Suppose you lose your baseball in the woods, and you and your friend decide to look for it. You know that either you will find it, or your friend will (or it will remain lost). Assuming the ball hasn’t been damaged, it won’t be the case that you and your friend each find half of the ball, or that you both find the ball in different locations. There is only one ball, and it has an exact location, even if you don’t know where it is. It can only be found once, and only by one of you. A wave behaves differently, however. Suppose the ball is dropped into the center of a pond, and you and your friend stand on the shore to look for the wave. You can be on one side of the pond, your friend on the other side, and you can both see the wave wash upon the shore. You can even both see the wave wash ashore at the same time, because part of the wave is near you, while another part is near your friend. This is a fundamental difference between particles and waves. Particles are local, with a
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