What Experiment Demonstrates the Particle Behavior of Electrons?

[bhsmith]

I know the double slit experiment illustrates how an electron can be treated as a wave, but what experiment shows how an electron can be treated as a particle? i know of the photoelectric effect, but from what i can understand that seems to have more to do with photons acting as particles, not electrons.

 

[Kevin_Axion]

If you perform the double-slit experiment but shoot one electron at a time in intervals you see illuminated points (particles, not waves). But if you perform this experiment for a period of time you realize that the individual points where the electron was illuminated creates an interference pattern as though each single electron's wavefunction interfered with itself, hence it is a wave and a particle simultaneously.

 

[ChmDudeCB]

One should be thinking of no "particle" as a billiard ball type particle. Everything is a wave packet, which is why we describe them with wave functions and operators. When you fire a single electron you get a single point on the detector screen because there are no other wave packets to interfere with. When you fire many wave packets you get much interference. There is an interference pattern with Buckyballs.

 

[jtbell]

but what experiment shows how an electron can be treated as a particle?

The fact that one cannot detect an electron (or photon, for that matter) in two places at once.