Re: Particle Position

["JACK L. URETSKY (C)1998; HEP DIVISION, ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB ARGONNE, IL 60439" <JLU@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

William Beatty-
        You write:
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>         So in order for Jim's question to have meaning, he has to tell us what
> he means by a "particle".

How "wrong" is this statement?  :

   When it's interacting with an atom, it's a particle.  When its flying
   through space it's a wave.

In other words, an electron in a box would be a wave, and wouldn't have
any point-like position.  But when an electron strikes a ZnS flourescent
screen and creates a flash of light, the wave no longer exists, and the
electron is a particle.
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        But when a stream of electrons strikes the screen after passing
through slits, the flashes still occur in a diffraction pattern.
        At any rate, I don't think that giving a name to a flash of light
qualifies as a definition of "particle".
                                                Regards,
                                                        Jack

        "I scored the next great triumph for science myself,
to wit, how the milk gets into the cow.  Both of us
had marveled over that mystery a long time.  We had
followed the cows around for years - that is, in the
daytime - but had never caught them drinking fluid of
that color."
                Mark Twain, Extract from Eve's
                Autobiography