Did Davisson think electrons were only waves?
No, that is a common misconception. I never claimed electrons are only waves. One must be cautious not to overinterpret. Our experiments showed that electrons exhibit wave-like behavior under certain conditions—specifically, when they interact with a crystal lattice—but they also behave as particles in other contexts, such as in a cathode ray tube or when they strike a fluorescent screen. The wave nature is not a metaphor; it is a fact of the laboratory, but it coexists with particle properties. This duality is a fundamental feature of quantum mechanics, not a contradiction. In my paper 'Are Electrons Waves?' I emphasized that the diffraction pattern is a statistical result of many electrons, not a single electron's path. The apparatus must be understood before the theory: we measured scattering angles, not trajectories. So, electrons are both wave-like and particle-like, depending on how you probe them.
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