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Davisson and Germer

Davisson and Germer performed an experiment that proved the wave nature of electrons. They fired electron beams at a nickel crystal and observed diffraction patterns when measuring the intensity of electrons scattered at different angles. The experiment found a peak in scattered electron intensity at a specific accelerating voltage and scattering angle, demonstrating the electrons were behaving as waves undergoing constructive interference. This provided direct evidence that electrons have an associated wavelength, as predicted by the de Broglie hypothesis.

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Dhruv Arora
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64 views

Davisson and Germer

Davisson and Germer performed an experiment that proved the wave nature of electrons. They fired electron beams at a nickel crystal and observed diffraction patterns when measuring the intensity of electrons scattered at different angles. The experiment found a peak in scattered electron intensity at a specific accelerating voltage and scattering angle, demonstrating the electrons were behaving as waves undergoing constructive interference. This provided direct evidence that electrons have an associated wavelength, as predicted by the de Broglie hypothesis.

Uploaded by

Dhruv Arora
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Davisson and Germers experiment:- This experiment proved the wave nature of the electron.

They observed diffraction effects of the electron beams by the crystal. The setup consists of the electron gun. The beam is accelerated by applying suitable potential difference. The beam is made to fall on the surface of a nickel crystal. The electrons are scattered in all directions by the atoms of the crystal. The intensity of the electron beam, scattered in a given direction, is measured by the electron detector (collector). The detector can be moved on a circular scale and is connected to a sensitive galvanometer, which records the current. The deflection of the galvanometer is proportional to the intensity of the electron beam entering the collector. The apparatus is enclosed in an evacuated chamber. By moving the detector on the circular scale at different positions, the intensity of the scattered electron beam is measured for different values of angle of scattering which is the angle between the incident and the scattered electron beams.

The experiment was performed by varying the accelerating voltage from 44 V to 68 V. It was noticed that a strong peak appeared in the intensity (I ) of the scattered electron for an accelerating voltage of 54V at a scattering angle = 50 The appearance of the peak in a particular direction is due to the constructive interference of electrons scattered from different layers of the regularly spaced atoms of the crystals. From the electron diffraction measurements, the wavelength of matter waves was found to be 0.165nm. When wavelength is measured by using the de Broglie equation with potential of 54V the wavelength is same as 0.165nm.

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