The hole.
I still maintain that the
hole doesn't "move". Holes merely appear and disappear--as electrons occupy/vacate orbitals.
Movement is a "useful delusion", in the same way cinema is. The appearance of movement on the screen is a phantom created by the mind. And, in fact, the so called
movement of holes isn't even
seen. That's why I used the word "delusion" in association with
hole movement, and
illusion in terms of movie
movement. In fact, isn't it true that there isn't, even, a
physical hole--as in some stationary pit surrounded by boundary defining electrons? I mean, in reality, it's just one less probability cloud, around the nucleus of an atom, right? So, to call that a
hole, is even more delusional, right? And by
delusional, I mean, a
model, and not an
actual thing. A
useful delusion.
So,
hole, is a model for a missing electron cloud -- which doesn't really resemble a
hole. And, any movement of this
phantom entity, is only conceptional. In an electric field, they
do seem to
move, but not really -- but, it's useful to think of it that way.
And, consider this: locking yourself into a way of thinking, based on an accepted model, makes it difficult to advance the field. Einstein was able to discard models and think beyond them. Because he was able to think beyond Newtonian Physics, he knocked Physics on its ear. The history of the conceptualization of the atom is another good example. If physicists had decided that the
plumb pudding model was the end-all-be-all, science would not have found its way to
orbitals and the to the current, very strange, model of the atom -- and it's
still a model!
But, I'm not a Physicist.
