« first day (4210 days earlier)      last day (727 days later) » 

Jagerber48
Jagerber48
4:06 AM
Why do we need the concept of parity in physics? It seems useless and confusing to me and I don't see what is gained by calling it out. What do I gain by knowing B is a pseudovector while E is a real vector? Or p is a real vector while L is a pseudovector?
 
 
4 hours later…
Slereah
Slereah
7:48 AM
 
 
2 hours later…
Adil Mohammed
Adil Mohammed
9:59 AM
Is it correct to tell photon is the quantum of light energy?
i think photon just refers to the particle nature of light whereas quantum of light energy is the discrete energy packets of light
so inother words, while a photon is associated with a quantum of light energy, they arent same
 
 
5 hours later…
Jagerber48
Jagerber48
2:44 PM
@AdilMohammed The elctromagnetic field (especially in closed system) can be decomposed into spatial modes (decomposition of solutions to Helmholtz equation). This is especially salient when you have closed boundary conditions like a cavity because the mode is physically confined in space.

In classical E&M any one of those modes can have arbitrarily small or large energy (and correspondingly large E and B field amplitudes). However, in quantum mechanics, the total energy (for standing waves) or intensity (for travelling waves) in the mode is quantized.
So a photon could be considered to be a particular state of light.

I would define "the quantum of light energy" as the amount of energy that one photon carries.
Finally I find the whole wave/particle duality thing to be BS. If you want to know what things are the answer is they are quantum fields (meaning quantum waves). I don't see much use in thinking of things as particles, because with particles I think about billiard balls and that way of thinking is just going to get me in trouble. Better to think of extended fields whose energies are constrained to discrete values.
 
 
7 hours later…
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
9:30 PM
@Jagerber48 See e.g. this answer of mine - physicists' confusion about "pseudoness" is really just due to them not carefully thinking about what geometric objects they have on their hands (in particular, angular momentum is only a "pseudovector" in 3d, but a genuine "bivector" in higher dimensions and does not map to a single vector)
 

« first day (4210 days earlier)      last day (727 days later) »