[Nadeem Gabbani (OP)]

Bruce asks:

Will entropy eventually slow the electron's rotation?  If so, when?  If not, why not?

Can anyone help?

[Halc]

Will entropy eventually slow the electron's rotation?  If so, when?  If not, why not?

Electrons don't physically rotate.  To do that they'd have to be made of parts that are moving in different directions, but electrons seem to be fundamental particles.

The 'spin' of an electron is just a word used to describe its defection behavior in a magnetic field, and does not refer to physical rotation.

[alancalverd]

No.

The notion of electron "rotation", whether spin or orbital, was abandoned by 1925. Some characteristics of atoms and electrons can be crudely modelled in terms of moving mesoscopic objects like planets and spinning tops, but they do not provide realistic numerical values  or predict real observations.

Unfortunately quantum mechanics and orbital theory do not produce simple diagrams, so the classical and incorrect models persist in elementary textbooks and are quite handy for introductory lectures.

[chris]

If electrons were really "rotating" around atoms they would constitute a moving charge accelerating (the electron being accelerated continuously toward the nucleus about which it was "orbiting"); as such, this would produce short wavelength photon emissions (in the x-ray or gamma ray regime) like you get from a synchrotron; this obviously does not happen, but if it were true the universe would also have invented a perpetual motion machine, violating a bunch more laws! So the answer is no.