Positive and Negative Wave Functions

I hope one can not ask only limited amount of questions because I'm confused everytime. here is my question, now. You must think of electron not as aelectron but as a wave.The wave has both negative andpositive parts, so if the same ( +and+or -and-) combine , they add up toform a big orbital while if different(+and-) combine they get destroyedhence we get a node(abmo). "if electon is a wave, why does it have a negative charge? I mean, as mentioned above, wave consists of both; positive and negative parts.
- Faiza. (age 16)
Pakistan

The positives and negatives in the quantum wave don't stand for the electronic charge. They represent some more abstract property of the wave. In fact, the wave usually can't be represented with just positive and negative real numbers but rather requires complex numbers. All the regions of the electron wave contribute some to the negative charge of the electron, regardless of whether in that region the wave is represented with a positive, negative, imaginary, or complex number. A region's contribution to the net charge is proportional to the absolute square of the wave function in the region.

Mike W.

(published on 04/04/2015)