Davisson–Germer experiment

The Davisson–Germer experiment was carried out at Bell Telephone Laboratories by Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer, who were studying how electrons scatter from the surface of a nickel crystal. After an accident that led them to heat the nickel and change its structure, they found that the electrons were reflected in a pattern of sharp peaks, like the diffraction of X-rays. This was a clear demonstration of the wave nature of electrons, and it confirmed the hypothesis proposed a few years before by Louis de Broglie that matter has wave-like properties. The British physicist George Paget Thomson obtained similar results independently, and Davisson and Thomson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1937.

Open on the timeline