The nature of force

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jim</i>
<br />Well then the elyson has mass but that mass is different for different packets of energy?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Elysons have nothing to do with photons. Your question seems to presume they are somehow related. They are not.

As I said, and as Larry's question also shows, the mass of a "photon" (like that of a particular sound wave) is undefined. Even the physics meaning of the word is vague in QM. In MM, a "photon" is part of a singlet wavefront. Waves obviously are objects that <i>have</i> mass, but that mass is undefined because the wavefront normally does not have boundaries along the wave. So we can't say how much mass a wave has.

Even the energy of a wave would normally be difficult to quantify. However, in the photoelectric effect, we discover by experiment the minimum energy that a passing lightwave imparts to an electron to make it jump a single orbital. So the energy of a "photon" has as much to do with the properties of electrons as with those of light, because it is the electron that is determining how much of the lightwave is needed to produce a minimal jump.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Either there is mass or there ain't mass at some scale or at all scales. In QM the issue is treated just as you are doing.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I understand your frustration. But we normally can't say how much mass is in a wave, but only how much is in the part of any wave that acts on another body. So we normally confine our interest to how much energy or momentum a wave carries per unit area. -|Tom|-

The mass goes somewhere when it is transformed to energy weather the energy appears to be sound or heat or electric charge or light. (As you can see sound and heat are types of interaction of matter/energy, charge and light are energy only). What you are saying is it is not important or too small a matter to be of interest to science? If that is the case science is worse off than I figured. It is bad enough everyone uses interactions and energy as one. Now we have electrons jumping up and down for some unexplained reason and don't even wonder why anyone should believe that happens.

Jim,

This really isn't a small or unimportant issue.

===

You seem to be working overtime to avoid understanding the point - photons do not exist. At least, not as a "particle" or some other Single Entity that moves, as a single entity, through space in the way that a neutron or a galaxy moves through space.

Light is a wave, just like sound. When sound moves through something, the particles that the something is made of move a short distance and then return to their starting point. In the process the original particles push and/or pull on other near-by particles in the something the sound wave is moving through. And these other near-by particles ...

Oh hell, you have to understand this. You're obviously not a dummy. The point is that the particles that make up the wave as it passes point A are not the same particles that make up the wave as it passes point B.

The particles that made up the wave back at point A are still back at point A. They passed the energy of the wave on to the next group of particles and were no longer involved.

The energy moves from one place to another, not the particles it moves through.

All waves, including EM waves, behave this way.

Photons are just a mathematical convenience (a mathematical fiction) that makes solving certain problems (especailly those involving photo electrons) easier.

They don't really exist. Despite the fact that some scientists seem to think they do. (IOW, you're in good company in your misunderstanding.)

Regards,
LB

LB, The model you posted above for how waves behave says a lot of how energy effects matter but very little about energy. The energy moves at the speed of light and the waves here are much slower than that. There must be some time delay also in waves due to the complex interaction of all the tiny bits of matter involved in the process. This is a big problem with modeling electric charge as a flowing through a conductor-the atoms or electrons in the conductor need to act in a complex way in instant time to make the model work. The basic assumption is simply ignored when required and invoked when needed.

[Jim] "The energy moves at the speed of light and the waves here are much slower than that."

The energy being moved by wave action and the wave move at the same speed. (Duh.)

[Jim] "There must be some time delay also in waves due to the complex interaction of all the tiny bits of matter involved in the process."

True. This is why waves move at a speed that is characteristic of the medium they move in. It takes time for the individual particles of the medium to move from one collision to the next.

Sound energy (and sound waves) move in air at STP with the characteristic speed of about 335 meters per second. Light energy (and light waves) move through elysium with the characteristic speed of 300,000 km per second.

[Jim] " ...the atoms or electrons in the conductor need to act in a complex way in instant time to make the model work."

Nothing real can act "in instant time". (I'm assuming you mean instantaneously.)

Hmmm. I remember reading somewhere that the average speed of the physical electrons in a 60 Hz power circuit is 385 meters per second. That's average speed, not velocity.

But this is not wave propagation through space. An electron in one of the generators at the Monticello SES in east Texas never moves more than a few meters from that generator. But it's electric field extends down the wires in bucket briggade fashion, one electron pushing on the next, all the way to my house in Dallas (approx 200 Km). When an electron moves in the generator, another electron moves in my house. I'm not sure about the exact propagation speed, but it is obviously less than light speed. Seems like I remember that it is something like .7c or .8c, but I'm really not sure.

LB, It may not seem like this to you but I think we are in aggreement on most of the points you make. The main thing is the waves are caused by energy interacting with matter.