Re: chaos and uncertainty

From: Lee March (cyberlee@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Jul 18 1999 - 00:33:04 MDT


Spike Jones wrote:
>

> 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

Spike,

Maybe you can help me here. I was trying to remember the other QM demo
from college physics in which the beam is passed through a slit or pair
of slits that are vertical, thus screening out all the side to side
waves or particles, then through a slit or pair of slits turned 90
degrees .......and then it all gets foggy in my mind. If I remember
right it ends up that the particles still have the same intensity as if
they had never passed through the first slits, etc.

Anyone who can jog my memory on this, or the name of the demo would be
much appreciated.

Lee



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:30 MST