Confusions about electrons as a wave. (A bit long and stupid. Thanks you so much for taking time to see)?

2017-02-06 11:43 pm

If an electron of a hydrogen atom revolves the nucleus as a stationary wave. How is this stationary wave formed? I have learnt that a stationary wave is consisted of a wave travelling forward and a wave travelling backward(reflected wave). However an electron is a single wave by 入=h/p, how come the is two wave travelling in opposite direction in an electron?

Moreover, if it is a stationary wave, there must be some nodes and anti nodes, what does the maximum and minimum of the wave means? I got some information from a web, it says the maximum and minimum of the wave correspond to the probability of finding the electrons in the position. That implies that we could never find an electron in a node and always find an electron in an anti node?

回答 (1)

天同

2017-02-07 8:26 pm

✔ 最佳答案

It is because the electron is in a fixed orbit. A progressive wave would imply that the electron is moving away from the atom and is not in a stationary orbit.

In fact, to model the hydrogen atom needs the solving of the Schrodinger Equation (the Schrodinger Equation is a very important equation in Quantum Mechanics, just as important as Newton's Laws in classical mechanics). The solution of that equation is a "wave function". The square of the "wave function" gives the probability of a certain event. Note that in Quantum Mechanics, any event is probabilistic, not deterministic as in classical (Newtonian ) mechanics.

Based on such understanding, the "orbit" is thus NOT a simple circle. It becomes an annulus, i.e. bounded an inner circle and an outer circles, with the electron found within these two circles, but never beyond the the outer circle or inside the inner circle.

The "nodes" thus determines the boundaries of the "orbit", i.e. the inner and outer circle. The anti-nodes, which occur somewhere between the two nodes, indicate the places where the electron is most probably found. It gives the conventional orbit of the electron.

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