Timeline for What does it mean "not to have a definite trajectory"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 19, 2016 at 15:04 | comment | added | emery | "they do have mass, so.. they must occupy space, and only one space at a time" - that makes sense but experiments show that it's wrong. | |
| Feb 18, 2016 at 1:55 | comment | added | Peteris | @user104 "x has mass, so x must occupy (behave as if it occupies) a particular single point in space and pass from one point to the next" is simply not true, on small scales our reality behaves in ways that contradict this. Electron "orbits" around atoms are a great example. In many cases, the concept of a trajectory is a very useful simplification but not always - the meaning of "x does not have a definite trajectory" is "as some cases show, the whole concept that 'stuff' or 'mass' has 'location' or 'trajectory' is conceptually wrong and not consistent with the physical reality we live in". | |
| Feb 17, 2016 at 19:10 | comment | added | slebetman | @user104: Think of it this way - until an electron interacts with another "thing" (usually this is called "observed") it doesn't occupy a definite space but rather a statistical/probabilistic range of space. That a single electron can cause interference with itself tells us that the probabilities does not mean we don't know (like the outcome of a dice), it means it actually occupy all the space according to the probabilities (like multiple virtual particles travelling together). | |
| Feb 17, 2016 at 15:29 | comment | added | user104372 | My question refers to electrons, and they do have mass, so.. they must occupy space, and only one space at a time, and they should pass from one point to the next and only to a next point. They do progress like a wave, but a wave is indeed a trajectory , too | |
| Feb 17, 2016 at 15:20 | history | edited | user36790 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 3 characters in body
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| Feb 17, 2016 at 15:16 | review | First posts | |||
| Feb 17, 2016 at 15:20 | |||||
| Feb 17, 2016 at 15:15 | history | answered | emery | CC BY-SA 3.0 |