"Like the meridians as the approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole."
Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man
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"Like the meridians as the approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole." Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man |
We began by discussing the structure of this term of the course. This included the distinction between html and pdf web documents; the former are preferred for reading on a screen and the latter for printing to read in hardcopy. We also talked about why for most students extensive note taking, both in class and when studying, is an excellent idea.
We then discussed Operational Definitions, and built one to define the words wave and particle. We did an experiment that showed that light was a wave.
I then described the result of applying the same definition to electrons, whose result is that electrons are waves also.
We discussed how even with one electron at a time being in the system, the distribution of the electrons is still an interference pattern.
We ended with a question: Are the individual electrons going through both slits at the same time? We will discuss answers to this question next time.
There are Supplementary Notes on today's class. The html version is available here, and the pdf version is available here. Today we got through about the first-half of the "Two Slit Experiment for Electrons" section.
