Before you read this, I suggest you read post 19.24. The uncertainty principle is named after Werner Heisenberg (picture above), the German physicist who suggested it in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel prize in Physics in 1932. He was the first director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics; the Max Planck Institutes are… Continue reading 19.26 Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

Before you read this, I suggest you read posts 19.23 and 19.24. In post 19.23 we saw that electromagnetic waves (post 19.9) could behave as particles, called photons, and in post 19.24 that particles, like electrons, could behave as waves. People often try to imagine what these things are “really” like and then the first… Continue reading 19.25 Wave-particle duality

Before you read this, I suggest you read post 19.23. In post 19.23, I explained the idea that light could behave as a stream of particles, as well as being a wave. So, do particles (or any other objects) behave as waves? This question was explored by the French physicist Louis de Broglie in his… Continue reading 19.24 Electron waves