Wave-particle duality Interference To explain Commentary

Werner Heisenberg, Louis-Victor de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger quantum mechanics

Wave-particle duality

• Thomas Young showed light behaves like waves;
• Planck and Einstein showed it was made of particles.
• Quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg decided
• a mathematical solution based on matricies
• could serve instead of a physical description.
• Louis de Broglie insisted on a physical description—
• each particle of matter should physically also be a wave.
• No one has proven de Broglie’s hypothesis,
• but it inspired Ewin Schrödinger, whose wave function,
• describing a physical system evolving with time,
• shows what de Broglie’s idea looks like mathematically,
• plus Schrödinger’s equation can be transformed
• into Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics, and various solutions
• describe physical systems at any scale—molecular,
• atomic, and subatomic systems, even the universe itself.

Interference

• Electrons, like photons,
• show an interference pattern
• after flying through two parallel slits.
• De Broglie thought that an electron
• has an internal clock that keeps it in synch
• with its propagation wave
• like other physical particles,
• showing more harmonic synchronization
• than our coarse senses can distinguish.

To explain

• To say an electron is a wave
• is not to say it’s a particle that waves.
• When it’s a wave it’s not a particle,
• and when it’s a particle it’s not a wave;
• what we know as particle or wave
• is not the same as the electron itself.
• Even a simple zen kōan
• can stymie our expectations;
• we might never have evolved
• to understand anything’s true nature.