Wave and Particles: Lecture 1

Wave:

In physics, a wave is disturbance or oscillation that travels through matter or space, accompanied by a transfer of energy. Wave motion transfers energy from one point to another, often with no permanent displacement of the particles of the medium that is, with little or no associated mass transport. They consist, instead, of oscillations or vibrations around almost fixed locations. Waves are described by a wave equation which sets out how the disturbance proceeds over time. The mathematical form of this equation varies depending on the type of wave.

Particles:

In the physical sciences, a particle is a small localized object to which can be ascribed several physical or chemical properties such as volume or mass.The word is rather general in meaning, and is refined as needed by various scientific fields. Something that is composed of particles may be referred to as being particulate. However, the term particulate is most frequently used to refer to pollutants in the Earth's atmosphere, which are a suspension of unconnected particles, rather than a connected particle aggregation.
Particles vs Waves:

The distinction between waves and particles becomes rather blurred in light of quantum mechanics. The photoelectric effect tells us that light can behave as though it's made of particles, while "particles" like the electron, as de Broglie first suggested, sometimes act like waves. Thomson was certainly correct in concluding that his negatively charged cathode rays was not electromagnetic waves (or photons), which have no electric charge but it isn't quite fair to say that electrons are not waves at all. Interestingly, J. J. Thomson's son, G. P. Thomson, performed one of the famous experiments showing that electrons, like waves, can produce interference patterns. J. J. won the Nobel Prize for showing that electrons are particles his son won the Nobel Prize for showing that electrons are waves--and they were both right
 
Wave Particle Duality:
Wave particle duality is the concept that every elementary particle or quantic entity exhibits the properties of not only particles, but also waves. It addresses the inability of the classical concepts "particle" or "wave" to fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects.