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Like many great scientific discovery's such as Alexander Flemmings discovery of penicillin, the results of the Davisson Germer
experiment were discovered by accident. While working at Bell Labs during the mid 1920's C.J. Davisson and L.H. Germer were researching electron energies scattered from metal surfaces. Their discovery was found when
they were shooting electrons at a piece of nickel in a vaccum. One day the nickel became oxidized after their vacuum had sprung a leak. They heated up the nickel in order to get rid of the oxidization. Now when they did
the experiment, their diffraction pattern displayed maxima and minima at specific angles. Davisson and Germer realized that heating up the nickel caused it to crystallize and the regular spacing between the atoms of the
crystal acted like a grate to cause the diffraction in the same way as Young's Double Slit Experiment. This experiment proved Louis de Broglie's theory that matter behaves like waves. |
