Beyond The Portals Harumite

comes from: quantum physics: particles are waves

When we talked Bohr model of for the hydrogen atom, we said he needed impose a postulate, ie, a condition which did not show, but that allowed him to explain the observed phenomena. This condition was that the electrons are orbiting around the nucleus in orbits whose angular momentum was an integral number of times the reduced Planck constant.

De Broglie's hypothesis, and evidence that an electron is a wave can solve this pitfall. When a wave is confined in an enclosed space, can only wavelengths space size is. A guitar string, for example, can vibrate with multiple wavelengths along its length. Similarly, if we apply now to an electron, its wavelength must be such that n is a number of times the orbit crosses:

orbit l = 2 r = p n L

The wavelength can be expressed as the angular momentum:



The first term corresponds to the angular momentum of the electron orbit, which is the Bohr quantization condition needed .

See also: quantization of the orbits of the Bohr atom