Single electrons build up interference pattern

[coldarc]

there is no electrons strikes. what moves in an electron gun is platonic solids of atoms. the atoms create inference with other atoms trough a scattering of massless light as waves. platonic solids have shapes of triangles pentagon hexagon and so on. each side of a 3d triangle is a proton or a neutron. the electron is more like the mass of the whole atom. in other word subatomic particles are illusions of atomic behavior. light is messing with your head.

[Thireus]

Hello, thanks for this video, but where is the similar experiment with an observer that proves the wavefunction collapse ?

[maplebayou1]

@Thireus The fact that each electron strikes one and only one location, even though its wave function is spread out over a substantial area, is an example of "collapse." However, some physicists avoid using the term collapse. To illustrate how tricky this is, we could change the wave functions of these electrons, and therefore the distribution, by actions taken AFTER they have hit the monitor.

[CHAS1422]

perhaps the electron is accompanied by an EM wave. The wave passing through ahead leaves a diffrction pattern field. The electron passing through the field is guided to a probability for its landing spot based on the em pattern that it falls into.

[maplebayou1]

@CHAS1422 Electrons do, it is believed, give off virtual photons continually. The problem is that a particle's behavior can depend on events that do not involve it directly, and even circumstances occurring after it is long gone. See delayed choice quantum eraser.

[CHAS1422]

@maplebayou1 For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Forces and fields are communicated in ways we do not yet understand. I tire of the mysterious explanations of quanum mechanics experts who claim the unpredictable and statistical probabilities of partical behavior. It may be true our models lack the ability to predict, but I would argue that there is a reason or a force that we simply do not yet understand or cannot detect. String theory is the worst at nebulous explanations.

[CHAS1422]

@maplebayou1 I appreciate your video, it is very educational. I would still argue that an electron of low mass will easily sucomb to even minor field influences it might pass through. Has anyone ever measured the resolution of the diffraction pattern based on partical energy as it passed through the slots? Has anyone ever developed a diffraction pattern of protons through the slots?

[maplebayou1]

@CHAS1422 I'm afraid you have me confused with someone else. I have not posted any videos. I urge you to carefully study quantum eraser experiments, including delayed choice experiments. Locality is dead, and no amount of arm-waving will resurrect it. Trying to invoke hidden variables only drives more nails into its coffin.

[CHAS1422]

@maplebayou1

It is a limitation of measurement that the composition of measuring devices is the same (i.e. atomic particles), as the objects we are trying to measure. It is also a limitation in that in detecting a small magnetic field we will influence it.

[IIXVXII]

PLEASE, don't ever delete this video! This is the most amazing video I've ever found on Youtube.

[toffeerusty]

The video actually shows that a single electron can never be a "wave!"

Try to create a single ripple of water wave; let it pass through two slits (no matter how close). Record the intensity of the wave on any single line parallel to the line joined by the two slits.

To the right of the right slit. no interference occurs because the left ripple can never catch up with the right ripple. The so-called "self-interference" can only occur between the two slits.

So a water wave is not a wave?

[maplebayou1]

@toffeerusty An electron does not correspond to one cycle of a water wave. It is a wave packet, or to be more precise, its location can be described by the Schrodinger equations whose solutions are wave packets.

[toffeerusty]

@maplebayou1

WAVE PACKET? Einstein used the word "packet" to describe an undivisible lump of energy.

Can you define what you mean by a wave packet?

Wave is "normally" defined as some kind of oscillation that produces some kind of disturbance to its surrounding when it travels. A single wave has only one cycle, even though it still has a wave length and, theoretically, a frequency.

How do you define a "WAVE PACKET"?

[maplebayou1]

@toffeerusty A wave packet, or wave train, is a local concentration of wave action which moves as a unit. Enter the term wave packet in the Wikipedia search engine.

[toffeerusty]

@maplebayou1

More precisely, the solution to the Schrodinger equations is some sort of probability distributions of the location of electrons.

His equations are handicaped because he is unable to incorporate any REAL dynamics into his model. In other words, his model only describes a static equilibrium not a dynamic equilibrium.

The problem is, the study of waves is the study of "Repeated Cycles" which allows one to treat a dynamic problem as if it is static.

[maplebayou1]

@toffeerusty Because a model contains stochastic elements does not mean it is not dynamical. QM wave equations do describe dynamics.

[toffeerusty]

Indeterminacy is to the experimenter (observer), not to the electron itself. When you are driving a car, you follow some physical rules when you "travel," whether you are watched by the police or not.

We want a model that can predict the time path of an electron (stochastic or non-stochastic), like the case of a randomly moving pollen.

The alternative is to abandon the QM model that does not serve this important purpose and to build a coherent model that incorporates the causality principle.

[maplebayou1]

@toffeerusty It seems to me you're advocating some sort of hidden variables approach. This is all right as far as it goes. However, I don't see that any such approach will achieve your purpose if we can never access the hidden variables. This would be like the roll of a die that we cannot watch. In principle we could predict the outcome, knowing the initial conditions and the forces applied to the die. But if we can't observe the actual process, we are left with a stochastic model.

[toffeerusty]

Physicists are strange animals. Just because they see an inference "pattern", they will go ahead to claim that a single electron "interferes" with itself?

How is "interference" in physics defined anyways?

Similarly, what is the definition of a "wave"?

Has anyone tried the double slit experiment on a water wave? Just create a single ripple every minute or so and let it pass through a double slit setting. Observe the interference pattern at a distance. What is the interference pattern?

[maplebayou1]

@toffeerusty The mathematics of wave interference describes the pattern of light and dark areas shown in the video. In this sense the electrons are considered to exhibit wave behavior. This "wavelike" interference pattern only occurs if each electron can take either of 2 paths, and the paths are indistinguishable.

[toffeerusty]

@maplebayou1

This is getting tautological here. Some mathematicians observed some "line" patterns that they didn't know the causes. They then based on these "line" patterns with no known creation mechanisms to develop something known as the "wave function" to describe the "random" positioning of electrons.

So, electron positioning is the same as tossing a dice?

[maplebayou1]

@toffeerusty I'm afraid I don't follow you. The patterns are far from random, which is why wave equations work well in describing them. Particles with different wavelengths produce interference fringes exactly as predicted by these wave equations. There is of course uncertainty involved but this is a separate issue.

[toffeerusty]

@maplebayou1

Randomness DOES NOT mean even distribution!

BTW, check the internet for the philosophical debates on the "randomness" assigned to an electron by the QM model.

Also, check that the QM model violates the "causality principle" required by classical physics.

To me, QM is worse than the random walk model that describes the movement of pollens. At least, in a random walk, a future state depends on its current state. In QM, the time path of an electron is unknown.

[maplebayou1]

@toffeerusty I am familiar with the concept of randomness. QM, with all of its indeterminacies and seeming time-reversed causation, works. Delayed choice quantum erasers are experimental facts. What is the alternative?

[sethpiezas]

please, please post more examples. is it possible to record similar buildup with extremely short laser pulses? or are there still too many photons in a 'packet'?

[IIXVXII]

Good question. One photon is one wavepacket like the electron is one wavepacket, but photons travel much faster. I suppose if someone built a screen where each pixel was a photon counter and the experiment was carried out in a very dense medium to slow light down and give time for the instruments to record data that it could be carried out in a similar fashion.

[maplebayou1]

@sethpiezas It is absolutely possible to build up an interference pattern by firing individual photons and has been done. Each photon is a wavepacket just as each electron is a wavepacket. If the paths are distinguishable you will not see interference, with either electrons or photons.

[vaibhav1803]

Quantum Physics...thats wat im gonna do..!!!...i luv this stuff..!!..1 electron screwed the case ov an entire experipent and collapsed so many theories....

[RavnoUK]

Dude you are a genius i was looking for a way to explain to my cousing about Electron Wave- particle beheavior.. and this is the best way. thank for posting it!

[Rheinhard]

Outstanding! Useful for explaining to lay-folk what all this quantum weirdness is about...

[rlwelch]

FUCKED UP.