Students are placed in small groups and will use the “Electron States in a 1-Dimensional Lattice” program to model a single electron in a periodic array of square well potentials.

The groups will convince themselves that the program is correctly simulating periodic potential wells by finding the eigenenergies of a single potential well system and checking one or more values using the energy eigenvalue equation.

Each group will then add more potential wells to the quantum system and answer several questions about key differences from the single well system.

The class will investigate how changing certain parameters of the system (potential well depth, width, spacing, etc) will change the energy eigenvalues for the system.

Students will explore how increasing the number of potential wells affects the density of states for the electron in the periodic landscape.