Electrons as Waves

The Complementarity Principle says that sometimes electrons have the properties of particles and sometimes the properties of waves, but never both together. Their two types of behaviour complement each other but never coexist. The type of behaviour that is shown usually depends on the measurement technique being used. To put it another way, ask a wave-type question and you will get a waves answer. Ask a particle-type question and you will get a particles reply. Bohrs interpretation was that the two irreconcilable descriptions should be applied in turn but cannot be applied simultaneously. They are never in direct conflict, because it is impossible to determine at the same time all the information required to make the two images precise. This relates to Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle. The more precise the observations of one picture, the less precise the other becomes. Define the wavelength of an electron sharply enough and the attempt to apply the particle model will surely fail. Localize the electron definitely enough and the wave model fails. All quanta including photons and electrons have a dual nature. 'I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics'. Richard Feynman We need the concept of alternating electromagnetic fields (waves) to explain certain physical phenomena, like the interference pattern in the 2 slit experiment. So we keep that. We must somehow explain how a particle orders of magnitude smaller than the distance between the slits somehow passes through both slits and interferes with itself. Problem, we cannot explain this well using "quanta" (Particles, photons). Wave mechanics gives a simple easy to understand explanation. We need the concept of quanta (particles, photons) to explain other phenomena, like the Photoelectric Effect. So we keep that too. But, this means we use 2 different, mutually exclusive systems of mechanics to explain electromagnetic radiation. Quantum Mechanics gets out of this mess by introducing the Uncertainty Principle, Indeterminacy, and the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM. If we do NOT know which slit the particle went through, then the particle is "smeared out in equal parts" and goes through both slits. It turns into a fog. As long as it is a fog, it can pass through both slits. That is: The particle occupies a

volume of space with some probability. QM says that so long as the position is not known, the particle occupies the entire volume. If we learn its position, the fog condenses into that location and the particle goes through one slit. (The problem with this is: Fog does not form interference, waves do. Sooner or later, in those problems where appropriate, you must give up particles and fogs and start cranking through the equations of Wave Mechanics) But, Quantum Mechanists prefer fog to, "The particle turns into a wave and goes through which ever slits are open. One slit, no pattern. Two slits, pattern. Take your choice of which mental picture you form. Rule of Thumb that got me through QM: If its position is known, it is a particle. If its position is unknown, it is a wave. This works because the equations of Wave Mechanics work, if the position is unknown. If you dont tell anybody, no one will know the mental picture you formed to solve the problem. (This may not always work, but I do not remember a case where it failed Some experimental results, like this one, seem to prove beyond all possible doubt that light consists of particles; others insist, just as irrefutably, that it's waves. We can only conclude that light is somehow both a wave and a particle--or that it's something else we can't quite visualize, which appears to us as one or the other depending on how we look at it. The deal is, particle and wave are only scientific models, which attempt to keep track of reality. EVERYTHING can execute either behavior. It isn't really "waving" in any manner obvious to you. You could say, it is waving in and out of existence...if you must. The concept is the DeBroigle wavelength, related to momentum. lambda = h/p, where lambda is wavelength, h is Planck's constant, and p is momentum. If you set-at a situation, like Young's diffraction slits, and you shine light through it, you get diffraction patterns, rather than direct illumination. Shine lower wavelength light and you get more direct illumination. Same with electrons...they can be shown to behave as waves if the slits are comparable to their DeBroigle wavelength. Even if you shoot one per minute, you still see electron diffraction patterns. You seldom notice this because electrons just have such high momentum compared to visible photons, that their wavelengths are so short. How do things hold their form with vibrating atoms?

Simple...THERE ARE SO MANY OF THEM. The superposition adds up to an overall stable shape. within an atom, there are electrons whizzing around the nucleus. the electrons can only occupy certain orbitals in other words, the electron can only revolve around the nucleus at fixed distances. this distance. you know the electrons are moving with high velocities around the nucleus right? that by definition is "current", current is just a moving charged particle. when you have current you get a magnetic field, and when you get that you get a magnetic dipole moment, "magnetic dipole moment" is just the longer word for the north end of the magnetic field direction of that atom's electron. the magnetic dipole magnitude of an electron if you calculate everything it comes out to a famous number 9.3e-24Am^2, also called the bohr magneton. the magnetic dipole magnitude is dependant on the radius of the orbit of the electron. so what i meant when i said that the electron can occupy only certain orbitals was that... the electron can only stay at fixed distances that have a magnetic dipole magnitude of the bohr magneton OR multiples of the bohr magneton. keeping this in mind, everything, yes everything, has a wave function. you and i both have wave functions too. the highest science class i've taken so far is AP physics B, so i cannot tell you what a wave "function" exactly "is". but everything has one. the faster you go, the smaller the wavelength becomes. electrons are particles but they can clearly exhibit wavelike behaviors when they achieve sufficient speeds. this is one of the other reasons why electrons can only occupy fixed orbits, because when they orbit around the nucleus they go faaaaast, that if they catch up to their tail wave, it cancels itself out, and you can't have particles cancelling themselves out with no output, namely the conservation of mass, energy, and charge. this is one of the weird things about quantum mechanics, even if nothing else physically prohibits it, you can't have particles defying certain laws that govern them, and therefore they don't do it. it's like the effect comes before the cause. so far, i know i didn't answer ur question yet, but wait patiently because you said to put as much detail and in order to answer ur questions these are part of the details u needa noe. now, these fixed orbits around the nucleus are called energy levels. there are other sub orbits within the energy level called sublevels and within those are called individual orbitals. these are the so called shells. well, they are actually called clouds as well because electrons move so fast that with our modern technology you can't locate an electron AND know its' momentum in a certain point in time. there is an uncertainty there called the heisenberg's uncertainty principle. the atoms hold their form because again, referring back to the electrons

being able to occupy certain orbits. the atoms are constantly vibrating (thermal energy), that is just another way of saying micro-kinetic energy. when you have atoms bumping into each other they give each other energy right? so the reason the atom maintains its' structure is because of the very reason electrons can only occupy certain orbitals. so if you give that electron an energy of 2Joules, the electron will not do anything, it will maintain its' orbital, you need to either add a CERTAIN amount of energy to it or a whole bunch of energy. w/ the "certain amount" of energy, you need to do that in order to bump the electron to the next energy level (bohr magneton x2). with the "whole bunch of energy" you can do this to just knock the electron out of the atom, this actually has a name to it, ionization energy, the energy it takes to remove a certain electron from its' host atom. so that is why atoms maintain their structure, because again, if you add only 6Joules of energy when you really need 12 Joules of energy to knock the electron up to the next energy level, the 6 Joules you added will not alter the electron in any way shape or form. all of this relates back to the reason of the electron being able to occupy only certain orbits. thats why i had to mention it in the beginning.

they are both, and neither. all sub atomic particles exhibit what is known as wave-particle duality. depending on whether or not you are looking at them. the classic example this is the double slit you fire a single photon at a 2 slits and it interferes on the other side, thus demonstrating the definitive property of a wave. but, this is the creepy part, if you watch the a slit so that you can determine exactly which one it is going through, it goes through as a particle. it's almost as if it knows it is being watched. how do electrons behave in the shells well the Bohr model is the one they teach in high school, but that is inaccurate. it's fair to say we've not really came up with an accurate model yet because it's not "like" anything. electrons are not like little billiard balls. really the only way i could properly describe the behaviour of the electrons would be a rather lengthy and detailed explanation of quantum mechanics which probably wouldn't make sense to you anyway. it doesn't make sense to me half the time either. Since an electron has a charge, it has an electric field surrounding it. As it moves the field disturbs the particles in the air around it, creating the "marks" it was talking about. I hope this helps Before getting inside the chapter..remember that according to the dual nature theory we "assume" that a fundamental particle can act as a particle as well as a wave...

You see there are some proofs which can be proved when you consider them as particles...while others can be proved only when you apply wave equations.... Now talking about Shrodinger equation gives the probablity of finding an electron in an "area" of a shell of an atom...so...if you look at the shapes of the shells of an atom....for example the s shell...which is spherical...the probability says that the maximum chance of finding the electron is on the outer curve of the sphere....it does not mean that the electron is leaving a spherical wave-front sort of thing at the place....dont confuse the probable area of finding the electron with the wave of an electron... The electron can be considered as both a wave and a particle hence wave particle duality, the Schrodinger wave equation has to consider the position of the electron as a probability because until it is observed it acts as a wave rather than a particle. the act of observing the electron changes its properties because to observe it we must 'bounce' a photon off it. Particle and wave are just models of thinking we use to describe and explain atomic and subatomic phenomena. In one experiment, electrons can be show to have wave properties (slit experiments) and we use wave theory and wave math to explain; in another experiment they can be shown to have particle properties and we use particle theory and particle math to explain. No single experiment can show both wave and particle properties simultaneously. If it were possible for us to go down to subatomic level and actually see electrons we might not even see waves or particles but just strange things that we might never understand because they might look like things we have never seen. We just use our ideas of waves and particles to explain how electrons behave. The wave stays until you observe it, then it collapses to a particle. When you're doing the maths to explain what an electron is doing, you use the waves. When you look at it, it drops to a particle. The electron comes out of your tube in a wave, but if you put a screen somewhere to measure it you'll only get one spot from the electron (that's the particle), the probability of where that spot will be is determined by the wave.

You will get what looks like a wave if you pass lots of electrons through the tube. The probability of each electron hitting the screen is described by the wave mechanics, and the brightness on the screen is determined by the number of electrons - bigger wave amplitude at a point = more electrons will land there.

It's exactly the same effect for photons of light. You observe one photon on a

CCD say and you get one spot. You observe loads of photons and they make a wave pattern - the wave pattern is the probability of the photon ending up there. If there's high probability (big wave), lots of photons go there and it looks bright and vice versa for the dark. By thinking that electrons behave like waves, how does it help to explain that the accelerating particle does not give out energy? In the 'solar system' model of the atom, a particle-like electron travels in a circular orbit around the atom. There are different circles for orbits with different energy. Travelling in a circle, it would be accelerating (centripital acceleration) and so would radiate. In quantum mechanics, the atom has an electron wave. The wave is a bit like a standing wave in a string (see waves and strings), except that it is three dimensional. It is going nowhere. No acceleration, so no radiation. Different energy orbits have different waves, most of them have nodes, just like the waves in a string, except that in three dimensions nodes are surfaces, not points. Now in a string, the wave is in the displacement of the string. What is it that waves in an electron wave? The quantity is called , the Greek letter psi. is a complex quantity it has real an imaginary components. If you take at any place and multiply it by * (which is like , but has the opposite imaginary component, you get the probability of interacting with the electron at that point. So the atomic nucleus is pictured (especially in chemistry text books) with clouds of 'electron probability' around it in different orbitals. The interpretation of as a function of position and time is a subtle question. In the case of the atom, is a standing wave. In other cases, like the for electrons in a cathode ray tube, has the form of a travelling wave. Is an electron a particle or a wave? Another subtle question. It can have wave properties (eg a wavelength) and particle properties (eg a position). However, it cannot be a 'good' wave and a 'good' particle at the same time. Because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, a precise measurement of the wavelength implies a poor measurement of position, and vice versa. So an experiment in which wavelength is controlled precisely will give you wave effects (such as interference), but the electrons will not be localised in space. Conversely, if you constrain the position, you have an uncertainty in the momentum and wavelength. Some people say that little things like electrons are 'wavicles'. I prefer to say that they are neither wave nor particle, and that these macroscopic ideas are misleading when applied to electrons.