Conference Agenda

The Schroedinger equation, introduced in 1926, together with Born’s statistical interpretation allows us to calculate the probability of finding an electron in the hydrogen atom, or, more generally, the probability distribution of the possible outcomes of a measurement made upon a quantum system in a particular state.

It took a while before graphic representations of these electron densities were produced, which eventually established the notion of an orbital as the new pictorial representation of matter. In 1931, Harvey Elliot White constructed a mechanical apparatus to visualize the wave function of an electron in the hydrogen atom. In 1941, Don DeVault introduced a computational method that allows planar electron densities to be represented by point intensities as cross sections in specific planes. Three years later, William J. Wiswesser published a three-part paper on the periodic table and the structure of atoms, in which he presented a mechanical, two-dimensional model for visualizing electron densities.

In our paper, we replicate and reassess these three early ways of visualizing the probability density of electrons with a view of teaching the atomic model of modern quantum mechanics to students.