Light: Partical & Wave

F

Fredric Argyle

Temporal Novice
OK then, it's been known for getting on for a century that light is a Photon (ie. a packet of energy, having the properties of both, except when they collide in which case it uses one).

If light is a partical (which it is), then it must have mass (even if it's mass is measured in Mega Electron Volts (MeV)). Anything with mass will experience Time Dilation as it approaches the speed of light and cannot under any circumstances ever reach the speed of light.
By this theory, light cannot travel at the speed of light, only slightly faster or slower and if it did then it wouldn't move because as far as it was concerned time would have stopped.

Theories?
 
Fred:

OK then, it's been known for getting on for a century that bread is made out of wheat (ie. a packet of grain, having the properties of both, except when they collide in which case it uses one).

If bread is part of a bread bag (which it is), then it must have mass (even if it's mass is measured in Mega Electron Volts (MeV)). Anything with mass will experience Time Dilation as it approaches the speed of light and cannot under any circumstances ever reach the speed of light.
By this theory, bread cannot travel at the speed of light, only slightly faster or slower and if it did then it wouldn't move because as far as it was concerned time would have stopped.

Is it make a difference to me?

<This message has been edited by dob (edited 14 May 2001).>
 
You are incorrect. The correct formula for energy is:

Energy = Square root(p*p*c*c + m*m*c*c*c*c)

Where p is momentum, c is speed of light, m is rest mass. A photon is massless, but it does have momentum.
In fact for a photon, E = pc.
Just because something has energy does not mean it has mass, many people believe that energy in the relativistic case is simply E=mc*c but that is not true, it is in fact:
Energy = Square root(p*p*c*c + m*m*c*c*c*c)
 
i think young's double slit experiment tells us about the wave particle duality stuff. when you fire a single photon through the double slits, you still get full interference pattern. think about it. that 1 particle is going through both slits at once, thus exhibiting wave like behavior.

or think about it in terms of multiverse. unseen particles for parallel universe interact with ours.
 
i was reading a book, QED, by Feyman a while ago. He talks about an expiriment where a select amount of light hits an instrument and amplifies the energy into a "click" (i cant recall the name of the instrument, i wanna say photometer, but i know thats wrong, im very tired). theoretically, if light was a wave, the clicks would get softer and softer as the light was dimmed, however, that didnt occour, the clicks continued until the light was completely off. The only theory that can describe this is the particle theory. I am a holographer. The work i have done in the lab is based off of the wave theory, however. So i am very confused. How can it be both?
 
TIME 02112: My family name is "Boulanger" this means 'baker' in french, so I do know a lot about bread, and you are a diver, so you may know a lot about water. I believe that if we put our two brains together we may found the answer to: is the bread faster than the speed of water.

And if there is any other physician in the room please stand up! We need your support.
 
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