John said:
Most electron sources emit randomly, so the interference pattern is
made up of electrons arriving randomly. Every single electron
participates, interfering with itself, no matter what the rate.
Hi,
I kind of assumed that an electron gun existed that could fire a single
electron at the screen on demand. However it sounds like the electrons
are in fact emitted randomly, and the emitter is tuned to the power
level required to form dots on the screen at the desired rate?
Just because a dot appears on the screen doesn't mean that a single
electron has been emitted necessarily. The screen is composed of light
sensitive material that requires its molecules electrons to jump an
orbital for a dot to appear.
The quantum mechanics view is that ALL energy released from an electron
that drops an orbit, is absorbed by a single electron that raised its
orbit. So in this case, once the energy from an emission has been
absorbed, there is no possibility to detect the emission elsewhere.
The classical view is that ALL energy released from an electron that
drops an orbit, is emitted evenly as an electromagnetic wave traveling
outwards spherically, with decreasing intensity at the speed of light.
This allows for the possibility to detect this emission, however as the
emitted energy decreases as it travels outwards, there is not enough
energy to raise an electrons orbit, unless that electron was already
nearly at the next orbital energy level, which is possible if you look
at these two effects:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stark_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeman_effect
Those two effects show that electron orbital state changes aren't fixed
but instead can be dynamic based on the electrostatic or electromagnetic
background field.
The other way to detect this electromagnetic energy without having to
use a atomic/molecular method (electron orbital jumping) would be an
electrostatic or electromagnetic field detector. In this case you can
detect an emission at two places at once without having to absorb all
the energy of the emission.
Quantum mechanics interpretation requires that all energy be absorbed in
transactions between molecules, rather than there being a background
field that is added to or removed from by electrons jumping or dropping
orbitals. Quantum mechanics interpretation means that 100% of the
energy released from an electron dropping an orbit 100 light years away,
will be absorbed by the electron that jumps an orbit when that light is
absorbed. The classical view is that 100 light years away, there will
be almost no energy left to absorb, as it will be dispersed evenly over
a 100 light year radius sphere, however this energy could still possibly
cause one or more electrons to jump orbits, if they were already nearly
at the next orbital energy level, based on other electromagnetic fields
in combination with the energy emitted from the electron that dropped
its atomic or molecular orbit.
For the double slit experiment if you assume that the emitted energy
from the electron gun is wave based, then it is possible to see that
this energy will always hit the screen in the pattern that is shown
as the final result of this experiment. The reason only one dot appears
on the screen at a time is that the emitters intensity has been reduced
to a level that will only trigger atomic/molecular electron orbital
jumps on the screen for electrons that are very close to the next
orbital level already based on their local electromagnetic field energy.
Perhaps all electrons in the screen are susceptible to jumping orbits to
the next state, and they will only jump a certain percentage of the
time, depending on the strength of the wave based field coming from the
emitter. This means that if the emitters intensity is decreased, it
will cause dots to form slowly on the screen, and the dots will form
at a higher rate in the areas of stronger field intensity.
Wow sorry for the long email it is just hard to describe what I was
trying to say!
cheers,
Jamie