovered by physicists. What is it supposed to mean that wavefunctions exhibit some properties of waves and some properties particles? For that matter, what does it mean for something to be a wave or a particle?

Key terms I'm looking for are: soliton and non-linear wave.

And given that we're talking about non-linear waves, terms like "frequency" should be avoided or explained; non-linear waves don't have an exact frequency or wavelength! (I'd prefer if it were explained since that would make explaining the Heisenberg "uncertainty" principle easier.)

Oh, and I'd like the first paragraph to explain that "duality" is a misnomer since the wave and particle theories of light are not equivalent. That's just a term tacked on by some loser who wanted to sell a mind-bender to a bunch of stuffy conservative physicists.

And "probability wave" is seriously misleading. Probability is not what most people think it is; mathematical probability has no relation to the everyday concept of probability. And since "probability" adds nothing to "wave" or "wavefunction", it should be junked.

Other misleading things: the ever popular misconception that quantum mechanics has anything to do with the travesty called Copenhagen. The impression that quantum mechanics recognizes a pre-observation and post-observation domain is seriously wrong and should be avoided at all cost.

And as long as we're explaining the history, why is Huygens left out of the picture?

IF YOU'RE GOING TO TALK.....BE SPECIFIC....YOU CAN'T JUST STATE WHY SOMETHING IS WRONG WITHOUT STATING YOUR REASONING. ISN'T THAT WHAT A PHYSICIST DOES? JUSTIFY WHY. THINK ABOUT IT