Roseyland

Image Credit: Patrick Edwin Moran - Wikimedia Commons

I’m sure you are familiar with Thomas Young’s Double Slit Experiment. I mean, who isn’t? In case you missed that day of modern physics in college, you can watch the video below to review.

Basically, if you shine light through one slit, the light acts like a particle, but if you shine light through two slits, it acts like a wave. What’s even stranger, is that if you shine one photon at a time towards two slits, it still acts like a wave. Even though it’s just one particle. But wait, there’s more! If you shine light at two slits, but you set up a detector to see which slit the light travels through, the light goes back to acting like a particle. It appears that light changes it’s behavior depending on how you observe it. Weird.

I want you to do a new experiment for me. Create two screens where when a photon hits the screen, a blip appears so that you know where the photon hit the screen. In one of these screens, cut out two slits. Then put the screen with the double slit in front of the other screen and shine a light, one photon at a time, towards the double slit. If the photon does not go through one of the slits, you will see a blip on the first screen. If it does go through one of the slits on the first screen, you will not see a blip on the first screen, but you will see a blip on the second screen. Repeat this experiment many times keeping track of the location of the blips on the second screen, then let me know what pattern appears. Will it be a wave interference pattern, or single particle created bands? My guess is an interference pattern. For bonus points, make the first double slit screen some type of powered detector that only detects photons when it’s on. Then turn it on and off to see if it changes the pattern on the second screen.

I know what you are thinking. Isn’t this like that experiment that has already been done where they put detectors in front of both slits of a double slit? NO!!!! The key to my experiment is that we detect whether or not a photon goes through a slit, but we have no information as to which slit it went through. If we knew which slit it went through, it would obviously act like a particle. Duh!

It is possible that this experiment, or an equivalent experiment, has already been performed. If so, please send me the results. If not, please perform the experiment and let me know what the pattern on the second screen is. The first person to provide me with results that are to my satisfaction wins a $10 gift card to either Runza or Sonny’s BBQ. Your choice.

Sometimes I get bored. It’s very sad, but I’ve found a cure. When I’m bored, I develop detailed plans that will never ever happen. It’s a blast, you should try it. I’m going to share one of these plans with you today. Settle down, you aren’t going to be able to read if you are too excited. I’ve been working on this plan off an on for about 14 years. As you might know by now, I went to Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. See this post for more information. Doane is pretty much the greatest college ever, it’s too bad you didn’t go there. Unless you did, in which case: OMG! It’s so good to see you again! Thanks for checking out my blog! See you at homecoming! Moving on… By far the best thing about Doane is its sense of community, which had a lot to do with it being a residential college where a vast majority of students lived on campus all 4 years. The only slightly bad thing I can say about Doane is that a few of its residential halls are getting kind of old. Now the college is currently starting the process of remodeling the older halls, but I like to think bigger, so I came up with my own plans. Click on any of the pictures for a larger version.

First, we need to study the anatomy of Doane. Below is the campus as it exist today. There are three traditional residence halls made up of mostly standard double rooms. These are Frees (coed), Sheldon (all-female), and Smith (all-male). Hanson hall is fairly new and did not exist when I was at Doane. It consist of suite style rooms and is only upperclassmen. The quads are also only upperclassmen and each quad consist of 4 double rooms with a common living area and bathroom. The quads are where most of the Greek organizations live. Doane has a fairly active greek community with about 50% of students being members of a sorority or fraternity. All of the sororities and fraternities are local organizations, which is one reason they don’t have houses. I lived in Frees my freshman and sophomore years, and the quads my junior and senior years.

I loved my time in Frees and the Quads, but I think it would be fun to just tear everything down and start from scratch. So let’s demolish Smith, Frees, Sheldon, and the Quads. Sheldon is actually fairly new, but I need the space it sits on, so we’ll have to tear it down. I’d like to tear down Hanson too, but they just built it. Demolishing it is a little too unrealistic for my completely unrealistic plans, so I’ll find a way to work it in. Okay, are you ready? drum roll please…. Here is the new Doane!!!

I’ve replaced Smith with three 75 person dorms that will be freshman only. One dorm will be all-male, one all-female, and one coed. I like this idea, because I think it would be cool to have all freshman living in the same place, since they are all going through the same transition to college thing together. It would also provide a common experience for all Doane students, because everyone would have started out in the freshman dorms. Sadly, the freshmen dorms would probably have to be “dry” dorms, but that might be okay. I mean rules were made to be broken, right?

The blue rectangles are on-campus apartments. As great as the residential college experience is, there will always be some students that want more independence. This is for them. I also envision this area being the quieter part of campus, so there are probably more restrictions on parties and stuff.

Okay, now for the fun stuff. I’ve replaced Frees and Sheldon with “group” living. I got this idea from some college out there that doesn’t have dorms (I don’t remember which college). They just have a bunch of big houses, and the students all live in different houses centered on some sort of common interest. Each orange square above is a 30 person “house”. In Doane’s case, I’m thinking that these houses would be filled mostly by fraternity and sororities. It would be a way to have the fraternity/sorority house experience, without forcing the groups to deal with all the logistics of owning a house. These houses would not just be for greek groups though, they would be open to any group that can provide enough members to fill the house. Maybe those crazy FCA kids could even have a house. I would also hope that Doane would allow groups to keep the same house year after year as long as they are responsible with it and can find enough people to live in it. I should also mention that I don’t intend for each orange box above to be an identical house, they should each be unique to allow for the unique styles of the groups that will fill them. Also, parties with alcohol are allowed in these houses.

So there you have it. My perfect plan. If you were paying attention, you would notice that I kept about the same number of total spaces for students and I kept the percent of students living on each side of campus the same. In addition, I moved the noisier side of campus away from the residential neighborhoods. Gotta keep the Crete community happy. So what do you think? Where would you live?