Everything in the world around us, including ourselves, is made up of identical
material particles with regular properties which obey physical laws.
Field theory encompasses quantum mechanics, and quantum mechanics encompasses the rest of physics “If you press a physicist to say what a field is, they’ll say a field is whatever a field does.”
Waves are the best metaphor to understand particles and fields. Electrons, in addition to being particles, are simultaneously waves in the “electron field.” Quarks are waves in the “quark field” (and since there are six types of quark, there are six quark fields), and so forth. Photons are like water ripples: they can be big or small, violent or barely noticeable. The fields describing matter particles are more like waves on a guitar string. If you don’t pluck the string hard enough, you don’t get any sound at all
Field theory encompasses quantum mechanics, and quantum mechanics encompasses the rest of physics “If you press a physicist to say what a field is, they’ll say a field is whatever a field does.”
Waves are the best metaphor to understand particles and fields. Electrons, in addition to being particles, are simultaneously waves in the “electron field.” Quarks are waves in the “quark field” (and since there are six types of quark, there are six quark fields), and so forth. Photons are like water ripples: they can be big or small, violent or barely noticeable. The fields describing matter particles are more like waves on a guitar string. If you don’t pluck the string hard enough, you don’t get any sound at all
As a result of all this quantum thinking, it’s often unhelpful to think of particles as being like tiny balls.
“Photons [and matter particles] travel freely through space as a wave,” says Gbur, even though they can be counted as though they were balls.
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