Understanding photons

This week, I took a phone call from a student at the University of Manchester to discuss how I might contribute to the university’s Alumni Fund. I was a student in Management Sciences at the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology (UMIST) from 1967-1971 and UMIST has recently merged with the Victoria University of Manchester.
My caller turned out to be a young woman currently studying for an MSc in Photo Science. So, to be conversational, I asked her: “So tell me, Jennifer, is a photon a particle or a wave?” She replied immediately: “It’s a duality, Mr Darlington”.
Warming to my theme, I then asked Jennifer: “So do you think we’ll find the Higgs boson particle“. Totally unfazed, she responded: “I don’t think so – but they are trying to locate it with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN“.
At this point, I decided to let Jennifer get on with the fund raising and I went to watch the television news on the latest car-bombing in Bagdad.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 6:59 am and is filed under Science & technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Comments

  • Janet
    December 7th, 2006 at 9:10 am

    The History student who phoned me last year in regard to the University of Birmingham Alumni fund drew a short straw. When I was asked about contributing to improve student life at Birmingham, I replied that I was already contributing to improve a student life there – in the form of our son who was in his final year of an Engineering degree!

  • Roger Darlington
    December 7th, 2006 at 9:30 pm

    That’s a good answer, Janet. Once Tolly has left though, you’ll need another excuse. I know: you’re funding Tess through university …