Can I say that the electron model I talk about is really the Williamson and van der Mark model, but one that employs the electromagnetic wave rather than E and B fields. If you depict the electromagnetic wave as a flat-bottomed sinusoidal paper strip, you can wrap it round twice with a twist to make a Mobius strip. It "works" better than the paper strip in their paper. I tried to explain this to John, but he was ill, and sadly nothing came of it.
It was a mistake that I never had the sense to reach out and talk to him while he was alive. The paper strip is, like everything else, merely an approximation - but it captures the important phenomena to a degree and that's the important bit. Once you know the topology, you can use topological arguments independent of the underlying details (mostly)
Can I say that the electron model I talk about is really the Williamson and van der Mark model, but one that employs the electromagnetic wave rather than E and B fields. If you depict the electromagnetic wave as a flat-bottomed sinusoidal paper strip, you can wrap it round twice with a twist to make a Mobius strip. It "works" better than the paper strip in their paper. I tried to explain this to John, but he was ill, and sadly nothing came of it.
It was a mistake that I never had the sense to reach out and talk to him while he was alive. The paper strip is, like everything else, merely an approximation - but it captures the important phenomena to a degree and that's the important bit. Once you know the topology, you can use topological arguments independent of the underlying details (mostly)