# On the double slit experiment with 4 slits

I'm not a physicist nor a science savvy person, but I was wondering if this experiment was ever performed in a simultaneous fashion on screens with fixed references(marks) and firing different wavelengths particles.

So, to recap, 4 slits, 2 emitters firing at different times (where the $\Delta T$ is known and certain) on two different screens.

I hope this question is not too stupid.

P.S. I'm sorry, I've been too vague. I ask this because I've recently learned that this interference pattern emerge even firing large atom clusters instead of single particles.

This is astonishing and it's clearly stating that there's a limit in mass aggregation where it stops behaving in duality. Cause, you know, firing bricks will hardly produce interference. And, in the end, I was wondering if it's not possible that it's spacetime itself vibrating at a certain $f$ and if there's a limit when mass stop to be affected (relatively) by this vibration. Like pinning a vibrating rubber sheet.

I'm so confused.

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## 1 Answer

The main reason we can see quantum effects from small objects but not from large objects is due to interactions with the environment.

If a quantised system interacts with anything else it will become entangled with that other object. When this happens you can no longer treat your system on it's own. You have to treat your original system and whatever it's interacted with as a single combined system.

If you're doing the Young's slits experiment with photons or electrons it's not too hard to keep them isolated from the environment while they travel from the source, through the slits and to the screen. However as the objects you're studying get bigger they interact with the environment more strongly and the experiment gets harder to do. To see the Young's slits interference patterns with large molecules like buckyballs is much hard, was was managed in 1999. If you attempted it with pools balls, or even pollen grains, the interactions with the environment would swamp any interference and you'd see no diffraction pattern.

If you want to know more about this try Googling for decoherence, but be warned that it's a complex subject and I don't know of any good popular science level descriptions (except this answer of course ;-).

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so, in an ipotetical ideal set, firing Jumbos will produce interference on the jumbo-sensitive surface right? It's only a matter of keeping the environment clear from interference(gravitational, magnetic, electromagnetic, whatever)? – vaitrafra Oct 10 '12 at 8:57
Hmm, presumably at some point the internal degrees of freedom would get so large they'd have a similar effect to interaction with the environment. To be honest I don't know if you could theoretically observer diffraction of something as large and complex as a jumbo jet, even if you could isolate it from interactions with the environment. – John Rennie Oct 10 '12 at 9:34
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