It sounds like the laser beam was too narrow to go through both slits.
This video shows the use of hair instead of two slits. That gives you a more stable interference pattern.
I had the same problem with soot that you did, so I used a sheet of aluminum foil with two cuts made with a knife, but that still doesn't allow the nice calculation shown in that video.
Yes coherent light is required. The important thing to realize is that coherent light is not something that is magically created by lasers. Sunlight is somewhat coherent and it's easy to make it as coherent as you like.
What do people mean when they say "coherent light"? Well, it can be a few different things, but the relevant criteria in this context are:
- The light is all travelling more-or-less in the same direction ("spatial coherence" or "collimation")
- The light is more-or-less the same frequency ("temporal coherence" or "monochromaticity")
(See Footnote.)
I say "more or less" to emphasize the fact that it is never 100% coherent, (even from a laser), and it is never 0% coherent (even from a lightbulb or sunlight)
The way to think about it is, the light travelling towards the double-slits coming from a certain direction (e.g. 10 degrees away from normal incidence) create a really nice sharp double-slit pattern. The light travelling towards the double-slits from a different direction (e.g. 20 degrees away from normal incidence) also creates a really nice sharp double-slit pattern, but shifted!
So if you have light coming from every direction between 10 degrees and 20 degrees, you see a blurry composite of all those different double-slit patterns. It's possible that it will be so blurry that you can't even see that there's any pattern there -- it's just blurred out into a smooth line. But it's also possible that it will be only a little bit blurred out and the pattern is still recognizable.
The reason there's a cardboard box in the youtube video is to ensure that all the light from the sky that makes it to the slit is travelling in more-or-less the same direction. (Do you see how that could be done? Take a cardboard box, poke a small hole in it, and then put a double-slit far from the hole ... all the light at the double-slit is now coming in the same direction, i.e. from the hole.)
Frequency (or wavelength) is basically the same: Different frequencies of light make different interference patters, and we see a blurry composite of all those different patterns at once. If more monochromatic light was used (e.g. red laser light), the pattern would be much less blurry and easier to see, especially far from the center of the pattern. Luckily we have color vision, so we can (to some extent) recognize the composite pattern for what it is -- we see rainbows near the center, not just a blur.
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Footnote: In comments, people are complaining that the term "coherent light" should refer only to spatial coherence, not temporal coherence. I disagree: The term can refer to either of these, depending on context. For example, in the context of optical coherence tomography, or in the context of "coherence length", or in the context of Michelson interferometers, people routinely use the phrase "coherent light" to mean temporal coherence.
Best Answer
It means the separation between slit is not close and the slits size is not small enough! Those two light beam must overlap to have interference. Small slit size is required to have large diffraction, the optimal slit size is certainly small than wavelength $\lesssim\lambda\approx0.5\mu m$ which gives you large diffraction. However, larger slits size is ok, but you have to (a) Make two slits as close as possible (b) move the setup far from the screen. You will know that it is enough when the light beam can overlap.
For the slit, you need better tools than a knife as well as a better material. First, you should use a shape cutter. Second, you need a material that can have a sharper edge such as film. I believe that film was used in the first few experiments of this kind. You have mentioned a hair is enough so $10\mu m$ should probably be ok, you just need to move the screen further away.
For the light source, you should always use a laser, since a high coherent light is required. Any laser out there is ok, it just cost 1 dollar and I can sure you can borrow a laser pointer near you. As I remember when I was doing Michelson Morley experiment, a tungsten light only gives interference pattern for $<0.1m$ with short coherent length, but a laser can have coherent length $>2m$. It means your life can be easier as you can use a 20 times larger slit with a laser!
Edit: Additional info on the methods Young used for this experiment.
The wiki about Young' interference experiment has quoted his paper on "On the nature of light and colours" (Also around page p.140 in the book Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences). The relevant excerpt is:
So, I guess the experiments were carried out as follow:
Since his results cover all color, so it is very likely that he used sunlight rather than other light source such as candle (There was no light bulk at that time). Also, there is no diffraction grating, so it is likely that he was just using a simple prism.
For home experiments carried out these day, we can use LED as a monochromatic light source so that step 1 and 2 can be skipped. If you use a torch, you still need the step 2.