Quantum Mechanics Tutorial III
Engineering Physics
Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad
How Long Are de Broglie Matter Waves?
Calculate the de Broglie wavelength of: (a) a 0.65-kg basketball thrown at a speed of 10 m/s, (b) a nonrelativistic
electron with a kinetic energy of 1.0 eV.
(a) For the basketball, the kinetic energy is
K= mv2/2 = (0.65kg)(10m/s)2/2 = 32.5 J
and the rest mass energy is
E0 = m0c2 = (0.65 kg)(2.998×108 m/s)2 = 5.84×1016 J
We see that K E0 and so we use simply momentum
p = mv = (0.65kg)(10m/s)=6.5 J⋅s/m
Hence,
λ = h/p = 6.626×10−34 J.s / 6.5 J⋅s/m = 1.02×10−34m.
(b) For non-relativistic electron , the de Broglie wavelength is
λ = h/p
= h/
=(6.626×10−34 J.s )/
= 1.23nm
Problem based on uncertainty principle
The average life time of an excited atomic state is 10-9 s. If spectral line associated with the decay of this state is 6000 Å,
estimate the width of line.
We have
Δt = 10-9 s, λ = 6000 Å
Now energy released when excited electron comes down to lower state
E = or ΔE = Δλ
Multiplying both side by Δt, we get
ΔE Δt = Δλ Δt
therefore,
Δλ = =
= 1.91
Problem based on particle in box
A 10-g marble in box 10 cm across . Find its permitted energies.
Here we have m = 10 g = 1 and width of box L = 10 cm = 1
So, the permitted energies of marble in this box ,
(1)
o The minimum energy the marble can have is 5.5 J, corresponding to n = 1. A marble with this kinetic energy has a speed
of only 3.3 and therefore can not be experimentally distinguished from a stationary marble. A reasonable speed a marble
might have is 0.33 m/s which corresponds to n = 1030. The permissible energy levels are so very close together that there
is no way to determine whether the marble can take on only those energies predicted by equation (1). Hence, in the
domain of everyday experience, quantum effects are imperceptible, which accounts for the success of Newtonian
mechanics in this domain.
Normalization and extraction of expectation value
A particle considered to move along x-axis in the domain 0 has a wave function , where n is an integer. Normalize the
wave function and find the expression for and evaluate the expectation value of its momentum.
The normalization condition gives
dx = 1 { is complex conjugate of
For this wave function
|N|2 or |N|2) dx = 1
Then,
|N|2 = 1 or N=
So, now the normalized wave function is,
sin (nπx/L)
The expectation value of the momentum is obtained as:
The momentum operator is defined as =
