Re: [Phys-L] electron location & wave function

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 04/11/2013 02:39 PM, Bruce Sherwood called attention to

Art Hobson
"There are no particles, there are only fields"
  http://physics.uark.edu/Hobson/pubs/05.03.AJP.pdf
  http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4616
  http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/henry.hobson.pdf

> The basic
> idea he reviews is that everything is fields; "there are no particles" (to
> put it provocatively).

An excellent point.  To me this is completely un-provocative.  I've been 
explaining it that way for years.  I gave up on "wave/particle duality" 
back when I was just a sorcerer's apprentice.

This includes explaining the outlines of QM at the most introductory level,
e.g. when talking to people whose training in physics ended with high school 
physics class 50 years ago.  I tell a story about two ducks on a pond.
Here it is, including diagrams:
  http://www.av8n.com/physics/wave-add.htm

Wave mechanics says one and one makes 0, sometimes.  Wave mechanics says
one and one makes 4, sometimes.  Wave mechanics says one and one makes
2 /on average/.  We can see how the classical result emerges from the
quantum-mechanical result, in the appropriate limit.

At every level, introductory or not:
 -- Starting with waves, I can explain how to produce something that
  acts like a particle (in the appropriate limit).
 -- Starting with particles, I cannot imagine how to produce something
  that acts like the correct kind of wave.

It's basically the same way that physical optics turns into geometrical
optics in the appropriate limit.  Waves turn into rays.  Waves turn into
particles.  No big deal.

As I see it, the wave representation will always be fundamental, while
any talk of particles will always be an approximation.  It might be an
exceedingly good approximation, but that's all it is.