[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Paradoxes

[stevertigo]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 5:29 PM, <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> "An electron is not matter."
> Interesting idea.  Do you have an authority for that statement ?
> Sounds a little odd to me.

Well not all things are "matter." Light, for example. But there's a
bit of a semantic ambiguity issue with the word "matter," so like with
other words, its meaning is not quite precise.  But anyway its meaning
tends to be synonymous with atoms or else things that have mass.

Yes, electrons are known to have a certain rest mass, and so in a
certain way electrons can be thought of as being "matter." But this
rest mass measurement is only local in the atomic context - so it's
incorrect to assume that its mass is actually intrinsic to the
particle itself.

Steve