- #1
tonyxon22
- 75
- 5
First of all, I want to apologize ahead for three things:
1) Opening another tread about this experiment, with probably the same title than other 800 threads: I took a little time to read the other threads with similar titles and didn’t found this doubt in none of them, and also didn’t seem right to post this questions in any of those threads.
2) Giving the electron the property of “wave-particle duality”: I will not explicitly write down this term in the lines below because one of the things that I learned in many of the other threads is that this term causes misunderstanding since electrons are not particles nor waves, they are just “electrons”. However I think it could be implicitly understood in my expressions, especially because in most of the literature I have read the term subatomic PARTICLE is applied to all of them, photons, electrons, neutrinos, quarks, etc.. So I have great difficulty in accepting that an electron is not a “particle”, especially for my first question where the electron’s mass is involved into the problem.
3) Giving the electron a human characteristic by using the terms “it knows”: I am afraid this could be a terrible mistake but I find no other way to phrase my questions without it.
Second, the introduction:
As I understand, the experiment consist of 3 elements: (a) a source which shoots electrons. I hope it’s safe to say that it is capable of shooting one electron at the time when we push a button, so we know exactly when each one of them leave the source; (b) a wall with two small slits on it, and on top of each slit there is a detector that is capable to indicate whether a single electron or not passed through the slit; (c) a screen that will mark the position where the electron arrived.
Finally, the questions:
1) Electrons, which for the moment I will accept that are not particles nor waves, have mass. If that is the case, they cannot travel at the speed of light. In the case that we have the detectors ON over the slits, in order to determine which way the electron went, one should be able to calculate how much time did it take for the electron to go from the source to the screen. Knowing the distance between them we can then calculate the speed of the electron which should be slower than the speed of light. The question is: What happens when the detectors are OFF, so we do not know which way the electron went and the screen reveals that it behaves like a wave. In other words, what is the speed of the electron when it behaves like a wave?
2) Supposing that we manage to create a layout of the experiment where the slit is in the middle distance between the source and the screen, why does measuring the position of the electron at half way would determine the position at the end? Does the result changes if we move the slit closer to the source or to the screen? For all the electron “knows”, it was detected at a certain point, but it could be crossing many other slits after the one with the detector, thus start behaving like a wave, but it doesn’t. I seems like once it is detected, the rest of the experiment is already fully determined. So what if we put another barrier with two slits in front of the first one? Will the electron at that point begin to behave like a wave if no detectors determine which one of the second slits in went through? How does it even “knows” that it was crossing a second slit? Why would that behavior not happen if there were not this second barrier with slits?
3) (This question was actually in one of the other threads that I read but I didn’t catch a direct answer) If the detectors are OFF, does each single electron still leave only one mark in the screen? If that is the case, then many electrons need to be fired before the wave behavior can be appreciated on the screen, which can also be interpreted as each individual electron takes a different path after the slit. I don’t know if you understand where I’m going with this but thinking about it takes me back to the second question.
Thanks for reading and best regards,
1) Opening another tread about this experiment, with probably the same title than other 800 threads: I took a little time to read the other threads with similar titles and didn’t found this doubt in none of them, and also didn’t seem right to post this questions in any of those threads.
2) Giving the electron the property of “wave-particle duality”: I will not explicitly write down this term in the lines below because one of the things that I learned in many of the other threads is that this term causes misunderstanding since electrons are not particles nor waves, they are just “electrons”. However I think it could be implicitly understood in my expressions, especially because in most of the literature I have read the term subatomic PARTICLE is applied to all of them, photons, electrons, neutrinos, quarks, etc.. So I have great difficulty in accepting that an electron is not a “particle”, especially for my first question where the electron’s mass is involved into the problem.
3) Giving the electron a human characteristic by using the terms “it knows”: I am afraid this could be a terrible mistake but I find no other way to phrase my questions without it.
Second, the introduction:
As I understand, the experiment consist of 3 elements: (a) a source which shoots electrons. I hope it’s safe to say that it is capable of shooting one electron at the time when we push a button, so we know exactly when each one of them leave the source; (b) a wall with two small slits on it, and on top of each slit there is a detector that is capable to indicate whether a single electron or not passed through the slit; (c) a screen that will mark the position where the electron arrived.
Finally, the questions:
1) Electrons, which for the moment I will accept that are not particles nor waves, have mass. If that is the case, they cannot travel at the speed of light. In the case that we have the detectors ON over the slits, in order to determine which way the electron went, one should be able to calculate how much time did it take for the electron to go from the source to the screen. Knowing the distance between them we can then calculate the speed of the electron which should be slower than the speed of light. The question is: What happens when the detectors are OFF, so we do not know which way the electron went and the screen reveals that it behaves like a wave. In other words, what is the speed of the electron when it behaves like a wave?
2) Supposing that we manage to create a layout of the experiment where the slit is in the middle distance between the source and the screen, why does measuring the position of the electron at half way would determine the position at the end? Does the result changes if we move the slit closer to the source or to the screen? For all the electron “knows”, it was detected at a certain point, but it could be crossing many other slits after the one with the detector, thus start behaving like a wave, but it doesn’t. I seems like once it is detected, the rest of the experiment is already fully determined. So what if we put another barrier with two slits in front of the first one? Will the electron at that point begin to behave like a wave if no detectors determine which one of the second slits in went through? How does it even “knows” that it was crossing a second slit? Why would that behavior not happen if there were not this second barrier with slits?
3) (This question was actually in one of the other threads that I read but I didn’t catch a direct answer) If the detectors are OFF, does each single electron still leave only one mark in the screen? If that is the case, then many electrons need to be fired before the wave behavior can be appreciated on the screen, which can also be interpreted as each individual electron takes a different path after the slit. I don’t know if you understand where I’m going with this but thinking about it takes me back to the second question.
Thanks for reading and best regards,