Scientific research has always been linked to experiments which help to prove, disprove, or clarify scientific principles. In this section of Physics 2000 we will look at some classic experiments in quantum physics...experiments that demonstrate some of the more bizarre aspects of physics. The puzzles in some of these experiments are what helped lead physicists to the breakthroughs of the early 20th Century, while others are recent experiments which confirm strange predictions made decades ago. Interference Experiments The classic two-slit experiment was one of the original proofs that light travels in waves, but newer versions show that light also travels as particles! This "particle-wave" nature of light gets right to the heart of quantum weirdness. Bose-Einstein Condensation Originally predicted by Einstein and Bose, this 1995 experiment by researchers in Boulder, CO achieved a new state of matter...one unlike anything else ever seen, at the coldest temperatures in the universe. The Photoelectric Effect This results of this experiment was one of the original conundrums that led to the discovery of quantum physics. Now it is a classic demonstration of those theories. Spectroscopy The Quantum nature of atoms has a useful feature on a galactic scale...it allows us to figure out what distant stars (and other objects) are made of.

>