It’s a good question, but asking it shows that the experiment was explained poorly.
The slits aren’t the reason you see an interference pattern. The slits function as two lenses, similar to a pinhole camera. That’s something that usually doesn’t get explained very well, you can use all sorts of lenses for this, but slits are the most basic (and crucially, glass lenses would cause an interference pattern even if light weren’t a wave).
The double slit experiment is basically “if light is a wave, a slit would behave like a lens, similar to a pinhole camera. If light is a particle, it will simply be a hole. Two slits show multiple bars, due to interference from the lenses, which means light is a wave”
Which means this works at any scale. All you need is some light in the same frequency, and something to bend it. That can be two slits, some glass, or an entire galaxy.
That’s when considering the slits as a lens though, which they will act as at any diameter however there’s going to be a width at which the angle of approach and wavelength of the light are insignificant enough that you practically can’t tell that the slits were even there right?
It’s a good question, but asking it shows that the experiment was explained poorly.
The slits aren’t the reason you see an interference pattern. The slits function as two lenses, similar to a pinhole camera. That’s something that usually doesn’t get explained very well, you can use all sorts of lenses for this, but slits are the most basic (and crucially, glass lenses would cause an interference pattern even if light weren’t a wave).
The double slit experiment is basically “if light is a wave, a slit would behave like a lens, similar to a pinhole camera. If light is a particle, it will simply be a hole. Two slits show multiple bars, due to interference from the lenses, which means light is a wave”
Which means this works at any scale. All you need is some light in the same frequency, and something to bend it. That can be two slits, some glass, or an entire galaxy.
What a great comment!
That’s when considering the slits as a lens though, which they will act as at any diameter however there’s going to be a width at which the angle of approach and wavelength of the light are insignificant enough that you practically can’t tell that the slits were even there right?