| THEORIES WITH PROBLEMS - THE BIG BANG THEORY -> Double Slit experiment | Start A New Topic | Reply |
| Post Info | TOPIC: Double Slit experiment |
| Posted By: Colin Posted On: Sep 15, 2010 Views: 976 | Double Slit experiment Double Slit experiment. Every time I read about this extraordinary experiment, the writer starts talking about what happens "when an individual electron is 'fired' at the screen" - yeah, I know, "it goes through both holes at once" - BUT - (excuse me, for I am a layman, I'm not a trained scientist) can anyone out there please just explain to me in simple English just HOW the experimenter can a) select an individual electron b) detatch it from its nucleus c) propel it towards the screen. What is the methodology? Never mind, for the moment, the extreme bizarreness of the experiment results - I'm still trying to learn how the experiment is actually performed! I would be most grateful to any scientist who can spare the time to explain this! |
| Posted By: Keith Mayes Posted On: Sep 16, 2010 Views: 971 | RE: Double Slit experiment Trying to find precise details on how the Electron gun fires single electrons is difficult. However, the general principle of stripping off electrons and firing them is apparently straightforward because my understanding is that is how the old fashioned cathode ray tube TV's work. I am no electrician and don't know much about these things. As for firing single photons, a laser is used and the frequency is turned down until only one photon at a time exits the laser. I have never looked too hard at how it is done, it is the results that have always captivated me and it would seem you as well. |
| Posted By: Colin Posted On: Sep 17, 2010 Views: 964 | RE: Double Slit experiment Certainly the results captivate me. It seems that even Feynman was frustrated by the unresolved contradictions of the double slit experiment. Where a contradiction is unresolved it seems natural human nature to wish to discuss this contradiction with other people. When (as I have learned is the case) plenty, if not most other people do not understand the issue at all and, worse still, they have never even heard of the double slit experiment. What is one to do when one wants to raise these contradictions with other people? Of course, we are then obliged to recount, in your own words, all of the double slit saga from Thomas Young down to Feynman. When one does that, and when the subject is new to one's interlocutor, then that interlocutor is bound to dwell on possible interferences caused by the experiment's apparatus which is giving misleading information to the scientist. In short, it is natural to conclude that the results are being misconstrued. In order to convince one's friend that this is not the case, it is necessary to know, in some detail, how the experiment is physically performed. And, at the back of my mind as I write: might it not actually be the case that a re-examination of the experiment's methodology is, at long last, going to resolve these contradictions. Light cannot be a wave AND a particle! |
| Posted By: Colin Posted On: Sep 17, 2010 Views: 963 | RE: Double Slit experiment I wonder what is the definition of “thefrequency (at which) …… only one photon at a time exits the laser” What is this frequency? Is it 513-89 or is it 1029-38 ? And if it is 513-89 , then 513-89 whats? rads? herzometers? amperes? dazzlers? NB A definition of the unit of measurement used would also come in useful, as in “a calory is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one cubic centimeter of H20 through 10 Celsius at 1 atmosphere air pressure” |
| Posted By: Keith Mayes Posted On: Sep 18, 2010 Views: 956 | RE: Double Slit experiment I can easily understand that in the light of such strange results it would be natural to wonder if the apparatus was at fault, or the erroneous cause of, such results. However, the experiment has been carried out around the world for many years using different apparatus and firing not just electrons but photons, buckyballs and even molecules, and always getting the exact same results. As scientists are very good at removing any possibility of erroneous results, and because the number and different styles of the experiment around the world all agree, we can with confidence say the findings are correct and not due to any peculiarity of the equipment. As for the conclusions that are reached from analysing the results, these are always open to interpretation. All we can say for sure is that when the equipment is set up in a certain way it yields this result and when set up another way yields that result. The Copenhagen Interpretation is just an attempt to make sense of it, it may be wrong but it works. |
| Posted By: Colin Posted On: Sep 19, 2010 Views: 952 | RE: RE: Double Slit experiment I don't think for a moment that brilliant scientists all over the world are being duped by faulty equipment! I am, however, postulating that a) we have not yet arrived at a correct interpretation of the results b) in order to do so, will require yet more thought c) those thought processes must necessarily begin with constant re-examination of the experiment's modus operandi. My thoughts about the passage of a single photon through one (or maybe more than one) slit are not going to be very effective if I do not even know how a laser gun works, and do not know how it can "release" just one photon at a time. If, really, this can be done simply by reducing the "frequency" to a low enough level, well, then by crikey I certainly DO wish to know what this frequency is and how it is measured - otherwise, how are our thoughts going to rise to the level where we can interpret these strange results correctly? Newton postulated that there is a force he called gravity that keeps the planets in orbit around the sun but he himself (and I paraphrase) declared "but just how that force may be exerted across millions of miles of completely empty space without any matter intervening in between seems to me the greatest possible absurdity". In a way, great Newton had to wait another 250 years for Einstein to give us a better explanation of this 'absurd' result. A more correct interpretation of the double slit might easily require another 250 years - maybe longer! Blissful ignorance of the details of how the experiment is performed is not going to help anyone |
| Posted By: Keith Mayes Posted On: Sep 19, 2010 Views: 949 | RE: RE: Double Slit experiment I totally agree. This is why I ended my page on QM with these words: "That is the problem. Something is going on at a level that we are completely unaware of. However, the idea of probability waves as an explanation is nothing more than an attempt to describe what is observed in the quantum world by the Copenhagen Interpretation, and is of course a purely theoretical concept. It may be possible that we need to develop a new form of logic to be able to describe what is happening at the quantum level. It may be that it is not enough to say that a statement is either true or false, we may have to introduce a three-valued quantum logic which allows the additional status of 'undecided'. This would mean that a statement that is not true need not be false." One day in the far future they may look back and wonder why we were so dumb! |