Electrons are ordinary particles and cannot behave as waves.

When J. J. Thomson identified the electron in 1897, the evidence looked strongly particle-like: electrons carried definite charge, struck detectors at localized points and could be deflected by electric and magnetic fields. A tiny charged corpuscle was therefore the natural model.

Quantum theory complicated that picture. In 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that matter itself should have a wavelength. The proposal sounded abstract until Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer scattered electrons from a nickel crystal and obtained diffraction patterns—the same kind of geometric interference associated with waves. George Paget Thomson independently observed electron diffraction through thin films.

Yet the experiments did not simply replace a particle with a classical wave. Electrons still arrive in individual localized detections even when many such events build up an interference pattern.

Quantum mechanics therefore abandoned both ordinary classical pictures as complete descriptions. An electron is represented by a quantum state whose behavior can produce wave-like diffraction and particle-like detection outcomes. “Wave-particle duality” is a warning about the limits of the classical categories, not a literal switch between a tiny ball and a material ripple.