this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
1530 points (97.5% liked)

Science Memes

11148 readers
4039 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CeeBee@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The interference pattern only appears after firing many many photons. They're still a photon (packet of energy) when creating an interference pattern. It's the distribution and probability of its location that changes. Not the physical "shape".

Edit: to clarify further

When not being detected, it's still just one dot that appears on the sheet. As more and more are fired, the interference pattern shows to show as each photon hits the screen

It's all about the distribution possibilities.