Eli5: Why can’t the wave-like behavior of photons through a slit be explained by the photon coming too close to the edge of the slit, being influenced by gravity or the strong nuclear force of the atoms in the slit material, thus causing it to change it’s trajectory and only appear wave-like?
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Firstly, because gravity is a super weak force, so the “gravity” attributed to close proximity to the edge of a given slit wouldn’t be enough to affect the trajectory of any particle, even a larger one with mass. If this could explain the behavior, then tossing a baseball infinitely close to a wall’s edge should cause the ball’s flight to bend towards the wall as it passed, since the mass of a baseball is infinitely larger than that of a photon (zero mass).
Secondly, the strong nuclear force doesn’t act like gravity at all, and it doesn’t act on photons (at least not like this with photons passing near atoms); it holds an atom together, particularly the protons and neutrons. Keep in mind that protons all hold positive charge, so the strong force not only has to hold the protons next to neutrons with a much higher strength than gravity could, it also has to hold protons together against the coulomb force from the positive charges which repel each other.
Thirdly, the interference patterns of light on the opening side of the slits essentially “match” the interference patterns we see with sound waves.
So, basically, neither the strong force nor gravity could have any measurable effect on a photon, plus we see additional data demonstrating wave-like behavior beyond simple particle scattering. It’s the wave interference as sketched here that proves wave behavior:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%27s_interference_experiment#/media/File%3AYoung_Diffraction.png
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