"Surely You are Joking my Son"

A few days back i was confronted by the same question which had once troubled the great physicist Dr. Richard Feynman. However, it so happens that there were a few similarities and a few dissimilarities regarding the premise of this question. First the similarities; In both these cases this question was asked to them by their respective fathers (hero-figure to their sons) while their sons holidaying at home, away from their undergrad courses. Both these men expected to get a satisfactory answer to this question as they had spent a considerable amount of their fortune in sending their sons to respectable science colleges of their respective countries. Both sons failed to live up to their father’s expectations. The dissimilarities (are most obvious); one of them was one of the most original thinkers of all times and the other is the most wannabe original thinker of all times. Secondly Feynman’s story is what you would read in any of his books or see in any of his documentaries and my story i assure you, will get to read in my stupid blog. So, the choice is yours: Do you want to read the story of a man who changed the way we look at QED or a guy who still hasn’t able to figure out the working of the LED.

I’m pretty much sure 99% of the people must have closed my blog window. But throughout my life i able to make sense to the rest 1% so i shall ramble on…. Yes, so about the question which we faced (i should stop using ‘we’ now!) “What is light? Is it particle or wave?”

I found myself uncomfortably dumb. After gathering my thoughts I began explaining (with whatever poor understanding I have of the subject) to Baba that according to me it was neither, only sometimes in some experiments it shows characteristics of a particle and in some experiments it shows characteristics of a wave. As a silly example I offered: from a distance a red round object might be confused for an apple or a cricket ball as they are red and round. Might be either; might be neither.Or perhaps there ain’t difference between either. However, I was unable to convince Baba who through some source had come to the conclusion that light is both a particle and wave. With his very sweet and mischievous smile he said to me “Surely you are joking, my son.” After several futile attempts to express and impress, I gave up. However, this question kept bothering me (probably my own inability to convince myself lead to this commotion.)

2:30 A.M : On a piece of paper I wrote down the big question in block letters.

“IS LIGHT A PARTICLE OR A WAVE?”

Nearly 10 minutes of glancing at the paper and the question made absolutely no sense to me!!!! The explanation that shall follow is quite fuzzy but please bear with it.

Question1: What is light? Is it real?

Answer: Light is a form of energy and blah and blah and blah….(plz refer text books.) IT IS PROBABLY THE ONLY REAL THING.

Question2: What is particle/wave? Is it real?

Answer: Particles and Waves are nothing but creations of the human mind (which is essentially a pattern recognition machine). They are 2 imaginary word-concepts created by physicist so that they can make some sense of the things that are happening around them. In reality either may exist neither may exist or both might be the same thing (that is what we currently like to believe -The Wave-Particle Duality.)

So, all this time we have been trying to through our intellect fit in something as real as light within the narrow constraints of human imagination which is blinded by not only by perception and experience but also by prejudice. "Trying to explain the beauty and intricacies of nature by verification from human imagination". Is this what SCIENCE is all about? Is SCIENCE all about satisfying man’s fundamental requirement of trying to explain everything. Or is it about just staring at Mother Nature, totally taken in by her beauty and intricacy, totally overjoyed to have witnessed this spectacle, totally clueless and helpless? Being happy to know that you just don't know and you don't need to.

i don’t know. And that’s why i am not Richard Feynman.