In my last Article I introduced the Quantum world to all of us, Today I will focus more on the double slit experiment, these was one of the experiment that made Scientist to ask questions about what is observations.
The double slit experiment.
Every student of Science mustt have heard about these experiment before directly or indirectly. The double slit experiment exposed us to Quantum world, and made us to realise that the same law that our physical world obeys ,does not apply to the Quantum world at all.
The double slit experiment was first performed by Thomas young to prove one of the wave properties of light which is the interference.
Interference simply means, when two or more waves passing through two path and then emerge to form a much bigger waves or they combine to form zero waves. It just like saying 1+1=2 and 1-1= 0.
These double slit experiment was conducted using An electron which is assumed to be the building block of matter.
To conduct the experiment,A material with two path created on it was use. In layman voice it is like saying ,you put two goal post together.
First on the physical scale, if you put two goal post close to each other,but these two goal post does not have net,so the football can just pass through it.
Now if a footballer is given a ball, and he is told to aim at the post, the football won't enter the two post together, but it will either enter the first post or the second post. But not the two together. These was what Scientist where expecting when they wanted to use electron to conduct the experiment.
Now there footballer will be replaced with an electron gun( A device designed to shot electrons) and the two goal post was replaced by a Double slit, that is a material that has two path on it.
also on the physical scale if a water is passing through a material having two holes in it, the water will pass through the two holes together and then converge together at the other side of the hole, it is one of the wave properties of water.
Electron double slit experiment
Now the electron was shot at the material, Scientist expected us to have the same result as the first situation where the football passed through only one of the goal post but not the two together.
But Scientist where surprise, a single electron passed through the two path on the material.. Scientists conducted the experiment again and they still had the same result again. Well they now decided to observe the electron and know how it was possible for the electron to pass through the two path together.
But like the electron has a mind of it own, the observe noticed that the electron passed through only one path in the material but not the two path together. When the observer was removed again, the single electron passed through the two path again..
Scientist became confused, what is matter, is matter a wave or a particle, how can an electron behave both like a wave and also like a particle.
These questions lead to many unlearning of what we think we know.
It took a group of Scientist to finally came up with idea. Great men like heinzberg,Neil Bohr, Paul Dirac, the great Schrodinger's and the rest to finally find the solution to these problem of the Quantum world. and these single experiment paved the way for world we live today.
To be continued!!!
I love reading about this experiment though. It's amazing how just having an observer around makes the electron behave differently