Yes, you can! (Do a quantum theory experiment at home)

[Martin Vashko]

Just like this guy:

I really hope I'll remember to try this with my son some twelve years from now - when he'll be hopefully able to enjoy and understand it.


And as if the movie itself wasn't great enough, there is this hilarious comment on it:

I am currently in the design phase of a double-Sleep experiment, which will allow me to appear as working hard to an outside observer (boss), while I should also benefit from a simultaneous well-deserved sleep entanglement, with no interference pattern during the 8 hours of the experiment.

Worth posting in the Jobs Discussion forum?

EDIT: appears these experiments do not demonstrate quantum theory effects after all (read the following posts). Sorry for the confusion. Hopefully I will be able to understand these things twelve years from now...

[fred rosenberger]

Martin Vajsar wrote:I really hope I'll remember to try this with my son some twelve years from now

I hope I remember to look at this video 5 hours from now when I'm not behind my office's firewall...

I'm betting you have a better chance than me...

[Campbell Ritchie]

It looks like the diffraction experiments we used to do in physics at school. Since lasers were not readily available, we had to use a third slit to make the light coherent, otherwise the interference patterns would have been invisible. You can work out the wavelength of the light from the width of the fringes. I think we used a sodium discharge lamp, which would produce yellow and black fringes.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Is the second part uncertainty or simple diffraction?

[Steve Luke]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Is the second part uncertainty or simple diffraction?

Simple diffraction. Surely there is an uncertainty about where any one photon will go, but that uncertainty doesn't cause the pattern. The pattern is well known and predictable (and used in latest gen microscopes to get super resolved images through structured illumination).

[Campbell Ritchie]

I thought it was simple diffraction.

[Martin Vashko]

Silly me. So it appears you can't after all.

This one would be the real double-slit experiment. Of course, not having an electron microscope at hand, I'm not going to try this at home....