Submitted by Ethan-Wakefield t3_1198h4o in askscience
MrFartyBottom t1_j9ngqyn wrote
Reply to comment by jmwing in What does it mean for light to be an excitation in the electromagnetic field? by Ethan-Wakefield
A photon is the quantised amount of energy transferred between an electron and a the electromagnetic field when it moves between shells. Electromagnetic radiation always travels as waves, it is the transfer of energy between the field and atoms that is quantised. The concept of a photon being a light particle is incorrect.
Kedain t1_j9nz9ps wrote
So, can we see photons as the "highest point" of a wave travelling across the EM field? Or does the wave analogy stop being relevant at this point?
Seygantte t1_j9od5q3 wrote
The analogy doesn't hold well at this point. The previous comment saying "Electromagnetic radiation always travels as waves" is misleading because neither classical waves or particles can describe all the behaviours of EMR.
If you're asking "Where in the wave is the photon", the answer is that it's in all the places at the same time until you check. You can consider the height of the wave to be the probability that the photon would be in that position if you were to measure it. The position and path a photon travels is literally not concretely defined until it is measured, at which one of the possible positions is randomly selected. When we have a lot of photons we can sweep a lot of the probabilistic stuff under the rug by summing them all together into something that resembles our intuitive understanding of waves, but it does not mean that a single photon is a tiny wave.
The previous comment said "The concept of a photon being a light particle is incorrect", which is true, but the concept that it is a wave is also equally incorrect. They're both interpretations that aim to simplify the probabilistic nature of quantum objects into something intuitive to us, and which interpretation you use will depend on which behaviour you want to describe. Can you model electromagnetic radiation travelling as particles? Yes absolutely, but you'd be describing it in terms of the sum of those infinite probabilistic potential paths the particles could travel.
[deleted] t1_j9sj1nw wrote
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Implausibilibuddy t1_j9owh7b wrote
Say I had a beam of photons with a very specific wavelength and I was able to check the position of a particle, would that position be somewhere along a very well defined sine curve? Or is that just a simplification like the nebulous clouds of atomic electron shells were dumbed down to be circular orbits that look cool as sciency logos in the 50s and 60s?
MrFartyBottom t1_j9nzoql wrote
What does highest point mean?
Holgrin t1_j9oybh5 wrote
>the wave analogy stop being relevant at this point?
It doesn't stop being relevant, you just have an incorrect picture of what is happening. You likely are basing this image on your intuition of waves of water.
Actually, a useful image is more like sound waves. A sound wave consists of oscillating pressure in some medium, such as air or even water. When you hear sound, do you just hear the "high" pressure peaks? Or the low pressure valleys? Or, do you hear the full range of changes over some period of time?
It's the latter.
In fact, if you were only hearing the "peaks" or the top half or the bottom half of a sound wave, you would hear something that is distorted. This is actually how sound distortion in music works, such as for guitar amps or synthesizers. When we speak, or a piano hammers a tuned string, the sound created is relatively smooth, like a sine wave (speaking has more complicated wave patterns but the patterns consist of a combination of relatively smooth waves). A distorted sound appears more like a square wave or something with more corners on it, when plotted visually. So instead of your ear sensing the smooth undulations of pressure changes, it experiences sustained pressure (such as the top of a square wave) followed by (or preceding) a much more abrupt and instantaneous change (the vertical part of a square wave). This is more jarring and unexpected, which is why it sounds "unnatural."
Vision and light share some of these characteristics of experience, in that when your eyes see, they are typically experiencing a smooth range of changes in the Electromagnetic spectrum over time as the photon passes the receptors in your eye. It's not simply the peaks or valleys of this wave, it is the frequency and the total energy ( simply: how many photons in the frequency range) that your eyes sense. You can't really experience an instant of a photon. You need the changes of the wave over time for your body and brain to sense and interpret these signals.
[deleted] t1_j9owhpv wrote
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fuerdiesache t1_j9sg2xx wrote
well Einstein and other physicists don't seem to agree with you. and i'd rather go with them.
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