In this experiment, students will be asked to explain the model of light. Experiment 3 - Light Wave-Particle Duality To give them a starting point, provide the specific examples, i.e., what it would look like when you let sand pass through the double slits vs water, then ask what they expect to happen when they flash a laser. The idea of this experiment is that students start to form a model of the light’s behavior as a particle and as a wave.īefore setting up any of the experiments, ask the students what they are expecting to see when light goes through an obstacle such as the double slit, what a particle behavior should look like, what a wave behavior should look like, and finally, what light would look like. In the student’s guide, students are tasked with developing an experiment, following Young’s experiment, to see if they can determine whether light behaves as a particle or a wave. Stay at Home Experiments #1 / DIY Double Slit Experiment! Quantum Physics at Home Safetyĭo not point the laser at anyone, and do not look directly into the laser. We have found this the easiest and most reliable form of doing it. Note: You can find other DIY setups that use old DVD discs, aluminum foil, or even cardboard paper. Paper, notebook or whiteboard to write the observations.Get a single strand, depending on your laser pointer 3 inches will suffice. Remove the rubber and separate the intertwined pieces of copper. Cut a piece of a cable that you don’t mind discarding. Laser pointer, any kind (red lasers work best because of its larger wavelength).Now it is time for you to check it out! Experiment Many other scientists throughout history have tested this concept with electrons, molecules, and atoms always seeing the same result. Therefore, he demonstrated that light can behave both as particle and wave. If he left exposure of the photo for long enough, the little points started forming the interference pattern. But when he dimmed the light to very low level, the photos were of little points, like particles hitting the screen. Initially he saw the same interference patter as Young. In 1909, Geofrey Taylor repeated Young’s experiment and took photos of the light coming out of the slits. In order to be sure, other scientists decided to explore the subject a bit further. So then, that’s it, right? Light is a wave! Yes, but… Confirming the hypothesis that light behaves as a wave. That is exactly what Young’s double-slit experiment showed. If instead of thinking of water waves now we think about light, then what we expect to see on the wall will be lines of bright light and lines with no light. Then you can imagine what happens when the paths of two troughs cross each other: they forma deeper trough. When the crest of waves created by rock A crosses the crest of waves created by rock B, then they form a taller crest. When the crests of waves created by rock A cross the troughs of waves created by rock B, they will cancel each other out. As the waves spread, we will see that the waves that originated from one rock will start to cross the path of the waves created by the other rock. If we throw a rock next to it, we will see that it also creates crests and troughs. If we throw a rock in the water, we see that it creates waves that have crests and troughs. Let’s go back to the ripples in the water. What he saw was what physicists now call an interference pattern. In this experiment, Young would shine a light source onto a screen that had two small slits close to one another to see the reflection of the light after passing through the slits in the wall behind it. But scientists could not agree if light behaves like a particle or a wave In 1801, Thomas Young, a British scientist, was convinced that light was a wave, and he designed his famous double-slit experiment. We can see how a rock behaves differently from a wave. When you throw a rock in the water, you are transferring some energy of the movement of the rock into the water, which causes the water to move around to disperse that energy. In physics, waves are described as the spread of the disturbance or perturbation of something, often energy. Have you noticed what happens when you throw a rock in the water? It makes waves that spread in a ring and grow as they move outward. On the other hand, we have things that can be at different places at the same time, such as waves. We can say that these objects behave like a particle, which is a tiny object that is characterized by only being in one place at a time. In the world we experience every day, we see that objects, like a chair or a rock, can only be in one place at one time. The concept behind how light travels and behaves has been one of physics’ greatest mysteries.
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