The Schrödinger Equation is the key equation in quantum physics that explains how particles in quantum physics behave. You wanna know where your electron is going to go? That’s the Schrödinger equation you’ll need.
So why does it look so complicated? Well it’s because in quantum physics, when you are describing what a thing like an electron will do, it doesn’t follow the rules of particles it follows the rules of waves, and that’s what these psi’s are, they are wave functions.
Okay so an electron is a wave, and a wave can evolve in space and in time, but it can’t evolve in any old way, there are constraints about how it can evolve, and those constraints? That’s what the Schrödinger equation is telling us.
It says that over time the total energy has to stay the same. And this total energy is made of the kinetic energy, and potential energy. An example of a potential energy for an electron is just being in an atom.
So if you want to see what a quantum object will do in the future, you need to find the wave function that will satisfy all these bits of the Schrödinger equation.
#quantum #physics #DoS
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