The photon enters as a wave and takes every path at once. Where paths recombine, their amplitudes add as arrows โ line them up and the port glows; point them opposite and it goes completely dark.
Tap the phase shifters to rotate each path. Make every โข mine detector go dark and send the photon out the safe port.
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Ports dark
Next puzzle โ
All five solved
You tuned five interferometers to darkness โ probabilities that cancel, something no classical particle can do. That's real quantum interference.
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How it works
A single photon enters at the source and flows along the rails. A beam splitter (the โ couplers) sends it two ways at once โ it travels both arms as a wave of probability amplitude, which carries a phase (an arrow direction) as well as a size.
A phase shifter rotates the arrow on its rail. Tap to turn it by 45ยฐ. When two arms meet again at a splitter, their arrows add tip-to-tail: aligned arrows reinforce (bright), opposite arrows cancel to nothing (a dark port).
Your job: tune the shifters so every โข mine detector is dark. The panel at the bottom shows each detector's arrows adding up, so you can see the cancellation happen. Classical balls can only pile up โ they can't subtract. Here, adding a path can make a detector less likely. Solve all five.