Hello Veeky Forums.
Has the double-slit experiment ever been tried in a medium that shows the path of the particles?
For example with electrons through that gas that lights up when electrons pass through them. What would happen? Would we see the pattern below or would we see the usual bullshit like when a detector is placed at the slits and just get two bright spots on the target rather than the wave pattern?
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just do it a container and blow some smoke in there. but im sure you'll see small light rays splitting up
How is that any different from the original? You realize that the screen is essentially showing the path of the particle right? It's a 2D slice of the path. If you put some idealized gas that shows the path you would just get a 3D version of what the screen shows, the diffraction pattern but spreading out.
>shows the path of the particles
wew
Yes. And when it's done, the interference pattern on the detector screen disappears.
why ?
For starters, you need to understand the measurement problem.
plato.stanford.edu
And then let me try to explain in the Copenhagen interpretation.
Without the gas that lights up to show the path of the particle, the wave of the Schrodinger wave equation travels through both slits, interferes with itself to produce the interference pattern, and then it hits the slit in a single specific random location, all determined according to standard Copenhagen quantum theory.
With the gas that illuminates the path of the particle, the wave of the Schrodinger wave equation travels a small distance, hits one of the gas particles where the wave function collapses, it illuminates, and the particle continues in wave form, where it shortly hits another particle, and the wave collapses, and so forth. Because the wave is constantly being collapsed by frequent interaction with outside particles, there is no single wave that stretches from the slits to the final detector screen, and therefore no interference pattern (loosely).
Butt the default double slut experiment has that same problem as well :B That same experiment isn't run in a vaccuum and they still give you the same pattern, but they constantly hit the air particles from the laser source to the plates.
Having some other particles in the air and having them observed are entirely different things.
IIRC, you can do a double slit experiment with a laser-pointer and a carefully prepared card in normal household conditions. In that case, the photons that interact with the air particles would then not be part of the interference pattern, but most of the photons from the laser pointer happen to not interact with the air particles and form the interference pattern.
You do know that air is mostly transparent to visible wavelength photons, right?
they still bounce off
My guess: Most of them don't over the distances that we're talking. Most of the photons from the laser pointer would not interact with any air particles whatsoever over that short distance. Again, you do know that air is mostly transparent, right?
And let me go look up the average distance to interaction of visible wavelength photons in air. I'm betting it's more than a meter.
And I appear to be wrong. I'm looking up the right answer now.
No, I was right. One random-ass source says about 33 meters.
Maybe. I don't know. Still looking.
Well anyway, since we know exactly where the photons are hitting, we should be able to accurately estimate the light paths going after they split. They should be like two foggy lights rather than directly linear bouncing ray of photons.
Come again? I don't understand your context. Please explain yourself.
Since we have the light pattern, we can approximately figure out how the light travels after they go through the slits. Which I'm guess they don't just bounce off in a linear fashion, but they spread around, creating a visual like how light diffuses all around in the fog.
You really should read more about experiments that have been done. We've fired electrons literally one at a time and observed them self-interfering. You're asking questions that are difficult to answer without you already knowing about attempts to prove the simpler explanations you are leaning towards.
Read what this user said:
TO:
It seems that you need to do some basic education. In particular, as the other user says, we have observed this interference pattern by firing one electron or one photon at a time through the slits, wait for it to hit the detector screen, and only then do we fire the next particle. We do this particle by particle, thousands of times, millions of times, so that there is only ever one particle in the chamber at any one time. After the thousands of particle shots, we can overlay all of the detector screen flashes, and we see the standard "high, low, high, low, high, low" interference pattern. A single particle can and does interfere with itself.
And according to some other source, the number is about 140 km for visible photons and air of Earth's atmosphere at standard temperature and pressure, aka at sea level. Given that we can see stars, and that the atmosphere is mostly transparent, that sounds correct.
Well, an idealized upper limit. Dust and water in the atmosphere lower that amount.
Damn, this is not an easy number to look up: mean free path of visible photons in Earth's atmosphere at sea level.
Are you neil degrasse tyson ? Because you sound pretentious as fuck.
Go back to school, child.
awww. did I make you delete your name so people don't know you're samefagging ?
Please. I have better things to do with my time than samefag. Besides, I'm much too pretentious to do that. If I have something to say, I'll say it to your face, directly.
> If I have something to say, I'll say it to your face, directly.
Oh boy watch out, we got a badass internet keyboard warrior here ! Sorry for pushing you to put your name back on so people don't still don't know you're samefagging.
Can't wait til grade school is back in session and the children are too busy stressing about their inevitable dropout. Keep trying to bait, no one's feathers are being rustled.
For any future readers of this thread, I would be most welcome if someone could cite an actual measurement instead of a prediction from theoretical models as to the optical mean free path of photons at some visible wavelength in the Earth's atmosphere, at some particular humidity, at sea level, at some low-dust low-smoke etc conditions.
He's the resident retard whos desperately trying to come of as intellectual, hence his name. Just ignore him.
I'm the samefag, some people are actually interested in conversations that take place here. I don't care if tripfags are stupid, go back to /b/ if you consider "mean free path" to be "intellectual".
>That same experiment isn't run in a vaccuum and they still give you the same pattern, but they constantly hit the air particles from the laser source to the plates.
Illuminated gas isn't enough proof for you that gas particles are reflect light?
> Illuminated light isn't enough proof for you that air particles are reflect light? the amount is trivial to the experiment
