So when people say light exists as a particle and a wave, I understand what it means in terms of different behavior, but what “is” a wave? A photon is a light particle, is a light wave “made” of anything? Is a light wave just a way that a photon expresses itself? Is it just “energy”? But then, what is energy? Is a microwave “made” of anything, or is it just a way of describing how heat/light behaves under certain conditions?
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This will sound hand-wavey (no pun intended) as these are such fundamental concepts, but it sounds like you’re pretty close to being able to answer your own question. A wave is indeed a “behavior”, or really a set of behaviors that in simple terms can be described as a moving disturbance. A wave itself is not “made” of anything, but rather it describes how “things” such as particles behave. With “things” themselves being extremely general, seeing as spacetime itself is a “thing” that may not be tangible in an intuitive sense but does exhibit wave-like behavior.
Waves can be thought of as “carrying” energy in a sense, but it would be misleading to say they “are” energy. What is energy is a question that I’m not sure how to answer very well and understandably.
As far as photons, heat, light and microwaves. Light, microwaves, and all of the other electromagnetic waves are really just different wavelengths in photons, i.e. different levels of wave-like behavior. These things are not heat, but they are a means in which heat is transferred between atoms in a process called electromagnetic radiation.
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