most people give an example of water waves but I thought every single “wave” has particle-like atomic structure. What does it mean for the most smallest particle like an electron to be a wave?
In: Physics
It’s a simplified way to describe what a photon is doing. A photon’s motion can be approximated as a straight line in a signal direction, but that really isn’t it true. The photon is actually vibrating around that line of motion, which means that in many cases it will behave like a way when interacting with other things.
For example, if we fire a photon through a tiny slit that is smaller than the amplitude of it’s vibrations, instead of just shooting straight through following the line of motion a particle would, it’s going to hit the sides of the slit and bounce off, creating an interference pattern the same way a wave would.
The problem for scientists is that there really isn’t any way to direction at what point in the vibration a photon is without destructively changing it’s motion. This means that they have to use probabilistic methods to describe the motion and behaviour of photons, especially as they interact with other things. A bunch of the weird confusing language & theories in quantum mechanics exist to deal with this problem.
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