What are electrons, waves or particles?

Answer 1

Both.

Electrons (like light) have a duel nature. Electrons can behave as both a wave and a particle depending on how you study it.

Electrons have a wavelength associated with their momentum and will diffract like a wave, but they can also behave as particles, for instance when they are shot against the inside of a TV screen in a cathode ray tube.
But an electron cannot be viewed as both a wave and particle at the same time. It depends on how you ‘look’ at it.

Actually, all particles with momentum can behave as waves, but unless that have a VERY small mass, it can be difficult to detect their wave nature.

Lambda = h / p
(This is called the ‘de Broglie Wavelength’)
Where Lambda is the wavelength of the object with momentum p, and h is Planck’s constant. Planck’s constant is a VERY small number (6.63 E-34 J s). As p increases, lambda decreased.
So even particles with only a ‘little’ mass by our everyday standards have such a tiny wavelength that it can be impossible to detect. But for things with such a tiny mass such as an electron, their wavelengths can be important in a variety of circumstances.

Answer 2

Electrons As Waves

Answer 3

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RE:
What are electrons, waves or particles?

Answer 4

Neither.

Waves and particles are models that can be applied to describe physical systems and processes. There are no perfect point particles in existencem, though we like to think there are because they are intuitively appealing.

In fact, aspects of both wave models and particle models can be applied to the actual behaviour of electrons.

Answer 5

Electrons act like waves, but are particles. Wave/photon duality.

Answer 6

What is the electron?
=================
Robert Milliken, who measured a charge of electron, in his
Nobel speech ( 1923) told, that he knew nothing about “last essence of electron”.
In that case there is one old joke.
One professor asked a student:
“ What is an electron?”
“ Ah, God damn it! I have forgotten. And in fact even in the morning I knew it. ”-
the student answered.
“ You should recollect it without fail, - professor said – because you were
the unique person who knew, what electron was, and you had suddenly forgotten!”
This old joke does not grow old.
And today a question: “What is the electron?” remains without answer.
How the electron looks nobody knows.
* * *
There isn,t the Maxwell's theory / SRT without electron.
The electron is a main and single hero in the Maxwell's theory and SRT.
1) What does the electron do in Maxwell's theory?
Maxwell's equations have no relation to the movement of the electron.
They describe the distribution of electromagnetic waves
but not the movement of a particle such as an electron.
In Maxwell's theory, the electron is considered local,
as though the particle is "at rest".
This means that it particle does not move rectilinearly,
but rotates around the diameter
(has the form of a sphere- geoid).
The electron rotates around of its diameter with the speed
more than c=1. / Tachion theory/.
Therefore:
1.The electron has an electrical charge e =±√ ħcα
2. This electron /charge has energy E = ħw
The rotation of the electron creates electrical waves.
* * *
But everybody knows, that an electron is not a firm sphere.
Everybody knows, that its form can be changed.
And these changes describes by SRT.
2) What does the electron do in SRT ?
At the beginning of the last century many scientists
(Einstein, Lorents, Fitzgerald, Poincare, Abraham)
were interested in the question:
“What will take place, if the electron (Maxwell's), creating
an electrical field, begins to move - rectilinearly? “
All of them came to the conclusion that there would be
radical changes with the electron.
These changes are described by the Lorentz transformations.
That is, when the originally rotating electron (sphere) begins
to move rectilinearly, during movement it gradually
will change its geometrical form.
* * *
But nobody understands the borders of the electron,s changes.
So, what are the borders of this change?
Quantum theory gives an answer to this question.
It says that at the interaction of the electron with the vacuum,
its energy and mass become infinite.
Physicists do not understand what to do with infinite sizes,
and therefore they have invented "a method of renormalization",
a method "to sweep the dust under the carpet" / Feynman./
This method is abstract.
The situation can be understood in another way.
Electrons, having the geometrical form of a sphere, lost their volume
and turned into an indefinitely flat circle.
In this reason, infinite sizes of the electron occurred.
But in physics we know only one particle which has the form of a flat circle.
It is a quantum of light, which flies rectilinearly with speed c= 1.
Therefore, the electron can turns only into a quantum of light.
That is why, the electron and /or a quantum of light
is the same particle in different states.
* * *
It is proved, when electron leaves atom, its electric field changes.
The spherical field will be transformed to an ellipse field.
And in process of his removal the ellipse field is more and more extended.
And in a limit (at the moment of breaking-off )
the electron gets the form of a string.
/String theory/.
Therefore, electron can have the different geometrical forms:
circle, sphere and string.
* * *
In the books it is written, that electrons interact among
themselves with the help of a quantum of light.
In the books it is written that an electron in an atom passing
from one orbit to another radiates a quantum of light.
It should be understood as follows.
The electron has a quantum of light in a “pocket” or under a "shirt"
which it gives freedom from time to time.
Why is it necessary for the electron to hide a quantum of light?
================================
Many years ago man has accustomed some wild
animals (wolf, horse, cat, bull , etc.)
and has made them domestic ones.
But the man understands badly the four-footed friends.
In 1897 J. J. Thomson opened new particle - electron.
Gradually man has accustomed electron to work for him.
But the man does not understand what an electron is.
========================
The world of electron.

But maybe these electrons are World,
where there are five continents:
the art,
knowledge,
wars,
thrones
and the memory of forty centuries.
/ V. Brusov./
===============================

Answer 7

Electrons are sub-atomic particles.

Answer 8

Electrons like the ones orbiting the nucleus of atoms are definitely particles.
I can't think of any time they behave like a wave.

Answer 9

both! weird eh? but they can behave like particles in some instances and waves in others. That quantum physics for you.

Answer 10

elctrons are very small particles in an atom, waves are what you see in the ocean, particles are objects that are not made of anything else like an electron (an ipod can't be a particle coz it is made of atoms