Basic concepts of quantum mechanics: Difference between revisions

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Consequently, neither ''wave'' nor ''particle'' is an entirely satisfactory model to use in understanding light. Indeed, astrophysicist [[Arthur Stanley Eddington|A.S. Eddington]] proposed in 1927 that "We can scarcely describe such an entity as a wave or as a particle; perhaps as a compromise we had better call it a 'wavicle' ".<ref name="Eddington">[http://books.google.com/books?id=PGOTKcxSqMUC&pg=PA201&lpg=PA201&dq=We+can+scarcely+describe+such+an+entity+as+a+wave+or+as+a+particle%3B+perhaps+as+a+compromise+we+had+better+call+it+a+%60wavicle&source=bl&ots=K0IfGzaXli&sig=zgrQiBJbHRLuUzVBT-yy8jZhC1Y&hl=en&ei=i8g1SpOHC4PgtgOu_4jVDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1 A.S. Eddington, ''The Nature of the Physical World,'' the course of Gifford Lectures that Eddington delivered in the University of Edinburgh in January to March 1927, Kessinger Publishing, 2005, p. 201.]</ref> This term was later popularised by mathematician [[Banesh Hoffmann]].<ref name="Hoffman">Banesh Hoffman, ''The Strange Story of the Quantum,'' Dover, 1959</ref>{{rp|172}}

The conceptsconcept of waves and particles, and the analogies which make use of them, are mechanisms of [[classical physics]]. Quantum mechanics, which seeks to explain nature at the fundamentala level underlying that of the atoms which comprise matter, cannot be understood in such terms. Those classical concepts presuppose an artificial division ofbetween matter as particles and energy as waves that has no objective validity at the sub-atomic level. Where the distinction no longer holds true, it is not surprising if classes of object can exhibit the characteristics of either.

==Uncertainty principle==