Wave Behavior of Particles

The three underlying streams of thought in this chapter are wave properties of particles, wave-particle duality of matter, and the uncertainty principle. Following the Davisson-Germer experiment, particle waves, also called material waves, have been observed for other material entities, such as neutrons, protons, and atoms, as well. Particle diffraction is now a very useful technique to study different structures. Quantum confinement is an interesting effect that has significant, useful, and practical implications. As an application of de Broglie hypothesis, the chapter explores a simple situation of a confined particle by applying a rudimentary mathematical treatment. Although the spatial confinement can happen in all three dimensions, the simplest case is the confinement in one dimension (1D). The uncertainty principle, postulated by Heisenberg in 1927, can be understood as a natural consequence of the de Broglie hypothesis that each particle has a wave associated with it. Controlled Vocabulary Terms electron diffraction; elementary particles; quantum theory; wave mechanics