darrenyeats wrote: > Yeah, the double slit experiment captures the essence of quantum > behaviour. The "delayed choice quantum eraser" experiment is even > weirder I think. > > This is the way I would put it. When the photon is displaying quantum > behaviour it's in superposition. This is a state of probabilities, and > these probabilities move around in a wave fashion - when the photon is > in this state, it's not a particle and it makes no sense to say it > passes through a slit, let alone two slits at the same time. (One could > say - less inaccurately! - that some probabilities pass through the > slits.) It just isn't a particle when it's superposition. One could say > the particle IS an observation, or an observation is a particle. Between > observations there is quantum behaviour in superposition state - wave > behaviour - no particle. > > That's how the experiment works, by observing the photon at one of the > second slits, the wave behaviour at that stage is interrupted > (superposition collapses). It is a particle there. And the two slits > stage is the key stage, since having the two apertures in parallel would > cause the wave to interfere with itself. > > When the twin slits are not watched, the photon is a particle when it > leaves the the source and it's particle when it hits the end screen, but > it's a particle nowhere in between - it stays in superposition. > > I agree with you Dave - it's weird.
Hi Darren! Just picked up your post. No argument with anything you say, it's difficult enough to describe this stuff to yourself when you're familiar with it (even though as Feynman says no-one understands it): trying to give as simple a description as possible for anyone who is unfamiliar with it is doubly so. The "superposition" probability wave state is as *-real-* as any other part of the wave/particle duality concept - I remember seeing an extremely high-power electron microscope image of the inside of an atom (which they'd managed to take without making the superposition of the electrons collapse somehow) & you could actually see the ripples of the probability waves - it's all totally trippy... Dave :cool: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Golden Earring's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=66646 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106519 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
