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Old 07-04-2012, 12:10 AM
Kepler
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Quote:
Originally Posted by whoguy423
The double slit experiment is the perfect example of destructive and constructive interference of waves and particles, which demonstrate perfectly the wave/particle duality of something such as light.
Yeah, definitely.

Quote:
Originally Posted by whoguy423
I just want to posit a thought.... if all particles vibrate, hence atoms vibrate, molecules vibrate.... all things vibrate.... then according to Einstein's fabric of space, wouldn't ALL things cause the fabric of space to vibrate and hence cause constructive and destructive interference patterns on each and everything?
What exactly do you mean by "according to Einstein's fabric of space"?

But anyway, because something is virbating does not make it a wave. (Something that is vibrating in some sort of periodic fashion can be described mathematically as having a wave like motion, but that does not make the thing that is vibrating a wave.)

However, there is a "wave-particle duality" to nature, as you mentioned. This is a fundamental property of nature and doesn't have anything to do with if something is vibrating or not. The wavelength of an object is called its de Broglie wavelength and is determined simply by the object's momentum. You can calculate your own wavelength if you'd like - its equal to h/p, where p is your momentum and h is Planck's constant. You will see that for macroscopic objects (like yourself), the wavelength is so tiny that any associated wave properties are basically negligible (otherwise, if you walked at the right speed, you could diffract when passing through a doorway ).

But, this doesn't get us very far in terms of the water wave - light wave interference example because we're talking about two different sorts of waves that can't be simply added algebraically.
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