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What happens when an object has the same de Broglie wavelength as the size of an object?

Physics Asked by Hamza Eyad on January 21, 2021

This is confusing me so much, we learned in class that to study the structure of nucleons, a lot of energy is required and this is to give a smaller de Broglie wavelength which is for some reason a good thing? And for a particle to “probe” the nucleus (I still don’t know what probe means) it must have a debroglie wavelength comparable to the size of the nucleus, what exactly happens when an object has the same debroglie wavelength as the size of another object.

One Answer

Setting particles aside for a moment, you recall how one probes crystals diffractively, presumably. To probe means to poke around to search into and explore very thoroughly with an instrument of comparable/smaller size: can you probe a pea with a cleaver, or a pomegranate with a tire-iron?

The idea is that the instrument ("probe") you are poking something with has to be quite a bit smaller than the object being probed. In Feynman's analogy, you cannot use a big fat screwdriver bigger than a watch to probe the innards of it: you need a very delicately small one, or, lacking that, you smash two watches together and monitor the cogwheel ejecta.

The Compton wavelength of the probe particle goes inversely as the energy, so it must be quite smaller than the size of the nucleus (fermis, or femtometers). Can you estimate the energies required? You can probe non-destructively, as in the crystallography gambit above, or destructively, by smashing up the nucleus, like smashing two watches with each other.

This is the central theme in subatomic physics: Higher energies and momenta, probe (explore) smaller distances, a seat-of-the-pants appreciation of Fourier analysis and the uncertainty principle.

Correct answer by Cosmas Zachos on January 21, 2021

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