How can a photon be a wave and a particle at the same time?

Question

I've heard of the two slot experiment.

My experience of this world leads me to have some sort of understanding waves (as on the sea) and of particles (smaller versions of something I can hold in my hand).

I am still having trouble, however, in how the two can be interchangeable or exist at the same time.

Answer 1

Did Einstein ask that question? No one can definitively answer that one. Its been the crux of quantum physics for... well humanity's perception. You can ask yourself, "if light has gravity then why does it work in waves?" or the same on the opposite side, " If light works in waves... then where is the particle?" It is the true conundrum of E=MC squared. Good luck .. By the way.. Einstein also asked what the world would look like if you were moving at light speed.. It got him into Physics. He failed math.

Answer 2

photons are not exactly a wave or a particle.
they are essentially the building blocks for everything.

However the last time i heard this sort of talk was in reference to light proccessing streams and nanotech type stuff.

As a particle :
the photon is is merely a part of what makes up the proton, neutron, and the electron all in turn become the atom when stuck together.

As a wave :
if you sit in the sun you tend to get sunburnt by a wave of photons.

Its a bit like :
a drum produces a sound
the sun produces radiation
the sound travels on a wave
so does the radiation.

we know from school that to produce a sound you need vibration so something needs to vibrate in order for you to hear it but if theres nothing between u and the sound then how do you hear it ?

you might say that the particles in the air vibrate you might refer to the atmosphear but then radiation is based on a similar principle.

for light to get to you it needs this vibration / wave and yet the sun is bright every day regardess of the vacuum of space is it not.

the particles are the wave itself, the particles are the sound and the heat / light.

wave is just a term meaning that the particle is in motion rather than sat still.

if we think about a normal particle it usually brings up some sort of picture in your head of an atom or bits of one. little blocks that fit with other blocks.

in the case of radiation like light or heat or even sound there can be no sound without motion so to refer to the actual object we call it a wave when we are actually referring to is the particle stream in side the wave.

hense we are talking about one and the same just in different context.

Answer 3

Quantum of light is a particle and wave simultaneously.
Exact there is a simultaneity of space and time.
For me such explanation is unsatisfactory.
It just as to speak, that the logic information and
the senseless message are the same simultaneously.
To say half truth is worse then to say lie.
* * *
Quantum of light is a privileged particle.
Only the speed of a light quantum in Vacuum has
a maximal, constant, absolute quantity of c=1.
No other particle can travel with the speed c = 1.
If quantum of light flies always rectilinearly c=1, it is a mad one.
Is he really mad?
* * *
Only the speed of a light quantum has
a absolute quantity of c=1.
No other particle can travel with the speed c = 1.
And I was taught at school from the first class:
that the incommensurable quantities cannot be compared.
To connect incommensurable quantities it
is similar to the decision of a problem:
“What will be if the whale will attacks the elephant?”
=============================
Dualism of Light Quanta .

A quantum of light is a privileged particle.
No other particle can travel with the speed (c = 1).
Quantum of light have two kinds of spins,
as a result of which the particle attains motion.
1)Under the action of Planck,s spin, which is equal to the unit ( h =1)
aquantum of light flies rectilinearly with speed (c = 1).
The geometrical form of a circle: (C/D = 3,14).
A quantum of light behaves as a particle.
2) Under the action of Goudsmit-Uhlenbeck's spin, ( ħ = h / 2pi) a quantum of light
rotates around of the diameter and is known as electron.
The geometrical form of a circle is transformed into a sphere.
This kind of movement is described by Lorentz's transformations .
The wave properties of light quantum are shown.
The dualism of a particle becomes clear and the paradox disappears completely.
When the form of a circle is change into the form of a sphere, the transcendental
magnitude (C/D = 3,14) is change on another transcendental magnitude (е = 2,71).

Answer 4

Most of the answers given here are correct but some are totally fantasy or wrong schooling.

1st light / photons are neither waves nor particles. Their behaviour is SIMILAR to waves AND particles. There are many theories about the nature of light. The ones that explain most observations are the most popular. Some have even proposed a string theory, where at times the string is open and behave like a wave and at other times the string is all bunched up and behaves like a particle (ball).

Good curiosity but, unfortunately we are yet to discover the true nature of light.

Answer 5

Your question is more about general physics than the photon. Physics works like this:

You observe a phenomenon repeatedly and then you draw up theories ... these eventually become laws of physics.... notice that the laws of physics are not laws that nature obeys, rather they are laws that nature seems to have been following and will follow in the future.

Now light behaves like photons and some of the theories relating to light are very useful when light is viewed in the particle sense. At other times the wave theory provides more useful applications.

Therefore we use whatever suits us depending on where we want to get. For all that light may not be just waves/particles in reality.

Answer 6

What you're lacking is two years of physics on the undergraduate factor. Hawking has no longer something to do with QM, he's a cosmologist. Greene is a string theorist. yet each and every of the pieces you're talking about are 1920's physics and function lengthy been looked after out. You thoroughly misunderstand the theory of a photon, its relax body and "eigentime" (or extra ideal "eignespace"). None of that pertains to QM and the quantum interference on a double slit is valid for "sluggish" electrons purely as a lot by way of the undeniable fact that is for classical waves, be they sound (phonons, nonrelativistic) or mild (photons, relativistic). Relativity has surely no effect on those observations. It does compound the failings to make a self-consistent relativistic quantum theory, besides the undeniable fact that the standard consequences, upon getting one, are very similar. If this stuff looks nonsensical to you, then purely because you're making use of words out of position and do not understand the thanks to placed the products at the same time. Like I reported, many years of faculty factor physics can make all of this sparkling. if you're prepared to make investments that era of time, your confusion will pass away. and there is, by the way, no such ingredient as particle-wave-duality in cutting-edge physics. we've executed away with that nonsense some 80 years in the past clone of we did away with the aether 100 and two decades in the past. yet some human beings, it type of feels, have not said and save using useless horses.

Answer 7

Photons have two properties wavelike and particulate. Firstly, photons emits waves that produce Light be it visible or infrared. With the help of Schordenger and Eintsten, they established that photons exist in packets called quanta. In that photons exist in discrete packages which behaveunder the principles of particular matter and is proptional to mass ie. E=mc2.

Answer 8

a photon can be a wave and a particle at the same time as a photon is a packet of light waves, it bends around corners like waves ,like ripples of water;it bounces back like particle when reflected.

Answer 9

It is what it is.

This is our current model, and it may or may not reflect the acutal phisical universe whether the phisical universe exists or not or is possible to explain in general terms.

The above tag should be attached to any scientific model. With better data, we'll either upgrade or throw away the old model. If you have a better model that explains the double slit experiment, then lets see it!!

Answer 10

the photon is a subatomic particle which behaves as a wave