Originally posted by J. Arthur God:
[QUOTE]My understanding (and, take this from someone who doesn't know anything beyond grade-school math and science) is that the problem isn't "tunneling" but "through".
He would argue that the mechanism isn't due to the wave function having a finite value on the opposite side of the barrier. Most of us would figure based on Freshman or Sophomore physics (which I hope to take someday) gives a finite probablity that the particle will move "through" the barrier and appear on the other side. Something having to do with the square of the wave function.
Instead, he proposes that the mechanism is that the particle approaches the barrier and gains the energy to overcome the barrier temprarily via the uncertainty principle. This propels the particle "over" the barrier.
It is a model that treats the particle as only a particle.
He doesn't give a quantitative explanation of this idea.
If, in the end, they give the same quantitative answer, they are likely in reality the same physics.
I understand what you are trying to explain; and if the current Copenhagen dogma is correct I will be willing to agree with you; however, I believe and am sure that I will be vindicated in the future that the wave intensity does NOT represent a probability distribution in the sense that Born postulated. It is for this reason that the "tunneling tail" cannot depict a probabilty that the "particle" can magically appear on the other side of the barrier; however, let us rather stick to superconduction.
