Double slit experiment Definition and 484 Threads

I performed a successful double slit experiment this morning. I'm doing it for my science fair, and I spent four hours last night trying to figure it out. I used every material I had that could be used. This morning, I woke up, rushed to the bathroom, and grabbed a comb. I used electical tape...

I am relatively new to QM and so have a couple of basic questions for you all. I understand that the double slit experiment creates an ‘interference pattern’. What bothers me, is that it seems like an assumption to me, that the pattern created could *only* have been made by two waves...

Has anyone taken into account the gravity of the slit material causing the electrons to quiver and cause a wave effect in the double slit experiment?

A detector screen far from the slits will show wave patterns whereas a detector near the screen will show particles. My question is what if we maintain the detector screen far from the slits but put some say block of wood near the slits, will we detect wave or paticles?

can the double slit experiment be performed with systems other than light?

Homework Statement If Young's double-slit experiment were submerged in water, how would the fringe pattern be changed? Homework Equations None...but maybe d\sin(\theta)=m\lambda The Attempt at a Solution It would not because the waves still propagate in the same manner and the...

Hi there, I've been told even with detectors behind two slits detecting if a particle comes through, that doesn't exactly mean that the quantum system is now in a mixed-state (for example, the quantum eraser experiment of Scully). How would we be able to differentiate between whether the...

in the double slit experiment , why must the two slits be at the same distance from the first slit?should the interfering waves have the same phase and why?

All I know about the Double Slit Experiment is that some particles are shot at a pair of slits, and the particle apparently splits, goes through both slits, and interferes with itself, creating an interference pattern, but if the particles are observed, they collapse and give the results you'd...

Hi, I think that this is (should be) a straight forward question: when conducting the double slit experiment, is there a relationship between the brightness / measure of the light source and the sum of the "peaks" from the interference pattern? (I have done a number of searches but can't find...

My name is Joe Fiero. Ever since I was a little kid, I loved science, especially science fiction. Sliders, Back to the future, Star Trek. I never had a chance to get a degree in the things I loved the most because I came from a poor family... which has lead me to a path of self education and...

hi, Please help me understand this... could you set up the double slit experiment (light, one photon at a time) in such a way that you could measure the time between a photon leaving the gun and arriving at the detector? you could then calculate the path the photon took, so would the...

Homework Statement Hey everyone, I am doing youngs double slit experiment to find the wavelength of a light source but i am having a lot of trouble finding the independent and dependent variables. Can people suggest what they could be? Thanks. Also, some controlled variables would be...

Two very narrow slits are spaced 1.8 \mum apart and are placed 35.0 cm from the screen. What is the distance from the first and second dark lines of the interference pattern when the slits are illuminated with coherent light with \lambda =550 nm r1-r2=m\lambda dsin\theta=m\lambda...

While reading Feynman's 6 Easy Pieces, I see he talks about bouncing photons off of the electrons that are passing through two slits. According to Feynman, when a photon strikes an electron near one of the slits, it bounces (sometimes back at the observer) and registered as a sharp point of...

I am just inhaling "The Grand Design" and am stuck in the chapter on the "buckyballs" double slit experiment. The authors say that in case of the experiment, a particle may take any possible way ("perhaps to Jupiter and back"), which then Feynman depicts as adding vectors to a result vector...

I'm new to quantum physics and the double slit experiment. If the person running the experiment collects the data but does not look at it, does the result of an interference pattern or no interference pattern on the CCD image sensor decide the future of whither that person decides in the future...

In the paper (AIP Conf. Proc. 810 (2006), 360): Mardari outlines three predictions of quantum self-interference, all of which empirical evidence is presented that appear to refute all three. The implications of the paper is interesting but of these I am particularly interested in the...

I am confused by an aspect of the infamous double slit experiment. It is said that one way to understand why a succession of single particles can give rise to an interference pattern is that a single particle could be going through both slits simultaneously and interfering with itself. But this...

Hello! I have a question? Does anyone know if scientists have tried to run the electrons through the double slit, record the particles that go through each slit, and before looking at the results, looking at the pattern on the screen. And THEN doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the screen...

The path of photons can be (almost) reconstructed in a double slit experiment! Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1170.abstract Discussion: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/46193...

I have a question regarding the double slit experiment. I have been doing a little reading (The Grand Design, to be specific) and I was left with a burning question. First of all, I am not a physics major. I have taken only one college physics class, and although it is something that...

Homework Statement Consider a young double slit experiments where the two slits are spaced d = 0.1mm apart. If when the screen is at a distance of l=1m the first bright maximum is displaced y = 2cm from the central maximum, then find the wavelength of the light. Homework Equations...

I have what I believe is a simple question about the single photon (at a time) double slit experiment. This experiment does not use a coincidence counter correct? I understand that one, or more, is used for entanglement experiments, but is one necessary to determine an interference or lack of...

This little link here: says that if there is a detection device that observes the electron before it gets to the slits, the observation collapses the wave function. This leads to the electron behaving like a particle rather than a wave as it enters the slit, so two bands are produced on the...

(Hope this is the right forum) For my Physics EEI (year 12 extended experimental investigation) I'd really like do some sort of variation of the double slit experiment that can deviate into wave like behaviour of matter etc... I've found ways to have the interference patterns shown using a...

Hello, Quick question: Will radioactive particles give interference pattern if there is no measuring device?

Homework Statement so here i have shown the distances of two dark fringes ... from here ... fringe width is \frac{\lambda L}{2d} L is distance of screen ... d is distance b/w 2 fringes. but fringe width is \frac{\lambda L}{d} , right ? What mistake am i making?

Quantum objects are particles, not waves. Particles are bundles of energy propagating on a field. It is the properties of the field that seem to give particles wave-like qualities. Thus in the Young's double slit experiment, a given particle goes through one and only one of the slits; it does...

I tried to do the double slit experiment at home with a green laser (for a science project at school and for fun). I failed but someone succeeded with a red laser. Is it true that a red laser works better because it has a longer wavelength?

Homework Statement A scientist decides to do the double-slit experiment in a ver- tical tube, with the slits at the top and a viewing screen at the bottom as shown. With red light from a HeNe laser (632 nm) a nice pattern forms on the viewing screen, with the bright spots 1.50 cm apart...

Experimentally how do we make sure that the ejected electrons are coherent?

In my modern physics course we learned that electrons, when shot through two close together slits, will produce an interference pattern just light light. However, when you set up an experiment to observe which slit the electron goes through, there is no longer an interference pattern. To my...

Homework Statement If i have the intensity pattern of a double slit experiment and aim to find the wavelength of the monochromatic light incident on the slits with the following information, - width of each slit - distance to the screen - intensity pattern (displacement Vs intensity)...

What if: 1) we put a swtich gate on the bottom slit. The bottom slit is normally closed, but we time it so we open it just before a photon/electron MAY arrive. so far this will yeild the same result as traditional experiment? 2) usually the two slits are close by, but we move it very...

Question Suppose molecules are placed next to the slits that fluoresce when electron passes, emitting a photon that can be imaged. Explain why this is no better than direct illumination, and explain how the two-slit interference pattern is destroyed. My Answer In direct illumination, a...

Whilst skulking through Youtube videos for a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics I noticed that vidoes offering accurate, legitimate, remotely-science-based information were few and far between. The rest seemed to be videos of people saying that we, as thinking beings, create the...

　 Buckyball Double Slit Experiment I've been reading old archives here and even the FAQ and still not definite about the answer. It is said that a buckyball composed of 60 carbon atoms can still form interference pattern at the screen. It is not the complexity of the object but the fact...

Hello, I was wondering if I could get any help with the following question/thing: Why does a stream of photons (let's say that one is fired every 3 seconds) at a double slit as shown in Young's double slit experiment create an interference pattern although there is no interference because the...

If electrons are strings (in string theory), what happened to the string between emission at the double slit experiment and detection on the screen after it passes thru the 2 slits? Does the string splitted and joined again after the slits? Before string theory, we just say particle...

A friend of mine pointed out this website to me. http://www.doubleslitexperiment.com/ The site posts an interesting theory; I'll take a quote from the sites document: "For some unknown reason that haunts scientists, everything we perceive as having mass is just a wave of information (or...

My question is about the double slit experiment..I was just listening to a guy explain this experiment on youtube and I got skeptical at one point in his explanation. He said that when the photons went through the double slits the detectors were turned" on" then the observers viewed the results...

Homework Statement Calculate the slit separation (d) given that: Wavelength = 650 nm (Plugged in 6.5*10^-7 m) m = 1 (plugged in 1) Distance to screen (D) = 37.5 cm (plugged in 0.375m) Distance between centre to side order (y) = 0.7 cm (pluged in 0.007m) Homework Equations We were only given...

Hi, I'm new here and have been thinking about the double slit experiment (with one photon at a time). As I understand it, you fire one photon, it goes through both slits, interferes with itself and hits a point on the detector according to probabilities that correspond to what you would...

Homework Statement I did the single slit light diffraction lab. The diode laser we used was 630-680 nm. It produced an image very much like the one on this page: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/fraungeo.html#c1 How does having multiple wavelengths in the laser change...

I'm pretty much a newbie to this quantum physics stuff, but the one thing that really blows my mind is the double slit experiment. I just don't make much sense. Anyways, I was wondering, could the interference pattern caused by firing a single particle through the double slits be the case of...

I have a question about the double split experiment, don't know if it's been asked before... Specifically, I have read and watched in some videos explaining that, when shooting electrons, physicists decided to shoot 'one electron at a time', to make sure they are not interfering with each...

Have there been any experiments done where a particle was detected to go through one or the other slits when after the detector was destroyed before the data could be known by a human? Does the detector's detection alone determine a particle rather than a wave behavior?

Consider a double slit experiment at the event horizon of a black hole, with 1 slit on each side of the horizon, one observer inside and 1 outside, inside observer should observe interference by equivalence principle, whereas outside one should not, since the photons can't enter the second slit...