Anesthesia Physics and Equipment made easy !
The BIGGEST MYSTERY IN THE WORLD !
The biggest science mystery known to man will be revealed to you. The mystery concerns the behaviour of electrons. You may wonder why something as boring as electrons should interest to you.
The big mystery is that electrons seem to behave as is if they are conscious ! Far from behaving like nonliving things, they seem to show "living" properties such as shyness and hiding secrets from prying eyes.
This big mystery of "thinking electrons" is seen when electrons are studied in the so called “two hole” device. To understand this mystery, you need to first understand the "two hole device".
"TWO HOLE" DEVICE
In the world of really tiny objects such as electrons, it is difficult to directly take a picture of them like you would using a camera on your cat.
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So instead, scientists have to use devices to indirectly work out how very tiny objects behave. For an example, scientist may want to know if a very tiny object travels as a ball or a wave.
Since they can't see very tiny objects, scientists have made a device, called the "two hole" device, to help them to decide if they travel as a ball or as a wave. The device is called a "two hole" device because it consists of a wall with two holes.
On one side of the wall is a gun that fires the tiny objects we want to find out about.
On the other side of the wall, is a special detector (shown in pink below). As the gun fires the tiny objects onto the wall, some of them will pass through the holes and will land on the detector. The detector records where the objects fall, and after a while, a pattern will emerge that will give us a clue about if the objects travel as balls or waves.
Depending on if the tiny objects travel as a ball or a wave, the detector will show a different pattern. One pattern will tell the scientists that the objects travel as balls and a different pattern will tell scientists that the objects travel as waves.
If the tiny objects are like balls, they will simply go through the holes in the wall and land directly across onto the detector. They would collect as two heaps right across the holes in the wall.
So, if the tiny objects travel as balls, the detector will record a pattern of two bumps (shown in green).
However, if tiny objects travel as waves, the detector will show a completely different pattern which consists of many more bumps than the two seen if the objects traveled as balls.
The reason for these multiple bumps will be explained briefly below. If the objects travel as waves ,these waves will travel like ripples generated by a stone thrown into a pond. These waves reach the two holes in the wall.
When the wave reaches the two holes in the wall, it will cause two “daughter” waves to continue from the holes.
These electron "daughter waves" interacted with each other and cause many bumps to be recorded.
The reason for the many bumps is because the two daughter waves "crash" into each other. Whenever an upward part of one daughter wave meets an upward part of the other daughter wave, a large bump registers on the detector as shown below.
Because the two daughter waves meet at many points, this causes many bumps to show up on the detector.
Therefore, with the two hole experiment, one can make out if tiny objects travel as balls or if the tiny objects travel as waves.
So to summarise: With the two hole device, if the objects travel as balls, the detector shows only two bumps.
But if the objects travel as waves, the detector will show many bumps:
Now that you understand the basic working of the two hole device, you are ready to learn about the biggest mystery.
Scientists released one electron at a time onto the two hole device. They expected that single electrons travel like balls and expected to find two bumps on the detector.
But instead, when the experiment was actually done on the device, they found this response instead :
This was very confusing. The ball like electrons were causing multiple bumps, as if they were waves. For ball like electrons to have behaved like a wave, it would have had to go through both holes at the same time and cause something like the daughter waves.
But this is an impossible explanation since electrons in reality cannot split into two.
So they decided to "spy" on the electrons. They fixed special "spy cameras" at each of the holes of the two hole device. In this way, the problem could be solved once and for all, since the cameras would be able to see how a single electron could go through both holes at once:
To start with , they kept the cameras OFF and let the gun release once electron at a time. And as before, the pink detector showed a pattern that suggested it was traveling as a wave.
But when they turned the cameras ON, the worlds biggest mystery was observed. The electrons seemed to realise that they were being spied on. When the cameras were put ON, the electrons decide to behave like balls !
They then put the cameras OFF and amazingly, the electrons seem to "know" that they are no longer being observed . They decide to behave as waves !
So this is the biggest mystery ! How is it that something lifeless like an electron "know" that its being watched ? How does it know that we are trying to find out its secret ? When we are not watching, it behaves mysteriously like a wave. The moment we decide to crack its secret by putting ON the camera, it behaves like a ball !
The solution to this mystery is not known. Repeated experiments reveal the same thing. Small particles such as, electrons, light particles, and even atoms seem to "know" that they are been watched !
Implications of this mystery ....
The two hole device shows us that small things such as electrons and atoms exists as waves when we don't look at them and when we look at them, they instantly become particles.
The behaviour of electrons and atoms everywhere is the same. What happens in the two hole device also happens elsewhere.
So when your eyes ( which is like a camera) looks at electrons anywhere, the same thing happens. The electrons behave like particles.
But when you don't look anymore (like a camera put OFF) , the particles disappear and become waves.
This is the mysterious game these particles play on us. Materialise when we watch, disappear when we decide not to watch !
Now, you may ask, what is the relevance to your day to day life ? The answer is that it may be very relevant since you are always looking at objects around you, and these objects are made up of particles like electrons.
Take your coffee mug. It is also made up of these particles.
When you are "watching " your coffee mug, it sits there nicely on your table. But when you look away, it disappears instantly as a wave. But as soon as you look back , it instantly materialises into a mug !
Now just think about this. You are also made up of particles such as atoms and electrons. If you are sitting in a room watching this computer, and no one is watching you, ... you may be existing as a bunch of waves !
You might be thinks that all this is rubbish. But it isn't. This stuff is part of Quantum Mechanics, the branch of physics that deals with very tiny objects. And Quantum Mechanics is not rubbish. We have all seen Magnetic Resonance Imaging. That is very much real and is based on Quantum Mechanics, the same type of physics that deals with the weird behaviour of tiny objects like electrons.
