Archimedes Plutonium wrote:
> For the highest probability of finding an electron in an atom
> is smack in the center of the nucleus-- inside a proton.
this stuff is pretty funny.
you'd think that the highest probability of where
a steelie electron charged -1 would be is right
at the nucleus charged +1, but, the prton, though not a "lepton"
is still fairly solid and not a cloud of 10^ mini-particles.
so, there's no way for a steelie "lepton" which
is the electron, to get -inside- of the proton.
no, not exactly, what it does do, is sort of bounce
off and around the perifery of the proton's personal
private space almost like two spinning tops.
but there must be some reason, why, the two particles
one +1 and one -1 don't just attach themselves like glue
but they don't.
see, if you though of the proton and the electron
as if they were like the earth and the moon, what
you may see, is
that, though the real earth and moon are very big and
don't have much of an electronic interaction
the proton and electorn, may very well have a tiny miniscule
gravitational interaction, only, it's really weak and the
tendency for two partcicals that size would be to fly apart
if -only- gravity were at work.
but, if the electronic effect is -just- large enough
to balance out with the gravitational effect, then there's
a tendency for the two particles to, both, fly apart,
and a tendency for the two particles to smash together.
and those two particles are trapped in a harmonic oscillation dance.
flying apart and smashing together but never quite flying all
the way apart and never quite ever smashing together.
as if they were stuck together on an invisible slinky spring
and the electron is flying away, and just as it is about to get away,
the elctronic effect yanks it back towards the proton but the elctron
just whizzes past on its trajectory and passes right by the proton
and wants to keep going out away again and does keep going until
the elctronic effect just catches up with it and yanks it back again.
and for the 1s orbital, you place the proton at the very center,
and the elctron s wobbling around in a sphere that is about a
million times the size of the proton, and its flight pattern,
is actually very nice neat little sign wave patterns
as the elctron flies away from the center and then
is pulled back to the center
you can almost hear it wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah
and it may interest one to note, that, this relationship
has -only- been solved exactly for a single proton and
a single electron, and, in fact, you -can't- solve it
exactly for any more particles.
you can only estimate the behavior based on a few theoretical
options which usually tend to require extensive matrix algebra.
but there are, actually, people who do strange
theoretical calculation on oddball ions
like, for instance, potassium 18+ ion, which just
happens to be 19 protons several neutrons and ONE electron.
and so, one may presume, that the entire nucleus, protons
and neutrons are treated as a single entity and they
try and solve for the shapes of the orbitals which
are -not- "hydrogen-like" orbitals
and, as you may very well expect, the -shapes are
not exactly the same as the shapes of the
hydrogen-like orbitals.
but, what you -don't- say, is that the electron,
is flying in and out of the nucleus
but you may wonder why that little -1 charge is
not sucked in to the area of the massive 18+ charge
and there's probably a reason for that.
why doesn't the whole atom just collapse?
why are negatively charged particles seeming
to fly -away- from postively charged nucleus.
that's what you're wondering right?
well, go back and think of what would happen
if the moon were about 1% of it's present size.
there may be some tendency for the moon's
orbit to race -away- from the earth.
only, there'd be nothing to yank it back and it
would just run off after the sun or venus or mercury
and smash in to one of them maybe, or it -could-
run out and smash i to jupiter.
you seem to have -some- inkling of a bit of
an understanding of this and a -lot- of
interest in it so, you'r posts are
sometimes sort of funny.
but that's ok.
i haven't read many of them, but i tried
to parse through some of this one.
do yourself a favor, don't concentrate too much on the
idear that the electron is 10^40 particles scattered
through out the orbitals.
now, see if you can comprehend this;
==
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/kullander/
Refined measurements of the size of the electron using
electron-positron colliders have shown that the charge
of the electron is confined to dimensions at least
1,000 times smaller than the size of the proton...
==
see, this suggests that the charge of the electron
is =confined= to physical dimensions smaller that
the size of the proton.
'kay?
==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton
The proton is about 1.6–1.7 fm in diameter.
==
now, i femtometer is equal to 10-15 meters.
here we see the general radius of
the various hydrogenlike electronic orbitals.
==
http://www.chm.davidson.edu/vce/atomicorbitals/size.html
n Shell radius
(angstroms) Nbr. Electrons
1 K 1.4 2
2 L 4.8 8
3 M 10.3 18
4 N 17.8 32
==
as you see, the orbitals are on the order
of "angstroms" or 10^-10 meters
so, what we have, is a particle, the electron,
whose charge is confined to dimensions on
the order of 10^-15 to 10^-16 meters
wandering about in an orbital schmear
that is on the order of 10^-10 meters.
which is to say that the spacial region which
encapsulates the chargeed particle is over
5 orders of magnitude the size of
the particle itself.
with me so far?
this means that the orbital is about 100000 times
larger than the -charge- confinement of the particle,
and so, we do not have a diffuse band of
smithereenies in a cloud the size of a given orbital
but a rather -small- solid object wandering
about in a balloon of space that is upwards
of 100000 times as large as the particle itself.
the "cloud" does -not- speak of a smithereenied electron
but that the most _likely_ =neighborhood= where we
may find this object, is upwards of 5 orders
of magnitude the size of the object itself,
and all we can say is;
"=it= is -in- there somewhere"
'kay?
oh, excuse me, i wasn't paying attention,
the electron charge is confined to
a space on the order of 10^-18 meters.
not 10^-15 meters.
and the orbitals are in the 10^-10 region,
so, teh electron is wandering about in a balloon
about 10 million times as large as teh electron itself.
sort of like a person who is six feet tall
swimming in an ocean way larger than the entire earth.
and all you can say is the guy is somewhere in the vast ocean...
gimme numbers, that ocean may be from hear to the moon
mean distance from earth to moon is 384,400 km
this ocean would be in the millions of kilometers
so, there's maxwells demon, about 6 feet rtall
swimming in an ocean from here to the moon and beyond
and yet, maxwell's deamon is known to be confined
to that six feet and is -not- schmeared
all throughout tha ocean.
=now= do we see?
mawell's deamon is swimminhin a very very large cloud
and you can't -see- the daemon, but, you
can say that he's in that cloud bank somewhere.
'KAY?
good, fine, now i get it....