this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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The double slit experiment demonstrates the wave-particle duality of light.
You shoot photons at a barrier that has two slits in it. The pattern on the backstop appears as in the top right panel: an interference pattern, because light is behaving as a wave.
Next, you set up a detector at the slits, so that you can determine which slit each photon passed through, one photon at a time. Now the pattern on the backstop appears as the lower right panel, not an interference pattern, because each photon is acting as a particle.
Not looking: wave. Looking: particle.
Exactly. The issue is that you can't detect photons without interacting with them. So it isn't observation like so many people think. It's that if you interact with subatomic particles you change their state.
Can't...So far, right? Like there hasn't been a method developed to somehow detect indirectly without interaction? I don't know enough about this to know how one might go about that, but I imagine those that know more might love to given whatever knowledge may be gained.
No. Can't. The only interaction sensors have is with particles. Photons usually. All things give off light but then measuring light itself, measuring is destructive.
Lol this guy still believes in particles
Ah! A field absolutist. Keep preaching, friend.
"Detecting" equals "interaction" in this context. You can't detect them without detecting them.
Although, given some further thought, isn't the double-slit experiment being discussed here sort of demonstrative of a "detection" without detection, i.e. the wave pattern vs. the particle pattern emerging after "detection/measurement/interaction"? Or am I misunderstanding it?
Is there another way they operate/appear outside of the wave-particle that eludes observation?
Im not an expert but tour comment should be on top. Knowing this, all makes sense so easy.
What if u look at only one of the slits?
Same deal, you're still measuring and can still determine which photons passed through which slit.
But then you potentially wouldn't be interacting with all the photons right?
You are, just not in an intuitive way. Because you'd know the rate of emission of your light source, the information of when a photon passes slit-2 would still "tag" them (whatever photon didn't pass slit-1 must have passed slit-2).