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Re: Cliff Parker's question


[I asked] am still wondering how you would describe the "stuff" of waves?
Is it
that you simply would not attempt such a description because our language
would not do it justice?

[Leigh's answer] Waves are easy; our language fully supports the concept
because we
can see and touch waves. Your question really relates to wavelike
phenomena, I suspect, and not to mundane water waves.

Let's start with the easiest problem then. Is there any "stuff" in
water waves? I think not. One merely observes a substance in motion
of a sort to which we give that name. It is to the motion itself
that we refer when we speak of water waves. That motion can be
described far more accurately (if less poetically) using mathematics
than by any other means. Is the mathematics "stuff"? No, it is not.

I understand that the mathematics describes with less ambiguity. But that
mathematics must represent some real meaning.

Why would it be incorrect to say that waves (any kind of wave) are made of
energy. Just as we would say that the earth is made of mass? ----- As I
wrote this last question I think I may have begun to see what you have been
saying. It occurred to me that we actually describe tangible things like the
earth to be made of matter and the amount of that matter we describe as mass.
If that is the case then energy is describing the amount of something. What
would that be? --- The amount of "ability to do work!" (Not a very tangible
thing) But that would be what waves are made of, would it not, the "ability to
do work?"

If I have things right here then mass describes the amount of matter just as
energy describes the amount of work that can be done. If GR is correct and
E=MC^2 (energy and mass are somehow interchangeable) then wouldn't matter and
the ability to do work also be interchangeable? And if that is the case then
why would matter be any more tangible than the ability to do work?

I hope you can follow my ponderings...

Cliff Parker