system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do electrons physically work within an atom?

As far as my knowledge goes,

Electrons behave as both particles and waves. Inside an orbital they behave as a 3D standing wave, so in essence (in an s-orbital) an electron exists everywhere on that sphere simultaneously.

My question is about the particle nature of an electron. How exactly does an electron show particle nature in atom? It all sounds like a wave. What part of an electron's existence in an atom is particle-like?

Also, is it possible to observe an electron as a particle while it's inside an atom?

Please do explain. (I get the basics of the mechanics, but I am at a lost at understanding how it looks physically and experimentally)
gpt
I never liked the term "particle and wave", cause it really isn't true.

electrons, photons, and the rest are all waves.  When they are sufficiently localized, they are a wave packet, when they aren't sufficiently localized, they can be more of a standing wave.

If you think about it this way, and assume that momentum is frequency (which is true quantum mechanically), then everything makes more sense. (a Fourier transform of a narrow gaussian is a wide gaussian).

So in a sense, no, electrons are always waves.

However, shadydentist is right, if you make a measurement on the position of the electron, you collapse its wave function down into a narrow wavepacket, and you can start talking about this wavepackets position and momentum, though its position is much better defined than its momentum.

We are getting to the point of ALMOST being able to observe an electron as it makes transitions from higher to lower energy states.  The problem is that it requires really FAST measurements (approximately attosecond scale), and really small measurements (nanometer scale), which is very difficult.  There are a couple of papers of people measuring valence electrons using attosecond spectroscopy floating around though.