“Everyone is born, but not everyone is born the same. Some will grow to be butchers, or bakers, or candlestick makers. Some will only be really good at making Jell-O salad. One way or another, though, every human being is unique, for better or for worse.”
&emdash; Danny DeVito, Matilda. United States of America (1996)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117008/quotes

Inspired by this memorable quote, I decided to orient my project discussing the wave-particle duality of light concerning electrons in a more child-like perspective. As we can see in the upper left corner of the painting, there are what appear to be two toddler electrons seated on a baby carriage strolling along a straight white line, which represents white light. Both electrons look exactly alike, almost as if the two were twins. They appear to be staring at the glass prism before them with astonishment because they do not know what awaits them, just like children do not know what they will grow to be in the future.

Once entering the prism, a transformation (taking the shape of an explosion) takes place. As white light is made of all wavelengths of visible light (therefore all of the colors of a rainbow), once the path of light cross the prism, one usually expects a single path of colored lights. However, I’ve split the line and the cart in half, making the newly grown up electrons take different paths, further following the example of the mentioned quote above.

The electron on the left has now “grown up” to be a photon (a particle of light) and is travelling along the first half of the colored line (red, orange, yellow and green) where we can clearly see a few of the many equations related to the particle nature of light. It also appears to be having fun, keeping its eyes wide open. This was a trait I decided to add, keeping in mind of the concept of electrons behaving as particles during the double slit experiment when being observed from up close (therefore keeping their eyes open)

The electron on the right has “grown up” to be a wave and is travelling along the second half of the colored line (green, blue, indigo and violet) where we can see a few of the many equations related to the wave nature of light. This fellow, unlike his photon counterpart and “brother”, is not having fun at all. He is keeping his eyes shut out of fear. This trait was based on the concept of electrons behaving as waves during the double slit experiment when being observed from afar, as if they weren’t even observing it at all (also comparable to “keeping your eyes shut”).

In the middle of both paths, we see De Broglie’s theory, an equation that relates both wave and particle nature of light. There appears to be no straight path leading towards the middle. Why is that? Our minds are not able to handle the fact that an electron has the ability to behave as a wave and a particle at the same time. We are able to stomach that all similar electrons grow to behave differently, the same way we believe that children are born to grow completely different among themselves and have a hard time understanding or searching for resemblances.