Common Misconceptions: Is an electron a particle or a wave?
By Christopher MooreElectromagnetic radiation (or light) sometimes behaves as a particle and sometimes it behaves as a wave. The same observations are made with regular particles like electrons. This apparent contradiction has led many to question the foundation of modern science, specifically quantum theory. How can something be A in one instance and be B in another? The answer is: that something is neither A or B.
First off, a little history. In around 1805 Thomas Young performed an experiment that has come to be called Young’s Double-slit experiment. Wikipedia summarizes the experiment as follows:
The double-slit experiment or two-slit experiment consists of letting light diffract through two slits producing fringes on a screen. These fringes or interference patterns have light and dark regions corresponding to where the light waves have constructively and destructively interfered.
Young was attempting to determine whether light was made up of particles or whether it was made up of waves. That he observed an interference pattern lead him to the conclusion that light was a wave. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that experiments began to suggest that light was made of particles. Einstein’s photoelectric effect is an example of light “behaving” like a particle.
So in some instances light behaves like a wave, but in others light behaves like a particle. And to further complicate the matter, Young’s experiment can be performed using beams of electrons or atoms. So particles seem to act like waves sometimes as well!
In 1961, Claus Jönsson of the University of Tübingen performed the Young experiment with a steady stream of electrons, and in 1974 the experiment was carried out “one electron at a time” at the University of Milan by Pier Giorgio Merli.
Here are the results (whether done with electrons or light):
If either slit is covered, the individual photons hitting the screen, over time, create a pattern with a single peak. But if both slits are left open, the pattern of photons hitting the screen, over time, again becomes a series of light and dark fringes. This result seems to both confirm and contradict the wave theory. On the one hand, the interference pattern confirms that light still behaves much like a wave, even though we send it one particle at a time. On the other hand, each time a photon with a certain energy is emitted, the screen detects a photon with the same energy.
A remarkable refinement of the double-slit experiment consists of putting a detector at each of the two slits, to determine which slit the photon passes through on its way to the screen (If the photon or electron passes through only one slit - which it must do, as, by definition, a photon or an electron is a quantum, or “packet” of energy which cannot be subdivided - then logically it cannot interfere with itself and produce an interference pattern). When the experiment is arranged in this way, the fringes disappear.
This is truly remarkable and seems to be completely contradictory. What this suggests is that light (or electrons) behave like waves unless we start counting them, and then they behave like particles. Observing things affects their behavior it would seem. The Young experiment applied to particles directly resulted in the development of quantum physics.
Some consider this a glaring contradiction, and therefore doubt the validity of quantum theory. They suggest that one thing cannot exhibit two very different behaviors based on the circumstance. Unfortunately for them, the experiment is very reproducible. Quantum theory doubters base their arguments on a misconception of what may really be going on: they continue to view the world through Newtonian glasses, where particles are particles and waves are waves.
One of the moderators on our forum puts it this way:
We call something a particle if it behaves in a particle-like manner. But what does that mean? What is particle-like behavior? Similarly, we say that something is a wave if it exhibits wave-like behavior. But what do we mean by that? What is wave-like behavior? Whatever your answers, they will be drawn from pre-20th Century (“classical physics”) constructs for describing the physical world that we observed. They are models originally distilled and codified from early observation and experiment.
A model is only as good as the accuracy of its results, and when investigating very small particles, classical models and descriptions no longer hold. An electron will behave differently depending on the circumstances. The common misconception is that this is contradictory, that something has to be either a particle or a wave. It is not contradictory. The wave-particle duality “problem” is only an issue if you continue to wear a Newtonian mental straightjacket and believe that only one of two types of behavior can be valid. Those who found an argument against quantum theory on this premise need merely be pointed to experimental data.
Martin once again:
Perhaps a reasonable analogy might be a coin: It has two sides (heads and tails). When you flip the coin, it will land showing either the heads side or the tails side, but not both. You would not be at all perplexed by this: Even though sometimes you see the heads side but other times you see the tails side, you have no doubt that you’re looking at a coin. The coin is then analogous to a “wavicle” of light, which has two mutually exclusive properties: sometimes it shows its “wave” behavior, sometimes its “particle” behavior.
Our Newtonian blinders confuse us. We are conditioned to think in terms of hard particles (like baseballs) and soft waves (like water ripples). This is what we see all around. It is easy to assume that smaller objects should exhibit similar behavior, but that assumption is absolutely false. George Gamow coined the term “wavicle” to describe quantum entities that exhibited both wave and particle behaviors. The conclusion that can be drawn from the data is that an electron is neither a wave or a particle. It is neither A or B. It is something else completely.
It is a wavicle.
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Great post, but it is still confusing me. Are you talking about electrons or light?
I thought that electrons were particles, while light photons were pure energy that behaved in both particle and wave forms. Am I correct in saying that?
Comment by Russ — Saturday -- November 11th, 2006 @ 1:05 am
I’m mainly discussing electrons, but the main point is that electrons (or any particle) behave in a similar manner as photons (light). Sometimes they act wave-like, sometimes particle-like. Of course, there are fundamental differences between electrons and photons, but they exhibit similar behavior with respect to wave-particle duality.
Comment by Chris Moore — Saturday -- November 11th, 2006 @ 10:56 am