wave mechanics
Noun
Meaning
wave mechanics (uncountable)
(physics, mathematics) The mathematical basis for quantum mechanics in which light and subatomic particles have the characteristics of both waves and particles.
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Examples
Another form of the same theory, wave mechanics, was discovered by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger independently, and by different reasoning.
De Broglie thus created a new field in physics, the mécanique ondulatoire, or wave mechanics, uniting the physics of energy (wave) and matter (particle).
In his later career, de Broglie worked to develop a causal explanation of wave mechanics, in opposition to the wholly probabilistic models which dominate quantum mechanical theory; it was refined by David Bohm in the 1950s.
Louis de Broglie (1892–1987): researched quantum theory, discovered the wave nature of electrons, awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics, ideas on the wave-like behavior of particles used by Erwin Schrödinger in his formulation of wave mechanics.
Click the show button below to see a semi-formal derivation of the Kennard inequality using wave mechanics.
For more complicated molecules, the wave mechanics approach loses utility in a qualitative understanding of bonding (although is still necessary for a quantitative approach).