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Focus: Landmarks: Electrons Act Like Waves

Chelsea Wald

Published May 12, 2006• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Davisson and Germer showed in 1927 that electrons scatter from a crystal the way x rays do, proving that particles of matter can act like waves.

Related papers

Landmarks: Electrons Act Like Waves

Chelsea Wald

Davisson and Germer showed in 1927 that electrons scatter from a crystal the way x rays do, proving that particles of matter can act like waves.

Focus•May 1, 2006•0 citations

Electron Waves

E. Taylor Jones

Among the secondary effects produced in an X-ray, or cathode ray tube, there is one which is of special interest to physicists because it seems to throw some light on the question as to the nature of an electron. It appears that when a pencil of cathode rays falls upon the surface of a metal crystal, some of the rays are reflected, or “scattered,” and that the intensity of the scattered rays is greatest in certain directions, so that on a photographic plate placed to receive them, a diffraction pattern is produced as with X rays. The experiment proves that electrons, which were till recently supposed to be merely “particles,” really consist (like X rays), of waves, or at any rate have waves associated with them. It is to these waves associated with electrons, or “electron waves” as they are called, that I propose to devote my remarks this evening. The effect was first observed experimentally in 1927, by Davisson and Germer, who reflected cathode rays from a nickel crystal and, using an electrical method of detection, found maxima of intensity in certain directions. From the positions of the maxima and the known spacing constants of nickel they were able to deduce the wave-length of the electron waves. Later in the same year Professor G. P. Thomson obtained similar effects by transmitting cathode rays through thin metal films and receiving them on a photographic plate.

British Journal of Radiology•Jul 1, 1933•0 citations

Electron Waves

The experiments of Drs. Davisson and Germer on the polarisation of electron waves, a preliminary account of which was published in Nature last year (Nov. 24, p. 809) are described in detail in the May number of the Physical Review.

British Journal of Radiology•Aug 1, 1929•0 citations

The Electron — A Wave

Edward K. Yeargers

Davisson and Germer performed an experiment, in which electrons were reflected from parallel layers of atoms in a crystal. The electrons showed interference, thus demonstrating the wave nature of the electron. Louis de Broglie postulated a wave model of the electron, in which an electron orbit was represented by a group of in-phase waves. The model predicted that the angular momentum of an electron could take on only a limited number of values, a concept that Neils Bohr had introduced some years earlier as an ad hoc assumption. In an electron microscope, electrons stream off a hot filament and are accelerated to high velocity by passing between two electrically charged plates. The electrons' wavelength is related to their velocity and it is easy to obtain electrons with wavelengths near 0.1 nm, which suggests the possibility of obtaining resolution of about the same magnitude.

CRC Press eBooks•Jan 18, 2018•0 citations

Electrons make waves

Akira Tonomura

At the atomic scale, the distinction between particles and waves breaks down. The realization, early in the twentieth century, that light consists of discrete packages, or “photons,” prompted the converse suggestion that particles could behave like waves. Confirmation of this idea came in 1927, from an experiment involving the scattering of electrons from a crystal. Today, “wave-particle duality” is central to quantum mechanics, and the wave properties of subatomic particles are widely used in microscopy and crystallography. Electron diffraction techniques are widely used to characterize atomic arrangements on solid surfaces and inside thin films, and to investigate the structures of molecules in gases. The dual nature of waves and particles is part of the “spookiness” of quantum mechanics, which cannot be explained in any classical way. It used to be that one could only imagine an experiment that would simultaneously demonstrate the particle and wave nature of electrons.

University of Chicago Press eBooks•Jan 1, 2003•0 citations

Focus: Landmarks: Photons are Real

David C. Cassidy

In 1923, Arthur Compton convinced most skeptics that in some experiments, light can act like a stream of particles, rather than waves.

•Feb 20, 2004•0 citations
Among the secondary effects produced in an X-ray, or cathode ray tube, there is one which is of special interest to physicists because it seems to throw some light on the question as to the nature of an electron. It appears that when a pencil of cathode rays falls upon the surface of a metal crystal, some of the rays are reflected, or “scattered,” and that the intensity of the scattered rays is greatest in certain directions, so that on a photographic plate placed to receive them, a diffraction pattern is produced as with X rays. The experiment proves that electrons, which were till recently supposed to be merely “particles,” really consist (like X rays), of waves, or at any rate have waves associated with them. It is to these waves associated with electrons, or “electron waves” as they are called, that I propose to devote my remarks this evening. The effect was first observed experimentally in 1927, by Davisson and Germer, who reflected cathode rays from a nickel crystal and, using an electrical method of detection, found maxima of intensity in certain directions. From the positions of the maxima and the known spacing constants of nickel they were able to deduce the wave-length of the electron waves. Later in the same year Professor G. P. Thomson obtained similar effects by transmitting cathode rays through thin metal films and receiving them on a photographic plate.
Davisson and Germer performed an experiment, in which electrons were reflected from parallel layers of atoms in a crystal. The electrons showed interference, thus demonstrating the wave nature of the electron. Louis de Broglie postulated a wave model of the electron, in which an electron orbit was represented by a group of in-phase waves. The model predicted that the angular momentum of an electron could take on only a limited number of values, a concept that Neils Bohr had introduced some years earlier as an ad hoc assumption. In an electron microscope, electrons stream off a hot filament and are accelerated to high velocity by passing between two electrically charged plates. The electrons' wavelength is related to their velocity and it is easy to obtain electrons with wavelengths near 0.1 nm, which suggests the possibility of obtaining resolution of about the same magnitude.
At the atomic scale, the distinction between particles and waves breaks down. The realization, early in the twentieth century, that light consists of discrete packages, or “photons,” prompted the converse suggestion that particles could behave like waves. Confirmation of this idea came in 1927, from an experiment involving the scattering of electrons from a crystal. Today, “wave-particle duality” is central to quantum mechanics, and the wave properties of subatomic particles are widely used in microscopy and crystallography. Electron diffraction techniques are widely used to characterize atomic arrangements on solid surfaces and inside thin films, and to investigate the structures of molecules in gases. The dual nature of waves and particles is part of the “spookiness” of quantum mechanics, which cannot be explained in any classical way. It used to be that one could only imagine an experiment that would simultaneously demonstrate the particle and wave nature of electrons.