Physics in the News – Two Slit Interferometer.

From BBC News – 3 June 2011

Quantum mechanics rule ‘bent’ in classic experiment

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Researchers have bent one of the most basic rules of quantum mechanics, a counterintuitive branch of physics that deals with atomic-scale interactions.

Its “complementarity” rule asserts that it is impossible to observe light behaving as both a wave and a particle, though it is strictly both.

In an experiment reported in Science, researchers have now done exactly that.

They say the feat “pulls back the veil” on quantum reality in a way that was thought to be prohibited by theory.

Quantum mechanics has spawned and continues to fuel spirited debates about the nature of what we can see and measure, and what nature keeps hidden – debates that often straddle the divide between the physical and the philosophical.

For instance, a well-known rule called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle maintains that for some pairs of measurements, high precision in one necessarily reduces the precision that can be achieved in the other. [ This is not so. Brian]

One embodiment of this idea lies in a “two-slit interferometer”, in which light can pass through one of two slits and is viewed on a screen.

Let a number of the units of light called photons through the slits, and an interference pattern develops, like waves overlapping in a pond. However, keeping a close eye on which photons went through which slits – what may be termed a “strong measurement” – destroys the pattern. Etcetera, etcetera.

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More waffle from the physics establishment. This experimental information is covered in my book Physics or Fantasy – Section 1 – Light and Relativity.

The experimental results obtained show that light functions strictly in accordance with normal fluid mechanics, and have nothing to do with quantum mechanics.  Just as in my experiments on colour, the main items of equipment in these experiments are the slits themselves. The significance of the ‘mechanics’ of the slits is totally ignored by the physicists, mainly due to their creed that mechanics cannot have anything to do with physics.

Light is the ultimate  fluid.  People do not think of light as a fluid,  yet it functions like a fluid. The main difficulty is that light is so fluid it that it travels a lot faster than liquids or gases.  The main definition of a fluid is it takes the form of any shape that contains it.

The speed at  which a fluid conforms to the shape of the  containing vessel determines  its fluidity. Treacle, Oil, Water, Dry Sand,  Oxygen, Hydrogen etcetera are all fluids. However, they all take  different amounts of time to fill any containment of them. They are also subject to to gravity and internal frictional forces. Light is  only very, very little affected by gravity, and is only affected by external friction, again, only in a very small way. The slit experiments demonstrate the effects of friction on light.

However, do not expect to put light into a bottle, put a stopper in and use it later. Once light is stopped, its energy is dissipated. The particles (Or if you are a physicist, wavy lines) are still there but have lost their energy. The particles have to have a certain speed to be detected by the eye as ‘light’. Below this speed they cannot trigger the eye/brain receptors.

The experiments are explained in simple language.

See also

How Physicists “Find” their Particles

The Full Mathematics of the Michelson – Morley Experiment