Wikipedia:Peer review/Wave-particle duality/archive1

Wave-particle duality[edit]

Request review for all aspects of this article, with the eventual goal of getting to "featured article" status. linas 14:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good, linas. Would add more comments later. deeptrivia (talk) 14:58, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's a pretty good article and the explanations seem clear to me, but that may be due to prior exposure. I'm not so sure how clear this would be to a newcomer. The text could probably be usefully supplemented by several good-quality illustrations. Also the applications section is rather brief, with only one example. Thanks. :) — RJH 15:41, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really like the Duality of light section. It's short and unclear in its purpose or relationship to other sections. Also, the applications section needs expanding. — Laura Scudder ☎ 19:31, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To be a FA it's going to need a longer lead section, and generally longer and more cohesive sections. Merge related material or expand short paragraphs until they are full complete ideas and flow well. It's also going to need more references (shoot for 10) and inline citations of important points. There should be plenty of good references out there. Feynman's lectures would probably be good ones, but any good QM textbooks would be a start. - Taxman ^Talk 23:23, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like the emphasis on differential equations; classical fields obey differential equations, while quantum fields might not (or at least, the equations they obey can be quite different from the classical analogue). There is no mention of localisation (and issues regarding masslessness), or Fourier transforms, or complementarity. The excuse that there isn't enough room to give a modern treatment in this article holds no water. Are you only interested in a historical synopsis? The theoretical review should be 3/4 of the article, in my opinion. -lethe ^talk 15:58, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I thought about this for a while, and couldn't figure out what the "theoretical review" is. There is no "modern treatment" or "Theory of wave-particle duality" that I know of, and this is one reason why I focused on the history. One could say, "study wave equations, study Fourier transforms, study the hydrogen atom, study the simple harmonic oscillator, study Hilbert spaces, and study second quantization and how the uncertainty principle is just Pontryagin duality then you will "get it"". I suppose one might try to describe a phonon as an example of a particle that's a wave, but a review of phonons is tricky, would require hand-waving to get to photons anyway. It could be wiser to just spend more time explaining the photoelectric effect in greater detail, or explaining the Schrodinger atom vs. Bohr atom. Ideas? linas 23:43, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Quantum mechanics is also governed by differential equations (all of physics is really). Therefore for a full treatment of this subject there should be at least some discussion on differential equations. I also wonder if it would be appropriate to mention Max Planck in the history section as he was the one who came up with the idea of photons (even if he didn't view them as real). In addition to be more technical, the Schrodinger equation is a non-relativistic equation, and the key equation that is used to provide realistic models is the Dirac Equation, which essentially is a relativistic Schrodinger Equation. Also, Linas is correct, there is no "theory of wave-particle duality". This is a phenomena imposed on us by the basic principles of quantum mechanics itself, mainly the uncertainty principle. As such it makes no sense to refer to the "modern treatment" of wave-particle duality as such phenomena was not even around until quantum mechanics was developed. Indeed there should be focus on some of the interpretations of what this duality represents and how it is dealt with in the various interpretations, such as the Copenhagen Interpretation or Feynman sum over histories. I will do what I can, but I am new to the Wikipedia interface and so will be inefficient. SciBrad 04:20, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]