How an electron “interferes with itself” ?

Question

I’m having difficulty picturing how this happens. Can someone please explain?

In: 3

Answer 1

The ELI5 answer is: don’t imagine. Quantum physics is not something you can just visualize and expect the world to exactly look like that picture you have. That doesn’t mean visualization is not useful, but you must be mindful that visualization is just a calculation tool and is not supposed to represent what exactly happened.

One way to visualize the situation is to imagine that the electron split into multiple copies of itself when it has multiple paths, and then it merge back into itself again.

Another way of visualization is to think of electron as wave ripples in space (*one* electron being the entire ripple). Ripples can get split into multiple paths and interfere with themselves later.