Particles and Waves
What is scattering?
Scattering played a key role in two escape room puzzles, illustrating two different types.
Water wave scattering appeared in a puzzle where players had to identify the number of slits using a wave table. Wave scattering is the principle used by dolphins and bats in echolocation: sound waves are reflected and distorted by objects, and the animals interpret these patterns to learn about their surroundings. Sonar instruments, such as those in submarines, use the same idea to map the landscape around them. In the wave tank, the interference pattern told you that the water waves had passed through two slits. Quantum particles—photons, electrons and even atoms—create the same pattern: this is the famous double-slit experiment.
Classical particle scattering was used in a puzzle to reveal a hidden letter beneath a disc. In the second experiment, you tried to infer the shape of a hidden obstacle by throwing balls at it and examining how they scattered. This mirrors how physicists study the structure of crystals. Scattering also explains why the sky is blue and sunsets are red: different wavelengths of sunlight are deflected by tiny particles in the atmosphere at different angles. Studies with electrons and photons show that quantum particles can scatter like waves or like particles—this is their wave–particle duality.
