Did you know that if you lower the frequency of sound down enough it becomes a discrete sound particle/wavepacket?
In fact I do not know that. I'm not even sure what you mean :-)
What you say doesn't make to me any sense if we take sound to have its common definition. Could you please elaborate? Thanks!
Hmmm, if the double slit experiment doesn't convince you that light is both a wave and a particle how about Planck's formula for black body radiation and Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect? That is what he got his Nobel prize for after all.
I have long considered light a wave and a wave only. The double slit experiment clearly demonstrates it as a wave. But what part about the double-slit experiment demonstrates that light is a particle as well?
Anyway, this weekend (Friday and Saturday) I did several interesting double-slit experiments. I even discovered (I'm sure I'm not the first) a formula that at least roughly describes the distance between bands on an interference band pattern. (Distance_To_Target/Distance_Between_Slits)*Wavelength)
(The formula should probably have a reference to sine in there too. But I didn't go that far.)
I also made a javascript simulator for testing my calculations against. and I also verified that all the colors (at least R,G,B) from the sun also form interference bands - but each color forms its own at a slightly different size. Anyway, I had a lot of fun and took a lot of pictures. See them all here!
And by all means feel free to let me know if you see errors - I was definitely in a rush and it's just fresh up.
But please do explain how the slit experiments demonstrate light as a particle. THanks!
This explanation may help. Everything is a wave/particle, particles are emergent properties of waves. Much like water is an emergent property of water vapour and ice is an emergent property of water, each phase has different properties.
How could you best demonstrate that to me?
Light and radio waves are the same, just different wavelengths. You are on the right path : )
This we agree on!
Stern-Gerlach doesn't prove that matter is waves. It is demonstrating the spin of the particles.
Or perhaps it demonstrates the spin of electrons.
Thanks, and do let me know what you think of my primitive and simplistic experiments for the weekend! (By the way, the pictures aren't clickable because I haven't uploaded the high-res ones yet since I'm on 256kbit dsl and well it's slow enough. I'll try to get them all uploaded tonight.)
-Jesse
First start by shooting particles (electrons or larger) at your target through a single slit. Photons technically will work but they are generally just considered electromagnetic radiation (waves) and make great interference patterns as your experiment demonstrated, but they make lousy particle patterns. You should get something that looks like what shooting a shotgun at a paper target looks like (lots of little holes). That is the particle verification.
Then insert the double slits in between your source and the target, then you should get an interference pattern, that is the verification of the wave nature. The idea is to shoot a single electron at a time. Concurrent electrons could invalidate the results.
If you have the theory that the particles are just tiny waves (I envision them as smoke rings) then just make the distance between the slits wider than the the wavelength you think that they are. It will still work with quite a large spacing.
Your experiment and post was great by the way: )