Video Infoblog: The Weird Experiment that Changes When Observed
The double-slit experiment is the strangest phenomenon in physics. Transcript 0:00 The double-slit experiment defies our understanding. 0:03 It involves a laser shooting beams of light particles, called photons, 0:07 at a screen with two parallel slits. 0:10 If we mark all the spots where the photons hit the second wall, 0:13 we should expect to see two strips to correspond with the two slits. 0:17 But that’s not what we see. 0:19 Instead, we see an alternating pattern of light and dark bands. 0:23 This is characteristic of the behavior of waves that pass through both slits simultaneously, 0:29 interfering with each other to create the pattern on the second screen. 0:32 The bright lines are where the top of waves meet, resulting in a more intense or brighter 0:38 area on the screen. The darker bands are where the top of one wave meets the bottom of another, 0:43 so they canc...