BATHTUB EXPERIMENT

BATHTUB
EXPERIMENT

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Detracts the causality of Young double slot experiment assigned to wave nature of light as imposed on us by the orthodox physics. It does not prove that light is not a wave phenomenon, but it detracts that the wave of photons is a radial wave comparable to that of waves on water from a common point source.

Set up

• Bathtub partly filled with water and covered with dirty, greasy steel dust.

• A sheet metal partition across the width of the tub with two 1" wide slots 4" apart.

• A plywood screen, at 8" distance from the slot partition, immersed up to the marked water line of the water surface at rest.

• A bar of soap.

Procedure

• The bar of soap is dropped approximately 18" in front of the slot partition on the far side of the plywood screen as a generator of waves.

• Waves are alowed to progress toward the slot partition and then toward the screen.

• The screen is withdrawn after the fourth crest stroke it in order to prevent otherwise unavoidable secondary reflected waves from the slot partition and walls to impinge on the direct wave record.

Observations

• The waves generated by the soap bar radiate and pass through the two slots in the sheet metal partition. They create the interference pattern of the experiment as they approach the screen as described in the orthodox physics literature. But.

• The floating steel dust drew a slightly sinusoidal line on the screen with all parts of the sinusoid well above the original (at rest) water line. The sinusoidal is not quite accurate. There was a hump in the center of the screen which dropped down along a sinusoidal curve toward the edges of the screen.

Conclusions

This was a single frequency wave for all the practical purposes. If we wanted to create the enhanced and cancelled pattern of Young’s double slot experiment on the screen, we would have to stop the waves in the bathtub and move the water in the bathtub along those waves. Even so, any change in the distance between the slot partition and the screen would alter the positioning of the pattern on the screen. The analogy between interference pattern of light in Young's experiment and the water surface double-slot experiment looks acceptable on paper. But paper picture does not show the propagation of the waves. A real water wave double slot experiment leaves the screen image almost equal in intensity. If light was a radial wave, Young’s experiment should have shown an ellipsoid of light with fuzzy border.