Wave-particle duality Definition and 98 Threads

(A disclaimer: I'm not an expert, having genuine confusion) There is a high concentration of introductory material on wave-particle duality that claims that the uncertainty principle manifests itself identically to the behavior of waves in the macro world. This however appears to be in direct...

No-one is suggesting that this is exactly the same as the wave-particle duality that exists at the quantum scale (e.g. non-locality) but I thought these papers looking at the behaviour of “walking droplets” that can be seen at the macroscale were very interesting: Quantum mechanics writ...

I am currently studying wave-particle duality. However, at the moment I do not see how the Bohr Model is connected to this topic. I know that the Bohr Model failed to recognise various aspects of the atom and that it works only for single atoms e.g. Hydrogen, but what did it fail to do when it...

Homework Statement At what Kinetic energy will a particle's debroglie wavelength equal its Compton Wavelength Homework Equations DeBroglie λ = h/mv Compton λ = h/mc The Attempt at a Solution Setting the two equations equal to each other, I got v = c, then said KE = (1/2)mc^2...

I was originally taught (and believed) that all matter was neither a wave nor a particle but in fact exhibited properties of both. However after reading QED (by Feynman) and The Cosmic Code (I forget who wrote that), both seemed to say (Feynman directly and The Cosmic Code more subtlety) that...

Hello again! So this time I have a few questions about the wave nature of the electron. So I've read that an electron can behave both as a wave and as a particle. My questions are regarding the electron as a wave. 1) When does the electron behave as a wave? Is it a transverse or longitudinal...

Ballentine mentioned in "The Statistical Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" published in 1970 in the Review of Modern Physics the following which allegedly showed that the wave-like behavior of a particle if some kind of illusion (now after 40 years, are there no experiments that can refute...

1. How do we know EM radiation is a wave? Also, how do we know that the magnetic wave is exactly orthogonal to the electronic wave? 2. In the into to A Brief History of Time, SH says that wave-particle duality refutes determinism. How is that conclusion made?

according to wave particle duality particles such as electrons exhibit wave like properties. and the wavelngth is given by lambda=h/p, so increase momentum and get shorter lambda. This property is utilised in the electron microscope to get very short wavelengths and so have very high...

according to wave particle duality particles such as electrons exhibit wave like properties. and the wavelngth is given by lambda=h/p, so increase momentum and get shorter lambda. This property is utilised in the electron microscope to get very short wavelengths and so have very high...

Correct me if I'm wrong. The wave function of a particle collapses when you observe/measure it? Because that you essentially disturb it. Right? So how is it that we see rainbows then if it's wave function collapses as we observe it? And how is it that we are able to split white light into...

Hello, I have some questions, but I'm not posting on quantum mechanics because as written in the FAQ, wave-particle duality is not really the realm of quantum mechanics, but is only a way for us to imagine what's going on. Is it true that the uncertainty on the location \Deltax, is in fact...

Hi All, I'm nk and new to your forum! Pl., excuse my editing skills just this post. I'll catch on fast-promise! It is known that "In physics and chemistry, wave–particle duality is the concept that all matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties."-Reference...

Hi, I’ve got a general question about wave-particle duality, and the experiments done with slits. When a laser is beamed through a small slit, we get a diffraction pattern. This pattern is interesting because it contains dark bands. When it comes to explaining the existence of...

What is meant by ths wave-particle duality of electrons?

Hi! I have been reading a little about quantum physics (I am in no way a physicist or scientist), and am trying to get my head round Wave / Particle duality. The only way I can visualise it is similar to the way to dsp / computer audio; a stream of particles oscillating in space. Particles...

I was just wondering about, after I had read about this topic. Which consequences did it have on physics that we can consider light as waves in some experiments and as particles (photons, quanta) in other experiments. And maybe even if all matter can have the same properties as light?

As every condensed-matter physicist knows, a phonon is a quantum of sound (or more precisely, of oscillations in a condensed-matter material). Clearly, sound is a wave. But quantum theory teaches us that, in a certain sense, sound is also a particle. Here I want to understand how far the view of...

light is known to have a wave-particle duality which of the 2 explain lights behavior best and which one is widely accepted?

Please, can someone explain how uncertainity principle explains the wave-particle duality nature of matter and radiation.

After completing a course in Quantum Mechanics and feeling rather dissatisfied with my physical understanding of the theory, I turned to Introductory Quantum Mechanics by Liboff, as I was advised that it was a much more clear treatment. I have barely started reading it and I am already immensely...

I placed it in here because it does have to do with homework, though it is not a numerical problem. The Problem I have to do an Extended Essay in Physics and Quantum mechanics really interest me. What I was planning on doing was doing an experiment with the Wave-Particle Duality experiment...

if matter in QM is considered to be more like waves with that particle duality what happens when a force is applied in QM, is it like classical where the force is a vector or does that change also in QM.

I have three points: 1. According to wave-particle duality, even regular matter can be classified as a wave instead of a particle, for example, an electron or a neutron. My question is, what is this a wave of? A photon is a wave of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. Are electrons, say...

Hi, A friend and I have been having a long standing debate on the nature of light, being an uneducated layman I tend to stick to the conventional interpretation of wave-particle duality but my friend maintains that light is solely a wave. He found this link at [link to crackpot website...

Hello everyone. I've been reading the forums for a while so decided to register hoping to increase my learning curve in my physics and mathematics classes. I started back to college last year after a 5 year break since I had quit college. I was previously a music education major, so when I...

Sometimes light exists in the form of a wave and sometimes light exists in the form of a particle or wave/particle duality. Light existing in two completely different forms does not make sense to me but the experiments have proved this right? I have a theory that light is actually a stream of...

Photons are always called 'particles'. But through many experiments (by scientists such as Geoffrey Taylor), it has been found that photons show some strange characteristics which resemble those of waves. In fact scientists also reveal that electrons also show wave-like nature(in fact they have...

Electrons are said to exhibit wave-particle duality because depending on the method of observation it acts as either a particle or wave. But according to De Broglie waves: A particle of mass,m, moving with velocity,v, acts like a wave of wavelength,\lambda. Where \lambda = \frac{h}{mv}. But...

Demystifier has a paper available entitled "Quantum mechanics: myths and facts". http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0609163 This is a fine overview of a lot of stuff which I would like to understand better. Please join me in discussing. There are 9 myth categories. By myth the author means...

Has anyone read http://www.hotquanta.com/wpd.html" . do any of you think he is on to something>

Hi to all I have a few confusions regarding wave-particle duality. I hope I will get good answers. You need not answer all the questions ( just those that you feel like answering). 1. Light acts as particles called photons. Photons have a definite energy based on their...

I've been racking my brain to no end trying to feed my crack physics fix. I've even managed to abandon sleep and school work to indulge in this addiction. :-p Anyways Am I looking at this right? I just want some sort of guidance so I'm going in the right direction with this... When a...

Two new papers on beautiful experiments were published this month concerning the Wave Particle duality of the photon:Paradox in Wave-Particle Duality S.Afshar et. Al. in Foundations of Physics. http://www.springerlink.com/content/q110r82074w03277/fulltext.pdf Experimental realization of...

In the 1999 paper published in Nature by Markus Arndt et al entitled "Wave-particle duality of C60 molecules" he states: The fullerenes are of course in this funny state of superposition as they are 'falling'. Couple questions: 1. Is this drop of 0.7 mm identical to what any object...

Brace yourself for another banal question, but... All the explanations I've read that introduce the wave/particle duality start by saying it has to be wave (the light-slit interference experiment) and that light arrives in discrete quantums (the photo electric effect, etc). None of the...

There seems to be a need for a theory that explains both the particle and wave properties of the electron. Neils Bohr treated the proton and electron as point-charges and successfully calculated the energy levels. He attempted to explain the stability of the h-atom by suggesting the planetary...

I have a question about an expirement that i saw yesturday in my physics class. They were shooting electrons one at a time at a wall on a video. They watched it and it showed a wave pattern on the sheet and it said that even when one electron goes throught it still goes through both slits and so...

Why is the WF of the photon a physical wave - the EM wave, but the WF of all other matter are imaginary?

1. I always thought that the word duality in QM referes to unmeasured (wave-like)/ measured (particle-like). So am I wrong? 2. Is that Marcella paper freely available on the net or another source that covers its content?

I have only taken an introductory course on QM so far, and a lot of it doesn't make sense to me. One thing that confuses me is what light is. In classical physics it was a wave consisting of oscilating electric and magnetic fields. In QM, I keep hearing about "wave-particle duality". My...

i was wondering, what if you shined two parallel rays of light directly next to each other and shot the particle throught them, one being a short wavelength and the other a long wavelength and measured each one. the first ray of light would find the momentum, so when u found the position you...

Does this describe wave particle duality correctly? 'Whether observed or not, a matter's wave particle duality still persist. The wave and matter characteristic cannot be isolated: A matter cannot be a wave sometimes and particle the other times. It must be both at anytime. However, when we...

This is my understanding towards wave particle duality: Matter is neither wave or particle.The matter position can only be determined when we observed the matter. When the matter is not observed, the matter can be in any position, and have a wave function. So, I make the following deduction...

This is one of the options I've found for IB extended essay topic. I would like to investigate and confirm the wave-particle duality of light. As an experiment to prove the wave nature I will shine a laser beam through a narrow slit, and use Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, \Delta p...

I was reading in one of my books today. It brought up an answered that I had when I was talking Modern PHysics over a year ago. Sadly our curriculum didn't really allow for us to do modern physics but our class flew through all the old physics for grade 12. Basically I had read a lot of...

just thought of this after watching a tv program on the origins of wave-particle duality discovery and the development of uncertainty theory. wonder if someone could bounce something back off me for it. now I am not a physicist, I am a computer science student, but I've read and watched a...

It has become almost axiomatic that whenever there is a discussion about the wave-particle duality of light it is inevitable that the double slit experiment is brought into the discussion as being the final and irrefutable proof of this property of the photon , since the existence of both wave...