I read on an article that electrons are “all the same.” Why is that and what does that mean? How can electrons be identical? Does that apply to other elementary particles?
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Well it really boils down to what you mean by “different”.
If we say that two things are different when they are made from different things or the same things arranged differently then electrons are identical. They are elementary particles they are the things that build things. Being different like this on this scale makes very little sense. For example every hydrogen atom is the same. One proton, one electron. Two hydrogen atoms are identical. Difference requires some level of complexity.
As far as quantum mechanics is concerned electrons are fermions. They must be different. No two electrons can have identical quantum information at a give time. Things like position, momentum, spin. Every electron is different from the others in at least one of their properties. But saying that two electrons are different because they aren’t on the same spot, I don’t know how I feel about that.
So maybe like this: We can confidently say that this electron is different from that electron but if we named one Bill and the other Bob and someone shuffled them around we would still be able to tell they aren’t the same electron but we’d have a hard time saying which one is Bill and which one is Bob. Like perfectly identical twins. We can tell they are different people and they can do different things but there aren’t any visible differences.
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