Wave Particle Duality & Hinduism
In 1905 Einstein published a paper about the “Photoelectric Effect” which showed that electromagnetic radiation can behave as particles rather than waves in some experiments. It was for this work that he later won the Nobel prize for Physics even though he is more famous for his work on Relativity (with its famous equation E=mc2).Wave-Particle duality plays a big role in modern physics and Quantum Mechanics in particular. In basics terms it says that when we get to a really small scale, we can no longer picture the world as we humans perceive it. Small fundamental “particles” like electrons can be thought of as tiny bits of matter whizzing round at fast speeds BUT they can also be thought of as waves which have no fixed position but exist as disturbances in space. Similarly, something like light which we have always thought of as waves can behave like particles. The real problem in getting our heads around this that something can behave as both a wave and particle and the way we see it depends purely on the experiment we carry out.
