[EvilOverlord]

My understanding, not being a professional physicist, is that the electron is confined to one of several energy levels when it is bound to the atom. Applying enough energy to free the electron (known as the 'work function'), allows the electron to have any energy level, and can move freely.

Free space is essentially a continuum of an infinite number of very closely spaced energy levels that the electron can occupy.

An electron is a wave function when bound to the atom. It has no single position, but appears as an 'electron cloud' around the atom. The electron may appear to be a particle, or a wave, in free space, depending on its interactions with other matter, energy, and observers. It's always a particle and a wave. It's called wave-particle duality.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: wave/particle dual nature

"The electron may appear to be a particle, or a wave, in free space, depending on its interactions with other matter, energy, and observers."

We're made of those little particles.. we're waves it seems to me. Maybe we're matter only in the eyes of observers.

[plinyelder]

My understanding, not being a professional physicist, is that the electron is confined to one of several energy levels when it is bound to the atom. Applying enough energy to free the electron (known as the 'work function'), allows the electron to have any energy level, and can move freely. Free space is essentially a continuum of an infinite number of very closely spaced energy levels that the electron can occupy.

An electron is a wave function when bound to the atom.
It has no single position, but appears as an 'electron cloud' around the atom.
The electron may appear to be a particle, or a wave, in free space, depending on its interactions with other matter, energy, and observers.
It's always a particle and a wave.
It's called wave-particle duality.<---"EXACTLY" ... What He Said!