WHAT IS WAVE-PARTICLE DUALITY?
Danish physicist Niels Bohr was a supporter of wave-particle duality
Ben Jones
Wave-particle duality is a facet of quantum mechanics that postulates that all particles exhibit both wave-like and particle-like characteristics. While seeming a paradox, this duality helps address the inability of classical physics’ concepts such as ‘particle’ and ‘wave’ to accurately describe the behaviour of quantumscale objects. Instead of isolating particles and energy as two separate categories, with only the latter exhibiting waveform characteristics, waveparticle duality removes that separation and postulates that the state of every subatomic particle can be described by something called a ‘wave function’ – amathematical representation used to calculate the probability that the particle will be in a given location or state of motion. In brief, waveparticle duality indicates that elementary particles and waves show predictable properties in certain conditions, but are and can be highly unpredictable when measured on a quantum level.