User talk:Johnjbarton/sandbox/duality

Comments welcome
This is an alternative to replace wave-particle duality. This replacement is minimal, introductory, and focused on empirical observations. The goal is to give some clear idea about the phenomena that drove the concept without exploring all of the unresolved and controversial aspects of QM interpretations.

What do you think? Johnjbarton (talk) 18:46, 29 August 2023 (UTC)


 * It definitely wanders around less than the current wave-particle duality article. I think it's a step in the right direction. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 21:06, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I threw "welcher Weg" in there because I've seen plenty of papers written in English that use the German term . I have no strong feelings about it and don't think including that terminology is obligatory by any means, but maybe it's common enough that an "also known as" mention would be appropriate? XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:46, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe like
 * (also called "welcher Weg", a German name for these experiments)
 * ? Johnjbarton (talk) 23:01, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * More generally, thanks for taking on the task of rewriting the page! The more I look at the shape the article is currently in, the more I think a total rewrite is necessary. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:56, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I wanted to link  https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc.html in the Feynman ref but I'm clear on how to do that. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:02, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I think this article is excellent. I wanted to replace right now the old one, which is not very good, by this one, which is. But some parts of the old one might be conserved. Hence there is a problem of fusion between the old and the new.TD (talk) 06:52, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Towards the goal of a focused presentation my suggestion is that we investigate each aspect of the old page to ensure the referenced material is covered in other articles. Then in this article we can look for ways to summarize and link to those other articles as guides for readers. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:34, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Comment on history
The part of the history concerning electron duality might be improved by using the presentation order from Matter wave, i.e. first the de Broglie hypothesis and Schrödinger equation and only then the experimental confirmation by Davisson and Germer (which is currently not mentioned). The concise style is fine. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 15:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Done.
 * I specifically did not change the order as the motivation for the de Broglie/Schrodinger work was the preceding experimental evidence. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not aware of any electron wave-experiments published before de Broglie's (1924) or Schrödinger's (1926) work. Davisson and Germer only published their results on 1927. As far as I know, de Broglie's hypothesis was based purely on the analogy with the duality of light. But you have done more reading on the subject. What am I missing? Jähmefyysikko (talk) 18:31, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Jähmefyysikko Before jj Thompson the cathode rays were not known to be particles (corpuscles in that time). I thought I had that in there. so the confusion about wave vs particle goes back to the early electron work as well as photon.
 * de Broglie was mainly looking for a quantum rule for electrons in Bohr's atom. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:02, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Blanked old content and started addition of QM section.
The comments above don't apply to the current page. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:19, 23 March 2024 (UTC)