Science
In reply to the discussion: Quantum Entanglement, Dark Counts, Coincidence Detection [View all]mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)To be perfectly truthful, I'm somewhat of a quack, or at least I feel like it. I've never built physics experiments or done anything like it. What's really cool is that I can apply some of the engineering-related things that I've done to this project: I built a simple laser animation system a while back, and learned how to get a Linux system to talk to a microcontroller (PIC18F2550/4550), to position galvanometers to draw things. Now I'm using that to move the interference pattern around over a light detector.
I did some work making pieces for my optical mounts today, and got better results than I have before. Earlier this week I cleaned up my milling machine, took it apart, got the crap out, and added synthetic lube. That helps a frigging lot! I need to make some more of these pieces, but hopefully by tomorrow I can get the first stage (Z direction) working, then do the next stage. It's tough, but I'm making slow progress.
Once I get the mounts built, I'll build up the interferometer and try to take some pictures to post.