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
Mostly it means that we don’t yet have an entirely clear picture of what a particle actually is.
When we try to measure them like particles we observe particle-like behavior (they have a discrete location or momentum, they ricochet off each other, etc) and when we try to measure them like waves they exhibit wave-like behavior (ex., create interference patterns with each other). They’re mostly likely something else entirely that exhibits these properties but we don’t know what that thing is.
I think the dominant model at the moment is Quantum Field Theory, which holds that every type of particle has a field and what we see as particles are points in that field where it has enough energy to be observed.
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