Re: Basic question about atoms


Matt Gregory wrote:
> Why not? If we could speed up time and watch the planets revolve
> around the sun a ridiculous number of times per second, they would
> form a cloudlike sphere around the sun. Are you saying that they
> would no longer be in orbit around the sun?

No, what people are saying is that the electron is not
a little planet.

And you are incorrect about the nature of planetary orbits,
which are pretty much confined to a plane. If you plotted
the position of the earth over a million orbits, you
wouldn't get a cloud which extended through the sun,
above and below the orbital plane, and out beyond the
orbits of the outer planets. At best, you'd see a very
small variation in radius.

But the electron cloud DOES extend beyond a plane,
through the nucleus, and out into space far beyond
the classical Bohr "radius".

> > But it isn't this way. The electron doesn't move around and is at
> > this place at this time and at another place later.
>
> So you're saying electrons are stationary? That makes no sense...

The electron does not have a fixed, definite position.
An electron "orbit" is actually a probability distribution,
that distribution is stationary, and any attempt to
pin down an electron position might find it anywhere
in that cloud at any given time.

- Randy

.

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