Talk:Wave interference

Can someone restore the long-standing animation, and text explaining it, which has been recently removed
I've just removed some recent pseudo-science additions by an unnamed person. An unnamed person has removed text and an animation explaining constructive & destructive interference, which can be seen here ... https://web.archive.org/web/20160530224057/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation). Can someone please restore that deleted text & animation. Natural Philo (talk) 03:20, 2 July 2016 (UTC) Update: The crackpot has reinstated their irrelevant/insane additions, (apparently via an anonymous proxy). Can anything be done to prevent anonymous obsessional nutcases from adding their ravings to wikipedia and deleting valid content ? Natural Philo (talk) 00:08, 3 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, you can request that a page be protected from anonymous/IP address editing for some length of time. David Spector (talk) 17:50, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Is anyone still working on this page, I have some input that should help. The work on the page is based on classical physics, using the quantum physics provides insight that answers most of questions above. Wikidave2015 (talk) 00:41, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

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Are the details of interference patterns the same?
The article says, "Interference effects can be observed with all types of waves."

While this is certainly true, it is always implicitly assumed that the detailed interference patterns are also always the same (up to differences in internal forces such as viscosity/Reynold's Number). But is this true? Does the Schrödinger equation, which precisely describes photon interference, also work precisely for water waves, using the Fresnel/Young equation? I think only as a first approximation. I think quantum interference is actually different from classical interference. I can't seem to find any confirmation. David Spector (talk) 17:46, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * The sentence is correct, but the Wave interference section -- which may have been added since your comment -- clarifies that the details differ.
 * Matter waves and light waves are complex functions; water waves are real functions. The sums differ as the complex amplitude involves phase.
 * Johnjbarton (talk) 22:59, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Quantum Interference section overwrought.
In concept the Wave interference is great. However, I'm about to make changes that I want to explain in more detail.

item d on the list of differences is incorrect: "In classical optical interference the energy conservation principle is violated as it requires quanta to cancel." Classical optics has no quanta as a start. An energy conservation is not a pointwise property.

The paragraph on double slit is off base. It seems to be wrestling with wave-particle duality. Fine, but here the topic is wave interference and we need not ponder metaphysics, just waves.

The list of differences is introduced but then delayed.

The biggest issue here is that the article over all is missing a reasonable sense of "classical waves". So comparing to classical waves not effective. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:04, 9 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I ended up reorganizing to make at kinda "classical wave" section, but it has to real-valued waves as optical waves are classical. The list of differences now works to distinguish mechanical+gravity waves from optical+quantum waves. Reordered the article to match.
 * Using the scary "complex valued wave functions" in section title may not be great but it does not raise the math level beyond what was there before. And it is significantly more correct.
 * I added more links. I suppose more refs could be pulled from matter wave and more could be added.
 * Comments and suggestions welcome. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:10, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

This page is obviously very very hard to understand by a general public
While the start is almost OK for a science-educated reader, jargon is used more and more often and at the end most readers will be lost, except those who know it all (and argue about details, as above), but those do not really need this page!!! I think that we need a pedagogic science writer here. 86.192.110.239 (talk) 18:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The page does mix up material waves (water waves, elastic waves) and quantum waves (light, matter waves). Both exhibit interference, because they are waves. But everything else about them differs. For quantum waves, three major complications: waves are not directly experienced, the amplitudes are complex, and coherence is required for interference.
 * I think reorganizing the article along these lines would help.
 * The basics of interference for material waves is simple. To say more than the simple combination immediately bring in math. I don't see any practical way around this, or value to be honest. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:18, 4 February 2024 (UTC)