Crazy Science Stuff: Double Slit Experiment

Click here to stream the double slit experiment!

What's up everybody! It's Tyler here from Mr. Peterson's 6th grade science class. Today I'm gonna tell you about this insane experiment I learned about after Coach made us run extra laps. It's called the double slit experiment and it's like the weirdest thing ever in science but also kinda makes you think about how some stuff just doesn't make sense to our brains!

So here's what happens. There's this thing called a photon which is like a super tiny particle of light (way smaller than any ball you've ever seen). Mr. Peterson says scientists shoot these photons through two tiny slits in a wall, kind of like trying to throw two perfect free throws through super small hoops at the same time.

The crazy part is what happens on the wall behind the slits. If light was just normal particles like basketballs, you'd expect to see two lines where they hit. But instead, you get this weird pattern with lots of lines! Scientists call this an "interference pattern" which sounds complicated but Mr. Peterson says it shows that our normal way of thinking about stuff just breaks down at the quantum level.

This happens because light is actually acting like a wave, like when you jump in the lake at church camp and the waves spread out. The waves go through both slits at the same time and then crash into each other making this weird pattern.

But wait it gets even more mind-blowing!

When the scientists put a detector to see which slit each photon goes through, the pattern changes! It just makes two lines like you'd expect from particles! It's like the photons know they're being watched! Mr. Peterson says this is where quantum physics basically breaks our brains because it doesn't follow the rules we're used to.

Scientists say this proves that stuff in quantum physics can be both a wave and a particle at the same time, which totally goes against what makes sense to us. Mr. Peterson explained that we're used to things being one thing or another - like how I can't be both at basketball practice and at home playing video games at the same time. But these tiny particles don't follow our rules.

Mr. Peterson told us that some super smart scientists like Einstein didn't even want to believe this stuff because it seemed so crazy. He said quantum physics shows us that the universe doesn't care about what makes sense to humans - it works in ways that our brains weren't built to understand. That's why when people try to explain quantum physics, they say "if you think you understand it, you don't understand it."

Next time in science class: I'm gonna try to convince Mr. Peterson to let us do this experiment, but he'll probably just make us memorize the periodic table again. Boring!

Don't forget to check out my blog next week! Tyler out!