Experiments That "Destroy The Wave Aspect" Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 205-6):

Bohr expressed the situation clearly. Suppose we attempt to uncover the particle nature of photons by pinning down the location to the extent that we can tell through which slit each one passes. Then the result of this scrutiny is to smudge out the very interference pattern that is the hallmark of the wave aspect. 

Thus if we set up the experiment so that a counter sits at each of the two slits to record the passage of each photon through one slit or the other, the effect of making these observations is to introduce an additional uncertainty (via Heisenberg's principle) into the behaviour of the particles. The magnitude of this uncertainty is just such that it smears out the interference pattern, leaving instead two superimposed smudges of light, just as you would expect for particles going through either of the slits without interference. So in exposing the particle aspect of the wave-particle duality, we destroy the wave aspect. 

We must therefore contend with two different experiments, one revealing the wave aspect and the other the particle aspect. The results of the experiment depend on the nature of the whole experimental setup, apparatus plus light (or electrons), and not just on the nature of light itself. These ideas may seem to defy common sense — but remember, our common sense is based on experience of things much bigger than photons or atoms, and there is no reason why it should be a good guide to what goes on at the atomic level.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Quantum Physics, as articulated by Max Born, such waves are probability waves. Interference patterns between two waves are thus interference patterns between two waves of probability. The removal ("smudging out") of an interference pattern in an experiment is thus the removal of an interference between two waves of probability, and it is this that is achieved when particle detectors are placed at each of the two slits.

Such an experiment does not "destroy the wave aspect". Instead, it eliminates probability wave interference, which, from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, changes the probabilities of the potential, and so changes the statistical behaviours of the particles that instantiate those probabilities.