HOMEWORK 3

De Broglie Waves

We have known that light can behave as a wave and we have verified this by a lot of experiments. In
1924, Louis de Broglie proposed the idea of the fact that matter particles could behave as a wave too.
He constructed a relation between the energy E and the momentum p of the particle and the
frequency f and the wavelength λ of the wave as follows:

E=hf
h
λ=
p
where h represents the Planck constant.

Waves of Probability

Since we are working with waves instead of particles, we have to express the quantities we deal with,
in terms of the wave properties like amplitude. For instance, if any electron wave has amplitude as a
function of time and position, ψ ( x ,t ), is defined for all x.

We use this wave function ψ to represent the superposition of many waves to denote a wave packet.
Fort he sake of some quantum mechanical principles, this wave function has a complex value. So it
must be squared to mean anything.
2
ψ∗ψ =|ψ|
gives the probability density of the particle to be found at any certain position.

Particle Diffraction

Scattering may be defined as a variation in the direction of a particle due to a collision. To clarify, the
fact that two particles repel or attract each other, is counted as a collision.

Let’s try to design an experiment with people. In order to make people behave as a wave, we need to
make its wavelength larger.

Uncertainty Principle

This is a quantum mechanical principle proposed by Heisenberg. It states that position and
momentum of a particle cannot be measured with arbitrarirly high precision. It is denoted by the
following mathematical expressions:

h
Δ E Δt>
4π
h
Δ x Δ p>
4π
REFERENCES:

Beiser, A. (1963). Concepts of modern physics. New York u.a.: McGraw-Hill.

Krane, K. S. (1983). Modern physics. Estados Unidos: John Wiley.

Libretexts. (2020, November 5). 6.6: De Broglie's Matter Waves. Physics LibreTexts.
https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/University_Physics/Book
%3A_University_Physics_(OpenStax)/Book%3A_University_Physics_III_-
_Optics_and_Modern_Physics_(OpenStax)/06%3A_Photons_and_Matter_Waves/6.06
%3A_De_Broglies_Matter_Waves.