Perhaps we do see quantum behavior at the macroscopic scale

[agentredlum]

It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realized that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive center, carrying a charge.[2]?Ernest Rutherford

Rutherford had used strictly Newtonian methods to analyze the relatively low-energy alpha-scattering of this experiment. Later, when full quantum mechanical methods were available, it was found that they gave the same scattering equation which had been derived by Rutherford by classical means.

I love this qoute by Rutherford.

Let me point out that for his many contributions to science he received many honors including Nobel prize and they named an element on the periodic table Rutherfordium.

 

[Jacques_L]

First : tune of "Mission: Impossible".
Next : Your mission if you accept it, is to prove that gongoric(1) subleties can reconcile undulatory experimental facts with corpuscular prejudices.

This sounds like standard electron tunneling, as seen in semiconductors. The electrons, particles though they may be, have a probability cloud that is larger than the gap, meaning that the electron has a non-zero probability of being on the oppisite side of the gap.

Your mission comprises the following tasks :
Prove that the interactions between electrons and phonons are corpuscle-compatible.
Prove that the Umklapp of phonons is corpuscle-compatible (sampling theorem of Shannon).
Prove that mirroring of light (photons if you prefer) by metal mirrors is corpuscle-compatible.
Prove that the Snellius-Descartes refraction law is corpuscle-compatible.
Prove that the preferential absorption of light by dyes and by F-centers in crystals is corpuscle-compatible.
...

Again, tune of "Mission: Impossible".
Good luck !


(1) from the poetic style of Luis de Góngora (1561-1627).

 

[agentredlum]

Also polarization, which is a phenomenon that anyone with 2 pairs of expensive sunglasses can confirm, cannot be explained by corpuscle theories.

Or you can use 1 broken pair of sunglasses but please don't break expensive sunglasses.

 

[agentredlum]

Jacques_L mentioned mirror, then i remebered a special kind of mirror, Phase Conjugate Mirror. This is a part of Non Linear Optics. In Non Linear Optics the superposition principle does not hold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics

Then i found out Schrodingers wave equation is linear and that's where superposition in Quantum Mechanics comes from.

Quantum superposition. In quantum mechanics, a principal task is to compute how a certain type of wave propagates and behaves. The wave is called a wavefunction, and the equation governing the behavior of the wave is called Schrödinger's wave equation. A primary approach to computing the behavior of a wavefunction is to write that wavefunction as a superposition (called "quantum superposition") of (possibly infinitely many) other wavefunctions of a certain type?stationary states whose behavior is particularly simple. Since Schrödinger's wave equation is linear, the behavior of the original wavefunction can be computed through the superposition principle this way.[4]See Quantum superposition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superposition_principle

Here is an excerpt from another article on Quantum Superposition

The principle of superposition states that if the world can be in any configuration, any possible arrangement of particles or fields, and if the world could also be in another configuration, then the world can also be in a state which is a superposition of the two, where the amount of each configuration that is in the superposition is specified by a complex number.

Here is a portion of the second article.

In most realistic physical situations, the equation governing the wave is only approximately linear. In these situations, the superposition principle only approximately holds. As a rule, the accuracy of the approximation tends to improve as the amplitude of the wave gets smaller. For examples of phenomena that arise when the superposition principle does not exactly hold, see the articles nonlinear optics and nonlinear acoustics

What am i supposed to make of this? Can we be absolutely certain that subatomic particles behave in a linear fashion? If not, then how can we completely trust a linear theory to explain non-linear phenomena?

 

[Jacques_L]

Of course non linear optics exists. It is a case of many photons.
Similarly, in Infra-red and microwaves spectroscopy, one states that highly excited molecules have a slight shift in frequency, because the chemical bond is not exactly symmetric in traction and compression.
Thermal expansion of materials occurs too, because of this structural asymmetry in the chemical and lattice bonds.

However, jumping to these non-linear behaviours of condensed matter in many-photons or many-phonons cases is not a good way to test the pertinence of the laws of undulatory physics, and of the subsequent quantizations that follow.

 

[agentredlum]

Of course non linear optics exists. It is a case of many photons.
Similarly, in Infra-red and microwaves spectroscopy, one states that highly excited molecules have a slight shift in frequency, because the chemical bond is not exactly symmetric in traction and compression.
Thermal expansion of materials occurs too, because of this structural asymmetry in the chemical and lattice bonds.

However, jumping to these non-linear behaviours of condensed matter in many-photons or many-phonons cases is not a good way to test the pertinence of the laws of undulatory physics, and of the subsequent quantizations that follow.

I understand your point sir and it is a good one. I had to look up the word undulatory. A Frenchman made an American look up a British word.

How would you test the pertinence of the laws of undulatory physics? As a scientist this thought has probably occurred to you? Please share your perspective on this issue.

Have a wonderful day.