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But the article also says, If it seems strange to call the collective behavior of electrons a particle, think of the proton, which is itself made up of three qu
by Koshkin 7y ago
But the article also says, If it seems strange to call the collective behavior of electrons a particle, think of the proton, which is itself made up of three quarks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ivalm 7y agoAbsolutely! Just wanted to highlight. It is easier to think of stable and localized collective behaviors (protons) as particles than unstable and delocalized (anyons). Both are collective behaviors but most of the time you can think of protons as “balls made of quarks.” It’s not quite right but with semi classical treatment you get most of the effects. Anyons are not even approximately balls made of electrons. They break a lot of “classical particle” intuition the way protons don’t.
- xvilka 7y agoBut if you think of them as the waves, any kind of close and stable wave superposition can be called "a particle". At some point, we might just drop the "particle world" and go with the "quantum systems".
- ivalm 7y agoMost people have an intuition about particles, they don’t have an intuition for quantum systems. I wanted to highlight for a general reader that anyons are not particle in the sense of common intuition. Protons, which the article brings as an example of collective phenomenona, roughly follow a lot of “particle intuition.”
- state_less 7y agoHere is a link to the quasiparticles Wikipedia page that may be helpful. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle Personally, I don’t mind if folks reify these things to make it easier to follow, fwiw.
- adrianN 7y agoI wonder whether we could change school curricula so that people develop an intuition about quantum systems instead. I my schooling I learned almost exclusively particle abstractions. It's only natural that I'm more comfortable with particles.
- DagAgren 7y ago> Most people have an intuition about particles That intuition is also most likely completely wrong.
- stared 7y agoIn this case, electric current is NOT carried by electrons. Electrons in a material are effective particles, with a different mass, vide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_mass_(solid-state_physics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_mass_(solid-state_ph.... Partice != fundamental particle.