So I was thinking about particle/wave duality and wondering how far it extends. I know that every particle is a wave, but is every wave also a particle?[1] And that got me thinking about sound particles.
Soon I was imagining something like a Bose-Einstein condensate of trapped phonemes.[2] I mean, you couldn't just hold 'em in a glass jar, after all. But what would I do with a stored (or trapped) collection of sound particles once I had it?
Oooh, and once you had sound particles, you could try to bounce photons off of 'em: then even folks without synaesthesia could know what various sounds look like!
Soapy thoughts -- what'cha gonna do but post 'em to LJ and bug everyone else with 'em, eh?
[1] I'll look it up later. I oughta' already know. High school was a long time ago and I never formally studied QM, but yeah, I ought to already know this anyhow. Seems kind of basic.
[2] Yes, I'm aware that phonemes aren't atomic acoustically (even if you think of them as linguistic atoms[3]), but this isn't a rigorous theory or even a serious exploration of a hypothesis; it's just shower-musing. Go with it for the moment. Besides, non-atomic particles (and yeah, I'll always continue to be amused by the fact that atoms aren't atomic) act as waves too, right?[4]
[3] Though that brings up another notion: is information-propogation wavelike? If so, memes would be particles, right? Okay, enough of that for now.
[4] And for anyone wondering, yes I still do want to perform the two-slit experiment with a mass driver and a bunch of Volkswagons and a baseline several AU long. It'd be fun. Okay, maybe with bicycles or toasters if cars would require too long a baseline to get dramatic results.
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Yes.
"Soon I was imagining something like a Bose-Einstein condensate of trapped phonemes."
The accepted term for a quantum of acoustic energy is phonon. Not sure if you could do a Bose-Einstein condensate of them or not; it depends on their spin characteristics, which I don't know offhand, and am not up to calculating without 4-5 hours of re-learning intermediate QM.
"Though that brings up another notion: is information-propogation wavelike?"
Um. Dunno as anyone's formalized information transfer far enough to answer this one. Information theory kinda sidesteps the notion of _how_ it's transferred, and concentrates on the statistics of the transferred information. On the other hand, the correspondence between information and entropy suggests there might be some meat here...
"If so, memes would be particles, right?"
Well, bits, anyhow. Memes tend to be a little more complex than single bits...
"And for anyone wondering, yes I still do want to perform the two-slit experiment with a mass driver and a bunch of Volkswagons and a baseline several AU long. It'd be fun."
Yeah, it would. If you can get together the rest of the equipment, I'll donate my Volkswagen.
Oh, one other thing...
sound particles
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Even tho it was Very Atomic, since it was done with early 60's technology, there's probably some significant upgrades you could do to it now.
It might be worth a call to Dr Seuss's estate. If anyone could build a device that lets you watch music in a Quantum sense, it would be him.
Heck, they might even lend you the prototype.
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You should maybe just shower. Enjoy the spray. Be here now. Just an antecedent.
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