Let me give you a piece of my mind.
Let me know if any of you learn anything useful from this, other than the fact that I'm cynical and sarcastic. That's no secret.
As the person who runs the digital electron microscopy facility at the school here, one of the things I have to do is train faculty, grad students, and industry clients on how to use some of the equipment. Some of them ( Read more... )
As the person who runs the digital electron microscopy facility at the school here, one of the things I have to do is train faculty, grad students, and industry clients on how to use some of the equipment. Some of them ( Read more... )
That said, I was able to follow your post! Granted by the end of the post I forgot what I was reading about, but it made sense while I was reading it! And that is saying much!
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It makes me smile.
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On the other hand, you know you've become to indoctrinated into modern theory when even pretending that electrons (or even nucleons for that matter) are actual particles hurts your brain.
I kept saying "but they *aren't* ugly guys... they aren't even THERE." I've got to the point where electron 'orbitals' seem more like musical harmonics than actual paths or probability shells. But, overruling my science-gland's objections, I couldn't help but appreciate the line "like gamers towards Cheetos and Mountain Dew." :-)
In general, this nailed the science on the head better than anything else I've seen before - it should be taught this way in classes:
"So Miss Daniels, under its current emotional state brought on by Ogee cascade effects, should our silicon sample reach out to the cupboard? Or pull from the Krispy Kreme down the street?"
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http://community.livejournal.com/loltheorists/21605.html
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You one of them String people or something?
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Bohr orbitals arise from the deBroglie wavelength of the electrons themselves. At atomic scales, electrons express just as much wave nature as they do particle nature... and there wave-component just makes more sense to me.
String Theory really didn't make an appearance until nearly 30 years after wave-particle duality emerged as part of the standard model.
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Possibly it's not in our best interest to try and define them as either way in an effort to help understand then, but to just accept them as they are.
After all, how can you witness the double slit experiment and not get your mind blown?
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It is better to think of them (meaning both matter & energy) as ~neither~ waves or particles, but as "something else" that we haven't figured out yet. It just exhibits its 'particle' trait the larger you get, and more of its 'wave' trait the smaller you get.
I've just always liked electrons because they are the break even point.
Hell, you can still do the double-slit experiment properly with MACRO-MOLECULES!!! If ~_that_~ doesn't boggle your noggin, I don't know what will. The only reason we can't do it with things as large as dust particles(!) is that the diffraction spacing approaches a single Angstrom.
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Which of course brings to mind the discrepancy between Newtonian "macro" physics and quantum "micro" physics.
Speaking of the GUT, You must have heard about this guy.
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I've only heard of him relatively recently (a few weeks ago). I've read through some of his work, and I'll admit the mathematics he's using for his G8 model is far far far above my head. :-/
The G8 model looks interesting, but it just doesn't have the romance of string theory. lol
I wish him well, though. The more competing theories there are, the better the chances of a valid 'victor'.
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