Expectation values — UPSC Physics Optional IFoS 2020 Paper II

(i) What do you mean by expectation value of a physical quantity ? How does it help to extract information from a wave function ? (ii) A particle limited to move along x-axis has the wave function \psi = ax between x = 0 and x = 1, \psi = 0 elsewhere. Find the probability that the particle can be found between x = 0\cdot 45 and x = 0\cdot 55. Find the expectation value <x> of the particles position x = 0 to x = 1.