Dr. Quantum Explains Double Slit Experiment

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Dr. Quantum explains the importance of double slit experiment in physics.

If we randomly shoot small objects, say marbles, at the screen through a slit we see a pattern on the wall where they went through the slit and hit.
Now, if we add another slit to the right of the first one, we would expect to see a second band duplicated to the right.

Now, lets look at waves. The waves hit the slit and radiate out, striking the back wall with the most intensity directly in line with slit.
When we add a second slit something different happens than with marbles. If the bottom of one wave meets the top of another, they cancel each other out - now there is interference pattern on the back of the wall: places where the two tops meet are the highest intensity and where they cancel - there is nothing!

Now, let's go quantum!

An electron is a tiny, tiny bit of matter, like a tiny marble. It behaves just like marbles. If we shoot it through a single slit, we see a single band on the screen. Now if we add another slit we should get, like marbles, two bands. But we got interference pattern!
We fired electrons - tiny bits of matter through - but we get a pattern like waves, not like little marbles.

How? It doesn't make sense!

The physicists are clever and thought that these little marbles, electrons, bounce off each other and create this pattern so they decided to shoot one electron at a time. After hours and hours of waiting they noticed the same interference pattern!

The conclusion is inescapable - the single electron leaves as a particle, becomes a wave at the slits and interferes with itself to hit the wall like a particle!

But mathematically it is even stranger - it goes through both slits and it goes through neither, and it goes through just one and it goes through just the other. All of these possibilities are in superposition with each other. But physicists were completely baffled by this! So, they decided to peek and see which slit the electron actually goes through! They put a measuring device by one slit to see which one it went through.
But the quantum world far more mysterious than they could have imagined - when they observed the electron went back to behaving like a little marble - it produced a pattern two bands NOT an interference pattern!

The very act of measuring or observing which slit it went through meant it only went through only one, not both.
The electron decided to act differently. As if it was aware it was being watched!

And it was here that physicists stepped forever into strange, never world of quantum events.

What is matter? Marbles or waves? And waves of what? And what does an observer does have to do with any of this?
The observer collapsed the wave function by simply observing!

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Category:

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Tags:

• quantum
• physics
• double
• slit
• experiment
• marbles
• electrons
• pattern
• waves
• interference
• particles
• superposition
• matter
• wave
• function

[ericxxxway]

God I love learning. No matter what you believe in this world and us alike are special, no more us than any other living being because life it's self and everything that includes is so special and amazing. We as a race of beings are becoming smarter and more enlightened, has anybody else noticed this? We are growing and I believe that we are beginning to use more of our brains than we used to

[hankaaron1961]

Dizzletrout, I agree with you. I think by observing, we are interacting with the particles which changes the outcome.

[kionay]

@shredder66691 matter does not reorganize itself to the slits, but the slits is the opening by which matter is allowed to pass, not blocked, an analogy might be that a shadow is not a reorganization of light, but a lack thereof

[shredder66691]

@kionay I don't mean to be rude, but I think you are missing the point. When observing the electrons or photons move through the slits, the matter reorganizes itself in the shape of the slits that they passed through. The 'observer' doesn't have to be a machine, it can be a human or just a camera. If a human or camera, there is likely to be no interference with the matter moving through the slits, yet the change in pattern (organization of matter) continues.

[InuShonen]

oh god!! what does it all meeeaan?!?!!!!

[scooterguy86]

@kionay It is the usage of photons that they use for measuring. The act of measurement (which some called observing) collapse the wave function. But then there is the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle that says that regardless of our measurements both the exact position and velocity of a particle cannot be known at the same time. This is a property of nature regardless of our measuring devices.

[Honeysucklebommie]

@kionay IF these professors havent thought of that (which Im sure they have) and we've just collectively financed them billions of tax dollars for the hadron collator: If you are right then we are all in the poop.

[leet512]

@kionay aye! the key is to go back to primary sources and consider what interactive traits the so-called 100% passive measuring device actually has... perhaps it truly is fully passive but i have serious doubts that is the case

many of these documentaries about QM are too pre-chewed to be taken seriously in my opinion

[martiandog89]

Yeah... electrons are cool.

[kionay]

it makes it sound like the act of observing causes the change

rather than how they are observed

i'd assume that the methods for observing electrons or other particles uses some type of sonar-like device, obviously not sonar exactly, but something that bounces off the particles to see where they are

i'd say that THAT is what is causing the change in patterns