A Proton accelerated from rest through potential difference of 'V' volt has a wavelength 'Lambda' associated with it. An Alpha particle in order to have the same wavelength must be accelerated from rest through a potential difference of
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
Note that an alpha particle has a charge of + 2 and consists of two protons and two neutrons which have approximately the same mass. To solve this problem, we use the De Broglie equation, which states: λ = p h = m v h . First, we well derive an equation for the velocity that a particle will have after passing through an electric current:
E e l U q v = E k i n = 2 1 m v 2 = m 2 U q
So, for the proton we have:
λ p + = m e v h = m e m e 2 U p + e h = m e 2 U p + e m e h
And for the alpha particle:
λ α = 4 m e v h = 4 m e 4 m e 2 U α ( 2 e ) h = 4 m e U α e m e h
We need to set λ p + = λ α . From this, we can derive the following:
m e 2 U p + e m e 2 U p + e m e U p + = 4 m e U α e m e = 1 6 U α e m e = 8 U α
Thus, answer we are looking for is 8 1 U p +