Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Lewis Thomson on 09/01/2018 10:59:33
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David asks:
When we look through an Electron Microscope we see atoms as fuzzy spheres. However, the models that we show of atomic structures do not show a sphere but a nucleus with electrons and protons revolving around the nucleus.
So what is it that makes an atom look like a fuzzy sphere? Is it another form of matter/sub-atomic particles or is it a force bonding the electrons and protons to the nucleus e.g. weak/strong nuclear forces?
What do you think?
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the "fuzz" is the electrons in the atom (and in the bonds, for molecules being imaged: https://microscopy-analysis.com/editorials/editorial-listings/researchers-reveal-first-afm-image-hydrogen-bond)
At this incredibly small scale the 'normal' relationship between mass and volume is reversed--less massive particles "smear out" more than more massive particles (this is related to de Broglie wavelengths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality). Electrons, being the lightest part of the atom (about 1/1836 the mass of a proton), take up the most space.
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Is there a reason to think electrons as physical objects / dots, instead of thinking electrons simply as energy fields? The same could be applied to protons, neutrons and photons.
That way we could possibly get rid of the messy idea of dualism and replace with simple force fields.
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Is there a reason to think electrons as physical objects / dots, instead of thinking electrons simply as energy fields? The same could be applied to protons, neutrons and photons.
That way we could possibly get rid of the messy idea of dualism and replace with simple force fields.
Well, as I understand it, electrons (and other particles) aren't just energy (or just force), so while we could model them as fields, it wouldn't be energy fields or force fields (instead it would be 'electron fields' etc.). There are certainly times when it makes more sense to think about electrons in this way (especially when considering systems that contain multiple electrons), but there are also times when it is best to think of electrons as particles, or somewhere in between.
The tricky thing about dualism is that it is referring to models (constructs) of electrons (how we think about them, and the equations that apply), not saying that real electrons in the real world are somehow confused between wave and particle. Electrons are what they are (I'm fairly confident that they are real), and we will continue to learn about them and revise our models to make evermore accurate, precise, meaningful, and easy to use. Newer better models don't necessarily invalidate older worse models--and we often choose to use the models that are as easy as possible given a required level of accuracy, precision, and meaning.
Electrons are physical objects, but they can act like dots in some ways, and waves in other ways, and fields in other ways. One way the "dot" (particle) model is better than the others is that it intuitively reflects the fact that electrons are indivisible (it's easy to understand that you can have 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. dots but not 2.39 dots, while it is not so easy to explain why a wave or field only has certain values). One major problem with the particle model is that it appears to imply much more defined locations than there actually are in the real world (and then there are the problems of zero vs finite volume and question of internal structure, both of which are non-issues with non-particle models)
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You can collide electrons with other particles. This doesn't mean they are solid balls of matter. The fields generated by the electron will play a major part in collisions. So that nothing solid may actually cause any rebound. In this sense looking at electrons as fields makes a lot of sense.