Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment that Captures the Enigma of our Quantum Reality (2020) is an exploration and explanation of quantum mechanics.
Essentially, this book is about one experiment – that has a multitude of questions.
The experiment, devised in the early 1800s by British mathematician Thomas Young (1773-1829), is the opposite of the light theories espoused by British mathematician and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1726) and leaned towards the views of Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695). Young became known as ‘the last man who knew everything.’
The light experiment that Young devised, at the age of 23, had two slits (holes) – ‘I made a small hole in a window-shutter, and covered it with a piece of thick paper, which I perforated with a fine needle.’ The pinhole let through a ray of light, a sunbeam. ‘I brought into the sunbeam a slip of card … and observed its shadow.’ If the shadow was ‘sharp’ it would prove Newton to be right. If the shadow was ‘a row of alternating bright and dark stripes’ it would prove Newton to be wrong. In other words, Thomas Young showed that light behaves like a wave, not as particles.
The book explains how the simple experiment, the ‘double-slit’ experiment, has led to many answers about the universe. Physicists continue to use this experiment to this day due to its conceptual simplicity.
Through an historical account of mathematicians, physicists, and scientists, readers see the work of great minds and the experiment’s influences.
Albert Einstein too had interpretations about quantum formalism, and he too used the double-slit experiment to explain his hypothesis that challenged the uncertainty principle. ‘Einstein imagined an electron that first passes through a single slit, and then encounters a double slit, and eventually ends up somewhere at the center of the far screen.’ So, nearly a hundred years after Young, Einstein showed that light comes in particles, leading to a great science debate. This was another ‘massive shift’ in the way scientists think.
All the while, as I am reading through the science, I am reminded of the 1992 Leonard Cohen song, Anthem, with the lines: ‘Ring the bells that still ring, Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack, a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.’
The author takes a fascinating approach to his explanations of quantum mechanics. The book shows that scientists from around the world have more than two ways of looking at things, more than two doors, and that after debate after debate, scientists will still walk through the two doors to find answers. But many questions still remain unsolved. This is interesting for its simple narrative, and there are also lots of diagrams.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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