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LateViewer
professor emeritus
Reged: 11/17/05
Posts: 612
Loc: Westchester NY
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Is it possible to do the famous double slit experiment in my basement?
I need to see this for myself.
Al
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photonovore
Moonatic
Reged: 12/24/04
Posts: 2472
Loc: tacoma wa
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Yes. 
Here is the college version of Young's experiment and here is the high school version.
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Mardi
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Jarad
Post Laureate
Reged: 04/28/03
Posts: 3858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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To put into amateur astro talk, use a barlowed laser collimator as your light source. Take a cheap back-silvered flat mirror out of a makeup set, and use 2 razor blades held against each other to scrape out 2 parallel slits from the silvering in back (the slits should be very close together). Shine the barlowed laser on the slits, and put a white piece of paper in front of the mirror, and turn out the lights. Voila - Diffraction!
Jarad
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Dane B
super member
Reged: 02/23/08
Posts: 120
Loc: Seattle, Wa
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Interesting, but what I'd really like to see in person is the diffraction pattern from photons or electrons sent one by one through the slits. And even better, the loss of diffraction upon creating a means of detecting which slit each particle passes through.
That sounds a bit more high-tech than can be done as a DIY project - hope I'm wrong though.
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Without judgement what would we do? We would be forced to look at ourselves...
-Death
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matt
Vendor (Scopemania)
Reged: 07/28/03
Posts: 10022
Loc: Chaville, France
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well, the laser or sunbeam experiment shows you photon diffraction. Electron diffraction requires an electron "gun" and an "electron screen" (basically the business end of a TV tube), which would still be available to an enthusiastic amateur physicist (if we could do it in high school, I guess it can be done in a basement) but might be a little beyond what you can buy at Radio Shack.
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Matt
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LateViewer
professor emeritus
Reged: 11/17/05
Posts: 612
Loc: Westchester NY
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Well I did the experiment with a laser and a card and certainly saw the interference pattern at the short distance of two feet from the card to the wall.
Cool.
The show at my theatre, Gypsy with Patty Lupone, has a bunch of kids in it. Over the weekend I showed them a small motor I made with a battery, paper clips, some wire and a magnet. I think I will show them this demonstration next.
Al
Edited by LateViewer (04/14/08 08:46 AM)
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AleX`G
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 05/29/06
Posts: 877
Loc: Scotland UK
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Yer sure you can but I think it might be harder using electrons you would need quite a high resolution imaging system with bright lights.
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/DoubleSlit/DoubleSlit.html
As im sure you most likely know although this effect appears to be a contradiction of our particle-wave theory it is in fact explained by the uncertainty princible in quantum dynamics.
Alex
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