Silly question:

I see
I SAID pls no bully

Look to your left and now your right. In your class, none of the students present have probably ever thought about this

One of us!
One of us!
One of us!

Op here, like i said, i've been wondering if photons and electrons collide so hear me out. Imagine a basket ball, regular basket ball, around it there's a thick layer of electrons, it's as thick as it gets and it's 10 times bigger then the ball, i'm well aware that such things don't exist but just answer my question, could the photons in light be able to get past the thick layer?

HERESY
BURN THE WITCH!

photons can interact with anything with electric charge. Electrons have electric charge so they can interact with photons. For example when two electrons scatter from each other, this is done via the emission and absorption of a photon.

When you say interact, you mean touching, right? I just want to know if they touch.

Imagine that you put an electric field inside an electric field. Are the electric fields touching?

I don't fucking know, like i said, i'm clueless when it comes to this kind of shit.

Nah dude nah.
That's gay.

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like a poster said earlier "touching" at this scale is not really well define. It's important to realise that the particles in the feynman diagrams are really just excitations of underlying fields (e.g. the electron is a local excitation of the electron field). To get a proper grasp on it you'd need to study quantum field theory.

Essentially "touch" has no meaning here.

There's no definite answer, I'm just rephrasing the question in a different way. It helps to think about electrons as more than just solid objects sometimes. If a photon and an electron interact, this is more or less what's happening: their fields interact. It's quite hard to say whether or not they touch, since we're talking about interacting fields. You might also want to think about the photon being absorbed by the electron. If a sponge absorbs water, are they touching?

I dispute that fact and raise you percentile charge theory in that the amount of time a field has spent interacting with another per partical will define an exchange equal to or less than the defined equilibrium charge at the disposal of the defining atomic force.
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Does that mean that the idea of ''touching'' doesn't exist?
No? the atoms in the water and in the sponge don't collide with each other, right?

DISSAPATION INTO THE VOID IS REAL!
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JuSt ExPlOdE mY aToMs InTo A sMaShEr SeNpAi!

Pls don't derail this thread, i'm really curious.

>Does that mean that the idea of ''touching'' doesn't exist?
It's not well-defined. In physical terms, we need to have some way of quantifying it. If we're talking about two electrons touching, are we talking about "touching" the hard-sphere radius of an electron (that only exists in classical physics)? Are we talking about two electrons occupying the same space? Are we talking about the minimum distance between electrons you can get before electrostatic repulsion is no longer the dominant force?
Touching exists in the sense that you can place a ball on a table. That makes intuitive sense. For the example of an lectron and an electron, or an electron and a photon, it might help to think of touching as a subset of interaction: not all interaction is touching, but all touching is an interaction.
Here's a video you might find interesting:
youtube.com/watch?v=P0TNJrTlbBQ
(Forgive the SJW cunt in the video)

You just put the word right in my mouth user, i'm trying to understand what would happen in both of these scenarios you presented, so let me reiterate my question.

Can photons and electrons occupy the same space?

I can't give you a definite answer to that. I guess they can? You can have electrons absorbing photons or emitting photons... But it would be very difficult for me to say at what point they are occupying the same space, or what exactly that means.

user, when i say ''touching'' i want you to think about it in a conventional way, i'm a simple man and i'm going full retard here but i that just what i want to know, i'm watching the video btw. Also thank you for trying to help me.

I know, but that's just not something anyone can do, because it's not defined. I could define touching in such a way that the answer to your question follows directly from my definition. I could say: They touch when they reach the minimum possible distance between them. By definition, they can touch, so it's a pretty arbitrary definition. Sadly you will find a lot of physics will be like this as it starts to get more mathematical...

What i mean by touching is, like you said
>They touch when they reach the minimum possible distance between them. By definition, they can touch

Ok, so let me go full blown retard here and take you back to the basket ball example.

Imagine a basket ball, around it there a thick layer of electrons, and there's a space between the ball and the thick layer. And now there a single photon heading towards the ball, could it get past the layer and reach the ball? Or even the space between the ball and the layer?

But the problem with that definition is that now we have to define the minimum possible distance. Obviously the minimum conceivable distance when the position of the center of both electrons is the same:
(x1,y1,z1)=(x2,y2,z2)
But two electrons cannot physically share exactly the same center point. Is there a more meaningful definition for the point of contact? What about where their center points are separated by an infinitesimal distance? Sure, but that's also impossible. What about a planck length distance? Sure, but we would never be able to observe it, so why would we need this definition? What about some arbitrary distance between the center points? Sure, but now it's arbitrary.
The basketball question you're asking is a different question entirely. You're asking whether the photon could pass by a shell of electrons, unimpeded. That depends on the distance between the electrons. Let's ignore tunneling, and ask if there is enough space for a photon to pass through? If yes, the photon could possibly pass thorugh. If no, the photon cannot pass through. I might be able to try and calculate how big the gap would need to be, but I don't know enough/can't be bothered finding out.

Yeah i'm asking if the photon could pass but not unimpeded, like, the layer gets thicker as the you approach the ball, do you think a single photon would be able to reach the ball? Just give me your opinion.

I don't really know why it matters that the layer of electrons gets thicker. If you have a layer of electrons that gets thicker closer towards the ball (to a point of infinite thickness), you have a wall of infinite potential, so the photon would not be able to pass through by tunneling. If there's a gap between electrons that the photon is able to pass through, then the photon will be able to pass through. If there is a gap between electrons that is not big enough for the photon to pass through, the photon will not be able to pass through.
What makes the gap "big enough" for the photon to pass through is where the electrons are far enough away that the electromagnetic forces will not prevent it from passing through.

In my example there's no gap, so the photon can get through, and that settles it. Thank you user, you hot son of a bitch.

I have another question related to my previous question. If the photon can't pass through the layer and reach the ball, will the ball be visible or will it apper as just a black dot? Because there's no light reaching it, right?

Well, if there's no infinite potential, there's a chance a photon could tunnel through.
Your question also doesn't lend itself well to extrapolation, so it doesn't mean much to ask about its visibility. The electrons will absorb the photon and emit the photon, so it will emit light. It may be low intensity, since it's possible the photon will diffuse some distance into the shell of electrons before getting captured.
It really depends on so many things, and it's not physically possible, so I couldn't say.

I know it's physically impossible, you're saying that the electrons will absorb the photon then it will emit light, so if there's enough photons/light heading towards the ball and getting in contact with the layer, woudn't the layer be visible instead of the ball? That's what i wanna know now

Yeah, I meant the layer. The reason why I drew attention to the fact it's physically impossible is because there's a lot of variables that change everything. What's the energy of the incident photon? What's holding the electrons in place? Do they heat up? Will the electrons cascade down energy levels after being excited, and emit different wavelengths of light?
It's getting too pointless at this point, so I'm calling it quits.

particles are modelled as wave packets. when calculating interaction probabilities the sections of wave overlap are significant. this could be called "touching". so actually, all particles "touch"

Ok user, thank you anyway