X-Message-Number: 7922
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 1997 08:28:26 -0800 (PST)
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: Uploading

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        >>Me: 

        >>Mass, energy, momentum, electric charge, spin, charm, and color,
                >>are all digital quantities.
        
        >Dejan Vucinic <> On Sat, 22 Mar 1997      
        >Digital they aren't, discrete is what you probably meant.  And

        >discrete they are not either.  Spin and charge of particles are
        
        >observed as discrete values, the discreteness of color charge is
                >deduced indirectly, but mass, energy and momentum are observed        
        >as continuous. 
        

Max Planck started the entire revolution by proposing that energy is NOT 
continuous, everything followed from there. Take a beam of light for example, 
it has momentum nhf, h is the Planck constant, f is the frequency of the 
light, and n is an INTEGER, the number of photons. Digital.

If you want to find the momentum of an individual photon, hf, you can find it 
by using the formula hN/X , h is the Planck constant again, and N is the 
number of wave crests the photon makes over a distance X. Digital. 

If you want to find the energy of a photon multiply the digital momentum by a  
constant, the speed of light. Digital.

Of course, there is a basic randomness built into the fabric of the universe, 
so if we were to actually perform this experiment when we got near the end of 
distance X it would not be entirely clear if we should include the last wave 
crest or not. We could minimize this problem and get a more accurate 
measurement of momentum by making X bigger, but then you'd know less about 
the position of the photon, X. Momentum and position have an inverse 
relationship, the more you know about one the less you know about the other, 
however randomness is NOT a continuous quantity, in fact it is as far from 
that concept as it is possible to get.

As for matter, it comes in particles, it is not smeared around, only the  
probability of finding it. If you look for an electron at a particular spot 
you may find one or you may not, you can't be certain, the best you can do is 
come up with probabilities. However one thing you CAN be absolutely certain
of is that you will find an electron OR you will not. Digital. There is no 
middle ground, there is no chance you will find half an electron or "sort of" 
an electron. If an electron is detected when it hits a phosphorous screen it 
will produce a photon of light. If it is not detected it will not produce a
photon of light. There are no other possibilities, it will never produce 
half a photon of light. If an electron is detected it ALWAYS acts like a 
particle. The probability of finding the particle acts like a wave and is 

not deterministic hence the random element.
                                                    
                                             John K Clark    

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