I was studying physics and a little question hit me like a meteor, why is that the electron don't fall over the nucleus in the hydrogen atom?
I was studying physics and a little question hit me like a meteor...
Owen Gomez
Christopher Smith
Gravity.
Julian Nguyen
orbitals
Tyler Taylor
it does, its always falling thats why it orbits in circles
Luis Baker
It sometimes does and that is what electron capture is.
Evan Ross
cringe
Electrons are not particles that rotate around an atom like planets rotate around the sun. It is a great analogy for middle school students, but in absolutely no way represents the reality of what electrons are or how they behave.
I mean if you really are curious, this is a good read: chem.libretexts.org
John Watson
Eli White
Here's the answer: It does and did. Every atom literally IS one or more electrons that have fallen towards a nucleus. The question then really is what happens next? And the answer is atom physics. When you imagine something macroscopic like a moon orbiting a planet and imagine that the moon falls into the planet for some reason, then you have an intuition of what happens. Depending on relative masses, the moon will disintegrate into pieces, and eventually merge with the planet. They can do that because they are not elementary particles. They are composed of other particles. Electrons at least are elementary particles. There really is nothing that CAN happen to it. So it gets as close to the proton as it possible can and stays there. The reason that it can't get any closer can be understood with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Electrons are fields and are dislocated. Their position is not described by a number for each dimension, but by a function of space time.
By the way, the only thing that can happen between proton and electron is the reaction [math]p + e^- \to n + \nu_e[/math]. So why doesn't this happen? Let's assume neither proton or electron have any additional energy beyond their masses. Then, for the reaction to happen, you need to overcome the mass difference between the left and right side of the equation, as [math] m_p + m_e < m_n + m_{\nu_e}[/math] by 782 keV. So unless you somehow feed the electrons or protons at least that energy, that reaction is not likely to happen. It does happen though in neutron stars for example. The enormous pressure applied by gravity is enough to overcome this energy difference and the reaction gets more likely so that eventually a part of the atoms within a neutron star have converted to neutrons.
Kayden Cooper
>the electron don't fall
"Fall" implies gravity governs the system.
Gravity has nothing to do with it.
The next simplest concept is strong force/weak force. Study that.
Jack Sanchez
You are an idiot.
Thomas Cooper
It actually can be found in the nucleus, the electron only has zero probability at x=0, and since the nucleus has a finite radius you have a small (but non-zero) probability of finding the electron within the radius of the nucleus.
Adrian Allen
I can learn.
You're an asshole.
You're stuck being that.
Blake Gomez
Because that model is old and fundamentally wrong and what you're mentioning is one of the many reasons why better models were invented afterwards that improved it. This model is only used to explain student the fundamentals.
Brayden Powell
:'(
Gavin Wright
they follow the pilot wave
Landon Davis
The quantization of energy.
It would release a certain amount of energy for that electron to fall to that proton. It's the wrong amount. So it doesn't happen.
Hudson Edwards
This is not correct.
Asher Ross
Because gravity is too weak at this level.
Henry Davis
>Bohr model
Please kys
Even in the Bohr model, the electron only has integer multiples of energy, n > 0.
Luke Thompson
The weak force won't allow it. In circumstances where the pressure is powerful enough to overcome the weak force, such as quasers, it will and the proton and electron will merge to become a neutron.
Ethan Scott
This is completely wrong.
John Bennett
Then exlpain how electrons+ protons become neutrons then.
Aaron Gonzalez
[math]pe^- \to n\nu_e[/math], which is a weak interaction. So you don't "overcome" the weak force. The problem here is just that you need energy for this process to happen as the neutron mass is greater than the proton mass and electron mass.
The objects you mean are neutron stars by the way, quasars are compact objects around sm black holes, usually with bright jets (blazars, fsrqs etc)
You may convince me that you meant the right thing, but your wording clearly reveals that you don't know what you are talking about.
Eli Williams
>You may convince me that you meant the right thing, but your wording clearly reveals that you don't know what you are talking about.
Its the opposite, the quickest way to get an honest answer is to say the wrong thing people feel the need to correct you. I never knew in the first place. Thanks for the answer.
Austin Walker
I respect your honesty, you're welcome.
Ian Flores
Can you just explain it to me, I don't want to read all of that
Cooper King
I didn't realize this was the 1910s already.
Colton Bennett
>So it gets as close to the proton as it possible can and stays there
Did it, rather, start out that the proton and electron were closer and that only as the universe expanded could they be as far apart as they are now? This makes more sense than imagining them separate and coming together only by chance, that they aren't inherently bound, unable to exist without the other.
The atom is only a model we use to interpret the 3-d microscopic in 2-d ways (written, pictures, graphs). There are many 2-d models, presented as if 3-d, which is scary and creepy.
Henry Davis
This does nothing to explain the question, but thanks anyway for coming in here and acting all smug .
David Jones
>Did it, rather, start out that the proton and electron were closer and that only as the universe expanded could they be as far apart as they are now?
No.
>This makes more sense than imagining them separate and coming together only by chance, that they aren't inherently bound, unable to exist without the other.
They didn't come together by chance, they literally attract each other. If you shoot electrons in a box filled with protons they will be very eager to recombine into H-atoms.
>The atom is only a model we use to interpret the 3-d microscopic in 2-d ways (written, pictures, graphs). There are many 2-d models, presented as if 3-d, which is scary and creepy.
All models we have of atoms are 3d man.
Andrew Russell
This is high school physics stuff and really just eliminates the possibility of a circular (non oblate) orbit. Which planets don't have either
Caleb Nelson
actually the l=0 states have a finite probability at r=0
Jacob Cox
just to add on
>The picture we often have of electrons as small objects circling a nucleus in well defined "orbits" is actually quite wrong. The positions of these electrons at any given time are not well-defined, but we CAN figure out the volume of space where we are likely to find a given electron if we do an experiment to look. For example, the electron in a hydrogen atom likes to occupy a spherical volume surrounding the proton. If you think of the proton as a grain of salt, then the electron is about equally likely to be found anywhere inside a ten foot radius sphere surrounding this grain, kind of like a cloud.
The weird thing about that cloud is that its spread in space is related to the spread of possible momenta (or velocities) of the electron. So here's the key point, which we won't pretend to explain here. The more squashed in the cloud gets, the more spread out the range of momenta has to get. That's called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Big momenta mean big kinetic energies. So the cloud can lower its potential energy by squishing in closer to the nucleus, but when it squishes in too far its kinetic energy goes up more than its potential energy goes down. So it settles at a happy medium, and that gives the cloud and thus the atom its size.
Luis Evans
van.physics.illinois.edu
This is a good link with the question and many follow ups given by professors in the field.
Hunter Rodriguez
It notes the heisenberg uncertainty principle and describes how the battle infinities prevent the electron cloud from escaping or hitting the center.
The electron cloud stuff was left out, but this is absolutely the answer. Which is echoed in what i think was a more clear and direct answer from my other post:>for coming in here and acting all smug .
Sorry, it is a touchy spot for me. Like when sci-fi movies use QM as a catch all for how anything incomprehensible works.