Page 628 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

ing object instead of the source of sand particles. This object sets the water in motion and continu-
ously generates waves, spreading in all directions.

Unlike grains of sand, these waves are not localized in space. They are spread throughout the
whole pool. As a result, the waves passing through both slits simultaneously spread out, encounter
one another and interfere with each other.
When the crest of one wave combines with the trough of another, they neutralize each other. The
wave effect disappears, leaving nothing. This interference is a basic characteristic of waves.

When the experiment was performed with electrons, instead of a cluster of particles striking the
screen—as with the sand grains—the electrons were observed to interfere with one another. The ex-
pected result failed to occur if the electrons were regarded as particles only. Therefore, since the elec-

trons displayed the wave-like feature of interfering with one another, they cannot be particles. Yet they
cannot be waves either—because, just like particles, they struck the screen in discrete groups.
In this instance, the observations suggest that the electrons are localized particles when they
leave the source and when they arrive at the screen, but that they act as waves everywhere in be-
tween. This is really very counterintuitive. 23

This experimental evidence did away with materialism, according to which, every particle must
possess an objective existence somewhere in space. Again according to materialism, an electron
must follow a single course through a space and cannot move through both slits like a wave which

is not localized. Yet materialists’ expectations did not correspond to experimental reality.
The wave we are referring to here is different from a physical wave that occurs in water. Elec-
tron waves do not exist in the three-dimensional space in our physical world.

Detector
Detected pattern

Thomas Young’s double-slit ex-
periment was conducted in order
to show that light and electrons
behave in a wave form. If grains of
sand are blown from a source and
passed through two slits, then two
equal patterns will form on the
screen on the other side. We ex-
Detector
pect the same result when we do
Detected pattern this with electrons. But this is not
what happens! Electrons produce
a pattern on the screen similar to
that formed by waves. This is
proof that the electrons compris-
ing atoms are not particles.

Filtered

Polarized Detector
light
Detected pattern

626 Atlas of Creation Vol. 4