I have had heard it said that if you think you understand quantum effects you are probably wrong, as it does not make any sense to have spooky action at a distance. So we miss which is pretty weird.
I think one of the interesting things about the experiment is that the single photon appears to travel through both slots simultaneously and interfere with itself to create the classic sum over history diffraction pattern . A calculation of all the possible single particle projections through the slits produces the same diffraction pattern . Spooky and strange quantum probability proves wave particle duality as a kind of analogue I think. So not really ping pong balls . Way stranger at that scale.
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Originally Posted by morls
Thanks Gary.
There's something I'm still not understanding about all this.
In the "basic" double-slit experiment described on the wikipedia linked to above, it's a coherent light source - single-phase, single frequency, in effect, a stream of photons emitted at a steady rate, yes? I imagine this would be a very narrow beam, i.e. with a diameter of 1 photon. This light source is directed at a surface with two slits in it.
M
Here's where I'm stuck:
Are the two slits narrower than the diameter of the coherent light stream (i.e. is 1 photon hitting both slits simultaneously)? In the video "Simulation of a particle wave function" (on the right hand size of the same webpage referred to above) this appears to be the case.
These must be very small slits, each less than half the diameter of a (massless) photon when allowing for the material between them!
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