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Particles
Real physical objects like cars are made up of lots of parts. Those
parts are in turn made up of smaller parts, and those parts made
up of parts smaller still, literally ad infinitum. The smallest
microscopic componenents of normal matter, quarks and electrons,
are point-like objects that have no physical extent that we can
measure.
To completely describe a big thing like a car, or even a little
thing like an atom, requires lots of coordinates for all of those
component parts. However, this is way too complicated for us to
even think about so far. Therefore we will ignore all the microscopic
components and pick a single point on the car that will determine
its position as if the car were a point-like object, and for the
time being we will ignore things like the relative motion of the
car's parts relative to this point.
In physics, we call point-like objects particles. Later, we'll
assign other properties (such as a mass or charge) to particles,
but they will always have a single, unique position as a function
of time in a classical description. We will treat nearly everything
we encounter in the first few chapters as a particle. Examples of
particles moving in one dimension might be a hockey puck sliding
along a line, a car travelling down a straight road, a basketball
thrown vertically into the air, an electron attracted to a charged
plate, or a bead on a straight wire. From the point of view of our
description, a basketball is as good a particle as a bead, at least
until we develop the physics prowess to describe and quantify their
differences.
Matter-Waves
One mystery leads to another. Pondering upon the enigma of the
wave-particle duality of light, Louis DeBroglie asked himself the
question: if light has this contra-intuitive dual nature of being
waves and particles, is it possible that matter also has a similar
duality? Could particles of matter also act like waves?! matrwave.jpg
-- Indeed, scientists soon found that when electrons pass through
a narrow opening they show 'diffraction' and 'interference' effects
which were known to be exclusively wave phenomena. Thus, the particle-wave
duality of matter was added to the wave-particle duality of light
and modern physics declared the quadruplicity of Nature. The mathematical
formalism that evolved from this hypothesis became the foundation
of Quantum Mechanics.
Aethro-Kinematics tears down both dualisms!
In the all-pervading ideal gas of Aether all moving chunks or particles
of matter create waves just like a fish or a boat in the water.
When particles are driven through a narrow slit the reflecting Aether-waves
destruct their straight line paths. This is the real kinematic cause
of the diffraction of electrons.
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