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wave–particle duality

Also known as wave-particle duality

conclusion that quantum objects behave at times like particles and at times like waves

AI overview

Quantum objects like electrons and photons don't behave like everyday objects—instead, they sometimes act like particles with definite positions and sometimes act like waves that spread out through space. This strange dual nature is fundamental to how the quantum world works and determines the behavior of atoms, light, and the materials that make up our universe.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~15 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that fundamental entities of the universe, like photons and electrons, exhibit particle or wave properties according to the experimental circumstances. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts such as particle or wave to fully describe the behavior of quantum objects. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, light was found to behave as a wave, then later was discovered to have a particle-like behavior, whereas electrons behaved like particles in early experiments, then later were discovered to have wave-like behavior. The concept of duality arose to name these seeming contradictions.

History

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “wave–particle duality” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.