Waves
 Bidang (detail), Iban people. Sarawak, Saribas area, 20th century, 52 x 104 cm. Tangkong motif, ikat technique. From the Teo Family collection, Kuching. Photograph by D Dunlop.

To summarize, so far WikiMechanics has considered a generic particle P by objectifying some chain of events $\Psi$ written as

$\Psi ^{\sf{P}} = \left( \sf{\Omega} _{1} , \sf{\Omega} _{2} , \sf{\Omega} _{3} \ldots \right)$

The events $\sf{\Omega}$ are defined by sensation, and they are supposed to be very repetitive

$\sf{\Omega} _{1} = \sf{\Omega} _{2} = \sf{\Omega} _{3} \ \ldots$

so that P can be recognized. But we might just as well understand such a recurring sequence of sensations to be a wave train. That is, $\Psi$ could represent some sort of of periodically undulating or fluctuating perception. This interpretive ambivalence is called wave-particle and historically it has been contentious during the development of physics. However for WikiMechanics there is no quandary; scientific facts and theories are founded on sensation, and whether we call these perceptions particles or waves is just a question of convenience. If feelings are localized, then we talk about particles. Or if sensory phenomena seem to have some extended quality, then we often use words like wave, wavenumber, wavelength, etc. In between, we might speak of particles that are in excited states. Over the next few articles more precise meanings for these terms are developed from a discussion of quarks.
 Next step: the wavevector.
page revision: 104, last edited: 06 Mar 2016 19:18