I'm a 14 year-old girl, and I recently watched a program called "BBC Horizon-What is Reality?" and it dealt with quantum mechanics. I understand it to a certain point..but I don't fully understand it. Because I live in a small town..our library is not the best. They did not carry any books on quantum mechanics. So I'm ask you, Yahoo! Answer users to please explain this to me? Thanks in advance! (:
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At one time, scientists thought everything was either a particle (like an apple) or an energy wave (like a sound wave).
Around 1800 a British scientist, Thomas Young, proved that light was an energy wave.
In 1900 a German scientist, Max Planck, accidentally discovered that light waves have particle properties. That was quite shocking! Even Planck questioned his own finding: light was both a wave and a particle - two different things - at once.
Then in 1924 a French scientist, Louis de Broglie said this: if a wave (like light) can behave like a particle, maybe a particle (like an apple) can behave like a wave.
It turns out de Broglie was right. Every particle: an atom, an apple, a person, also behaves like some sort of wave.
A German scientist, Max Born, took it further. Born said that particle's wave tells you where a particle probably is located.
Now, a large object's (like a person's) wave does not spead out much. So there is very, very little chance that you will disappear and reappear somewhere else.
But the smaller an object is, the more its wave spreads out.
An electron is very small, so its wave is very spread out. That means it's very possible that an electron will disappear from on location and instantly reappear somewhere else far away!
It sounds crazy, but it has been observed in the lab many times! The study of all this particle-as-wave stuff is called "quantum mechanics."
By the way, it's such an odd idea that Albert Einstein refused to believe it. Experiments have since shown that Einstein was wrong.
Around 1800 a British scientist, Thomas Young, proved that light was an energy wave.
In 1900 a German scientist, Max Planck, accidentally discovered that light waves have particle properties. That was quite shocking! Even Planck questioned his own finding: light was both a wave and a particle - two different things - at once.
Then in 1924 a French scientist, Louis de Broglie said this: if a wave (like light) can behave like a particle, maybe a particle (like an apple) can behave like a wave.
It turns out de Broglie was right. Every particle: an atom, an apple, a person, also behaves like some sort of wave.
A German scientist, Max Born, took it further. Born said that particle's wave tells you where a particle probably is located.
Now, a large object's (like a person's) wave does not spead out much. So there is very, very little chance that you will disappear and reappear somewhere else.
But the smaller an object is, the more its wave spreads out.
An electron is very small, so its wave is very spread out. That means it's very possible that an electron will disappear from on location and instantly reappear somewhere else far away!
It sounds crazy, but it has been observed in the lab many times! The study of all this particle-as-wave stuff is called "quantum mechanics."
By the way, it's such an odd idea that Albert Einstein refused to believe it. Experiments have since shown that Einstein was wrong.
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