Most Beautiful Experiment in Physics

An anonymous reader writes "Robert P. Crease has concluded his poll asking what the most beautiful experiment in physics is. The winner was Young's double slit experiment performed using a single electron. Attentive readers will remember that Slashdot had a discussion of Crease's question previously, which Crease mentions in his current article." If you're unfamiliar with the experiment, Google pulls up a bunch of applets and demonstrations.

Comments

no WAY!!!

[lingqi]

the most beautiful experiment is, has been, and always will be the practical aspects of

* photons gets converted to electric impulses;
* these electric impulsese are stored, usually by dielectric tunneling, into a floating gate (Flash memory)
* the information is then read back, sent through 7 (read it, it's SEVEN) layers of network stack, to a physical link
* the data is digitized into more packets of light, and sent across the atlantic from RUSSIA to the US.
* after more routing (some in light-packets, some in electrical), it climbs back up the 7-layers.
* mozilla interprets them, and through some seriously complex transistor networks, the signals cause some polymers to twist just the right amount
* and i see some pr0n.

wait a sec; that would probabbly be "the most beautiful engineering feat"... ahh fsck it.

Re:WOOHOO!!!!

[The Wing Lover]

Although Slashdot bills itself as "news for nerds", its audience evidently includes a large number of science-history aficionados.

I love how this sentence is written as if it's some sort of contradiction.

Re:Quantum Polaroid Demonstration

[sconeu]

I once heard the three polarizer experiment described as follows.

You have a field with cows. To make sure that now cows get out, you put up two fences. They stay in their field. But you're really paranoid, so you put a third fence in between the two. Now, all of a sudden, one fourth of your cows are wandering in your neighbor's field.