If unlike charges attract, why doesn't the electron fly into the proton?

If unlike charges attract, why doesn't the electron fly into the proton?

Science on suicide watch.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture
van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1226
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Who told you it doesn't?

this dude may be meming, but I wonder about this.

well fuck..

If you consider the orbit of electrons, the angular velocity of the electron cancels out the force from the magnetism.

If you consider it under quantum mechanics, then spin,charge and angular momentum are non physical properties needed to describe the probability density of the electron.

There is a non zero chance for it to appear in the nucleus, but it doesnt happen.

The electron goes through the nucleus all the time. Is there a problem with that statement? It's not like it stays there very long.

It's called the Strong Jesus Force.

a dark force

jk its called strong force and its very well understood

these guys know what they're talking about

the wave function predicts that for an atom the elctron density should be highest at the nucleus and therefore you should find an electron there. However, we know that cannot be true by simply observing the way electrons are exchanged and shared between atoms. The electron density is largest nearer the nucleus, sure, but it is not there. This is one of the odd observations of quantum mechanics similar to the idea of "nodes" where the probability of finding an electron is zero, yet electrons seem to pass through them.

As far as many electron atoms go, the electrons in shells beyond 1s experience an attraction due to the nuclear charge and a repulsion away due to the electrons closer to the nucleus. The net attraction an electron beyond the 1s orbital feels is called the "effective nuclear charge" which is calculated simply by

Effective nuclear charge = nuclear charge - electron repulsion.

using Slater's rules, you can make a pretty close estimate to what that number is.

>the wave function predicts that for an atom the elctron density should be highest at the nucleus and therefore you should find an electron there.

Not exactly. The wavefunction for 1s looks like [math]e^{-r/a}[/math] but to find the probability you have to calculate the integral which includes an [math]r^2[/math] in the integrand.

Pic related illustrates the actual radial variation of the probability density of the 1s orbital.

>the wave function predicts that for an atom the elctron density should be highest at the nucleus and therefore you should find an electron there

This is not true in the slightest. You should remember that the radial probability density function is multiplied by a factor of r^2. In fact, for a simple Hydrogen-like atomic model, it's 1s state probability density function is just r^2 damped by an exponential to give a peak at the effective Bohr radius. For small radius values, the exponential is effectively 1 and all of the scaling is in the r^2 term--which vanishes at the center. Like demonstrated.

>similar to the idea of "nodes" where the probability of finding an electron is zero
The probability of finding the electron in a measure zero region of space is zero. No matter where you look in a simple Hydrogen atomic model--or even any similar quantum mechanical problem--the probability of finding the particle within a region vanishes as you squeeze the region into a point/plane. You can't talk about the probability of an electron existing at a point in this formalism. You can demonstrate that, for example, the electron being within a suitable fixed radius ball near a zero of the probability density has much smaller probability than some other location within a Bohr radius or so.

If unlike charges attract, why doesn't the electron fly into the proton?
If massive bodies attract, and the Sun and the Earth have mass, why doesn't the Earth fly into the Sun?

I'm curious. Is this just one dedicated troll doing the "go back to /a/ pedophile" bit, or is that a meme here now?

my pchem is rusty. sorry for acting like i knew what i was talking about.

1 autistic young memester

Dumb frogposter

If the electron were localized at the proton, the uncertainty in the electron's momentum becomes sufficient for the electron to escape the potential well formed by the proton. The proton can be well localized in the nucleus because it is orders of magnitude heavier than the electron.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture

Leptons, quarks and all that shit

This is literally question that spawned quantum mechanics. classically atoms dont work, even basic QM solves this problem.

Electron don't interact with the strong force.

>If unlike charges attract, why doesn't the electron fly into the proton?
If massive bodies attract, and the Sun and the Earth have mass, why doesn't the Earth fly into the Sun?
That's a false equivalence - moving charges radiate, but moving masses don't (in Newtonian gravity at least).

What if they do, but they just stop being matter when they do it?

>What if they do, but they just stop being matter when they do it?
that would be observed but is not.

Or maybe it's orbiting the nucleus so fast, it won't fall in it, like how moon around Earth?

Think about that

The variation in a physical coupling constant under changes of scale can be understood qualitatively as coming from the action of the field on virtual particles carrying the relevant charge. The Landau pole behavior of quantum electrodynamics (QED, related to quantum triviality) is a consequence of screening by virtual charged particle-antiparticle pairs, such as electron-positron pairs, in the vacuum. In the vicinity of a charge, the vacuum becomes polarized: virtual particles of opposing charge are attracted to the charge, and virtual particles of like charge are repelled. The net effect is to partially cancel out the field at any finite distance. Getting closer and closer to the central charge, one sees less and less of the effect of the vacuum, and the effective charge increases.

If an electron couldn't move, would it then fall into the proton?

Hey Niels, long time no see.

While electrons and protons are attracted to each other, both of them know realistically it just wouldn't work out.

No, because that would mean it's moving, which you said it isn't.

They do. Theyre called neutrons.

Holy fuck it's like no one took a basic chemistry class in this thread.

No. Ultraviolet Catastrophy.

What happens when an electron touches the nucleous?

Some poeple talked about angular velocity here, but why would an electron have velocity in the first place?
Does an electron ever collide with anything and stop?

wrong

Part of the problem is quantum mechanics.

An electron does not orbit a nucleus as you would classically think. Yes electrons have angular momentum, but again not in the classical sense. The picture you posted is not at all how atoms look or operate.

A classical interpretation, again not entirely accurate, would tell you that it doesn't fall due to its speed.

Next time google it, not hard to do.

What's the correct interpretation then, if the picture of OP's is wrong?

It won't fall to the nucleus because it's not moving and it won't fall to the nucleus because it's moving?

Op here. Read and reread this thread. Not a single answer explains why it doesn't happen beyond "it can't happen because it hasn't been observed/the model doesn't allow it"

wtf

The fact is, it doesn't fall to the nucleus, why do we have to explain the reason?

We have never claimed it has to fall to the nucleus because we say so, observations tell electrons don't behave that way.

So unlike charges attract until they hit a magical wall surrounding the proton and I'm just supposed to accept this as making sense?

No one ever said it's a magical wall, all we can say from observations is that for some reason the electron doesn't fall to the nucleus.

And we have determined that charges attract too. It's all just observations, those don't have to make sense.

The nature doesn't give a fuck it makes sense or not, we are just observing it.

>why doesn't the earth fly into the sun?

Because it moves fast enough to avoid that, same thing for the electron?

But don't orbits eventually decay? Won't the moon come crashing into the earth one day?

Plus afaik electrons don't orbit the same way planets orbit a star

Remember that an atom is mostly just empty space, like the space between Sun and Earth.

And yes, we call it heat death, the bitter end.
Not entirely sure how fundamental particles will pay part in that as we know them,
but we are not here to witness that happening.

Also movement doesn't mean you need energy for it, for acceleration to other direction is needed, slowing down and speeding up as we call them.

>Plus afaik electrons don't orbit the same way planets orbit a star

>electrons

>orbit
i thought this was a board for learned people

You thought wrong,
you seriously need to become better at thinking.

Respect to all people who want to gain more knowledge and find more information, learn etc

Sun is in motion; planets trail/drag behind. Is that what is saying? Electron drags behind moving proton? And does anyone know if there is some repulsive force protons exert on electrons in addition to their attractive forces?

I don't actually know the answer, but I know this much:

Applying analogies from the macro world to the realm of quantum physics is rarely useful.

Forget about orbits, planets, etc. Those work on gravity, which is so tiny as to be nonexistent at the subatomic level. Things act in weird and unintuitive ways at that size. Asking why the electron doesn't crash into the proton is a good question, but comparing it to a planet around a sun is not useful.

The terms don't really help, either. "Spin" and "angular momentum" don't actually mean the same thing as they do in the macro world. They're just properties these objects have, and those properties cause certain behaviors. Don't think of "spin" as "this object is rotating on an axis."

Now, can we get someone who has actually studied quantum mechanics to answer the original question?

What for do we need to know the why?

I thought it might be a fitting analogy since the sun's core is also positively charged while it's surface is negatively charged, and both the sun and proton are moving. But who knows

Of course we don't need to know. We just like to know and that's enough to discuss it.

What I think the other user was trying to say is that electrons don't orbit the nucleus as a planet orbits the sun. With planets they have well defined positions and momenta, so it becomes a case of just balancing the attractive force with the centripetal force. In Quantum mechanics position isn't well defined, what this means is that the wavefunction has a term that looks like [math] exp \left ( -r / a \right ) [/math], but that terms is non-zero everywhere so we can, at least in principle, find the electron anywhere (yes including within the nucleus). The standard interpretation of this is that electron exists in all possible states until it's measured, only then does it take on a definite position, the most probable place to find it is at 3a/2.

Well I do want to know the why too, but talking here about it doesn't help us to find answers to it..

What kind of experiments could we do to find the why, what do you think?

>If unlike charges attract, why doesn't the electron fly into the proton

They do. We just perceive the universe in super slow mo. The universe is just momentarily stable and will annihilate itself instantaneously. We just perceive time so slowly that it appears to not be happening.

Ez peezee.

If masses attract each other, why doesn't the moon accelerate towards the earth?
>pro tip: it does

How can you prove that claim?

It just werks :^)

> Accelerate towards Earth
Yea, because moon totally doesn't move towards Earth either, but moves away from it slowly.

If you want the simplified answer, it's because energy levels are 'quantised', i.e. discrete not continuous. Moving closer to the nucleus would cause the electron to lose potential energy and 'at' the nucleus it would have zero energy. However, even the ground state of any system has energy and so the lowest possible energy level the electron can exist in corresponds to the electron still not being 'at' the nucleus.

This is as close a reason as I can give you without delving into the maths as other anons have, but ultimately that's what you have to do because quantum objects do not behave analogously to macroscopic objects. There is no physical equivalent you can look at and reason about, they're more or less purely mathematical objects and this is one of the main barriers to understanding the subject.

Also this thread just confirmed my suspicion that the majority of posters on Veeky Forums have little or no scientific understanding if no one even passingly mentioned energy levels yet.

"Why" is a question that leads to better understanding. There's usually an answer.

If no one asked why nuclei stick together even though protons repulse each other, we'd never have discovered the strong force.

I realize this is QM and there may not be a "why." It never hurts to ask.

And this user just answered it.

>Also this thread just confirmed my suspicion that the majority of posters on Veeky Forums have little or no scientific understanding if no one even passingly mentioned energy levels yet.

It's funny since the reason you posted is completely wrong, there is a nonzero probability of finding the electron within the nucleus.

>Also this thread just confirmed my suspicion that the majority of posters on Veeky Forums have little or no scientific understanding if no one even passingly mentioned energy levels yet.

Why would that need to be need to be brought up? In classical mechanics, OP's intuition, the system still wants to minimize energy but there is no lower bound due to the 1/r^2 singularity. The theory breaks down at short distance scales. For weak and linear fields like electromagnetism the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics is enough to solve this problem which many posters have either directly or indirectly mentioned.

>Also this thread just confirmed my suspicion that the majority of posters on Veeky Forums have little or no scientific understanding

Some of us are just interested in science from a layman's point of view. I took two years of chem in high school and physics in college, but I was a CS major and all that was a really long time ago. I've got an interest without the benefit of the education to go with it. I do try not to answer questions I'm not sure about, though.

It'd certainly be nice if there were more people who actually knew what the fuck they were talking about in here, though.

Does energy ever die?

Von Neumann was working on an electron bomb but CIA killed him by giving him cancer because the electron bomb was powerful enough to destroy the globe.

Nothing he said contradicts that. Are you retarded?

If greater mass attracts lesser mass, why don't we slam into the sun?

We will, eventually.

[citation needed]

draw a force diagram of a small ball orbiting a big ball and you'll notice. the force points inwards but the movement is perpendicular to the force

Not in a billion years GOY :∆D

Are you?
>However, even the ground state of any system has energy and so the lowest possible energy level the electron can exist in corresponds to the electron still not being 'at' the nucleus.

Ignoring the fact that the ground state has very little to do with the location of the electron, the implication here is that at the even at the lowest energy level the electron will always be outside the nucleus. It reads likenit was written by someone with a passing familiarity with oldn quantum theory at best.

>the implication here is that at the even at the lowest energy level the electron will always be outside the nucleus

What a dumb non-sequitur. An electron isn't a little ball.

The sun has a reach greater than all the fucking planets. We supposedly have comets leaving the solar system only to return precisely as predicted decades later when the sun has moved across the galaxy and we are brainwashed into thinking that everything occurs randomly and it's all pure coincidence.

I think the heliocentric model is bullshit. More like Helios n' trick.

And yet that's what the other guy implied. Obviously it's wrong.

How does carbon dating work if you don't know the original amount of radioactive carbon in the sample when it was made X amount of years ago?

Evolutionist btfo?

No he didn't. Work on your reading comprehension.

>science fags can't even answer a basic question about the most basic part of physics but expect me to believe the satanic theory of evolution
Literally CAN'T male this SHIT up

Yes he did. Allow me to break this down for you since you're clearly having trouble.
OP asked:
>If unlike charges attract, why doesn't the electron fly into the proton?

user answered:
To summarise:
>Because energy levels are quantised and a ground state ensure that an electron is always outside the nucleus

Clearly user thinks two things:
>Energy levels are actual locations with an atom
And
>An electron will always exist outside of the nucleus

Both of these are wrong. Now we know he must think that otherwise its completely pointless post in the sense that it addresses nothing in the thread.

Further the actual answer to OP's question is:
>An electron has a nonzero probability of being found with in the nucleus.

The fact user didn't say that and instead went off on a tangent about energy levels further reinforces that belief that he doesn't have clue what he's taking about.

You know, the thing that sucks about Veeky Forums is that's it's hard to tell if people like this are really this stupid or if they're just really good at making bait.

>fry.jpg

BTFO by

Well you took the bait if I had a lure. So who the retard now.

>Anime-girl-with-lazy-eyes-doing-chest-beating-with-palsy-hands.gif

Found the retard

>>Because energy levels are quantised and a ground state ensure that an electron is always outside the nucleus
Haha, stopped reading there. Quit making up strawmen. It doesn't compensate for your inability to read.

>The fact user didn't say that and instead went off on a tangent about energy levels further reinforces that belief that he doesn't have clue what he's taking about.
That an atom has nonzero ground state energy guarantees the electron cannot be localized at the nucleus. A normal 5 year old can do the math. Why are you so retarded?

van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1226

>van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1226
>it just kind of stops thanks to kinetic energy or some shit, idk why lol
>we don't pretend to understand why

>That an atom has nonzero ground state energy guarantees the electron cannot be localized at the nucleus.

But that's completely wrong. Take the hydrogen atom in its ground state, let b be the proton radius then [eqn] P(r \leq b) = \frac { 1 } { a^3 \pi } \int ^{2 \pi } _{ 0 } \int ^{ \pi } _0 \int ^{ b } _0 e^{ -2r / a } r^{2} \sin \left ( \theta \right ) dr d \theta d \phi [/eqn] Doing that trivial integral gives: [eqn] P(r \leq b) = 1 - e^{-2r/a} \left ( 1 + \frac { 2b } { a } + \frac { 2b^2 } { a^2} \right ) [/eqn] Let [math] \delta = 2b/a [/math] expanding in powers of delta and only taking terms of leading order leaves us with [eqn] P(r \leq b) = \frac { 4 b^3 } { 3 a^3 } [/eqn] taking [math] b \approx 10^{-15} [/math] gives [eqn] P(r \leq b) \approx 10^{-14} [/eqn]

Like I said a nonzero probability. Why do people insist on talking about shit they have no understanding of?

>a non-zero probability density at the nucleus = localization at the nucleus

Let me laugh even harder. How many extra chromosomes are you carrying around, retard?

This.

>Doesn't know what he's talking about
>Continues to talk

It's cute desu.

>why do people insist on talking about shit they have no understanding of?

Are you really that stupid you can't figure that one out?

> math makes made me smart

Except that's [math] \int ^{b} _{a} | \Psy | ^{2} dr [/math] which is the probability of finding the electron between a and b. This is literally page 2 of Griffiths, fuck sake user you cretinous faggot, read a god damn book.

Consider this:
If unlike charges didn't attract, the electron wouldn't even go anywhere near the proton, let alone fly into it.

I've never met a smart human, who has called someone a faggot.

Projections are even cuter.

There's always the first time.

And the point of posting this high school platitude was what? To further emphasize your complete lack of understanding into what's being discussed?

Wasn't the first time, because he's not smart, rule applies.

Why does phi go to 2pi and not theta? I thought theta goes to 2pi and phi goes to pi.

>being tripped up this hard by simple change of symbols
hows that degree in triple integrals treatin' ya