Mini- Project

Wave/ particle duality. Double slit experiment

Macro Scale

When shoot a particle through a slit, there is a pattern that appears on the other side that looks like a vertical line. When there are two slits, there are two vertical lines that appear. Now, let us consider a water wave under the same situation. When there is one slit, still one vertical line appears. The interesting part comes when there are two slits. There is then what is called an interference pattern. Meaning there are many vertical lines at the points where the crests of the waves are coming together.

Micro Scale-

Now let us zoom in on what happens at the micro level. We will consider electrons. If we shoot electrons through the single slit, one vertical line is created. When they are shot through the double slit, an interference pattern is created! This is very interesting because the electrons are behaving as waves.  Up until this point, we have considered them to be particles.

What could be creating thins behavior?

Superposition

This begins our discussion of superposition for electrons.

Superposition of electrons states that the electron can be in both of it states.

superposition in demonstrated the Schrodinger’s cat dilemma.

A cat is placed in a box with a radioactive particle, cyanide,…

Until the cat is observed we do not know whether the cat is dead or alive. In fact, it is both dead and alive until it is observed and it collapses into one state

This seems ridicules on the macro scale, but electrons behave this way all the time.

Quantum Tunneling