(I’m placing this at the bottom here because the subthreads have become so complex as to be unnaviagable.)
Pekka Pirilä wrote:
>Perhaps, if any real physicists (i.e. not Webdummy) are involved in (or wish to be involved in) the discussion, they might comment.
Pekka, I am a real physicist: Ph.D. from Stanford in elementary-particle physics, later worked in semiconductor-device physics (so, I know, e.g., all about the Fermi surface to which WHT has alluded).
I took QM and intro to elementary-particle physics from Nobelist Richard Feynman at Caltech as an undergrad; I took quantum field theory from Nobelist Steve Weinberg at Stanford (Steve was on sabbatical visiting Stanford). I know about bosons and fermions, a fair amount about bosons and fermions.
On that issue, Web is simply and deeply wrong. There are an even number of fermions in a standard neutral water molecule. That gives an integral spin (an even number of half-integral spins gives an integral spin). Integral spins give bosons. QED.
It really is as simple as that.
I assume anyone reading this can count up the number of fermions (electrons, protons, and neutrons) in a water molecule and note that the number is even.
No one who has studied college physics should need a cite to show that integral spin particles are bosons, but for anyone who does: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol III, p.15-6 “particles with integral spins are bosons…” Note that this was intended to be a sophomore physics text (and the physical copy I am quoting from is indeed the copy I used my sophomore year at Caltech).
Anyone who doubts that “particles” include composite particles should remember that this is the explanation of superfluidity in normal helium: a normal helium atom is a boson because it has integral spin.
Anyone who does not know all this lacks basic competence in physics.
I am not casting aspersions on the details of WHTs professional work. But, when it comes to fundamental physics… well, what he said about bosons speaks for itself.
I will add that I too am skeptical that the bosonic nature of H2O is relevant to its behavior in clouds, but, then again, I am not sure of that, not being a cloud expert, and I do not know exactly what Judith and her co-author said on that, since I do not have a copy of the book yet.
But, WHT would dramatically increase his credibility if he would admit that he was wrong in saying that a normal H2O molecule is not a boson. (Web, if you admitted it above and I missed it, sorry for missing it.)
Dave Miller in Sacramento
