#7 in Nuclear physics books
Use arrows to jump to the previous/next product
Reddit mentions of QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton Science Library)
Sentiment score: 2
Reddit mentions: 4
We found 4 Reddit mentions of QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton Science Library). Here are the top ones.
or
- Picador USA
Features:
Specs:
| Release date | October 2014 |
Think of water and snow as giant pinball fields. Photons enter the field, bounce around as they interact with the electrons and eventually exit the field.
In the case of water, the most likely path most visible photons will end up on has them moving in more or less the same direction.
Snow is intermingled frozen bits of water and air so the electrons aren't arranged in the same way as they are in liquid water. In the case of snow, there isn't a single most probable exit path that the photons take but lots of different equally likely paths. Basically, the pinball field is laid out differently in snow than it is in water and so the probability path distribution is different.
The color you see depends on which photons hit your eyes and which photons hit your eyes depends on which path they took to get to your eye.
The interesting bit is that you see almost all the colors in both cases but in one case, the colors are organized in the same pattern they entered water whereas the pattern is randomly scrambled when it hits snow. The organized pattern means we can see fish underwater but we perceive snow as white noise. It's white because almost all the colors still reach our eye but they arrive in a different pattern than when they initially hit the snow.
Feynman went into far more detail here.
Not weird at all. When you find out how weird quantum physics is, it's hard not to be interested. I first read about it at around the same age and it's fascinated me ever since.
If you haven't yet, read Feynman's QED, which is a great introduction from a famous physicist. The only math is a little arithmetic.
'QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter' by Richard Feynman https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BR40XJ6/
Just 180 pages, most of it pretty well understandable by the layperson (like me). Explains all this.
> Can't light's behavior be solely modeled as a wave?
Only at macroscopic scales can light be "solely" described as a wave. Quantum Electrodynamics has already shown that light can be solely described in terms of particles only. (IMHO,) Q.E.D. is a completed theory.
> Why do we think it even needs to be a particle?
> What behavior of light is solely a property of a particle and not a wave?