Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/section-a/1/solution

Take a representative tennis-ball mass of . The speed is nonrelativistic, so the de Broglie wavelength is
This is an estimate because the mass was not specified. The wavelength is vastly smaller than any practicable aperture or obstacle separation: a diffraction angle of order is unresolvably small for laboratory-scale . Moreover, interactions with air, thermal radiation and the apparatus destroy observable coherence between macroscopically distinct paths. Quantum mechanics still applies; the small wavelength and rapid decoherence explain why ordinary experiments reveal classical trajectories rather than a measurable interference pattern.

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