I have a big problem with this myself. I try not to do it but it's difficult not to. If I hear myself doing it, I stop myself. I think people think it's showing off or trying to intimidate but really it's just pure excitement at how amazing the world is. Sounds like it's the same for you.
The wave-particle duality thing fascinates me and horrifies me in equal measure. My jaw dropped when I was taught it but then I realised that what I was being taught was, essentially, wrong. Yes, light sometimes behaves as a particle and sometimes as a wave but that's because we're trying to model it on something familiar. The fact that it does both means that it's neither. The science is a fudge made for the sake of being able to predict things. I prefer "is" to "like". I want to know what light "is" not what it behaves "like". Someone one day will explain it. But, for now, we don't know.
It's like how gravity acts on bodies that have mass. Photons have no mass so why can't they escape a black hole? A black hole should have no effect on light at all, but the very name of a black hole implies that it does. The truth (or the current truth) is that gravity (and by implication, mass) bends reality. By the very act of existing, you are bending reality. Amazing stuff.
Is it normal to be a "know it all"?
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I have a big problem with this myself. I try not to do it but it's difficult not to. If I hear myself doing it, I stop myself. I think people think it's showing off or trying to intimidate but really it's just pure excitement at how amazing the world is. Sounds like it's the same for you.
The wave-particle duality thing fascinates me and horrifies me in equal measure. My jaw dropped when I was taught it but then I realised that what I was being taught was, essentially, wrong. Yes, light sometimes behaves as a particle and sometimes as a wave but that's because we're trying to model it on something familiar. The fact that it does both means that it's neither. The science is a fudge made for the sake of being able to predict things. I prefer "is" to "like". I want to know what light "is" not what it behaves "like". Someone one day will explain it. But, for now, we don't know.
It's like how gravity acts on bodies that have mass. Photons have no mass so why can't they escape a black hole? A black hole should have no effect on light at all, but the very name of a black hole implies that it does. The truth (or the current truth) is that gravity (and by implication, mass) bends reality. By the very act of existing, you are bending reality. Amazing stuff.