Why do electrons behave as they do

Jonathan Allday

Newton thought that light was made up of particles, but then it was discovered, as we have seen here, that it behaves like a wave. Later, however (in the beginning of the twentieth century) it was found that light did indeed sometimes behave like a particle. Historically, the electron, for example, was thought to behave like a particle, and then it was found that in many respects it behaved like a wave. So it really behaves like neither. Now we have given up. We say: “it is like neither.” ere is one lucky break, however-electrons behave like light. e quantum behaviour of atomic objects (electrons, protons, neutron, photons, and so on) is the same for all, they are all ‘particle waves’ or whatever you want to call them.

Jonathan Allday

Newton thought that light was made up of particles, but then it was discovered that it behaves like a wave. Later, however it was found that light did indeed sometimes behave like a particle. Historically, the electron, for example, was thought to behave like a particle, and then it was found that in many respects it behaved like a wave. At our current levels of experimental sensitivity, there is no evidence for any constituent objects within electrons, hence they are regarded as fundamental particles. They have an electrical charge which is negative and a very tiny mass. While thinking about experiments involving beams of atoms and magnetic fields, Otto Stern realized that passing a beam of specially selected atoms through a nonuniform external magnetic field would apply a force to the atomic magnets.

Muhammad Suhail Zubairy

In 1924, de Broglie postulated that particles can behave like waves, thus complementing the observation by Einstein in 1905 that light can behave like particles. This wave–particle duality aspect for both particles and waves had a deep impact on the subsequent development of quantum mechanics. Some highly counterintuitive results, like the Heisenberg uncertainty relation and the Bose–Einstein condensation, that were motivated by wave–particle duality are discussed in this chapter. Following de Broglie’s hypothesis, a wave packet description for a particle is described. An analysis of the Heisenberg microscope is presented, thus motivating the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. The Davisson–Germer experiment that showed that electrons can behave like waves and the Compton effect that provided early conclusive evidence that light can behave like particles are also discussed.