most people give an example of water waves but I thought every single “wave” has particle-like atomic structure. What does it mean for the most smallest particle like an electron to be a wave?
In: Physics
Ok so a lot of these answers talking about the differences between particles and waves… are just wrong.
All matter has a waveform. Everything from subatomic particles to baseballs. That wavelength is mathematically defined.
Wavelength = Planck value / (mass * velocity)
(Planck value is very small constant value)
Now let’s talk about what wavelength is…. Imagine we see something – let’s use a baseball – if it had a wavelength of three feet… even though we can “see it” the baseball could actually be 3 feet from where we think it is. If we wanted to interact with the baseball, we’d be guessing where it actually is in that 3 foot long area. We can know where that 3 foot long stretch is, but we aren’t sure where the baseball is in that 3 feet.
Turns out, You can calculate the wavelength of a baseball! The only issue is that the wavelength will be absurdly small because the mass of the baseball is so relatively large.
So for a baseball the wavelength is so tiny that it doesn’t mean anything relative to the size of the baseball. It’s not a 3 feet search zone, it’s actually like 10^-35 feet. So in this case we’ll never be able to “see” the baseball but not interact with it.
For a sub atomic particle, the wavelength will be larger than the particle itself. In this case you have a very real chance of “seeing the particle” but not being able to know exactly where it is, because the wavelength (search zone) is so big relative to the particle.
This is a key concept. Everything is a wave. For subatomic particles, their wavelengths are larger than the particles themselves. This is where they get all of their unique properties. There is a lot more on that. But for an eli5 I’ll leave it there.
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