My science teacher said a vacuum consists of an "electron sea"?

Question

Did she confuse this with zero point energy, or was she explaining the "wavefunction"? Also, can you explain what the wavefunction is?

Answer 1

this sounds like the 'dirac sea', which is an older model of the vacuum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_sea

mathematically, the wavefunction is the solution to the schrodinger wave equation. its physical meaning is debatable, but in quantum mechanics all predictions are derived from the wavefunction.

Answer 2

A wave function is a mathematical expression that predicts the probability of locating an electron with a given amount of energy under specified conditions. The location of an electron is not known precisely, nor can it be known precisely, at any given time. Instead, we use the probability functions to predict where they will be. When the wave equations were discovered, it wasn't known that they represent the probability as described above.