Gradations

Is Light Fundamentally A Wave? Or A Particle?

Ethan Siegel writes in Forbes about a limitation in our knowledge of the world:

One of the most bizarre aspects of quantum physics is that the fundamental entities that make up the Universe, what we know as the indivisible quanta of reality, behave as both a wave and a particle. We can do certain experiments, like firing photons at a sheet of metal, where they act like particles, interacting with the electrons and kicking them off only if they individually have enough energy. Other experiments, like firing photons at small thin objects — whether slits, hairs, holes, spheres, or even DVDs — give patterned results that show exclusively wave-like behavior. What we observe appears to depend on which observations we make, which is frustrating, to say the least. Is there some way to tell, fundamentally, what the nature of a quanta is, and whether it’s wave-like or particle-like at its core? That’s what Sandra Marin wants to know, asking:

“I wonder if you could help me to understand John Wheeler – the delayed choice experiment and write an article about this.”

John Wheeler was one of the most brilliant minds in physics in the 20th century, responsible for enormous advances in quantum field theory, General Relativity, black holes, and even quantum computing. Yet the idea about the delayed choice experiment hearkens all the way back to perhaps our first experience with the wave-particle duality of quantum physics: the double-slit experiment.

The idea of a double slit experiment goes way back to Christiaan Huygens, a prominent scientist in the 17th century who, in many ways, was a formidable rival to Isaac Newton. Newton insisted that light was a particle-like ray — a corpuscle, in his words — pointing to phenomena like the refraction of light through a crystal. Huygens, however, realized there were properties of light that were much better explained with waves, like interference and diffraction.

If you were to drop an object in a steady, still pool of water, for instance, you’d watch as it generated ripples that traveled outward: waves. If you set up a barrier to block the waves, but . . .

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More on the double-slit experiment in this article.

Podcast: Bill Moyers and Heather Cox Richardson

The podcast can be downloaded from this post on BillMoyers.com. The transcript begins:

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. President Trump urged his followers to come to Washington for a “big protest” on January 6^th. He wanted their help in reversing the results of the election he lost. “Be there,” he said.“ (It) will be wild.”  And they came. By the thousands, they came, and sure enough, it was not only “wild,”  as the President had promised, it was worse. Much worse. The protesters became a mob, stormed the US Capitol, drove the vice president and members of the House and Senate out of their chambers, and turned a day meant for celebrating democracy into a riot that sought to overturn a free and fair election. Across the country and around the world people watched, horrified, dumbfounded and disbelieving, as insurrection incited by the president of the United States and his Republican enablers struck at the very centerpiece of American governance. Here’s Bill Moyers, to talk about that day with the historian Heather Cox Richardson.

BILL MOYERS: Good morning Heather, glad you could join me.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: It’s always a pleasure.

BILL MOYERS: It’s the morning after what happened in Washington, the insurrection. Did you believe your eyes when you were watching those events unfold on the screen?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: I believed them and I wept. And I am not exaggerating. Seeing that Confederate flag, which had never flown in the Capitol during the Civil War, and it had never flown in the Capitol in the 1870s, and it had never flown in the Capitol during the second rise of KKK in the 1920s, going through our people’s government house in 2021– the blow that that means for those of us who understand exactly what was at stake in the Confederacy. That image for me, of the flag being carried through the halls was, I think, my lowest moment as an American.

BILL MOYERS: Interesting because I kept seeing the flags all afternoon: the Confederate flag, American flags flying upside down. Flags with the name “Jesus” on them, “Jesus saves,” “Jesus 2020.” A big, burly protester carrying a flag on a baseball bat that seemed as big as his arms. He paused long enough just to give the camera and us a middle finger. Joe Biden keeps saying, this isn’t America. It’s not who we are, but it is America. This kind of character and this kind of conflict and this kind of meanness are a big part of our history. Is there any hope for Biden’s aspiration to unite us again?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: These people have always been in our society. And they always will be in our society. What makes this moment different is that we have a president who is actively inciting them in order to destroy our democracy. We certainly have had presidents who incited these sorts of people before for one end or another. But at the end of the day, every president until now has believed in democracy. And this one does not. He wants to get rid of democracy and replace it with an oligarchy that puts him and his family at the top. The same sort of way that we have oligarchies in Russia now, for example. Biden cannot combat these people alone. This is a moment for Americans who care about our democracy and who care about returning to our fundamental principles. And finally, making them come to life to speak up, to push back, to insist on accountability and to recognize that we are, in fact, struggling for the survival of our country, not simply talking about, “Oh, I like this politician” or, “I like that politician.” And if we do that, will we win? Absolutely. But making people do that and getting people to understand how important that is is going to be a battle. And it’s one that, by the way, we’ve been in before, and lost. This is the same sort of battle we fought at the end of Reconstruction, when most Americans sort of went “Whatever.” And we ended up with a one-party state in the American South for generations. And that is exactly the sort of thing that they are trying to make happen across America itself.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think happens to those we saw on the screen yesterday, those who invaded the Capitol, the core of our congressional system? What do you think happens to them when they discover that Trump and the Republican Party have been lying to them? That the election wasn’t rigged, it wasn’t a hoax. What do they do?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: A lot of them will never realize that. You know your psychological studies. A lot of what we used to call brainwashing can’t be undone and won’t be undone. And they will go to their graves believing that this was a stolen election. But some, and you could see them on their faces yesterday, some people sort of went, “Well, wait a minute. This was supposed to be the storm. We were supposed to be having a revolution. And it didn’t happen. We got into the Capitol building. We did our part, and there was nobody there to greet us and to help us take over.” And what’s interesting in a moment like that is there are two things to do: you can go deeper into your delusion, or you can turn on the people who took you there in a really powerful and passionate way. And this is one of the reasons this moment is so fraught is a lot of people might be waking up and going, “Wait a minute. They lied to us. They changed their minds last night and they made Biden president.” And you can see if you’re watching QAnon. They’re sort of saying, “Well, wait a minute. I’m sure Trump has an even deeper plan.” Which, of course, puts him in a bind because he can’t now say, “Oh, never mind. I didn’t mean this,” because then he’s going to lose their loyalty. So, we’re in this fraught moment. But I think people will either go ahead and continue to believe and this will a rump group that we are going to have to be dealing with for many, many years. Or some of them will become some of our most vocal opponents of people like Trump.

BILL MOYERS: Seventy million people are not really a rump group, are they? They constitute a sizable portion of the American population. You think they’ll drift away, those who are just seeing Trump as a sort of spokesman for their grievances and someone who could put the establishment on notice? Or are they in this for the long run?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: I think it’s really important to distinguish between

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Eucalyptus and Spearmint in Dr. Jon’s Vol. 3 formulation, with the Baby Smooth

Yesterday’s Vol 3 experience was not so good as I had hoped, and I suspected it might have been the brush, a silvertip badger. Barrister & Mann specifically recommend a synthetic brush for their Reserve formula shaving soaps, so I switched this morning to a synthetic brush, this Maggard Razors 22mm, a $10 brush that is truly excellent. The lather excellent all-round: fragrance, consistency, and volume. It did occur to me that it may have been that yesterday I just didn’t load the brush enough. Tomorrow I’ll return to silvertip and see whether longer loading doesn’t eliminate the problem.

I did really enjoy today’s lather. Eucalyptus and Spearmint has a head-clearing fragrance that’s quite nice, and with the excellent lather and the Baby Smooth I achieved a smooth face in three easy passes.

The matching aftershave came with the unwanted but mandatory menthol, but I recalled a familiar sequence from other contexts (food, fragrances, games, music, ….):

1. I hate this.
2. I really dislike this.
3. I guess it’s okay.
4. I can see why people like it.
5. It’s actually pretty good, once you’re used to it.
6. I love it.
7. This should be required.

So far as not having a choice, I’m still in the 1-2 area. It’s different with Alt-Innsbruck and Floïd, since they don’t have a matching soap. But if I buy an aftershave to match the soap, I want to choose whether it has menthol or not, and right now I choose not, but am forced to put up with the menthol hit. Perhaps in time I’ll move to 5.

I do like the fragrance, just not the menthol.