pic from gallery kyoto-u, an artist impression , check out his hairstylist.Pic taken from rcurtis.com showing electrons can produce diffraction patterns (particle -right) just like x-rays (wave -left)
If a man can cook then why can't a woman play soccer? If only Einstein think with a child like mentality he would have won two noble prize and bridge the gap that took 24 years. Einstein won in 1905 for quantum theory, light having particle characteristics and debroglie in 1929 for electrons having wave characteristics.
Einstein 's photoelectric effect expt supported his quantum theory that waves can have particle- like behaviour. First of all you need to know what are the properties of particle and wave. Particles obey Newton's laws (newtonian mechanics) and wave obey principle of superposition and therefore can interfere and diffract producing fringe patterns . These are normal behaviours , just like if you were to say a woman cooks and man plays soccer. But if you say a woman plays soccer or a man cooks , it may raise some eyebrows. Einstein was the new kid on the block when he proposed that wave can have particle behaviour. de-Broglie was less well known but nevertherless won a Nobel prize too for another revolutionary theory that particle can produce diffraction pattern(wave property ) and was later proven experimentally by bombarding a crystal (diffraction grating) with a fast beam of electrons(particles ) . Therefore if someone ask you ,what is the evidence that a
particle behaves as a particle- obeys newtons laws like electrons accelerate in a cathode ray tube
wave behaves as a wave - produces diffraction pattern as it emerges from slits due to superposition when waves interfere.
wave behave as a particle - emits photoelectrons when light of a minimum frequency is incident on a metal surface (photoelectric effect)
particle behave as a wave - produces diffraction pattern when particles (electrons) are incident on a crystal that act as a grating(electron diffraction expt).
