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
Electrons themselves aren’t waves per se. Rather they are moving so fast that you can only describe their location, or their velocity at any one moment in time. You can never measure both, and it is only for that single moment in time. The next moment all those measurements will have changed. This is called the “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”. Because of this uncertainty, our best description of an electrons movement is not as single particle. Rather it is a wave of probabilities where certain areas are more likely to have the electron at any one moment. Due to this uncertainty it can be said that until we measure the electron in some way it is BOTH the probability wave and the particle at the same time.
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