On this day in physics: 23 January 1907, Happy Birthday to Hideki Yukawa, 1949's Nobel Prize winner who predicted the existence of the pion. He won the nobel prize for "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces".[Source.][Source.]
Word of the day- Wave-Particle Duality is an embedded property of everything that exists. Every atom, quark, photon, car, person, planet, galaxy, can partially be described as a particle, and partially described as a wave. Louis de Broglie was able to describe the wave-like property of matter as follows: lambda = h/p, where lambda is the wavelength, h is Planck's Constant (6.626 × 10−34 J seconds), and p is the particle's momentum. So how come if everything has a wave-like part, we're not oscillating all over the place? The answer lies with this de Broglie wavelength. When you consider something as large as a fly, or even as large as a person, the wave-like part is so small it is simply unnoticeable. However, when you're considering something the size of an electron, this becomes much more noticeable. The wavelength of a 0.511 MeV electron is roughly 1.23 nm. Still very small, but these wavelengths are now on the same scale as the particle to which it is associated. By comparison, "A 50-kg (~110-lb) person walking at a speed of about 2 m/s would have a deBroglie wavelength of 6.63x10-36 m." [Source].
Killer Resource: An article where the particle and wave properties of light are imaged for the first time. (WIRED MAGAZINE)
Keywords: Photon, Electron, Wavelength, Wave, Particle, Duality, Nobel, Prize, de Broglie
