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Russell E. Rierson
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Dr. Wolff's theory rings true!
Milo Wolff - Quantum waves were first described by Heisenberg, Schrodinger, de Broglie and others. They originated the word. We use the same name as those quantum waves which are already known by that name because such waves have already been discovered. The special 'quantized' meaning is because the energy transfers always occur in discrete amounts or 'quanta". I suppose we could avoid the use of the word 'quantum waves' if we wanted to. But that would be a sort of scientific plagiarism. I see the problem here: Most people have no feeling for the word quantum so it is useless to use it until they do. We could start off with just 'waves' and then add the less-observable quantum wave meaning later, with a careful explanation. This is a knotty problem.
My book 'Exploring the Physics of the Unknown Universe' has a chapter titled "All about Waves" which discusses some of your questions. But the clear distinction between vector and scalar waves HAS to be made in the readers mind, otherwise the logic following will have no impact. So we have to bring this out with strong emphasis. I will use examples.
SCALAR WAVES. - Pressure is a scalar quantity because it needs only ONE number at each point in space to describe it. That quantity is always an AMPLITUDE of the quantity at each point. Thus sound waves, Earth quake waves, and underwater waves are all scalar waves where the wave amplitude is pressure in the medium. Money, counting, age, etc are also scalar quantities.
VECTOR WAVES. - These waves are already familiar to you. The most important example is electromagnetic waves which need to have TWO quantities at each point to describe the wave. The two quantities are amplitude and direction. This combination of these two quantities is termed a vector. A vector can always be represented by an arrow where the direction is the way the arrow points and the amplitude is the length of the arrow.
Vector waves simply do NOT have either the physical or math properties needed. Did I tell you of the math saying, "You cannot comb the hair on a billiard ball". This proves in a simple way that spherical waves CANNOT be vector. Combed hair is a vector. If you try to place it on a sphere (ball), you will get a 'cowlick' in one place, so the spherical symmetry is impossible.
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