Problem50
Section 29.6: The Wave Nature of Matter

Question

What is the wavelength of an electron moving at 3.00% of the speed of light?

Question by OpenStax is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Final Answer

8.09×1011 m8.09\times 10^{-11}\textrm{ m}

Solution video

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Video Transcript

This is College Physics Answers with Shaun Dychko. What is the de Broglie wavelength for an electron traveling at the speed of 3 percent the speed of light, which is 0.0300 times c? So the wavelength is Planck's constant divided by the momentum of the electron and this speed we'll take to be slow enough that we don't need to use the relativistic expression for momentum and we'll plug in mv. So we have Planck's constant divided by the mass of an electron times its speed 0.0300 times the speed of light and that works out to 8.09 times 10 to the minus 11 meters.

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