Sunday, November 4, 2007
Duality is nature's way of saying it is inherently confused.
This question was sent in by Arjun. Thanks a lot, saar…
(And for all the rest of you, we demand that you to get off your lazy backsides and send in guest questions to [email protected] , so that we can just post those and get back onto our lazy backsides)
This image below shows a strange phenomenon. It is an image of the shadow of an object, but there seem to be bands of light in the shadow!
What is this, and why is it significant?
And just in case you’re under the smart-alecky impression that this phenomenon is not significant, here’s a clue. A clue to get the clue: why is their logo so weird?
Cracked (in whole or in part) by: 2ndratequizzer , sidsen , iamniks , prasanth and VikraM.
2ndratequizzer, sidsen, iamniks, prasanth and VikraM
Show Answer
That is the picture of what is called Arago’s Spot. This phenomenon “proved” the wave-particle duality of light. In essence, it was predicted that if light was only particle, there cannot be any brightness in the circular objects shadow, and if it had a dual nature, there would be brightness in the shadow of the object due to diffraction. Further, Poisson hypothesized that the exact center would have a bright spot since all the waves would interfere constructively.