The One With God's Sense of Humor

Golly gee, it's late. And I am UBER tired. And I have to be up insanely early tomorrow morning. But I don't want to go to bed! Instead, I thought I would pass on this little physics lesson that I found fascinating! And that's saying something, because I HATE physics! It is things like this that reassure me of God's sens of humor. I love the fact that no matter how far we advance, we never understand it all...and the stuff that eludes us is astronomical. So here we go...

*****Begin Physics Lesson*****

So, in an effort to determine whether the nature of matter conformed to that of particles or waves, physicists set up a simple little experiment. Picture this, if you will...an electron-emitter (think pitching machine at the batting cages) directly across from a screen capable of detecting the impact of electrons. In between these two devices, the scientists placed a metal plate with a slit cut vertically into the middle of it. Now imagine that the emitter fired one electron at a time toward the opposite side of the room (the slit plate and detector screen), but without aiming for the slit directly. You would expect to have a number of the electrons miss the slit in the middle of the plate, bounce off, and disappear, while a thin line appears in the middle of the detector screen as some of the electrons make it through the slit unimpeded.

And that's exactly what happened, thus proving that electrons (the smallest detectable units of matter) behave like particles.

If the electrons had behaved like waves (think if the same set up was used, but on the surface of a wave pool. Instead of firing electron particles, the emitter sends out a wave), then the wave emitted would hit the slit and the central part of the wave would make it through and radiate out on the other side, eventually hitting the screen. The detector screen would register an area of high intensity directly behind the slit, with a gradual decrease in intensity further from the center.

But the electrons didn't do that.

So, to further test their hypothesis, the physicists replaced the metal plate with one that had TWO slits cut in it, neither of them directly in line with the emitter. In our hypothetical wave-pool example, the new configuration would form an Interference Pattern on the detector screen. As the wave from the emitter hit each of the two slits, a new smaller wave would make it past and continue on toward the detector screen. Where the crests of these two smaller waves meet, a high intensity line appears on the detector screen. Where the waves cancel each other out, a low intensity area appears, essentially painting the screen in zebra stripes of electron hits.

But, again, that's not what happened. As expected with particles, the electrons fired individually from the emitter toward the two slits appeared randomly distributed across the detector screen......for the first few minutes. After that, scientists began to notice a pattern in the arrangement of the electron hits. Can you guess what the pattern was? Why yes, yes it WAS an interference pattern.

Imagine their shocked faces. When only one slit was present, the electrons behaved like particles. When they were fired through two slits, the electrons behaved like waves.

Oh wait....it gets better.......

So the scientists left the experiment sitting exactly like it was and ran off to get their hyper-sensitive electron measuring equipment, specially designed to render accurate detection of electrons without hindering them or altering results. They aimed the device at one of the slits so they would know how many electrons were going through each slit and how they were creating an interference pattern if they were fired one at a time (remember that a single wave cannot create the pattern, only went it interacts with another wave). Anyway, they turned their little measuring device on and then started the same experiment again...




And the interference pattern disappeared. Only two lines showed up on the detector screen, exactly as expected from matter particles. The fact that the electrons were being observed caused them to once again act like particles.

And God laughed.

*****End Physics Lesson*****