tl;dr - a standing wave in a blocked-off tunnel causes pressure fluctuations at the anti-nodes, changing the dew point and causing the rapid condensation of water in the air.

Seems plausible to this lay-person.

can't guarentee I don't occasionally navel-gaze tho. Take it or leave it.

To be fair, you were taught this in school if you were taught wave particle duality and the double slit experiment. Look at this. Now imagine a particle bouncing along in very small steps (quantum leaps if you will), and the direction it goes depends on the strength and orientation of the wave where it lands. You may never have been told to think about it like that, but that's what makes physics so amazing that sometimes all it takes is for someone to think about it slightly differently. The information was there all along, but who would imagine the 'particle' bit of an electron interacting with the 'wave' bit - the electron interacts with itself?

I absolutely love it, it's amazing, and simple and beautiful. It may provide insights into new ways we can model quantum behaviour, it might open up new questions to ask.

There's things I'd like to know. First, if the standing waves generated at each step in the droplet's progression interact with each other, the droplet is reacting according to waves it made in the past - what implications does that have for the notion of real particles in a spacetime continuum? For the double slits experiment to work in that model - in the ball on a rubber sheet sense - the sheet would have to stay warped to some extent after the ball had passed. In the quantum sense of the real double slits experiment, we would say it IS a wave, passes through both slits and appears according to statistical probability (the diffraction pattern).

Presumably several droplets released along the same path would go on to take a different route through the slits, to create a diffraction pattern as it must. Perhaps because of fluctuations in the temperature or density of the water at different locations? Is that a limitation of the model or an indicator about the nature of the fabric of spacetime? Perhaps even due to quantum fluctuations in the water particles - the water is never the same twice even if its perfectly still each time - which would potentially mean we're cyclically using quantum mechanics to explain quantum mechanics and we actually haven't explained very much.

The philosophy bit: But this reaches to the heart of the issue with quantum mechanics and perhaps science in general. How accurately can we model reality? The reality is beyond our ability to see, so we can only recreate simpler versions that are always wrong in some way... our idea of what happens - our models - can never be 100% because only a particle in spacetime can perfectly represent a particle in spacetime.

Scientific results and definitions are always defined with limits - "it works like this, within these confines, under these conditions, with these assumptions." There are always error margins. We are always only ever communicating an idea between different consciousnesses, and that idea will never be as true to life as life itself.

Sorry for the wall of text, it's a great and provocative experiment.

Neither, they've stimulated an oscillation of the free surface electrons in a wire and taken a diffraction pattern of that standing wave of electrons, using an electron microscope. It's sensationalism.

I was immediately apprehensive when the video stated that the light was confined to travelling along the nanowire and that it is reflected at either end and forms a standing wave. What is the photon interacting with at either end of the wire that reflects it?

The answer is that they haven't imaged light, but instead surface plasmons - oscillations of free electrons on the surface of the wire. Light is used to stimulate the plasmon, and the plasmon is used as a representation of light, which is imaged. However, electrons have mass and light does not.

A lot of reasonable people are calling this pop-science bullshit generated by the publicity department of whatever group published the study. Or rather, not that it's bullshit but that the explanation and headline are gross misrepresentations of what physical interactions are making the image.

montreal standing wave surfing (habitat) has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims on that post.

Surfing the standing wave has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims on that post.

This is a standing wave. There are standing-wave parks now in some areas of the world. I've never ridden one, so I don't know the difference between that and ocean surfing, but the first I learned of them I had an instant fantasy about owning a home near a river, so I could make one for myself. =D

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Basic points paraphrased from the article:

There are two speakers facing each other which are both producing the same tone. They are adjusted so that the waves interfere perfectly with each other, creating what's called a "standing wave". At the places where both waves have zero volume, called "nodes", the pressure coming up from the one wave and pressure coming down from the other is exactly equal, and they are strong enough to counteract gravity, so very light things can be suspended in mid air.

In this video, the guy adjusts the wave-o-metre thingie up and down, and it moves the nodes up and down, and the droplets move up and down as well.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'river, surfing, Germany, English Garden, Munich' to 'river, surfing, standing wave, Germany, English Garden, Munich' - edited by calvados

(A small addition that has a lot to do with the last part of the original Blog Post.)

The one I posted directly above has some small changes for easier reading. I still need to do a little idea storming at the end as I'm VERY unsure whether the forces at play would still hold the Universe together.

It's more likely that the "big rip" will win out, even over the weak and strong nuclear forces (which is a lot of energy considering that it just did it to the UNIVERSE! heh...

I also need to see, particularly under what conditions the Universe might start to be "swayed" by quantum fluctuations, the same you see at the beginning of the big bang, that had a lot to do with how matter and other non-baryonic (that 's the official way of saying, matter that isn't like the stuff we know: like Dark Matter) matter set up (when you look at the cosmic background radiation (CBR) map, the "hot vs. cold") topography wise; it's why the Universe isn't a smooth uniform (or symmetric) balanced energy place; which you would expect from a perfect explosion like the Big Bang, but the CBR shows that the explosion was far from being smooth and quite the opposite.

It's what gives us our galaxies and also where they're at. The question besides how gravity is related to the quantum mechanics realm; as we have NO theory (with a few hypotheses that almost all have to do with string theory: strings of energy in different "dimensional" configurations; like one dimension, two dimension (planer), etc..."; these little strings vibrate, kind of like a standing wave and intercede and connect into our dimension: think of a plane with limited dimensions on the x & y, then imagine a line intersecting in two spots--one coming "up" the other going "down", but the second connection BARELY hits the plane.

On our end we see a photon that appears to act like a particle and wave in whichever situation it's facing.Normally it may only act like a wave the first spot, but since the energy of this photon is a gamma ray (increased energy) it caused the string to vibrate more forcefully. Thus, connecting it to our "planer" observable space-time. But, when the energy decreases, the photon's string is pulled back and all of a sudden it only displays one of the two characteristics. Baryonic matter works the same way in String Theory, but requires VERY hard math to solve the discrepancies (one of the reasons some people hate it as it isn't a so called "elegant solution"; everything we've seen so far, while hard to grasp initially--tends to, "so far", work out to be very easy solutions).

However, string theory has described many things we have found out in the particle world very well. Another idea (which is more elegant and to me, the presence of "e" in it is very, intriguing) is E8 Symmetry. It's also a mathematical solution, so don't expect too much straight forward dialogue in it's definition. However, remember that Euler's number/The "Natural" number, "e", is related to a great many things already present in everyday life and the formation of almost everything from: you neural pathways, your circulatory system, clouds, trees/plants, sea shells, galaxies, fractals, and much much more...

What I need to know his how baryonic matter would react given a scenario were everything is ripped apart. Specifically, it's quantum mechanical reactions. Does it go into a "quantum critical state" (a fancy way of saying "pseudo"-superposition), as in this state it would still behave in a quantum mechanical way according to superposition. This leads to the last question. If it does enter superposition, is it possible that it may become "uncoupled, disassociated, or dis-entangled" from other matter, even non-baryonic matter like dark matter.

Anyway, just a bit more for what I wrote. More of me, thinking aloud, as I've read a lot about entanglement and superposition, but in this scenario I'd mot likely need an expert to think about it and give me an answer. Math will most likely be useless till we have some hard information on it; right now it's just pure observation. Then you may be able to commit yourself to some math that would show (or at least predict) what most likely would occur.

Another long ponderment! I'm keeping that word so screw you Merriam-Webster!

>> ^charliem:

Check out those standing waves...6, 7? That's so cool.

Yeah, can anybody explain why you get that kinda resonance?

Check out those standing waves...6, 7? That's so cool.