Examining the Slit Experiment

[Buffy]

Trying to understand what you're doing so here goes:

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

Quantum physics retains but refines this picture of the particle. I question the very validity of that model.

Why?

This is not a facetious question: I'm trying to get you to be explicit about what bothers you about Quantum Mechanics. Knowing you, I know that this is probably much more sophisticated than "it just doesn't make sense from my macroscopic experience of the world."

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

What I am questioning is the results of a material experiment within which I believe that certain key factors are being neglected, such as the very structure of matter at it's fundament.

Neither Classical physics, nor Quantum physics give a satisfactory explanation (theory) of matter.

What makes Quantum theory's explanation unsatisfactory?

I think anyone who's studied it will agree its hard to grok that is well attested to by Feynman, and many others. There are certainly unknown boundaries of the standard model, and it definitely is hole prone when it comes to trying to integrate gravity, but claiming that its description of matter is incomplete is attacking it at its strongest and best-supported-by-data point!

So expound a bit KAC: what's your beef?

A wavy particle,
Buffy

[Drum]

Kickass ....
Thanks for your kind words. Its true that my last post was my first and that I have read very little of yours, or others posts on this forum.

I am not a Scientist and I know very little about maths. I will try a little more detail

..KickAss ..Consider a simple correspondence fact about the photon and electron. They both have mass-energy and thus are identified as forms of matter.

If you consider the electron as occupying an 'orbit' or 'blur' around a nucleus, then only certain 'orbits' are allowed. A raw description of allowable 'orbits' would be that the 'diameter' of the electron must divide into the circumference of the orbit exactly, whether it be 10, 20 or 11 times. if an allowable orbit had a circumference = (ten electron diameters) then the next larger allowable orbit would be a circumference = (11 electron diameters)

Of course this is an explanation that does not exist in reality.... but it is conceptual.

Each time an electron gains or loses energy it 'jumps' to the next available orbit. Remember this 'jump' is not really describable as it is part of the probability of all possible paths. However, each time the electron does this it gives of exactly one Photon.

Electrons are massive objects, while Photons have zero mass (at least zero invariant mass ... which for our purposes is the same).

This difference can not really be considered minor. The reason I suggested electrons in the double slit experiment is that they are 'heavy' and travel 'slow' whereas a Photon, having zero mass zips along at Light(-ening) speed. Electrons are very easy to keep track of, look at the example of your TV screen or computer monitor if you still have the CRT type. if there was no barrier at all and we fired a single electron at the target it will register.

The double slit experiment was first performed many years ago, 1801-2, I think. Since then many, many times it has been proven. it has been followed by the Delayed-Choice double slit experiment...... If you have a problem with the double slit then be prepared to be outraged by the delayed choice. The most shocking implication is that the past can effectively be altered by the future.

All this culminated in an alienation between two camps ... On the one side Einstein, Podolsky and Rosenberg, known as EPR ... and on the other, all the new hot, young quantum physicists.

The EPR side threw up a challenge that absolutely stymied the QM camp in their tracks. The best answer they could come up with was that 'in the world of the Quantum such questions are not allowed' .... pretty lame, but from a scientific viewpoint perfectly valid.

The along come an unknown guy called Bell. He suggested a way that the EPR Paradox could be tested ... up to this point it had been thought impossible to test. In the early 1960s (or possibly late 60s) this test was conducted and guess what .... it proved absolutely beyond doubt 100% that the universe is not local, and that Classical mathematics is no longer the most valid description of our Universe.... it also spawned many false religions and cults as people read mystical things into it.

Once you have a handle on Bell's Theorem you will never look at reality in the same way again. You can be assured that Bell and the other physicists that successfully bought his ideas to experimental conclusion are people of immense skill and integrity. They can easily detect particles used in experiments from amongst the particles making up the machinery of the experiment..

KickAss ..Here is a challenge. Give me two seperate theories of matter. One classical and one quantum. Preferably from the standard model.

I am afraid that it will take someone a lot better than me to do that.

From my own personal opinion, I believe that in the beginning there was a fundamental substance (matter) that was somehow put in motion (energy) ... The Universe is the result. Once you have matter in motion you only need a Newton to say F=MA, an Einstein to correct the absolutes by fixing the Speed of Light relative to all observers, then go on to say that Gravity is nothing more than Acceleration and it is also fixed relative to all observers.... but finding out what that bastard fundamental substance (matter) is ... you will need Quantum Mechanics .... and there goes the neighbourhood..!!

Drum

[Fatstep]

Keep in mind I know nothing about this topic.
But is the answer not because it isn't a single layer of atoms?
The hundreds/thousands/millions of layers of atoms form a barrier and stop any/everything from coming through?

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

… if you ask the question of if the barrier is massed, and mass is 90% empty space, then why doesn't the photon merely pass through the barrier?
…
in the case of a closed barrier, why must I accept that the photon is still contained within the experiment area?

For the first question, “why doesn’t the photon pass through the barrier”, we should start by noting both that, in a classical sense, any barrier is much more than 90% empty – if you consider an atom’s nucleus (classical diameter about m) and electrons ( m) to be “solid”, and the atom ( m) to be “hollow”, a typical carbon atom (6 electrons) is about = 99.9999999999 % empty. Even densely packed carbon atoms – diamond (3513 kg/m^3) or graphite (2267 kg/m^3) add about another division by 2 to its density, so a typical dense solid is about 99.99999999995 % empty. Using this figure, we can calculate the “classical” probability of a small, uncharged particle passing through a 1.5 m slab of graphite ( packet atoms), and get a surprising (and strongly contradicted by observation) 99.95 %.

From this, we should conclude what early 20th century physicists did: there’s something very wrong with viewing photons and sub-atomic particles as tiny little classical objects.

A detailed explanation would recapitulate most of modern physics, so jumping to the end, we explain why even a thin (1 mm, about 3000000 atoms) layer of something like graphite appears to allow effectively 0% of photons of visible light to pass through it as follows:
The electrons in the carbon in graphite are free to assume many different energies. For every frequency of visible light an electron is available to change energy, absorbing the photon. The electron then emits one or more photons, most of them either virtual photons of magnetic force that carry the energy to it’s atom’s nucleus and electrons in surround atoms in a phenomenon known macroscopically as heat, or if the electron’s energy is great enough to allow it to reduce its energy by a great enough amount, as one or more photons of visible or invisible light, in a phenomenon known macroscopically as glowing. If the electron emits a photon of the same energy as the one absorbed, the phenomenon is known as reflection. Graphite doesn’t reflect much.

On the scale of photons and electrons, and other fundamental particles, the idea of classical size and collisions isn’t useful. Instead, we must consider their interaction to be a summation of the wave functions of the photon and a superposition of the electron at various energies. Mathematically, this is very complex, but despite the difficulty we humans have calculating it, appears to be what huge numbers of photons, electrons, and other fundamental particles do to produce macroscopic phenomena, such as opacity to visible light

For the second question, “why must I accept that the photon is still contained within the experiment area?”, referring to the preceding explanation, we can see that the photon is not contained by the opaque barrier. It is absorbed, ceasing to exist, by an electron, which then emits photons of other than visible light.

Note that none of these explanations require consideration of gravity. The whole of observed macroscopic optics is explained by quantum mechanics, and would work about the same if gravity did not exist.

(All of the data used in this post is available in numerous references, such as wikipedia)

[silverslith]

Love to hear you describe the

Delayed-Choice double slit experiment......

Drum.

[KickAssClown]

I quite enjoy hearing all about the various facets of the double slit experiment, with different variables and all.

However, I reconginze that my beef as Buffy says, is not understood in full.

The reason I gave the challenge to present the classical and quantum theories of matter is because I know within reasonable certainty that there exists no such theories. Not formally anyway. My physics book has a chapter early on that describes basic concepts such as mass-energy and matter, but no where in it does it contain a standard theory of mass-energy or matter.

What it does explain is this, Mass-energy are properties of the object matter. It further explains that these properties are the device by which we detect the underlying object, matter.

Now I have a hard time expressing concisely why this fact bothers me in the context of the double slit experiment but I do know that if someone takes a little time and effort to sit and think about the structure of the experiment both microscopicly and macroscopicly they will realize, at least to some degree, that the experimental results are reflective of a structure. What is neglected in all this discussion and interpertation is that the experiment in total is matterial. Everything about it.

Wheather we talk about electrons and their orbits, photons and their phantom rest mass, wheather we are using carbon, cardboard or steel for the barrier. We are using matter for the entire construction. Now in classical experiments regarding non-quantum scale experiments we could neglect such things as the truely fundamental structure of matter, however what this experiment does goes far beyond that scale. It obviously enters into a different realm of scale.

Take for instance CraigD's comment:

Originally Posted by CraigD

On the scale of photons and electrons, and other fundamental particles, the idea of classical size and collisions isn’t useful.

CraigD here asserts, implicitly, that what is being played with is fundamental particles, I would assert that what is infact being played with is not fundamental, though I would conceit that it is made up of fundamentals.

I am not necessarily saying that the experimental results are incorrect, what I am disputing, what I am remain skeptical of is the interpertation of the results.

My reasoning for remaining skeptical arrises from the simple fact that these interpertations, by even the most knowledgable, come about without a real scientific basis. There is no theorem of mass, no theorem of matter, no theorem of energy.

As such what can be really said about the interaction of matter particles/waves? When the term matter, mass, and energy are all so ill defined?

[Erasmus00]

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

My reasoning for remaining skeptical arrises from the simple fact that these interpertations, by even the most knowledgable, come about without a real scientific basis. There is no theorem of mass, no theorem of matter, no theorem of energy.

As such what can be really said about the interaction of matter particles/waves? When the term matter, mass, and energy are all so ill defined?

Note: I abridged the above. What do you mean by a "theorem of mass, matter and energy?" I ask, because as far as I know, mass, and energy are very well defined in standard theory. What is not known is WHY certain particles have certain masses.

However, once experimentally measured, mass is a very well defined property, as is energy.
-Will

[KickAssClown]

Originally Posted by Erasmus00

Note: I abridged the above. What do you mean by a "theorem of mass, matter and energy?" I ask, because as far as I know, mass, and energy are very well defined in standard theory. What is not known is WHY certain particles have certain masses.

However, once experimentally measured, mass is a very well defined property, as is energy.
-Will

Well, I mean just that. Theorem of Mass-energy, and matter.

There is a theory of relativity which lays out in certain terms the priniciples of relativity and it's effects. Which explains in rather good detail the phenomena that arrise from it's emperical existence.

Surely mass and energy are decently defined in physics, however their definition is still far from comprehensive.

You can search the physics books all you like and what you will find for mass-energy and matter are models, not theorems. As I have posted previously on this forum is the neglegence in defining and questioning the fundamentals like mass, distance, time, and charge will ultimately lead scientist astray.

The main one is mass and matter. Yes, matter has a property that we call mass, and yes it can be measured, but what is it exactly? the fact that matter has this property is what can be called a law. The explination for why it has this property is what can be called a theory.

In this way, there is no theorem of mass-energy or matter. It is taken for granted and needs to be examined. I know with reasonable certainty that what we think mass and matter is, is most likely not what it really is.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

My reasoning for remaining skeptical arrises from the simple fact that these interpertations, by even the most knowledgable, come about without a real scientific basis.

I must disagree that it is a “fact” that none of the interpretations provided in this thread, or, I gather KAC means, in the whole of physics literature, have a “real scientific basis”. If none of what most people have for centuries called “science” qualifies as “having a real scientific basis”, this meaning of “real scientific basis” seems so far from the usual one that it’s not useful.

One of the characteristics of science is its ability to make and test predictions in the absence of a complete understanding of underlying causes. Kepler's laws of planetary motion provided very good predictions of the motion of orbiting bodies 80 years before a good, but still incomplete, explanation was provided by Newton’s law of universal gravitation. Lavoisier’s caloric theory, even though absolutely incorrect, provided an explanation of heat that allowed many scientists and engineers to successfully predict, test, and build useful technologies based of phenomena involving heat.

IMHO, scientific theories must always be viewed as provisional. They are constantly in need of improvement. However, this need does not negate their theoretical predictions.

For example, AFAIK, gravity has not been successfully included in a theory of particle physics that successfully predicts the observed behavior of phenomena on the m scale. This does not mean that the motion of the planets as explained by Kepler’s laws, or the interaction of photons and atoms explained by the standard model, have no scientific basis, or that the terms such theories define – distance, mass, energy, etc. - are ill defined.

PS: A note on diction: The term “theorem” does not mean “explanation”, as the term ”scientific theory” does, but means “a proven proposition”. It’s ordinarily used only in formal mathematical language. It certainly does not mean to most people who recognize it “a really good/perfect theory”.

I believe the sentence

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

There is no theorem of mass, no theorem of matter, no theorem of energy

should have been written:
“there is no theory of mass, no theory of matter, no theory of energy”,
or
“there is no explanation of mass, no explanation of matter, no explanation of energy”.

[Erasmus00]

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

Well, I mean just that. Theorem of Mass-energy, and matter.

As Craig mentioned, you most probably mean theory or explanation.

Surely mass and energy are decently defined in physics, however their definition is still far from comprehensive.

You can search the physics books all you like and what you will find for mass-energy and matter are models, not theorems. As I have posted previously on this forum is the neglegence in defining and questioning the fundamentals like mass, distance, time, and charge will ultimately lead scientist astray.

Of course this is questioned, and all the time! Relativity was about rigorously defining what we mean by time and space. Other theories (such as QED) have attempted to elaborate what we mean by charge and mass.

The main one is mass and matter. Yes, matter has a property that we call mass, and yes it can be measured, but what is it exactly? the fact that matter has this property is what can be called a law. The explination for why it has this property is what can be called a theory.

First, this is an oversimplification, not everything has mass. Photons and gluons, for instance, do not. Of the force carrying bosons, only the W and Zs have mass.

Second, the standard model does have a theory of mass based on the higgs/Anderson mechanism.
-Will