- #1
mikewday
- 13
- 0
I am trying to think of a way to visualize the dual nature of particles. If a particle can be represented as a wave and if that wave collapses when measured... would the following be a decent analogy? If not, does anyone have a good way of visualizing this?
A summary of what I am trying to visualize is...
Is the act of measuring a photon or electron actually what creates the "thing" that we can measure? And in that process are we altering what that thing originally was before it was measured?
In this imaginary world, we think of white light as a thing or a single wave. We do know have an undertanding of other electromagnetic wave lengths outside of the visible range.
If I think of a particle as a 'piece of color' (just as a visualization aid) then, I can imagine white light traveling out in all directions like a ripple in a pond (white light isn't really one EM wave but this is just a visualization aid for me). That "wave of white light" is in many places at once (it's just a ripple traveling through some medium)... but, when that "wave of white light" interacts with a atom or a group of atoms it alters the original wave. Maybe it absorbs evey wave that makes up the white light as IR/Heat except red. So, what I see from that piece of the wave's interaction with that atom is a "piece of red". I only see a "piece of red" because I have a measuring tool (my eyes) that can see that "piece of red". And I don't yet have the understanding that a piece of red is also a wave. Someone else might see a "piece of red" from that same "wave of white light" somewhere else since it's a ripple in many places at once (connected back to its point of origin through time).
If I use this same visual aid and think about the double slit experiement and I am just looking for "pieces or red" to measure because a "piece of red" is this new thing I have discovered...
I notice that when I find "pieces of red" on the screen behind the slits that they spread out. If I try to measure the "pieces of red" before they go through the slits, then they are not spread out on the screen behind the slits. The act of measuring the "piece of red" at a point in time prior to it going through the slit caused the "piece of red"... which was just part of the "wave of white light" before it was measured to be altered by the measuring device. In order measure the piece of red, I had to interact with the "wave of white light" in a way that caused some of the wave to be convereted to IR/heat (which, for this visualization I don't know about yet) and the rest of the enegry to be converted to a "piece of red" (a wave legth specific to the color red). Now when I look at the screen behind the slits, I only see the non spread out pattern becuase the newly created and emitted "piece of red" or wavelegth that is measure as red has not had much distance to spread out.
A summary of what I am trying to visualize is...
Is the act of measuring a photon or electron actually what creates the "thing" that we can measure? And in that process are we altering what that thing originally was before it was measured?
In this imaginary world, we think of white light as a thing or a single wave. We do know have an undertanding of other electromagnetic wave lengths outside of the visible range.
If I think of a particle as a 'piece of color' (just as a visualization aid) then, I can imagine white light traveling out in all directions like a ripple in a pond (white light isn't really one EM wave but this is just a visualization aid for me). That "wave of white light" is in many places at once (it's just a ripple traveling through some medium)... but, when that "wave of white light" interacts with a atom or a group of atoms it alters the original wave. Maybe it absorbs evey wave that makes up the white light as IR/Heat except red. So, what I see from that piece of the wave's interaction with that atom is a "piece of red". I only see a "piece of red" because I have a measuring tool (my eyes) that can see that "piece of red". And I don't yet have the understanding that a piece of red is also a wave. Someone else might see a "piece of red" from that same "wave of white light" somewhere else since it's a ripple in many places at once (connected back to its point of origin through time).
If I use this same visual aid and think about the double slit experiement and I am just looking for "pieces or red" to measure because a "piece of red" is this new thing I have discovered...
I notice that when I find "pieces of red" on the screen behind the slits that they spread out. If I try to measure the "pieces of red" before they go through the slits, then they are not spread out on the screen behind the slits. The act of measuring the "piece of red" at a point in time prior to it going through the slit caused the "piece of red"... which was just part of the "wave of white light" before it was measured to be altered by the measuring device. In order measure the piece of red, I had to interact with the "wave of white light" in a way that caused some of the wave to be convereted to IR/heat (which, for this visualization I don't know about yet) and the rest of the enegry to be converted to a "piece of red" (a wave legth specific to the color red). Now when I look at the screen behind the slits, I only see the non spread out pattern becuase the newly created and emitted "piece of red" or wavelegth that is measure as red has not had much distance to spread out.