Re: Conducting Wave-Particle debates with students

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 02:33 PM 1/23/01 -0500, Joe wrote:
> As a part of this course, I would like to divide the students in half and
> have each half of the class debate the other regarding the wave-particle
> duality of light.

What are the two sides?  The first time I read this I thought one side was
arguing in favor of the wave-particle duality, while the other is arguing
against.  But now I suspect the intention is to have one arguing for waves
while the other is arguing for particles.  Right?

> Is conducting such a debate feasible?

Maybe "feasible" in the narrowest sense of the word... but not advisable.

It seems to me analogous to staging a debate where one side argues that
pi=3.10 while the other argues that pi=3.18.  Neither one is correct to the
stated accuracy.  There is no glory in tilting against such defenseless
(and indefensible) quintains.

> I have eight, two-hour sessions to: introduce the duality issue,

What issue?  I thought this got settled decades ago.

-- There are no particles, just stuff.
-- There are no waves, just stuff.
-- Electrons are stuff.
-- Light is stuff.
-- Sometimes stuff acts like waves, by which I mean it exhibits
superposition.
-- Sometimes stuff acts like particles, by which I mean it can be counted.

> what experiments are both possible
> and most clearly illustrate wave and particle behaviors?

Well, as I sit here, I see a Light Emitting Diode that tells me my computer
is on.  If electrons didn't exhibit wave-like superposition behavior, there
wouldn't be any band structure in the "semiconductor" so it wouldn't
semiconduct and it certainly wouldn't emit light.  If electrons didn't have
a good particle-like number operator, the photoreceptors in my eye wouldn't
work.  So this seems like a clear demonstration of the physically correct
wave-and-particle behavior.