I’m having difficulty picturing how this happens. Can someone please explain?
In: 3
You’re only considering the particle side of this, and not the wave. That’s the bit – electrons are part-particle, part-wave in their behavior. It’s not that the electron as a particle interferes with itself. It’s that the particle-wave duality of the electron means that it behaves in ways which might *seem* like a particle interfering with itself.
If you stare into the wave equations which people use to model such behavior, you’ll probably find that they don’t exactly lend themselves to direct interpretation for particle mechanics, like Newtonian physics might. That should be another indication to you that picturing an electron as if it *is* a particle which interferes with itself is a bad idea. Because it isn’t one. It just behaves like one would *if* it did. Which it can’t/doesn’t.
Latest Answers