Terrapin Station wrote:You're not saying that we observe something mathematical though, are you?No, I don't think I've ever said that. We observe such things as flashes on a screen or clicks from a counter. We use mathematics as we do English, but in a less ambiguous way, to describe and predict patterns in the things we observe. The specifics of those patterns, in the case of the ripple tank experiment, was what I started to explore in some earlier posts here.
As I've said, I think it's worth taking the time to understand, as fully as possible, the observed behaviours of classical waves before moving on to look at any other phenomena that might resemble them in various ways. I think it's only if we do it in that order that we fully appreciate the nature of those resemblances. And it's only when we appreciate that that we can start to try to think of models of what's "really going on" which fit those resemblances.