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Quantum mechanics ("QM") is the part of physics that tells us how the things that

make up atoms work. QM also tells us how electromagnetic waves like light work.

QM is a mathematical framework (rules written in maths) for much of modern


physics and chemistry. Quantum mechanics helps us make sense of the smallest
things in nature
like protons,
neutrons and
electrons.
Complex
mathematics is
used to study
subatomic
particles and
electromagnetic
waves because
they act in very
strange ways.
Quantum
mechanics is
important to
physics and
chemistry

The wavelength of a wave of light


Quantum is a Latin word that means 'how much'. So a quantum of energy is a
specific amount of energy. Light sources such as candles or lasers shoot out (or
"emit") light in bits called photons. Photons are like packets. Each one has a
certain little bit of energy.


Waves and photons

Photons are particles, much smaller than atoms. The more photons a lamp
shoots off, the brighter the light. Light is a form of energy that behaves like the
waves in water or radio waves. The distance between the top of one wave and the
top of the next wave is called a 'wavelength.' Each photon carries a certain
amount, or 'quantum', of energy depending on its wavelength.

Black at left is ultraviolet (high frequency); black at right is infrared (low


frequency).
A light's color depends on its wavelength. The color violet (the bottom or
innermost color of the rainbow) has a wavelength of about 400 nm ("nanometer")
which is 0.00004 centimeter or 0.000016 inch. Photons with wavelengths of 10-400

nm are called ultraviolet (or UV) light. Such light cannot be seen by the human
eye. On the other end of the spectrum, red light is about 700 nm. Infrared light is
about 700 nm to 300,000 nm. Human eyes are not sensitive to infrared light either.

Wavelengths are not always so small. Radio waves have longer wavelengths. The
wavelengths for your FM radio can be several meters in length (for example,
stations transmitting on 99.5 FM are emitting radio energy with a wavelength of
about 3 meters, which is about 10 feet). Each photon has a definite amount of
energy related to its wavelength. The shorter the wavelength of a photon, the
greater its energy. For example, an ultraviolet photon has more energy than an
infrared photon.

Pictorial description of frequency


Wavelength and frequency (the number of times the wave crests per second) are
inversely proportional. This means a longer wavelength will have a lower
frequency, and vice versa. If the color of the light is infrared (lower in frequency
than red light), each photon can heat up what it hits. So, if a strong infrared lamp
(a heat lamp) is pointed at a person, that person will feel warm, or even hot,
because of the energy stored in the many photons. The surface of the infrared
lamp may even get hot enough to burn someone who may touch it. Humans
cannot see infrared light, but we can feel the radiation in the form of heat. For

example, a person walking by a brick building that has been heated by the sun
will feel heat from the building without having to touch it.

The mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics are abstract. A
mathematical function, the wavefunction, provides information about
the
probability amplitude of
position, momentum, and other
physical properties of
a particle. Many of the
results of
quantum
mechanics
are not
easily
visualized
in terms of
classical
mechanics.

On the left, a plastic thermometer is under a


bright heat lamp. This
infrared radiation warms but does not damage the thermometer. On the right,
another plastic thermometer gets hit by a low intensity ultraviolet light. This
radiation damages but does not warm the thermometer.
If the color of the light is ultraviolet (higher in frequency than violet light), then
each photon has a lot of energy, enough to hurt skin cells and cause a sunburn.
In fact, most forms of sunburn are not caused by heat; they are caused by the
high energy of the sun's UV rays damaging your skin cells. Even higher
frequencies of light (or electromagnetic radiation) can penetrate deeper into the
body and cause even more damage. X-rays have so much energy that they can go
deep into the human body and kill cells. Humans cannot see or feel ultraviolet
light or x-rays. They may only know they have been under such high frequency
light when they get a radiation burn. Areas where it is important to kill germs
often use ultraviolet lamps to destroy bacteria, fungi, etc. X-rays are sometimes
used to kill cancer cells.

Quantum mechanics started when it was discovered that a certain frequency


means a certain amount of energy. Energy is proportional to frequency (E f).
The higher the frequency, the more energy a photon has, and the more damage it
can do. Quantum mechanics later grew to explain the internal structure of atoms.
Quantum mechanics also explains the way that a photon can interfere with itself,
and many other things never imagined in classical physics.


Quantization

Planck discovered the relationship between frequency and energy. Nobody before
had ever guessed that frequency would be directly proportional to energy (this
means that as one doubles, the other does, too). If we choose to use what are
called natural units, then the number representing the frequency of a photon
would also represent its energy. The equation would then be:

E = f

meaning energy equals frequency.

But the way physics grew, there was no natural connection between the units
then used to measure energy and the units commonly used to measure time (and
therefore frequency). So the formula that Planck worked out to make the numbers
all come out right was:

E = h f
or, energy equals h times frequency. This h is a number called Planck's constant
after its discoverer.

Quantum mechanics is based on the knowledge that a photon of a certain


frequency means a photon of a certain amount of energy. Besides that
relationship, a specific kind of atom can only give off certain frequencies of
radiation, so it can also only give off photons that have certain amounts of
energy.

Double-slit experiment: light goes from the light source at left to fringes (marked
in the black edge) at the right.

Photoelectric effect: photons hit metal and electrons are pushed away.
HistoryEdit

Left to right: Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Max Born,
Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrdinger, Richard
Feynman.
Isaac Newton thought that light was made of very small things that we would now
call particles (he referred to them as "Corpuscles"). Christiaan Huygens thought
that light was made of waves. Scientists thought that a thing cannot be a particle
and a wave at the same time.

Scientists did experiments to find out whether light was made of particles or
waves. They found out that both ideas were right light was somehow both
waves and particles. The Double-slit experiment performed by Thomas Young
showed that light must act like a wave. The Photoelectric effect discovered by
Albert Einstein proved that light had to act like particles that carried specific
amounts of energy, and that the energies were linked to their frequencies. This
experimental result is called the "wave-particle duality" in quantum mechanics.
Later, physicists found out that everything behaves both like a wave and like a
particle, not just light. However, this effect is much smaller in large objects.

Here are some of the people who discovered the basic parts of quantum
mechanics: Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Satyendra Nath Bose, Niels Bohr, Louis
de Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin

Schrdinger, John von Neumann, and Richard Feynman. They did their work in
the first half of the 20th century.


Beyond Planck

Visible light given off by glowing hydrogen. (Wavelengths in nanometers.)


Quantum mechanics formulas and ideas were made to explain the light that
comes from glowing hydrogen. The quantum theory of the atom also had to
explain why the electron stays in its orbit, which other ideas were not able to
explain. It followed from the older ideas that the electron would have to fall in to
the center of the atom because it starts out being kept in orbit by its own energy,
but it would quickly lose its energy as it revolves in its orbit. (This is because
electrons and other charged particles were known to emit light and lose energy
when they changed speed or turned.)

Hydrogen lamps work like neon lights, but neon lights have their own unique
group of colors (and frequencies) of light. Scientists learned that they could
identify all elements by the light colors they produce. They just could not figure
out how the frequencies were determined.

Then, a Swiss mathematician named Johann Balmer figured out an equation that
told what (lambda, for wave length) would be:



where B is a number that Balmer determined to be equal to 364.56 nm.

This equation only worked for the visible light from a hydrogen lamp. But later,
the equation was made more general:

where R is the Rydberg constant, equal to 0.0110 nm1, and n must be greater
than m.

Putting in different numbers for m and n, it is easy to predict frequencies for


many types of light (ultraviolet, visible, and infared). To see how this works, go to
Hyperphysics and go down past the middle of the page. (Use H = 1 for hydrogen.)

In 1908, Walter Ritz made the Ritz combination principle that shows how certain
gaps between frequencies keep repeating themselves. This turned out to be
important to Werner Heisenberg several years later.

In 1905, Albert Einstein used Planck's idea to show that a beam of light is made
up of a stream of particles called photons. The energy of each photon depends
on its frequency. Einstein's idea is the beginning of the idea in quantum

mechanics that all subatomic particles like electrons, protons, neutrons, and
others are both waves and particles at the same time. (See picture of atom with
the electron as waves at atom.) This led to a theory about subatomic particles and
electromagnetic waves called wave-particle duality. This is where particles and
waves were neither one nor the other, but had certain properties of both.

An electron falls to lower orbit and a photon is created.


In 1913, Niels Bohr had a new idea. Maybe electrons could only take up certain
orbits around the nucleus of an atom. The numbers called m and n in the
equation above could represent orbits. An electron could begin in some orbit m
and end up in some orbit n, or an electron could begin in some orbit n and end up
in some orbit m. So if a photon hits an electron its energy will be absorbed and
the electron will move to a higher orbit because of that extra energy. And if an
electron falls from a higher orbit to a lower orbit then it will have to give up
energy in the form of a photon. The energy of the photon will equal the energy
difference between the two orbits, and the energy of a photon makes it have a
certain frequency and color. Everything worked out very well that way, but there
was one big question left: Each of the colors of light produced by glowing
hydrogen (and by glowing neon or any other element) has a brightness of its
own, and the brightness differences are always the same for each element. Why?

At this point, most things about the light produced by a hydrogen lamp were
known. One big problem remained: How can we explain the brightness of each of
the lines produced by glowing hydrogen?

Spaced-out intensities in arbitrary units


Werner Heisenberg took on the job of explaining the brightness or "intensity" of
each line. He could not use any simple rule like the one Balmer had come up with.
He had to use the very difficult maths of classical physics that figures everything
out in terms of things like the mass (weight) of an electron, the charge (static
electric strength) of an electron, and other tiny quantities. Classical physics
already had answers for the brightness of the bands of color that a hydrogen
lamp produces, but the classical theory said that there should be a continuous
rainbow, and not four separate color bands. Heisenberg's explanation is:

There is some law that says what frequencies of light glowing hydrogen will
produce. It has to predict spaced-out frequencies when the electrons involved are
moving between orbits close to the nucleus (center) of the atom, but it also has to
predict that the frequencies will get closer and closer together as we look at what
the electron does in moving between orbits farther and farther out. It will also
predict that the intensity differences between frequencies get closer and closer
together as we go out. Where classical physics already gives the right answers

by one set of equations the new physics has to give the same answers but by
different equations.

Classical physics uses the methods of the French mathematician Fourier to make
a maths picture of the physical world, and it uses collections of smooth curves
that go together to make one smooth curve that gives, in this case, intensities for
light of all frequencies from some light. But it is not right because that smooth
curve only appears at higher frequencies. At lower frequencies, there are always
isolated points and nothing connects the dots. So, to make a map of the real
world, Heisenberg had to make a big change. He had to do something to pick out
only the numbers that would match what was seen in nature. Sometimes, people
say he "guessed" these equations, but he was not making blind guesses. He
found what he needed. The numbers that he calculated would put dots on a
graph, but there would be no line drawn between the dots. And making one
"graph" just of dots for every set of calculations would have wasted lots of paper
and not have gotten anything done. Heisenberg found a way to efficiently predict
the intensities for different frequencies and to organize that information in a
helpful way.

Just using the empirical rule given above, the one that Balmer got started and
Rydberg improved, we can see how to get one set of numbers that would help
Heisenberg get the kind of picture that he wanted:

The rule says that when the electron moves from one orbit to another it either
gains or loses energy, depending on whether it is getting farther from the center
or nearer to it. So we can put these orbits or energy levels in as headings along
the top and the side of a grid. For historical reasons the lowest orbit is called n,
and the next orbit out is called n - a, then comes n - b, and so forth. It is confusing
that they used negative numbers when the electrons were actually gaining
energy, but that is just the way it is.

Since the Rydberg rule gives us frequencies, we can use that rule to put in
numbers depending on where the electron goes. If the electron starts at n and
ends up at n, then it has not really gone anywhere, so it did not gain energy and it
did not lose energy. So the frequency is 0. If the electron starts at n-a and ends up
at n, then it has fallen from a higher orbit to a lower orbit. If it does so then it
loses energy, and the energy it loses shows up as a photon. The photon has a
certain amount of energy, e, and that is related to a certain frequency f by the
equation e = h f. So we know that a certain change of orbit is going to produce a
certain frequency of light, f. If the electron starts at n and ends up at n - a, that
means it has gone from a lower orbit to a higher orbit. That only happens when a
photon of a certain frequency and energy comes in from the outside, is absorbed
by the electron and gives it its energy, and that is what makes the electron go out
to a higher orbit. So, to keep everything making sense, we write that frequency as
a negative number. There was a photon with a certain frequency and now it has
been taken away.

So we can make a grid like this, where f(ab) means the frequency involved
when an electron goes from energy state (orbit) b to energy state a (Again,
sequences look backwards, but that is the way they were originally written.):


Grid of f

Electron States
n
f(nn)

n
n-a
f(nn-a)

n-b n-c
f(nn-b)

....

f(nn-c)

.....

n-a

f(n-an)

f(n-an-a) f(n-an-b) f(n-an-c) .....

n-b

f(n-bn)

f(n-bn-a) f(n-bn-b) f(n-bn-c) .....

transition.... ..... ..... ..... .....


Heisenberg did not make the grids like this. He just did the maths that would let
him get the intensities he was looking for. But to do that he had to multiply two
amplitudes (how high a wave measures) to work out the intensity. (In classical
physics, intensity equals amplitude squared.) He made an odd-looking equation
to handle this problem, wrote out the rest of his paper, handed it to his boss, and
went on vacation. Dr. Born looked at his funny equation and it seemed a little
crazy. He must have wondered, "Why did Heisenberg give me this strange thing?
Why does he have to do it this way?" Then he realized that he was looking at a
blueprint for something he already knew very well. He was used to calling the grid
or table that we could write by doing, for instance, all the maths for frequencies, a
matrix. And Heisenberg's weird equation was a rule for multiplying two of them
together. Max Born was a very, very good mathematician. He knew that since the
two matrices (grids) being multiplied represented different things (like position
(x,y,z) and momentum (mv), for instance), then when you multiply the first matrix
by the second you get one answer and when you multiply the second matrix by
the first matrix you get another answer. Even though he did not know about
matrix maths, Heisenberg already saw this "different answers" problem and it had
bothered him. But Dr. Born was such a good mathematician that he saw that the
difference between the first matrix multiplication and the second matrix
multiplication was always going to involve Planck's constant, h, multiplied by the
square root of negative one, i. So within a few days of Heisenberg's discovery
they already had the basic maths for what Heisenberg liked to call the
"indeterminacy principle." By "indeterminate" Heisenberg meant that something
like an electron is just not pinned down until it gets pinned down. It is a little like
a jellyfish that is always squishing around and cannot be "in one place" unless
you kill it. Later, people got in the habit of calling it "Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle," which made many people make the mistake of thinking that electrons
and things like that are really "somewhere" but we are just uncertain about it in
our own minds. That idea is wrong. It is not what Heisenberg was talking about.
Having trouble measuring something is a problem, but it is not the problem
Heisenberg was talking about.

Heisenberg's idea is very hard to grasp, but we can make it clearer with an
example. First, we will start calling these grids "matrices," because we will soon
need to talk about matrix multiplication.

Suppose that we start with two kinds of measurements, position (q) and
momentum (p). In 1925, Heisenberg wrote an equation like this one:

(Equation for the conjugate variables momentum and position)


He did not know it, but this equation gives a blueprint for writing out two matrices
(grids) and for multiplying them. The rules for multiplying one matrix by another
are a little messy, but here are the two matrices according to the blueprint, and
then their product:


Matrix of p

Electron States
n
p(nn-a)


.....

n-a

p(n-an-a) p(n-an-b) p(n-an-c) .....

n-b

p(n-bn-a) p(n-bn-b) p(n-bn-c) .....

transition.... .....
Matrix of q

n-a n-b
p(nn-b)

.....

.....

n-c ....
p(nn-c)

.....

Electron States n-b n-c n-d ....



n-a q(n-an-b) q(n-an-c) q(n-an-d) .....

n-b

q(n-bn-b) q(n-bn-c) q(n-bn-d) .....

n-c

q(n-cn-b) q(n-cn-c) q(n-cn-d) .....

transition.... ..... ..... ..... .....


The matrix for the product of the above two matrices as specified by the relevant
equation in Heisenberg's 1925 paper is:

Electron States
n
A
.....
n-a ..... B
n-b ..... .....
Where:

n-b
.....
.....
C

n-c
.....
.....
.....

n-d

.....


A=p(nn-a)*q(n-an-b)+p(nn-b)*q(n-bn-b)+p(nn-c)*q(n-cn-b)+.....

B=p(n-an-a)*q(n-an-c)+p(n-an-b)*q(n-bn-c)+p(n-an-c)*q(n-cn-c)+.....

C=p(n-bn-a)*q(n-an-d)+p(n-bn-b)*q(n-bn-d)+p(n-bn-c)*q(n-dn-d)+.....

and so forth.


If the matrices were reversed, the following values would result:

A=q(nn-a)*p(n-an-b)+q(nn-b)*p(n-bn-b)+q(nn-c)*p(n-cn-b)+.....
B=q(n-an-a)*p(n-an-c)+q(n-an-b)*p(n-bn-c)+q(n-an-c)*p(n-cn-c)+.....
C=q(n-bn-a)*p(n-an-d)+q(n-bn-b)*p(n-bn-d)+q(n-bn-c)*p(n-dn-d)+.....


and so forth.

Note how changing the order of multiplication changes the numbers, step by
step, that are actually multiplied.


Beyond Heisenberg

The work of Werner Heisenberg seemed to break a log jam. Very soon, many
different other ways of explaining things came from people such as Louis de
Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli, and Erwin Schrdinger. The work
of each of these physicists is its own story. The maths used by Heisenberg and
earlier people is not very hard to understand, but the equations quickly grew very
complicated as physicists looked more deeply into the atomic world.


Further mysteries

In the early days of quantum mechanics, Albert Einstein suggested that if it were
right then quantum mechanics would mean that there would be "spooky action at
a distance." It turned out that quantum mechanics was right, and that what
Einstein had used as a reason to reject quantum mechanics actually happened.
This kind of "spooky connection" between certain quantum events is now called
"quantum entanglement".

Two entangled particles are separated: one on Earth and one taken to some
distant planet. Measuring one of them forces it to "decide" which role to take, and
the other one must then take the other role whenever (after that) it is measured.
When an experiment brings two things (photons, electrons, etc.) together, they
must then share a common description in quantum mechanics. When they are
later separated, they keep the same quantum mechanical description or "state."
In the diagram, one characteristic (e.g., "up" spin) is drawn in red, and its mate
(e.g., "down" spin) is drawn in blue. The purple band means that when, e.g., two
electrons are put together the pair shares both characteristics. So both electrons
could show either up spin or down spin. When they are later separated, one
remaining on Earth and one going to some planet of the star Alpha Centauri, they
still each have both spins. In other words, each one of them can "decide" to show

itself as a spin-up electron or a spin-down electron. But if later on someone


measures the other one, it must "decide" to show itself as having the opposite
spin.

Einstein argued that over such a great distance it was crazy to think that forcing
one electron to show its spin would then somehow make the other electron show
an opposite characteristic. He said that the two electrons must have been spin-up
or spin-down all along, but that quantum mechanics could not predict which
characteristic each electron had. Being unable to predict, only being able to look
at one of them with the right experiment, meant that quantum mechanics could
not account for something important. Therefore, Einstein said, quantum
mechanics had a big hole in it. Quantum mechanics was incomplete.

Later, it turned out that experiments showed that it was Einstein who was wrong.
[1]


Heisenberg uncertainty principle

In 1925, Werner Heisenberg described the Uncertainty principle, which says that
the more we know about where a particle is, the less we can know about how fast
it is going and in which direction. In other words, the more we know about the
speed and direction of something small, the less we can know about its position.
Physicists usually talk about the momentum in such discussions instead of
talking about speed. Momentum is just the speed of something in a certain
direction times its mass.

The reason behind Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says that we can never
know both the location and the momentum of a particle. Because light is an
abundant particle, it is used for measuring other particles. The only way to
measure it is to bounce the light wave off of the particle and record the results. If
a high energy, or high frequency, light beam is used, we can tell precisely where it
is, but cannot tell how fast it was going. This is because the high energy photon
transfers energy to the particle and changes the particle's speed. If we use a low
energy photon, we can tell how fast it is going, but not where it is. This is
because we are using light with a longer wavelength. The longer wavelength
means the particle could be anywhere along the stretch of the wave.

The principle also says that there are many pairs of measurements for which we
cannot know both of them about any particle (a very small thing), no matter how
hard we try. The more we learn about one of such a pair, the less we can know
about the other.

Even Albert Einstein had trouble accepting such a bizarre concept, and in a wellknown debate said, "God does not play dice". To this, Danish physicist Niels Bohr
famously responded, "Einstein, don't tell God what to do".


Uses of QM

Electrons surround every atom's nucleus. Chemical bonds link atoms to form
molecules. A chemical bond links two atoms when electrons are shared between
those atoms. Thus QM is the physics of the chemical bond and of chemistry. QM
helps us understand how molecules are made, and what their properties are.[2]

QM can also help us understand big things, such as stars and even the whole
universe. QM is a very important part of the theory of how the universe began
called the Big Bang.

Everything made of matter is attracted to other matter because of a fundamental


force called gravity. Einstein's theory that explains gravity is called the theory of
general relativity. A problem in modern physics is that some conclusions of QM
do not seem to agree with the theory of general relativity.

QM is the part of physics that can explain why all electronic technology works as
it does. Thus QM explains how computers work, because computers are
electronic machines. But the designers of the early computer hardware of around
1950 or 1960 did not need to think about QM. The designers of radios and
televisions at that time did not think about QM either. However, the design of the
more powerful integrated circuits and computer memory technologies of recent
years does require QM.


QM has also made possible technologies such as:

Spectroscopy
Lasers
MRIs
CDs and DVDs
Why QM is hard to learnEdit


QM is a challenging subject for several reasons:

QM explains things in very different ways from what we learn about the world
when we are children.
Understanding QM requires more mathematics than algebra and simple calculus.
It also requires matrix algebra, complex numbers, probability theory, and partial
differential equations.
Physicists are not sure what some of the equations of QM tell us about the real
world.
QM suggests that atoms and subatomic particles behave in strange ways,
completely unlike anything we see in our everyday lives.

QM describes things that are really really small, so we cannot see some of them
without special equipment, and we cannot see many of them at all.
QM describes nature in a way that is different from how we usually think about
science. It tells us how likely to happen some things are, rather than telling us
that they certainly will happen.

One example is Young's double-slit experiment. If we shoot single photons


(single units of light) from a laser at a sheet of photographic film, we will see a
single spot of light on the developed film. If we put a sheet of metal in between,
and make two very narrow slits in the sheet, when we fire many photons at the
metal sheet, and they have to go through the slits, then we will see something
remarkable. All the way across the sheet of developed film we will see a series of
bright and dark bands. We can use mathematics to tell exactly where the bright
bands will be and how bright the light was that made them, that is, we can tell
ahead of time how many photons will fall on each band. But if we slow the
process down and see where each photon lands on the screen we can never tell
ahead of time where the next one will show up. We can know for sure that it is
most likely that a photon will hit the center bright band, and that it gets less and
less likely that a photon will show up at bands farther and farther from the center.
So we know for sure that the bands will be brightest at the center and get dimmer
and dimmer farther away. But we never know for sure which photon will go into
which band.

One of the strange conclusions of QM theory is the "Schrdinger's cat" effect.


Certain properties of a particle, such as their position, speed of motion, direction
of motion, and "spin", cannot be talked about until something measures them (a
photon bouncing off of an electron would count as a measurement of its position,
for example). Before the measurement, the particle is in a "superposition of
states," in which its properties have many values at the same time. Schrdinger
said that quantum mechanics seemed to say that if something (such as the life or
death of a cat) was determined by a quantum event, then its state would be
determined by the state that resulted from the quantum event, but only at the time
that somebody looked at the state of the quantum event. In the time before the
state of the quantum event is looked at, perhaps "the living and dead cat (pardon
the expression) [are] mixed or smeared out in equal parts."[3]


Reduced Planck's constant

People often used the symbol , which is called "h-bar." = h/2. H-bar is a unit of
angular momentum. When this new unit is used to describe the orbits of
electrons in atoms, the angular momentum of any electron in orbit is always a
whole number.[4]


Example

The particle in a 1-dimensional well is the most simple example showing that the
energy of a particle can only have specific values. The energy is said to be
"quantized." The well has zero potential energy inside a range and has infinite
potential energy everywhere outside that range. For the 1-dimensional case in the
direction, the time-independent Schrdinger equation can be written as:[5]



Using differential equations, we can see that must be


or

(by Euler's formula)


The walls of the box mean that the wavefunction must have a special form. The
wavefunction of the particle must be zero anytime the walls are infinitely tall. At
each wall:



Consider x = 0

sin 0 = 0, cos 0 = 1. To satisfy the cos term has to be removed. Hence D = 0


Now consider:

at x = L,
If C = 0 then for all x. This solution is not useful.
therefore sin kL = 0 must be true, giving us

We can see that must be an integer. This means that the particle can only have
special energy values and cannot have the energy values in between. This is an
example of energy "quantization."

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