Is it possible that there are limits to how well we know and understand our world? It is likely that many scientists in the twentieth century did not consider this idea much. The more they examined and studied the atomic structure with advanced technology, the more they understood why things happened. However, this vision changed with the development of quantum theory. When Werner Heisenberg debated this theory, he questioned, "Can nature possibly be as absurd as it seems?"1 Throughout time, many scientists achieved many great discoveries by offering a closer understanding of the electron’s behavior.
With that being said, the direction of my art work is based on how the concept of the electron has transformed over the centuries. The idea of how our universe has evolved has compelled me to convey this idea with a creative and personal outlook. The exploration begins with the wave behavior of light, followed by the wave behavior of particles, and finally the idea of quantum theory.
The first section of my artwork shows Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of the glass prism. The glass prism is significant because it depicted the origin of electrons as waves. Newton introduced the behavior of waves and discovered that when white light passed through a glass prism, the light diffracted into the color spectrum. In quantum mechanics, light was found to share many characteristics with electrons because this action involved an electric charged particle exerting a force.
In the second section, Albert Einstein is observing the conundrum of his experiment. His breakthrough discovery of light as a particle was based on the photoelectric effect where light shining on a metal surface emitted electrons. He proved that light can appear to act like a wave or a particle. Then in 1905, he proposed that light was not seen as a wave but more of a ‘shower’ of particles.
In the third section, Neils Bohr is looking through a spectroscope while thinking that an electron’s revolution can be similar to how planets orbit the sun, which is not plausible. My intent was to show that the macroscopic and microscopic worlds are entirely different. Neils Bohr attempted to construct the model of an atom, showing electrons rotating around the nucleus of an atom in a spherical orbit.
The last section of the canvas illustrates two electron particles merging into one, representing the dual nature of the electron. In 1927, Louis de Broglie performed an electron diffraction experiment, demonstrating an important property of electrons: that when a beam of light passed through two slits it produced an interference pattern. He concluded that electrons were expressed as particles with a wave-like nature.
In truth, there are boundaries to what we can know about the world and its environment, and quantum mechanics has proven to us just that. As a significant contribution to science it has given us information on how the world functions on microscopic level. Most importantly, it has also changed how we perceive things in the world today.
1Gilbert, T.R., Kirss, R.V, Foster, N., Davies, G., Chemistry Second Edition, W.W. Norton and Company: New York, 2009.