De Broglie

In 1923 Louis de Broglie put forward the idea that ‘all particles have a wave nature’ meaning that particles can behave like waves.

This doesn’t sound too far fetched after Einstein proved that a wave can behave like a particle.

De Broglie said that all particles could have a wavelength. A particle of mass, m, that is travelling at velocity, v, would have a wavelength given by:

which is sometime written as where p is momentum

This wavelength is called the de Broglie wavelength. The modern view is that the de Broglie wavelength is linked to the probability of finding the particle at a certain point in space.

De Broglie wavelength is measured in metres, m