nouveaydoubleslit

[nouveaydoubleslit]

The Double Slit Experiment.

If you think that I was inspired by this experiment to keep ‘Double Slit’ as the title of this blog, then you are right. I came across this experiment when I was reading about ‘photons’. And I kinda like it.

This experiment is with light. This experiment proved the photoelectric effect or photoelectric effect was introduced after the observations seen in the experiment.

The date goes back to the 17th century. Issac Newton and Robert Hooke were on a project with light. In that project, Newton had the opinion that light is made of particles but Hooke was against it and said light is a wave. Further studies resulted in saying that light is a wave.

Later, in the 19th century; Thomas Young, a renowned physicist from England, was spending some time by the lake. He observed the pattern formed by the ripples in the water when it was passing through two gaps between the stones. It reminded him of the day when he experimented with laser light passing from two slits. It behaved just the same how the water behaved. He was then satisfied, to say light is a wave, as he knew that ripples were waves. The image he could see with light was like this:

Then he wanted to start studying deeply into it, so he experimented again, but in an enhanced manner. He kept the structure the same but placed a black cloth over the structure so that no external light can pass through. This would give him a better view of what is happening. This time he could see the results in a different way, not the way how a wave does, but in a way how particles do! Like this:

This puzzled physicists all over the world. Albert Einstein took interest in this topic. After long research on the topic, he came up with an idea that light could possibly be both, a wave and a particle. He named this phenomenon- the Photoelectric Effect. Further researches stated that this effect was true and was proved in the ‘Falsification’ test. Later, for his contribution to the photoelectric effect, he holds the Nobel Prize in Physics. Now it was clear that light was made up of particles. He called these particles ‘Quanta’ while others called it in a simpler way ‘Photons’.

After that, both the statements that light is a wave and light is a particle is said to be correct. A part of the light can be particles and some waves.

One scenario which proved the above statement was when a part of the light which was passing through two wires with their ends open perpendicularly, jumped from one tip of the wire to the other tip, while the other part of the light was just passing through. It was not possible for a wave to ‘jump’ over. The only possible way could be if the light was made of particles. After the photoelectric effect was proved, this scenario told us that light is made of both a wave and a particle. Here the part made of particles jumped over the wires, and the part made of wavelengths just went through.

This theory told us a story that not always a theory proved can be perfectly correct. With time, new theories add up which would show that some part of previous theories can be partly or completely false. But not all theories are like this….. [we can trust the scientists and physicists though <;]

[nouveaydoubleslit]

Who Are You?

Life is what you are doing. There are so many things around us: trees, people, buildings; as a whole the ‘environment’. And all these are a part of something. These things have some connection to the start of everything. Really, ‘everything’.

Starts from the particles who don’t have a proper structure, hot, and which doesn’t know what their future is going to be. These particles combine to form the first ‘atom’ of the universe: Helium. With immense pressure on these helium atoms, break down to become the second element of the universe, Hydrogen. Then all these atoms spread around the empty universe, that is expanding at an incredibly high rate, and is still expanding. Then, marvellous fireworks start everywhere. And 13 billion years later, ‘you’ are here, which is formed by the atoms that have gone through all these stages of the universe. The atoms that ‘you’ are made up of have once combined to become numerous stars, which had then become fireworks to become the current stage of ‘you’, or even more interesting thing than that? It must have been a part of a distant galaxy far away than you can ever imagine.

So, as you can see, you can somehow relate all these stages to your life, the life that you are spending on a sphere mostly of molten rock and metal; 13,000 kilometres wide, with a fuzzy atmosphere 100 kilometres high, surrounded by a magnetic field that protects us from the onslaught of the subatomic particles from the Sun; which is called as the ‘Earth’.

So, does this mean that ‘we’, perhaps everything on Earth has gone through all the stages of the universe as those atoms are in you? Absolutely yes! You have your history since the beginning of the universe! You are star stuff! 

So how much exactly Star Stuff? You have your 65% of Oxygen, 18.5% of Carbon, 3.2% of Nitrogen, 1.5% of Calcium from Ancient Stars and 9.5% of Hydrogen from the Big Bang (the start of the universe). Add up all these you get 97%!!

So, as a conclusion of who or what we are, we get to understand how amazing a thing like you, the Universe can be. You are just not a part of the universe, You are the universe.