- #1
fimaun
- 8
- 0
Hello,
I am not educated in physics, but I would like to gain some understanding on the double-slit experiment. I am suspecting that not only its results are to me hardly understandable (as far as I know, that is the normal case), but also some of the assumptions on which the experiment itself relies.
There are many obscure points to me, and probably the following will be a stupid question... but I would appreciate someone clarifying the following:
If I understood what I have been reading, it is alleged that the 'measurement' by the slits changes the behaviour of the traveling electron from a wave-like one to a particle-one. I am talking about the 'measurement' that attempts to determine which slit the electron went through.
On the other hand, in the experiment there is a detection device, a fluorescent screen or sort of thing, that shows the wave-like behaviour of the electron by displaying the interference patterns.
So what I am not understanding is: In which way this 'detection' is different in nature from the 'detection' by the slits, so that forces the electron into a 'particle-like' object, but the other one does not?
After having formulated the question it sounds still more stupid, but it is a price I am eager to pay for some light on the subject... the resources I see in the Internet insist on quasi-mistycally talking about how 'observing' changes the behaviour of the particle, but I do not get the physical sense of this.
Thanks in advance.
David
I am not educated in physics, but I would like to gain some understanding on the double-slit experiment. I am suspecting that not only its results are to me hardly understandable (as far as I know, that is the normal case), but also some of the assumptions on which the experiment itself relies.
There are many obscure points to me, and probably the following will be a stupid question... but I would appreciate someone clarifying the following:
If I understood what I have been reading, it is alleged that the 'measurement' by the slits changes the behaviour of the traveling electron from a wave-like one to a particle-one. I am talking about the 'measurement' that attempts to determine which slit the electron went through.
On the other hand, in the experiment there is a detection device, a fluorescent screen or sort of thing, that shows the wave-like behaviour of the electron by displaying the interference patterns.
So what I am not understanding is: In which way this 'detection' is different in nature from the 'detection' by the slits, so that forces the electron into a 'particle-like' object, but the other one does not?
After having formulated the question it sounds still more stupid, but it is a price I am eager to pay for some light on the subject... the resources I see in the Internet insist on quasi-mistycally talking about how 'observing' changes the behaviour of the particle, but I do not get the physical sense of this.
Thanks in advance.
David