From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sat Jul 17 1999 - 22:16:25 MDT
James Andrix wrote:
> ...You take two objects (I think maybe
> razor blades) And start to block the beam with them,
> one on each side. (forming a vertical slit, making the
> dot smaller) when they get _really close together_
> instead of a very slotted vertical dot, you get a
> horizontal spread....
Yup, photons do behave strangely. In college I was
shown the famous double slit experiment, wherein a
laser forms a horizontal spread, as you called it. You
can send photons through double slits, and form
a pattern of high and low illumination on the wall behind.
This is explained by wave interference. But now you
can turn the power to the laser so low, that the photons
pass through *one at a time*. If you do that, you can
observe that the pattern does not go away. Therefore, each
photon must be somehow splitting into a wave, waving
through *both* slits, interfering with *itself*, creating
the interference pattern on the back wall. QM is weird
stuff, James. spike
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