AHL Atomic
Structure: Modern Theory
Slide 21 of 26
Particle-wave
duality
Now to return to the figure of the woman you saw in the beginning of
this set of slides.
By now you should have noticed that there is a woman as well as a
young lady in the picture.
–At any time, how YOU look at it will determine whether
you see one or the other but never both at the same time!
–Therefore, the picture at any time it is viewed will
either APPEAR to be that of the woman or the young
girl.
Similarly, what you should have noticed is that electrons have the
dual characteristics of a particle and a wave.
–Which one it appears to be depends how you “look” at it,
the perspective you take—which in this case is the
experiment you perform to characterize it.
–Electrons will never be both at the same time, just as
you weren’t able see both the women in the picture at the same
time.
–That is, we have no single experiment which
gives us evidence of both a particle and a wave just as there are
no single pair of eye that can see at the same time both
the girl and the woman.