Name: Class: 11th

Submitted to: Mr S.Purohit

The

Uncertainty
Principle

The Birth of Quantum Mechanics

___________________________

At the turn of the last century, there were several experimental observations which could not be explained by the established laws of classical physics and called for a radically different way of thinking

This led to the development of Quantum Mechanics which is today regarded as the fundamental theory of Nature.

Some key events/observations that led to the development of quantum mechanics _________________________________
Black body radiation spectrum (Planck, 1901)

Photoelectric effect (Einstein, 1905)

Model of the atom (Rutherford, 1911) Quantum Theory of Spectra (Bohr, 1913)

Scattering of photons off electrons (Compton, 1922)

Exclusion Principle (Pauli, 1922) Matter Waves (de Broglie 1925) Experimental test of matter waves (Davisson and Germer, 1927)

Planck Einstein

Rutherford

Bohr

Compton

Pauli

de Broglie

Davisson and Germer

The nature of light. ____________________________

The birth of quantum mechanics is intimately linked with the theories and discoveries relating to the nature of light Is the nature of light that of a wave or a particle???

Newton

Huygens

Young

Maxwell

Compton Einstein

Light has a dual nature ___________________________

Wave (electromagnetic) - Interference - Diffraction Particle (photons) - Photoelectric effect - Compton effect

Wave - Particle Duality for light

Why isnt the wave nature of matter more apparent to us? ___________________________________

h 6x . 10J.s 6
Plancks constant is so small that we dont observe the wave behaviour of ordinary objects their de Broglie wavelengths could be many orders of magnitude smaller than the size of a nucleus!

34

Wave

____________________________
Our traditional understanding of a wave.

de-localized spread out in space and time

How do we associate a wave nature to a particle? ___________________________________ What could represent both wave and particle?
Find a description of a particle which is consistent with our notion of both particles and waves

Fits the wave description Localized in space

What happens when you add up waves?

________________________________
The Superposition principle

Adding up waves of different frequencies.. ____________________________________

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle ___________________________________

The Uncertainty Principle is an important consequence of the wave-particle duality of matter and radiation and is inherent to the quantum description of nature Simply stated, it is impossible to know both the exact position and the exact momentum of an object simultaneously

A fact of Nature!

Some consequences of the Uncertainty Principle ___________________________________

The path of a particle (trajectory) is not welldefined in quantum mechanics Electrons cannot exist inside a nucleus Atomic oscillators possess a certain amount of energy known as the zero-point energy, even at absolute zero.

In 1927 Davisson and Germer showed that electrons can diffract they act like waves Big application Electron Microscopes

Double slit experiment with electrons (1989)

(www.hqrd.hitachi.co.jp/em/doubleslit.cfm)

Are matter waves for real?!

__________________________________

C60 molecules (Fullerenes or Bucky Balls) have a wave nature! (A. Zeilinger et al, Vienna, 1999)

Biomolecules have it too! Porphyrin (2003)