16 questions · 6 almanac · 0 findings

Wave-Particle Duality

The dual wave and particle nature of quantum objects.

Almanac A Photon Recoils Like a Billiard Ball
  • Why was the wavelength shift in scattered X-rays hard to explain using wave theory alone?
  • Why did the Compton effect settle the debate over whether light behaves as a particle?
Almanac Every Particle Hums a Wavelength
  • What reasoning led Louis de Broglie to propose that particles like electrons also behave as waves?
  • What is the de Broglie wavelength equation, and how does it relate momentum to wavelength?
  • How did Davisson and Germer experimentally confirm that electrons behave as waves?
  • What modern technologies rely on the wave nature of matter that de Broglie proposed?
Almanac An Idea Elegant Enough to Feel Unfair
  • What did de Broglie's formula λ = h/p claim about particles like electrons?
  • How did electron diffraction experiments prove that matter behaves like a wave?
  • Why did it take five years between de Broglie's thesis and his Nobel Prize?
  • What modern technologies depend on the wave nature of matter that de Broglie proposed?
Almanac Both Thomsons Were Right
  • What accident in Davisson's lab led him to notice electrons behaving like waves?
  • How did Thomson's diffraction rings from thin metal films confirm de Broglie's prediction?
  • How could the electron be proven both a particle and a wave by father and son?
  • What modern technologies rely on the wave nature of electrons confirmed in 1937?
Almanac Atoms Learn to Move as One
  • How did Wolfgang Ketterle prove that his sodium condensate was genuinely a matter wave rather than just very cold atoms?