Re: Energy-sucking EM antennas

[Bob Sciamanda <trebor@VELOCITY.NET>]

Hi Bill,
Let me better defend the "modern physics" texts.  They are describing the
situation of about 1905, long before second quantization, wave/particle
duality, (even the Bohr atom), etc were conceived.

(It was Einstein's 1905 paper on this photoelectric effect which is cited
as earning his Nobel prize.)  Nowadays, the "proper" conceptual model of a
photon is much debated.

Bob

Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor

----- Original Message -----
From: William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 1999 12:56 PM
Subject: Re: Energy-sucking EM antennas


> On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, Bob Sciamanda wrote:
>
>
> > Hi Bill,
> > Thanks for the references, I'll look into at least Bohren's.
> > For now let me just notice that, in my experience, every "modern
physics"
> > text quotes the above effect (an electron gathering more energy, in a
> > smaller time, than a wave model allows) as an argument in favor of
> > Einstein's photon model of the photoelectric effect, and against a
wave
> > model of this interaction.
>
> Really?  That's astounding, since waves and particles must obviously
obey
> wave/particle duality in such a situation.  The waves must be
*quantized*
> of course, just like they are in the double-slit experiment, but that
> doesn't affect the basic wave/particle concepts.  To say differently
would
> be to treat photons as if they were little billiard balls.
>
> A conventional EM antenna can be regarded as being like a single large
> atom which emits large numbers of photons in a single coherent
> electromagnetic wave.  If atoms serve as tiny antennas, they just have a
> much weaker radiation than a radio transmitter's antenna, so that their
> output wave is full of obvious quanta.  It's the "dim light 2-slit
> experiment."
>
> All the QM interpretations I'm familiar with say that the "wave" is
still
> there even when the intensity of the light has been reduced to the
> single-particle regime.  I don't understand why a QM text would want to
> argue with this or to say that atoms are some kind of special case.
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