Davisson and Germer show experimentally that matter can be wavelike. The duo bombard nickel crystals with a beam of electrons, observing an interference pattern in the scattered electrons that could only be explained if the particles behave as waves.
Alan Holden’s lesson about Davisson and Germer’s experiment, very classic, Germer cross in this video and explain the original experimental equipment he used:
In this video, narrator Alan Holden also is an interesting guy, and he introduces himself:
I came to Bell Labs from Harvard in 1925 looking for a job as a chemist, and it was the last of my leads for a job as a chemist. I was interviewed there, and then heard nothing. So then I went back there and said “What about it?” and they said, “Well, unfortunately, we don’t have any jobs for chemists right now.” I said, “What sorts of jobs do you have? I need dough.” And they said, “Well, we have a job in the accounting department.” And I said, “Fine, I’ll take it.” So I became an accountant, well, a general methods and audits department member, and spent a happy five years in that department, learning a lot of things you don’t learn at Harvard, and in particular a great deal about a kind of people that you never meet at Harvard, and this fascinated me. And I’ve not regretted it, really, except insofar as one must remember that 1925 was the year of Schrodinger’s first paper, and by the time five years were over, most of quantum mechanics really had been wrapped up, you know, done.
