Quantum Quackery Cracked? - Double Slit Experiment

Over the last year I have developed an appreciation for science. This consists mainly of reading science magazines and watching nature programs and the like, so as you can appreciate I am a total novice. One thing that comes up often is all the quantum mechanical quackery that fraudsters try to sell to people like me and quite frankly I'm sick of it. I have tried to educate myself a bit so as to guard against the disinformation.

The double slit experiment was quite an interesting read but I don't really see the mystery in it. Is an electron a particle or a wave? From looking at the experiment this is what seems logical to me:
The electron particle is fired from the generator. This has a secondary result of creating a wave-front of unknown subatomic properties.
The electron then rides the wave like a little surfer. When the wave hits the single slit the “surfers” make a beeline for the back of the receptor screen – hence particle distribution pattern.
Then when the double slit is introduced the “surfers” are caught up in the interference pattern and are washed up like driftwood in the wave interference pattern.
Introducing the observation device somehow attenuates the “unknown wave” frequency and the little “surfers” are forced off the wave and resume a normal particle distribution pattern.

It seems that you just have to find what is causing the wave and stop looking at the electron. If you did the double slit experiment with water in a pond and added small polystyrene balls the result would look like the quantum results if you accounted only for the polystyrene strike pattern.
Could this be right or do I have to put up with Deepak Chopra style babble for a bit longer?

 

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Think you should do a little more research on the subject.. This has been tested time and time again. The duality of matter is real and scientists have no reason for distributing "disinformation".

Trust the educated as they make the modern world tick. If they where wrong most of the technology that allows you to post on this forum would not work. Is that not the proof that it is so.

 

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As you may appreciate, scientists are not the only people who distribute information. I know how computers work and I'm not disputing that but I have give a very specific example in the double slit experiment. Yes, it has been tested time and time again and to my knowledge has not produced a satisfying explanation.
I have had a go and given my thoughts about this specific topic. Obviously I don't have the equipment to demonstrate but the maths can work. What is wrong with the hypothesis itself?

 

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If you are novice, why do you have such strong opinions?
Why not wait until you know more about the subject?

Before the usual crew dive in and tear you to pieces, I'd like to understand a bit more about your reasoning.

You mentioned quackery.
A wrong judgement I feel.
Physics depends on experiment and mathematics, which don't lend themselves to quackery.
Give some examples of what you mean.

 

I'm talking about all the “self help” type books and articles that borrow from quantum physics and turn it into magic, not the actual experiments themselves. As a novice I can still have a sound sense of logic. From what I have seen the results are described as counter intuitive but my line a reasoning make sense given the limited information I have.

Don't worry about hurting my feeling or anything, let me have it. This is how we learn – when other are willing to teach.

 

Sorry, contrary to what you're saying here, physicists ARE quite satisfied with the explanation they've all come up with. The experiment clearly demonstrates the dual nature (both wave and particle) of light, subatomic particles and even all the way up to buckeyballs with a diameter about 0.7 nm

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Oh please do provide your math. Would love to see something real as apposed to a gut feeling and some, I know better, reasoning...

 

Well then I suppose my supposition is counter to what "all those scientists" are saying. “What arrogance” you might be saying, I don't' care, it's beats selling bibles on street corners.
If there is a sea of subatomic matter all about us (like dark matter) and particles of a certain weight (like electrons) can be influenced by it's wave formation when “fired” at the same velocity, then this dual-nature of matter would fall away and the idea of single particles interfering with itself would be void. Can you say for certain what is happening at the subatomic level?

 

I suppose you get so many crackpots on here thinking that they know everything that the idea of a gut feeling repulses you - that's fair enough. Maybe I should come back when I've done the maths. This still won't change the idea though.

 

Ran across this: "Does God Have a Future":

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Face...ry?id=10170505

Had a bit of trouble finding the actual video, but the segments are available on this page (scroll down):

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaceOff/#

 

Guess im repulsed by people who make supposition without the math or experimentation.

It will take pages of math to describe current theory, and the same to disprove. Yet the math is useless without experimentation and proof.. If you do the experiment and math I strongly suggest you apply for a nomination for a Nobel Physics prize.

 

Hence the explanation of my non-credentials in the opening paragraph. If you stopped reading there you could have saved yourself from repulsion. Did you think I just wanted to be humble?

The experiment has been done, it's the conclusion that is counter-intuitive. I'm just employing Occam's razor. We know that we are surrounded by matter that has weight yet is invisible to us (this theory is used to describe the rotation of galaxies). It's not too much of a stretch to say that this matter could have an effect on known subatomic partials in experiments such as the double slit.

 

No, I'm not calling you arrogant at all. The problem is just that you don't don't know enough about the proven physics - and your final paragraph (above) is certainly proof of that.

All you need to do is spend more time getting a grip on the basics before you start in calling established facts "quackery" and trying to substitute your own suppositions for those well-established facts.

 

I agree but please don't think that I'm calling scientists quacks. I'm writting only about people like Deepak Chopra who try to sell science as magic to the layman like me.

 

I prefer to call it a mind fuck. Quantum mechanics is only understood with mathematics. Do not try to understand it in any other way as that will not work.

 

Just out of interest, does anybody know of an experiment that has been done on the effects of “dark matter” on subatomic particles such as electrons or photons?

 

As far as we know only the gravity of dark matter has an influence. There has been some speculation about the temperature of dark-matter and its influence but I think this is still via gravity. Quantum mechanics still has no explanation for gravity.

Try string theory, but which version I do not know.

 

Warning, pure speculation ahead.

If we could prove that the mechanism we use to fire electrons also creates a ripple of equal velocity in this so called dark matter would it not be intuitive to say that the trajectory of the fired electron could be altered by the wave-front and create the wave/particle distribution pattern.
The same could be said of the electron monitoring device used – If this disturbed the delicate balance of forces which enable the electron to “ride” on its wave-front, it would explain why the distribution pattern reverts back to particle formation.

(Sorry, but this is what happens when science starts to market itself to the public)

 

Two empirical problems with your speculation:
The wavelength of electrons goes down as you fire them harder, in contradiction to the naive expectations of "quantum efffects are cause by jostling aside dark matter."
The wavelength is inversely proportional not to the energy, not to the mass, and not to the velocity, but to the momentum of the particle, be it buckyball, proton, electron or photon.

\(\lambda = \frac{h}{p} = \frac{h}{\sqrt{\frac{E^2}{c^2} - m^2c^2}}\)

 

I'm a fan of pure speculation, but here is some math to go behind the basic slit experiments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygen%27s_principle