Advent calendar door #7: Schrödinger's equation in action
As we've seen over the last few days not only light, but also matter has this strange dual nature: sometimes behaving like particles and sometimes like waves.
You might have seen the maths that is used to describe the waves we're familiar with – like water waves or sound waves – and how they evolve over time (you can read about them in Give us a wave!). And behind yesterday's door we met the equivalent mathematical description of the mysterious "matter waves" of quantum mechanics: Schrödinger's equation and its solution, the wave function, which contains all the information there is to know about a quantum system.
Today you have an invitation to see the equation in action, using a very simple physical system as an example – a single particle bouncing back and forth between two walls in a box. And you'll also meet another weird phenomenon called quantum tunneling. This is going to be a treat if you like jumping into the mathematical details!
See Schrödinger's equation in action!
But if you'd like to skip the maths grab yourself a relaxing cuppa and wait for tomorrow's door to explore what Schrödinger's equations can tell us about the physical world.