wave-particle duality

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the quantum mechanical principle that all matter and radiation exhibit properties of both waves and particles depending on how they are observed and measured; demonstrated in the double-slit experiment, where electrons fired one at a time through two slits produce an interference pattern characteristic of waves unless a detector is placed to determine which slit each electron passed through, at which point the interference pattern disappears and electrons behave as particles; wave-particle duality was central to the founding debates of quantum mechanics involving Bohr, Einstein, de Broglie, and Heisenberg, and it remains conceptually challenging because our macroscopic intuitions offer no analogy for an entity that is both a wave and a particle