You are right that the actual values of the quantum \u201cwave function\u201d are not generally observable and that the things we can actually measure are usually more like properties of particles.<\/p>\n
But there are some ways of getting partial information about the wave function itself. For example chemistry and molecular structure gives us a way of learning about the squared magnitude of the wave function when it is a \u201cstanding wave\u201d and a scanning tunneling microscope even gives us a more direct picture of that. And the relationships between phases at different points sometimes lead to observable effects in solid state theory and in the Aharonov-Bohm effect.<\/p>\n
Source: (1000) Alan Cooper’s answer to Can we measure wave properties of particles or is my contention that ‘waves travel but particles are detected’ correct? – Quora<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Quora question asks: Can we measure wave properties of particles or is my contention that ‘waves travel but particles are detected’ correct? You are right that the actual values of the quantum \u201cwave function\u201d are not generally observable and that the things we can actually measure are usually more like properties of particles. But … Continue reading Waves vs Particles<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[28],"topics":[],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quora-answers","tag-quantum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1256,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}