Dorky Poll: Particle or Wave?

Wave.

Oh wait, I just ran a different experiment.

Particle!

Maybe I should try another experiment.

Particle!

Sweet, particle must be the answer. Now one more time just to confirm things.

Wave.

Oh crud this is going to keep me up all night.

Particle

( |sparticle> + |wavino> ) / sqrt(2)

A superposition is a physicist's way of saying "I can't make up my mind".

Wave. By a mile.

There's more to the world than what you see when you look at it.

Wavicle.

Carl Sagan liked to use the term.

Save room in your schedule for May 2009, where I am again Con Chair of a mini science fiction convention embedded in the 8th International Conference on Complex Systems, possibly in Alasaka. Most of the Guests of Honor shall again be PhD scientists who also publish Science Fiction. I consider dogs learning Physics to be Science Fiction, in the tradition of Stapledon (Siriusly).

Particle.

I'm going with Particle.

Maybe the particle jiggles?

Nobody gives a reason for their choice but having spent a large chunk of my life as a historian of science trying to understand the optics of Isaac Newton it has to be particles for me.

Particle. Because I like their creation/annihilation much better.

Wave: That's all we can really explain and understand as a mathematical formalism. Particles are absurd, since they either are infinitesimal, or have "what holds them together" problems (remember Feynman talking about "rubber bands" and electrons? Remember, a negative charge distribution: ...?)

I hear BS about how "decoherence" solves things, but that's a racket: the real problem is the *localization* of a "particle" to be "here" instead of "there" - that is still an acausal, mysterious collapse. Regardless of how the waves interfere or diagonalize or form a density matrix or whatever, that primal mystery of popping up somewhere (and then they can't pop up anywhere else) is not addressed by any theory we can understand, including decoherence's slick doubletalk. (And consider, the simple basic case of the photon etc. coming from a source in the center of a sphere, the photon wave has to collapse to somewhere on that sphere, so what does "intereference" have to do with it? I mean, even if we consider the superposed states of the sphere, that still doesn't inherently select one spot there, unless you use circular reasoning. Sure, nature presents us a particulate side, it just isn't logically describable.

To make it all even worse: There's Renninger negative result detections, which reallocate the wave (because of where it then can't be anymore) without localizing it at a point, and what about the effect on the WF of unreliable detectors? Do they collapse what they might be wrong about, and if not, what do they do?

Gravitation - you can't take quantization.
EM signals through a wire - it's the surrounding field not the electrons.

Waves.

In Kantian terms, particles are the-thing-for-me; waves are the-thing-in-itself. Therefore waves.

I'm with Jonathan Vos Post on this one: wavicle.

I would save wavicle also, but I figure that's cheating, so I'll go with Particle.

wave - because it includes/explains more phenomena than just the macroscopic universe

dirac delta function

You people are so binary! How it behaves doesn't necessarily define what it is. (Think adolescents studying physics, or adults behaving like children.)

Particle or wave? Yes.

Wave, because I'm a sucker for sound, and you didn't specify otherwise.

Yay, sound!

Wave.

The real question is: when are you going to compile all these answers for us so we know who the winners in these dorky polls are?

wave

Interference is fricken cool.

Wave.

Just mathematically derive out the particle characteristics when you need them.

Wave.

Particles just bounce off each other, waves superimpose.

Wave. I think I can do most everything with that, plus (cheat) a detector that goes click. Only problem is that type of detector can respond to vacuum noise.

ever see a packed stadium try to do "the particle"? it just doesn't work

but my answer is, of course, field

Particle Man, Particle Man, doing the things a particle can....

Count another vote for wavicle. (As a physical chemist -- at least by training -- what else was I going to choose?)

Particle, for the reasons outlined at #26, #14, and #11.

Also, billiard balls are cool.

Howard is right. It's neither. Besides, I think it can be argued that a particle is a "thing" while a wave is a "behavior", so it's like asking: bicycle or running?

Wave

The wave is the wavefunction, or more generally the quantum state, which correlates observations.

Particles are just the names we attach to the tendency of certain states to produce patterns of observations which have particle-like character.

In a superposition, or a mixture, of quasi-classical states a "particle" needs to be observed before it can be seen to be where it appears to be.

And whatever the state, ultimately, all "particles" are like phonons -- they are background dependent low temperature phenomena. Draw enough Feynman diagrams and you'll see that even the most quasi-classical of "particle" states is actually a fuzzy dollop of stochastic soup.

Of course if you're talking about wave-like appearances as opposed to particle-like appearances then the answer is still "state".

Not sure.... it depends on how I approach the question.

wave bye-bye

I just flipped a coin and it said "particle," so I'll go with that.

Wave!!! The field propogates. The resonance allows stability. Maya (Hindu philosophy) says it is all an illusion "of waves that appear to be something!" (my addition)

Particle. Otherwise, the TMBG song would sound really dumb as "Wave Man...."

Wavicle.

But Interference is definitely fricken cool.

Danil #26 is right, its particle. I mean come on triangles don't hate waves....DUH!

You must un-ask that question. It is attempting to impose names developed from everyday observation onto something you have not observed directly, thus associating properties (such as those of a billiard ball or water wave) with the thing that it does not have. A particle that is a point? What is its density? A wave that is a complex probability amplitude? How can you go surfing on that?

Wavicle is a start, but only if you realize why it is needed.