From: Ronald Wong (ronwong@inreach.com)
Date: Mon Mar 28 2005 - 13:08:55 PST
Message-Id: <l03102800be6e1b9dc1d4@[209.209.14.160]> Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 13:08:55 -0800 From: Ronald Wong <ronwong@inreach.com> Subject: RE: electron mass
Way back in November, Sally Seebode brought up a perennial issue regrading
electron mass:
>I was having a discussion with a student regarding subatomic particles that
>have mass and charge. My understanding of an electron is that it is
>sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. When is [sic] behaves as a wave, it
>is energy and therefore massless, but as a particle, it does have rest mass.
>So, does it have mass?
Yes.
>... or is my description faulty.
No. It is not faulty.
Whenever physicists write/talk about very small objects, like electrons,
they either refer to them as a particle or as a wave. It's always in terms
of one or the other. Because of this, it's not surprising that many people
think of them as if they were "sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave".
What many people find difficult to comprehend - and this includes
scientists and teachers of science - is the idea that the electron is NOT
"sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave". It is always a particle AND a
wave.
How this can be so is more a matter of metaphysics than physics. For
physicists, it simply IS and they go about explaining the behavior of
things - like electrons - in terms of them being a wave or a particle
depending on which suits their purpose best for the situation they are
trying to address.
Thus, in some ways, nature is sort of like us.
When we interact with our clients, customers, or students in our
corporations, businesses, or classrooms we manifest one set of properties
and when we interact with our children at home we manifest another.
In this sense, nature isn't really as strange as it sometimes appears to be.
ron
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