Do protons, neutrons, and electrons really exist or are they just useful approximations/visualizations?

Wait a minute, I just remembered something.

Express a single proton as a Colomb potential. Solve the Schrodinger equation and obtain wavefunctions. The solution set becomes very obvious why they don't collide.

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sort of and sort of not

>what makes the cathode-ray tube glow?
magic

wanna fuck this graph

My thoughts exactly

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Saved for use later

None of them exist. It's all aether stuff.

>just turn your brain off

Does anything really exist? Think about it bro...

This guy basically has it. The spooky (or quite sensible, if you think about it) thing is that the s electrons have a finite probability of being found inside the nucleus (see hydrogenic wavefunctions), however the expectation value of the velocity is zero so it's not much of a "smash." Intuition from other central forces (e.g. gravity or classical EM) does not apply to quantum operators. Particles occupy their lowest available eigenstate at zero temperature

There are no electrons.

With regards to the conservation laws, not so much. Electrons are happy to smash into nuclei if they have enough incident kinetic energy, and the conservation laws take care of themselves during the induced nuclear reaction. The real physics is in the electronic wavefunctions, which defy ordinary intuition.

t. Will be physics PhD in December

Good luck in your future studies

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The electrical phenomena as far as good conductors go is around the space of the conductor, not running through the inside.

It's the insulators that run the electricity on the inside, where is terminates or it strains the structure.

Questions like this essentially boil down to the fact that our definitions of "really exist" are ambiguous. We can predict behavior using mathematical models, the better our models the more accurately we can predict behavior in more situations. Any further abstractions of 'particles' or 'waves' or whatever are human concepts based upon patterns we are used to seeing and interacting with in the macro world, and will share some but not all properties with the various terms in our formulas.

They exist in the same sense that dogs exist, and the word is a useful approximation, and this is a useful visualization.

The particular visualization you have shown is purely symbolic, about as close to a dog as are the letters D-O-G, or at least as the description "has four legs, a tail, and barks."

But signs that say "Beware of Dog", are just as valid as "Beware Electron Gun In Use", as both electrons and dogs are real enough, and have consequences. Even if, in the end, everything is an approximation - such is the human condition.

>Bohr diagram

The universe is deterministic. Copenhagen is wrong.

Well it's either one or the other. You can't have both.

Wave or particle. Pick one.

My point is that it might share some properties with our notions of a particle and other properties with our notions of a wave but trying to say that it 'really is' one or the other is meaningless. We can accurately model its behavior, whatever word we call it is just a way we try to draw and intuitive analogy with something we are more familiar with (like a macroscopic particle, or a wave in a fluid). If you were arguing over the difference between two different models of behavior it would be one thing, but you shouldn't insist that it is a 'particle' or a 'wave' in some intuitive human sense of the words.

Maybe these facts will help you decide yourself what "really exists":

In the standard model the electron is an elementary particle. It is modeled as a mathematical point, with no width/height. Protons and neutron are "composite particles" that are "made up of" two or more elementary particles. But it's also possible to describe them entirely mathematically, even though some people think you can talk about things such as the "radius of a proton":

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_radius_puzzle

The very concept of a wave/particle duality is a fallacy.
This idea needs to get out of modern science.

same question m8.
point is though: the models work, which is why they are used.
your visualizing the equation and the stigmas of the atoms, not the real thing though.

phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html

Why do you think so? This strikes me as a pseudosciency opinion of someone who finds something to be unintuitive and so disregards it and the scientific consensus on something that is basically just a feeling. Believe it or not you aren't the first to be skeptical of this and yet still the scientific community has invariably accepted it. Why? Is it because everyone except you is just stupid? Is it because there is some conspiracy of in science serving some obscure purpose? Both of these options seem far less likely than the third, that you are the one who doesn't understand a topic that is very easy to misunderstand.

But by all means if you have a convincing argument against the currently understood physical models, or better yet an actual alternative proposal which would explain the behavior we observe, I'm all ears.

because the angular momentum of the electron is nonzero because it has a nonzero rest mass. in order for the distance between the electron and proton to get to zero you would need to somehow make the angular momentum of the electron get to zero (because angular momentum at r = 0 is 0). this is basically impossible outside of a particle collider and doesn't happen in nature

The concept is just off. Just sound it out in your head, "Wave particle duality".
I don't see a singe other duality in nature.

There's no particle behavior in ANY of the experiments.
They won't let go of the particle for historical context, on the back of J.J. Thompson and Einstein.

All of the electrical and light phenomena, there's no mass to anything.
Then that brings physics into particle stuff, because everything is now a marble. Now you have literal collisions and stuff.

There is no particle. No one knows what's happening down there.
But we know that it's a wave phenomena. Fields prove that.

You start bringing in particles and then you lose everything because you have to explain away the fields.

There are many things in science that sound off but are nonetheless repeatedly shown to be true - like the fact that time is relative, rather than universal. If you're going to balk every time something seems counter-intuitive, especially when it's for entirely linguistic reasons, you aren't going to get very far.

>There's no particle behavior in ANY of the experiments.
You've not read a thing on this subject, have you? I mean, even in the basic double slit experiment, that everyone derives so many misnomers from - that's literally half the experiment. If there were no particles, you'd have no mass and no matter. You can think of particles as fluctuations in the field, but suffice to say, you gotta denote them somehow, and without them, the fields never interact. Further, everything without mass travels at the speed of light.

youtube.com/watch?v=gSKzgpt4HBU
youtube.com/watch?v=p-MNSLsjjdo

>no particle behavior in experiments
Are you serious? Double slit experiment? Countless others? Fuck outta here. You're fucking retarded.

>I don't see a single other duality in nature
That's the point, fuckward. That's why quantum theory is so difficult, because it's so radically different from anything we experience macroscopically.

Time isn't relative is a metric dimension. It's just a measure of motion, it is not segregated and separate on different scales, it is universal for motion can only be measured against motion.
As soon as that stops being true, then you have zero reference frame for time.

All the double slit shows is an interference pattern. That's all.
There's no duality in it. It's simply showing how the waves interact.

...and when you shoot individual phucking electrons at the screen, what are those?

It's just a laser.
>Individual electrons

There is no matter in light. There's no mass involved.
You don't need particles do denote how two fields can interact, the fields can just interact.

>do the thing(s) which are fundamental to the concept of existence being true exist?
If they don't, we should change what "exists" means so that it fits them.

>electrons
I think you mean electron.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

You can literally detect individual photons. If everything is waves, how does that happen? If there are no particles, where does the mass and matter that allows you to exist and build the instruments to make that observation come from? How do electrons make patterns in the double slit experiment over time with nothing to interact with but themselves and the contact?

phys.org/news/2015-04-ultra-sensitive-sensor-individual-electrons.html

arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1508/1508.04307.pdf

That double slit experiment doesn't exist. One with the electron spread.
No one has even bothered to implement it or double check it.

Having the displacement of electrons change with a present observer should be a red flag.
The only double slit experiment there is is with light and the resulting effect.

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/15/3/033018

>No one has even bothered to implement it or double check it.
This experiment is repeated by undergrads literally hundreds of times per day in universities all over the the damned planet. There are working machines that D-Wave and other companies sell to Google and the like that literally depend on the effect to function.

And the observer doesn't have to be present, the result is the same be it measured by man or machine - it's ultimately a machine doing the "observation" either way. Hollywood pop-sci has merely twisted the meaning of "observer" in this case.

Also what exactly do you mean by "Having the displacement of electrons change with a present observer"? Do you understand that an observation in QM does not imply anything about someone being present but rather means that a measurement is made which requires an interaction with what is being measured?

>>SIT DOWN SHUT UP!

Dont just say "everyone does it everyday". Look into it.
I did a paper on the D-wave machines and it's the biggest meme going around.
That 'observer' experiment, it doesn't exist. look into it, but look deep. Don't just google the top result.

I don't care about proving MY point. It's for you.

You clearly don't know any university students. Spend a day in any cafe in Boston and ask the p-students to raise their hands, and ask how many have done the experiment.

I mean, fuck, you can do the basic version yourself at home:
youtube.com/watch?v=UANVMIajqlA
Or watch Hitachi Labs demonstrate the electron version every day:
youtube.com/watch?v=PanqoHa_B6c

And as for D-wave, you can literally download the software, compile it, connect to their service, and try it out yourself.
github.com/dwavesystems/qbsolv

You're one of those kids that has just decided you don't like how something works, and will ignore all evidence that proves you wrong, regardless of how highly piled it is, so it's debating religion at this point, but just look into the basics of how matter and mass work (some PBS for idiots videos already linked above) - you can't have them without particles.

It's just the electron version. The particle version.
It's a thought experiment. There's no actual experiment that detects a single electron nor is there a software present that can actually view particles.

>electron version literally linked there.
>multiple articles describing devices and experiments that capture individual electrons already linked in the thread.
I guess it really isn't just a river in Egypt.

Here's a real simple experiment.

Take a thick laser and a single needle or a small strip of metal or something.
Make sure the laser is shooting out a beam that's larger than the needle.

If you project the laser onto a back surface behind the needle you should see the light split in two at the destination, right? Like an inverse double split experiment.

I mean that makes perfect sense right? The photons are split and can only travel linearly.
Try it. It's a lot easier than taking and implementing source code for vector bit optimisation sorts from GitHub.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arago_spot

This model is clearly inaccurate, since it fails to account for the Helvetica Scenario

>"implementing source code for vector bit optimisation sorts"
t. Charlatan

Feel free to explain what the code does. I have no fucking idea.

Yaah that's the one. See? No particles.

What the hell are you on about, you were just saying light "travels linearly" and when shown a clear example to the contrary you act as if this proves your point. Everything you've said has been debunked and by the sound of things you haven't studied much physics but are all too willing to share your intuitions.

How can the particle not travel linearly?
It's a wave, you've been tricked.
A duality is the stupidest shit ever. How can something be two things at once?

So you're saying light travels linearly, because it is a particle (), then you say it doesn't travel linearly because it's a wave, and top it off by saying it can't be both particle and wave.

The language and concepts we use allow for a system most consistent with the largest breadth possible. Pragmatically it doesn't matter.