Question on Protons/Neutrons

[dgavin]

I was reading some things that indicated that when protons or nutrons are accelated outside of an atomic nucleous they displayed the same sort of partical/wave duality that electrons do.

So this begs the question... is the nulceous of an atom possibly a form of a standing wave (or a collection of standing waves)?

[Geo Kaplan]

I was reading some things that indicated that when protons or nutrons are accelated outside of an atomic nucleous they displayed the same sort of partical/wave duality that electrons do.

So this begs the question... is the nulceous of an atom possibly a form of a standing wave (or a collection of standing waves)?

The short answer is that particle-wave duality is a rather fundamental characteristic of all matter. The constituents of the nucleus (note spelling) are no exception. The nucleus has energy levels of its own, just as those associated with electron "orbits" you might be familiar with.

And you don't have to accelerate protons or neutrons (note spelling), by the way (it might be convenient or necessary for certain experiments, but acceleration per se is not a strict requirement for wave-particle duality).

[Ken G]

Geo Kaplan is right on, and furthermore, this means the answer to your question is "yes"-- it does act like a kind of standing wave. Any kind of particle in a small enough kind of "box" will act that way, it's just that some particles, like baseballs, would need to be in a box so small that it wouldn't even make sense to imagine a baseball inside a box like that, so those are the only kinds of particles for whom wave-particle duality does not make sense (and to analyze such small boxes you have to notice that the baseball is made of constituent particles that are much smaller). For protons and neutrons, the kind of "box" they are in, when in a nucleus, is about the same size as the protons and neutrons, so it stretches the meaning of the "standing wave" picture and you sometimes have to break the protons and neutrons up into their constituent particles too (which are called quarks). Perhaps there is someone who works in nuclear physics that can expound on that.

[trinitree88]

Geo Kaplan is right on, and furthermore, this means the answer to your question is "yes"-- it does act like a kind of standing wave. Any kind of particle in a small enough kind of "box" will act that way, it's just that some particles, like baseballs, would need to be in a box so small that it wouldn't even make sense to imagine a baseball inside a box like that, so those are the only kinds of particles for whom wave-particle duality does not make sense (and to analyze such small boxes you have to notice that the baseball is made of constituent particles that are much smaller). For protons and neutrons, the kind of "box" they are in, when in a nucleus, is about the same size as the protons and neutrons, so it stretches the meaning of the "standing wave" picture and you sometimes have to break the protons and neutrons up into their constituent particles too (which are called quarks). Perhaps there is someone who works in nuclear physics that can expound on that.

Ken G Yep. The energy required to confine an electron to a nucleus exceeds the binding energy of the nucleus....so in order to put it there....you'd have to blow the nucleus up. Surprising to most. SEE:http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/hframe.html
go to QUANTUM PHYSICS/then UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE ...scroll halfway down ....confine electron to nucleus ~ 3 Gev.

[korjik]

IIRC, they have double-slitted sodium. That would make it a pretty conclusive yes

Yup, they did

[Geo Kaplan]

IIRC, they have double-slitted sodium. That would make it a pretty conclusive yes

Yup, they did

And that wiki entry points out that even fullerenes have been double-slitted. No wonder I feel fuzzy - I am fuzzy!

[dgavin]

Thanks for the answers! Gald to know I was on the right track for a change. I'm more into vulcanology so wasn't sure if I was barking up a wrong tree so to speak.

This is now causing me to have some rather intresting thoughts on the nature of gravity. But expounding on those would be ATM at best so i won't do that here.

[bemp45]

Protons and nutrons are actually similar in construct to the atom. They are, themselves, made up of even smaller particles which are in turn made up, eventually of elemental energy waves or fields joined in differing arrays by Higgs-bosons, or so the CERN LHC will prove or disprove. If the LHC does not have the energy, or if it breaks out the individual particles and some of the energy can't be accounted for, the physicists need to buy a lot of chalk and blackboards.

What of interest comes from this, are these elemental energy fields that make up our matter, operating on a specific frequency? If they are, and since there is so much space (infinite) could there be fields operating at a different frequency that make up matter with its own physical laws. In this way, parellel universes could co-exist and be created, live and end independent of all the others. Think this way, if you could tune into all frequencies at the same time, the picture would be a solid block. With no limits, of course. And no 'dark matter'. Wall-to-wall universes operating like Sirius HD radio. We can only listen (live) in our own FM station.

[caveman1917]

They are, themselves, made up of even smaller particles which are in turn made up, eventually of elemental energy waves

I think you have misunderstood the wave-particle relation. It is not so that a particle, when probing deeper and deeper, will eventually be made up of waves. The wave is the particle.

Current theory suggests this: there is a field for every fundamental particle. So we have the up-quark field, the electron field etc.
Those fields 'ripple', there are waves like on the surface of the ocean. When two of these fields interact, the interaction takes place at a specific point and that would be what we think of as a particle. Left to its own devices, it's just a rippling wave. They're the same thing really.

[jj_0001]

To answer Dgavin's question another way, take a look (I'm hardly capable of describing it in an article here) at the understanding of "shells" in a nucleus, and the "magic numbers". These are probabilistic "locations' for the particles in a nucleus, just like the orbitals in an atom are likewise for the atom.

I've had people twitch when I talked about the "wavelength of a car", though. Does a composite object have ONE wavelength? Perhaps, given the sodium experiment, since it's a composite of a bunch of more elementary particles.

[mugaliens]

Yep - matter are waves, else ridged mirrors wouldn't work.

[dgavin]

Thanks for all the information!