For example, I’ve seen that an electron is assumed to be a point-particle, i.e, occupies negligible space.
But it obviously has mass, so it’s gotta occupy *some* space!
However, the math seems to add up (pun intended), and the behaviour of the electron can be explained.
How?
(This was inspired by the *assume a spherical cow* thing)
In: Physics
You have it slightly backwards. Reality apparently conforms to the math first, and all those assumptions and visualizations are secondary artifacts that we as humans use to try to understand what the math is telling us.
For instance, the point-particle electron: the universe doesn’t seem to care if it’s a point or not. If anything, an electron seems to be more like a vague haze of “it’s probably here, but it could also be there at the same time.” Yet, as soon as you get far enough away from the electron, you can treat it as a single, geometric point with mass and charge and the rest of the math just works (and by that, I mean experimental evidence completely agrees with math that assumes it is a point).
The problem with quantum mechanics is that it’s just *so weird* that even scientists studying it have no idea what’s going on down there. Weirder still, there are a couple of theories that produce multiple, wildly-different interpretations that are somehow all true at the same time.
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