Me and a friend were trying to calculate how fast a person would have to travel to be able to 'diffract' through a door. We took the width of a door to be 1m. For diffraction to be observable(?) the wavelength / slit width has to be approximately 1 (
). So to find the velocity of a 60kg person to produce a wavelength of approx 1m we went
m/s
We have probably (obviously) made some assumptions that don't make sense (maybe we just haven't understood the course properly yet). We just don't understand why it is such a small speed. Is this all incorrect because a single person can't be treated as single particle (point of mass)? We only did this for fun, but I'm confused about our answer and what it means exactly / why it doesn't make sense.
Also, when doing a double slit experiment, why doesn't air effect any part of the experiment. The light obviously still has to pass through air, so why doesn't this effect the interference pattern at all? Is it just because of the relative size of light compared to these atoms/molecules?
Another thing, I know I've only been doing real physics (that's probably a stretch for VCE) for two years now, but I honestly don't feel I can explain anything that happens in the real world. Like I can't seem to ever really apply any of what I've learn't to real life scenarios. Is this normal? I know I can't expect much out of VCE, but do you actually end up 'learning' things when you get to university?
Thanks guys, any help would be appreciated