Modern Physics for Engineers Lecture slides 06d – The nature of the particle-in-a-box solutions

This lecture part uses the solutions to the particle-in-a-box problem to illustrate several general behaviors found in quantum mechanics, including the notion of only specific allowed energy "states", quantum numbers that label these states, the notion of "parity" or odd or even symmetry of wavefunctions, and other quantum mechanical behaviors, including "zero-point energy", and points in space that the electron in a given state will never be found. This particle-in-a-box problem allows simple estimates of the energies of quantum mechanical electron states when the electron is "quantum-confined" in a small space.