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Ehh, its a bit more than that.

Its a particle in that we know they are quantized into single photons. As in, it is impossible to observe half of a photon, or any non-intefer number of photons, and one photon can only be observed in one place. This makes it like a particle.

But its a wave in the way it behaves - it can interfere (not just with other photons, with itself), and its movement can only be described through wave functions that can even take seperate paths at the same time, according to how waves propogate.

And, there are ways in which rhey act like particles no matter how they are observed, and same for wavelike behavior

Worth noting: “observation” is just physical measurement. You have tk keep in mind that observating something fundamentally requires interacting with it - in order to look at an apple, photons must bounce off of it, which is a physical interaction. On the quantum scale, these interactions cannot be ignored.

Also also: this isn’t just photons, everything is like this. It may not align with how we observe things on a microscopic scale, but this is fundamentally how the universe works.

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Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Also also: this isn’t just photons, everything is like this. It may not align with how we observe things on a microscopic scale, but this is fundamentally how the universe works.

Wow, I think this answered my first before I asked it. So yeah, I was wondering about that double slit experiment, I’ve seen it demonstrated with photons and visible light, but do the principles demonstrated by the experiment actually apply to other particles? In the right environments, do atoms behave similarly?

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- vithigar@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  In theory yes, but once you have multiple particles interacting things get really complicated really fast and nice tidy interference patterns like in the double slit experiment become much less common.
  
  All atoms are multiple particles at quantum scales, even a single hydrogen atom is comprised of four.
  
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  - Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    All atoms are multiple particles at quantum scales, even a single hydrogen atom is comprised of four.
    
    And I imagine we don’t have great methods for manipulating subatomic particles… Quarks and such don’t have magnetic charges, they’re probably hard to control as well as probably unstable on their own. So as a result I’d wager it’s hard to run experiments with those.
    
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- OboTheHobo@ttrpg.network ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  So the thing that gets weird is that the heavier the particle is the more likely it is to interact with the slits themselves on the way through, in which case the wavefunction will collapse and it will seem to go through only one slit. Im not totally sure if double slit has been demonstrated with atoms but I do know it’s been done many times with electrons.
  
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