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/sci/ - Science & Math

What exactly is a wave? What is moving in a 'wavelike' pattern if not particles?
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>>10467872
inerby
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>>10467872
>what is a wave
Something that is propagated over space without a transfer of matter
>if not particals
Vector fields, scalar fields, energy, etc.
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>>10467872
>What exactly is a wave?

What something does.
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>>10467872
Light :^)
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>>10467872
the field
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little dwarves too small for you to see
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Disturbances in an electric/magnetic field
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>>10468143
Bullshit. Wave is a noun, not a verb. We refer to it as a thing, I've never seen quantum physics describe a "waving"

Things exist AS waves until they collapse into things.
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>>10467872
Waves have certain properties. Just read it up on wikipedia or something. This board isn’t your personal homework machine
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motion potential expressed
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>>10468241
But that's wrong. >>10468143 is correct. Think of an ocean wave. It's not a singular object, such as a sea shell, but the macroscopic movement of smaller, constituent parcels.
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>>10468241
waves of what?
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>>10468469
We go round and round in a circle in these threads always. The answer is, we know HOW it behaves, we don't know WHAT it is
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>>10468469
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>>10468471
>The answer is, we know HOW it behaves, we don't know WHAT it is

non sequitur
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>>10468507
But it's true. Scientists can never answer the philosophical question of precisely WHAT a field is. They only deal in describing its behavior. Trust me, I've been asking here for years and I haven't yet gotten a good answer from anyone.
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>>10467872
Propagation of oscillation in a field, be it magnetic, electromagnetic, gravitational etc...
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>>10468527
There is no what without a how in modern science, and that has probably been the greatest invention in human thought.
Also, I like your source on the scientific consensus.
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>>10468469
Magnitude, fucking avatarfag
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the idea of a field is the most retarded idea ever created by retards
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>>10467872
.
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>>10467872
In the end every wave is just the movement of something tangible. Like particles. Some people that are in some esoteric understanding of science divorced from reality might tell you that it could be pure mathematics like some abstract field. And while a field might deliver a good description of the behaviour of a wave, in the end the wave consists of real particles.
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>>10467872
>What exactly is a wave?

You are BRILLIANT!
Physics desperately needs more brilliant people in it.
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>>10468668
Thats not even how waves work.
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>>10468690
.
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You get a wave when there's a pointlike particle moving randomly around (like in Brownian motion) that has an uneven chance to move in some directions as opposed to others.
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>>10467872
Take an object. Measure some parameter of this object in space and time: U(x,y,z,t). If this function U satisfies wave differential equation - it’s a wave.
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>>10469179
>electromagnetism does not propagate in waves
What did the avatarfag mean by this
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>>10469259
>light isn't a thing
Are you berserker fag?
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>>10469893
>does light exist
"Yes"
Not going to debate retarded semantics
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>>10469893
Light is visible photons.
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>>10468469
can you please use BAD anime/manga next time you want to post stupid shit? I'm sick of you ruining nice things
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>>10467872
>What exactly is a wave?
a mathematical abstraction. an extremely useful one that is used to model a wide range of phenomena and lies at the heart of our understanding of many things.
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>>10467872
>What is moving in a 'wavelike' pattern if not particles?
Probability amplitudes.
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>>10470059
whats a amplitude
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>>10468562
The how is fine. No one is protesting the how. The point is, despite knowing the how, no one can even still explain the what. That's the problem.
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>>10470061
Complex-valued function that describes a (pure) state of quantum system.
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>>10468527
>Scientists can never answer the philosophical question of precisely WHAT a field is
it's a mathematical construct that has coordinates and a value (scalar or vectorial) attached to every single coordinate vector. aka a function that maps a set of inputs (the coordinates) to an output (the field value at that point)

Any BSc should be able to explain this to you.
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>>10470074
how does this apply to my radio dude
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>>10470061
anyone who did sound editing for a day in their life knows what amplitude is
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>>10470059
It's definitely not particles. Just watch any random Sean Carrol video on YouTube and you will get why nothing is particles, and everything is waves.
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>>10470082
well, if it's so simple can you tell me?
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>>10470086
or fields, rather
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>>10470087
Yes. It's very simple, in fact. Amplitude is half of a wave.
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>>10470087
The magnitude of max value of the waveform
>inb4 what is magnitude
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>>10470087
Like this. I can't believe I'm explaining things to people who are currently going to elementary school, but hey. Okay.
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>>10470093
wait whats a wave then
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>>10470097
not quite. what's a waveform?
>>10470098
nice picture. can you explain what amplitude is using it?
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>>10470101
>>10470105
>>10468014
Or
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave
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>>10470105
I don't know what you want from me. I literally showed you what it is. I'm pretty sure you're just trolling me at this point.
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>>10470106
>what's this goblydeegook
>oh, its THAT goblydeegook
My point is that you are bad at explaining things to people who do not already share you intuition.

1. A field is a mathematical construct that maps some sort of value to every point in some space;
2. A wave is a mathematical construct that describes a propagating change in some field's point values; It's grounded mainly in fuzzy intuition about such phenomena in fluids, but has much wider applications.
3. An amplitude is some sort of boundary value describing the amount of change to the field's value as a wave passes over it.
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>>10470080
There's a reason QM prerequisites are analytical mechanics and EM. Study both before asking nonsensical questions.
>>10470086
It's a misguided question. Evolution of a quantum system is described by a wave equation, so it evolves in wavelike fashion, that's it.
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>>10470121
why is everybody saying that wave is abstraction when we can literally see it in fluids? it actually exists unlike the actual mathematical abstractions like perfect circle
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>>10470204
how can you see it in fluids? you can see some fluid higher, some fluid lower. some fluid closer to you, some further. you can also observe that the highness/closeness varies over time. so you develop an abstract model - the wave - to encompass some patterns you notice in the way the fluid pattern changes over time.
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>>10470210
>higher
>lower
that's what a wave is
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Sound waves, waves on water. Waves permeate all existence.
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>>10470211
yes. an abstraction you came up with to tie together the different states of the observable fluid. you never observe the wave itself, you just observe a bunch of fluid.
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>>10470211
>so a pressure mediation
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>>10470217
You observe the fluid behaving in a wave-like fashion. Yes. Waves are a behavior of something. Be it water, air, or "fields". No one can still determine what the medium of "fields" is.
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>>10470217
when you move your arm you dont say you never observe the movement itself you just observe bunch of arm atoms lol
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There is no such thing as a particle. the word itself is merely a placeholder for the discrete quanta of energy bound by fields or more precisely OF fields. In fact, the quanta of energy exhibits classical wavelike and classical particlelike properties.
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People get confused by waves because they think that a wave moves up and down when it really doesn't. A wave only propagates across a medium. Asking "what a wave is" is almost equivalent to asking "why does the other end of a stick lift up when I raise it by my end". If you moved a stick up and down from end at a speed close enough to the speed the motion transferred across you would get a nice looking "wave" propagating across the stick. Well, the stick would probably break but you get my point.

Put another way. Imagine holding a stick horizontally by one end. Now move it up. The "moving up" has to happen to each part of the stick a certain time after the end you are holding moves. The further away from the end you are holding the lo ger it takes. So the "moving up" travels across the medium of the stick.

If you move it down the same thing happens.

Keep moving it up and down like this and you have created a "wave"
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>>10467872
Since OP is clearly asking about the so-called wave-particle duality of Quantum Mechanics, I'll narrow my answer to that.

In classical mechanics, particles are point-like objects in space and time, while waves are distributed phenomenon spread out through space and time and are solutions to wave equations. These are models.

In QM, the words particle and wave are used very loosely, and all things considered, are terrible choices for describing what is being modeled in QM because they carry too much suggestive baggage from CM. In QM, the things being studied are "wavefunctions" (unfortunate name because of wave being in it), which encode everything there is to know about a quantum system, and the "measurements", that act upon wavefunctions to extract physical information about wavefunctions.

The way wavefunctions change in time when nothing is interacting with them satisfy the wave-like Schrodinger equation (this is why they are wave-like).

However something very special happens when you measure a wavefunction. For each type of measurement (position, momentum, etc) you can only get certain values, and each of these values is associated with a specific wavefunction. It turns out that any wavefunction can be written as a "blend" of these special wavefunctions, and when you measure a wavefunction, it turns exactly into one of the special wavefunctions (associated with the value you just measured) that is part of the blend. This is probabilistic, with special wavefunctions that contribute more being more likely to be measured.

That's pretty abstract, so let's now explain why people talk about "wave-particle duality" crap. In empty space, when you try to measure the position of a wavefunction, the special wavefunctions are point-like (to the accuracy of your measurement device). If you measure a wavefunction and get (say) x = 1m, the wavefunction "collapses" to a point at 1m. Afterwards, if left undisturbed, it evolves like a wave per Schodinger's equation.
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>>10470350
Another example (to demonstrate why thinking of wavefunctions like particles is bad) is trying to measure the position of a wavefunction in a box. In this case, the special wavefunctions associated with the position measurement are sinusoids. When you make a position measurement, the wavefunction collapses to a sinusoid, definitely not a point!

The main difficulty when describing QM to the uninitiated is that to appreciate the really cool stuff, you have to appreciate the math, and QM is a really mathematically intense subject. Hope this helped.
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>>10469966
>>10469869
>>10469973

>get warned

Just cause I get my posts removed doesn't mean I don't want an answer. There is no such thing as light, its an action of a medium. Prove me wrong you babies.

>>10468653
>>10470097
magnitude is synonymous to magnetism
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>>10470390
kys ken
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>>10467872
All particles behave like waves because they are waves. The whole "is it particle or wave" is just phy 101 to mess with kids's mind. The only reason we see "particles" is mainly because the photons in our eye operate on the same wave length as the wave length of other particles we see. Its just like two trains moving 10000 miles per hour side by side see themselves as static, but if one train stops or slows down or speeds up, the other will appear like a blur.
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>>10470629
This. There are no particles, really.
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>>10470390
>There is no such thing as light
$\mathbf{OOF!}$
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>>10470390
*turns on a light bulb*
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10470795
(you) privileges lost

>>10470804
>turns on light bulb
>illuminates room
>light makes light!
>still a moron for not being able to differentiate light from illumination without circular logic.

What now? What the fuck do you think is "traveling" though a vacuum sealed glass? Does it eventually get clogged up with particles? Do I have to empty it once in awhile? Retarded.
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>>10467872
Hint: ~
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>>10471081
Based "ive never taken a physics class" retard
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a wave is anything which can be described in a mathematical manner as to make it amenable to the fourier transform, that is, a sum of trigonometric basis functions
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>>10471571
You can categorify that notion and express that as functional space with group action acting on representation of that group. Pretty weird.
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>>10471258
>I still can't differentiate light from illumination

Didn't think you could. You probably don't even know what that means.
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>>10472874
>muh semantics
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>>10468014
I think this is a pretty good starter explanation. Thanks.

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