
Originally Posted by
haventaclue
just wondering. i know one can turn into the other and vice versa. but in the context of the various fields of study.
i've just picked up a book about quantum physics (physics for everyone, you know the kind of books). this is my first book specifically about quantum physics.any other books just glanced at the uncertainty principle and explained where the quantum mechanics began.
is quantum physics still at the level that deals with particles with and without mass and they're response to energy?or is it at this level that one would get an understanding of the most elementary building blocks of everything?(that is the things that make up both energy and mass). or is that another level of study.something like string theory? or other theories that go further down a level again?
Suppose you've determined the mass of two particles, and you put them into a particle accelerator and start accelerating them so they're going in opposite directions at a very high speed, like a substantial fraction of the speed of light, and then they collide in a way so they don't bounce off of each other, they just fuse. If you measure the mass of the combined particle, then theoretically it should weigh more than the two original particles put together.
In practice, they would probably give off some heat when they collide, so that would kind of gum up the experiment because some of the energy is getting lost before it becomes mass, but you get the general idea?