Abstract
This book is mainly concerned with the interactions of electrons with matter. Thus, the question “What is an electron?” is quite in order. Now, to our knowledge, nobody has so far seen an electron, even by using the most sophisticated equipment. We experience merely the actions of electrons, e.g., on a cathode-ray television screen or in an electron microscope. In each of these instances, the electrons seem to manifest themselves in quite a different way, i.e., in the first case as a particle and in the latter case as an electron wave. Accordingly, we shall use, in this book, the terms “wave” and “particle” as convenient means to describe the different aspects of the properties of electrons. This “duality” of the manifestations of electrons should not overly concern us. The reader has probably been exposed to a similar discussion when the properties of light have been introduced.
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Notes
- 1.
A summary of the equations which govern waves and vibrations is given in Appendix 1.
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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Hummel, R.E. (2011). The Wave-Particle Duality. In: Electronic Properties of Materials. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8164-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8164-6_2
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