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RE: Wave-particle duality aka the central pillar of quantum mechanics
In our physics class at school we studied this and the teacher told us that it was due to wave-particle duality, but that it was hard to understand so we couldnt get to it.
I still don't understand how a single photon can travel in all directions at once. I half understand that the wave is just the potential for the photon to exist, and on interaction the wave 'collapses' into a particle state, but if you have a better explanation I'd be pleased to read it.
A single photon (particle) cannot. It is a particle and has a given energy-momentum. In other words, the direction of the momentum is well determined. This is different from the photon quantum field.
In contrast, the photon field is indeed everywhere in spacetime, and photons are seen as quantized oscillations in this field. In other words, what we call particle is a quantization effect. But usually, we use one for the other which increases the confusion.
I am not sure whether this helps, but maybe can you expand the question?
OK so I was given bad info (or misunderstood).
So my interpretation of the two slit experiment is as follows.
Photon leaves the emission source
Photon wave potential encounters 2 slits
Photon collapses into particle and passes via one slit
Photon becomes a wave potential again and received some amount of diffraction
Photon travels towards screen on new trajectory
Photon reaches screen and collapses back into a particle
Your interpretation is actually not correct.
The particle and the wave are always coming as pairs. It is never one or the other, but always one and the other.
It is also not possible, as said at the end of the article, to determine by which silt the particle went through. The interpretation is really tough and counterintuitive, I know ;)
Ok yes my explanation wasnt exactly what I meant, the particle and the wave are different expressions of the same thing, I mean more that the wave/particle behaves as if it were a wave or particle based on the scenario, but the underlying object itself doesnt change. A man can wear a blue hat or a red hat, he is still a man with two hats, which hat he is wearing at a given time depends on the occasion.
In terms of the slit, I wasnt saying we could observe which slit the photon passes through (if we do there is no interference pattern, I think, the act of observation changes the outcome), only that it expresses itself as a particle in that scenario and passes through one slit or the other.
That's the difficulty of chatting on the comments of a post and not lively. Let's try to do our best in understanding each other ;)
This is however the question that cannot be answered. It is really like the particle passes through both slits at the same time, which is very counterintuitive. If the particle would pass through a single slit, then we would not get any interference pattern.
'It is really like the particle passes through both slits at the same time', yes and its where I get fuzzy, but I think we kind of believe it passes through both with a chance.
So if it passes through slit 1 with a 55% potential then we will see more interference on that side, but anyway it also went through slit 2 with a 45% potential. We always get the particle come out of the slits, but we cant be clear which one, but everything adds back up to 100% in the end. So we know it did happen, just not exactly how.
We are indeed getting closer. it is only the potential fractions that I don't understand. Do you mind explaining them further? thanks in advance!
Conceptually, this is hard to digest. But this is actually the key. Even if one may think this is not possible, data is there to tell us that it actually works.
I dont know if I can explain it because I dont properly understand it myself.
But we do see that objects like electrons arent bound to one fixed point, they kind of hop around and at any time have a range of possible locations they will appear at next, and I think the percentage chances of each new location can be calculated. So in the case of two slits, the electron can pass through both but might spend a higher proportion of its time in the vecinity of one slit versus the other.
I may have that utterly wrong, but its what I surmised from different sources.