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  1. Naked Science Forum
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  4. Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
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Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?

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Offline JSS

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #140 on: 24/07/2014 22:46:02 »
The reason that an electron cannot meet the proton is simply one of "impedance matching". A small mass charge cannot enter the domain of a large mass charge, even of the opposite charge. Note that as long as the masses of the particles are nearly equal, they do collide, because they are more impedance matched. The truly strongest force in nature is impedance mismatching (most notably between a large and small mass with opposite charges.

I could go into extreme detail of exactly why and how that works and what mass has to do with impedance matching, but it is a very, very long story.

And interestingly to space travel buffs, if you have a very large, heavy space ship with a very strong positive charge on it, then fire a small missile with an equally strong negative charge on it at the ship, the missile will blow up before reaching the ship. The impedance mismatch is a harder surface than the ship.

That is how you get the "impenetrable force shield" depicted in sci-fi films. The trick is getting the strong charge on the missile.  [8D]
« Last Edit: 24/07/2014 23:25:44 by JSS »
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Offline JSS

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #141 on: 24/07/2014 23:34:21 »
Quote from: jccc on 24/07/2014 04:38:56
So, electrons are for real orbiting the nucleus?

Charged particle accelerating in EM field will release energy, how long can electron keep orbiting before crash into nucleus?
The electron is constantly maintaining its size by absorbing energy (in the form of infinitesimal EMR pulses). All particles are merely a concentrated clump of infinitesimal EMR noise, constantly replenishing. Thus an electron can orbit (merely shifting the center of its noise), release energy, and also absorb an equal amount of energy.

What we call "empty space" is actually filled with infinitesimal EMR pulses (much as Krauss theorized, although having nothing to do with quantum foam). Without such subtle affectance, no particle could ever exist.
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Offline Ethos_

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #142 on: 24/07/2014 23:39:01 »
Quote from: JSS on 24/07/2014 23:34:21



What we call "empty space" is actually filled with infinitesimal EMR pulses (much as Krauss theorized, although having nothing to do with quantum foam). Without such subtle affectance, no particle could ever exist.
Precisely................There is no "space/time" empty of field.
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Offline evan_au

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #143 on: 25/07/2014 10:55:59 »
Quote
So, electrons are for real orbiting the nucleus?

Not really - it's an idea dating from the early days of studying the internals of the atom, where they imagined the atom like a tiny solar system.

This is still sometimes used as an analogy to introduce students to the structure of the atom, but the wave nature of planets is too small to be noticeable, so it's fairly limited as an analogy.

Quote
Charged particle accelerating in EM field will release energy, how long can electron keep orbiting before crash into nucleus?
About 16 picoseconds.

Clearly, the atoms in our bodies survive longer than this, so there is a paradox here.

This exact problem was identified by Niels Bohr, who proposed a solution in 1913 (101 years ago, now).

To catch up, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_model#Origin

Later developments in quantum theory from 1925 onwards made these ideas more precise (but often more shrouded in mathematics).
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Offline jeffreyH

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #144 on: 25/07/2014 18:12:02 »
Quote from: Vern on 02/11/2009 12:02:19
I don't mean to be contrary. [:)] I just need to explore every possibility that might offer experimental evidence that my vision of a photon is not reality. As far as I can determine the double slit experiment supports the vision. If I did not have the photon defined so that it must produce the observed results by cause and effect, I might fantasize some magical wave-particle duality.

The anatomy of a photon: A photon consists of two half cycles of electric and magnetic fields that drive points of maxima through space. The fields exist in a spatial area around the points. The changing amplitude of the fields drive the points and determine their path through space. Photon interaction happens at the points of maxima. So any observation will see the points. Edit: It is not my definition; it is Maxwell's definition.

What perplexes me is that folks don't seem to understand that. Is it that I just can't put the right words together?

Here's a schematic of the vision. It looks just like those that were in the text books when I studied electronics and nuclear instrumentation back in the 50's.



I know exactly what you mean.  [8D] I am putting together a model the details of which are in new theories. The Pauli Exclusion Principle has a physical mechanism that can be described along with the difference in energies of electrons. I like your diagram BTW. Although you haven't described the path of the waveform correctly. Yes there are waves!
« Last Edit: 25/07/2014 18:15:19 by jeffreyH »
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Offline PmbPhy

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #145 on: 25/07/2014 20:06:58 »
Quote from: jccc
Bingo!

This kind of comment is just cool as it can be.
What? That's what I've been telling you all this time!
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Offline jccc

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #146 on: 25/07/2014 21:17:25 »
Quote from: PmbPhy on 25/07/2014 20:06:58
Quote from: jccc
Bingo!

This kind of comment is just cool as it can be.
What? That's what I've been telling you all this time!

Feel like his wording has more momentum. Yours more temperature.
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Offline jccc

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #147 on: 26/07/2014 04:03:14 »
In fusion reaction, two atoms impact so hard, even two nucleus crashed into one, how come electron escaped from the crash?

Let's say somehow QM is correct, atoms are stable due to some mystery laws. When we putting pressure on matter, to a point, atoms/orbital/shell/wave will crash. But this never happened.

Wonder, confuse, another sleepless night, have a nice weekend!
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Offline PmbPhy

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #148 on: 26/07/2014 04:13:34 »
Quote from: jccc
In fusion reaction, two atoms impact so hard, even two nucleus crashed into one, how come electron escaped from the crash?
The atoms become ionized during fusion and loose electrons due to such an energetic impact knocking it out, the atom would later capture another electron and have a full set of electrons again.

Quote from: jccc
Let's say somehow QM is correct, atoms are stable due to some mystery laws.
Those "mystery laws" are called the postulates of quantum mechanics.

Quote from: jccc
When we putting pressure on matter, to a point, atoms/orbital/shell/wave will crash. But this never happened.
Since when? Atoms due combine to form molecules you know.
« Last Edit: 27/07/2014 05:39:19 by PmbPhy »
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Offline PmbPhy

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #149 on: 26/07/2014 05:47:01 »
Quote from: jccc
Pete, I don't get the part two positive nucleus able to impact into one but opposite charges not able to impact into one.
I don't know what you mean by "impact." Please explain.

The proton and electron are opposite charges and they form a hydrogen atom. The electron and positron are opposite charges and form positronium.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronium

Two positive charges also have the strong force acting on them in order to bind them together. Without the strong force nuclei with more the one proton couldn't exist.

Quote from: jccc
You talk about electron capture, capture by attraction force right? Why is nucleus only capture electrons half way and put them at radius?
What do you mean by "put them at radius"? Electron capture is the following process

cc4eadd7c2cf0fbaa6cddb455a2ab5e0.gif

where n is a neutron and 66698fb025b35665217b25df186b0e93.gif is an electron neutrino.

Quote from: jccc
When we put matter into liquid nitrogen, atom's orbital/shell/wave should crash like a glass doom under high pressure, that never happened as I know.
Now we're getting into quantum chemistry. A field I haven't thought about since I was a sophomore in college so many decades ago. Also you're using terms which I don't know what they mean such as crash like a glass doom.
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Offline lightarrow

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #150 on: 26/07/2014 12:20:58 »
Quote from: jccc on 26/07/2014 04:53:16
When we put matter into liquid nitrogen, atom's orbital/shell/wave should crash like a glass doom under high pressure,
Forget it. The interaction between proton and electron in an atom has nothing to do with thermal excitement.
Anyone made you believe it, has studied physics on comics...

--
lightarrow
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Offline jccc

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #151 on: 26/07/2014 15:03:08 »
Quote from: lightarrow on 26/07/2014 12:20:58
Quote from: jccc on 26/07/2014 04:53:16
When we put matter into liquid nitrogen, atom's orbital/shell/wave should crash like a glass doom under high pressure,
Forget it. The interaction between proton and electron in an atom has nothing to do with thermal excitement.
Anyone made you believe it, has studied physics on comics...

--
lightarrow

The strong attraction force fade away under QM laws seems more comic to me and lot others.

So far we don't even sure if the electron is orbiting, is that a fact?

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Offline jccc

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #152 on: 26/07/2014 17:11:17 »
At 0 degree k, all particles stop motion, certainly there would be no orbiting or standing wave happening, how could  two opposite charges in atom keep a distance?

Strong force bond positive and negative quarks together, why not bond electron into nucleus?

Thinking about it often times got me very emotional, why why why? Pull my hairs off, pull more. I hate science.
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Offline PmbPhy

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #153 on: 26/07/2014 18:13:28 »
Quote from: jccc
The strong attraction force fade away under QM laws seems more comic to me and lot others.
What is "strong attraction force"? And what do you mean "fade away under QM laws"? If they are what I think they are then any comic appearance is merely ignorance of the subject matter.

Quote from: jccc
So far we don't even sure if the electron is orbiting, is that a fact?
No. That's not a fact. We are very sure about what's going on. Electrons in atomic orbitals have a very specific meaning in quantum mechanics. "orbit" is just doesn't have the same meaning I QM than it does in classical mechanics. I've already explained many times what it means so I won't repeat myself.

Quote from: jccc
At 0 degree k, all particles stop motion,...
That's not true. First off it's not phrased as "0 degrees K". That's a common misunderstanding. It's phrased as "0 K". There's no "degrees" when it comes to Kelvin. 0 K only means that all atomic and molecular motion ceases. It doesn't refer to subatomic particles like electrons.

Quote from: jccc
... certainly there would be no orbiting or standing wave happening, how could  two opposite charges in atom keep a distance?
This is a mistake based on your misunderstanding of what 0 K means.

Quote from: jccc
Strong force bond positive and negative quarks together, why not bond electron into nucleus?
Because the strong force only acts between nucleons. That's because gluons mediate the strong force and gluons only mediate the strong force between quarks and not between electrons and nucleons/a nucleus.

I wish you'd consider a serious study of physics rather then being all over the place haphazardly. You're going to get frustrated like this as I see you getting now. If you learn it like us physicists do then you'd learn a lot more.
« Last Edit: 26/07/2014 18:15:07 by PmbPhy »
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Offline jccc

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #154 on: 26/07/2014 19:57:35 »
The explanation for why an electron does not fall into the nucleus comes from a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics: the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Put simply, it states that you cannot know the position and momentum of a particle simultaneously. More rigorously stated, the product of the uncertainty of the position of a particle (Δx) and the uncertainty of its momentum (Δp) must be greater than a specified value:

ΔxΔp≥ℏ2


Now, as the electron approaches the nucleus, it's uncertainty in position decreases (if the electron is 10nm away from the nucleus, it could be anywhere within a spherical shell of radius 10nm, but if the electron is only 0.1nm away from the nucleus, that area is greatly reduced). According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, if you decrease the uncertainty of the electrons position, the uncertainty in its momentum must increase. This increased momentum uncertainty means that the electron will be moving away from the nucleus faster, on average.

Put another way, if we do know that at one instant, that the electron is right on top of the nucleus, we lose all information about where the electron will be at the next instant. It could stay at the nucleus, it could be slightly to the left or to the right, or it could very likely be very far away from the nucleus. Therefore, because of the the uncertainty principle it is impossible for the electron to fall into the nucleus and stay in the nucleus.

In essence, the uncertainty principle causes a sort of quantum repulsion, that keeps electrons from being too tightly localized near the nucleus.

Quantum repulsion? My head is exploding.
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Offline jccc

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #155 on: 26/07/2014 23:00:16 »
Why is moving object slow down and stop? Because it get's tired.

Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons? Because there is quantum repulsion at work.

See the similarity?

In quantum world, black is white, white is black. Don't ask me why, it just be that way.
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Offline PmbPhy

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #156 on: 26/07/2014 23:37:04 »
Joey,

Before I respond I want to ask you a question. Your response will determine if and how I help you again. I only say "if" because I ask these questions of you so that I'm able to properly respond to your many questions. Okay?

Question: Why don't you ever answer any of the many questions that I ask you? I only ask them so I can better respond to the questions you ask me. So when you don't respond you're only hurting yourself.

Quote from: jccc
Is there any attraction force stronger than proton and electron at atom radius distance?
No.

Quote from: jccc
Yes, when the distance decreased.
That's incorrect because in your question you wrote at atom radius distance which means at a particular fixed distance. When you said "when the distance decreased" you changed the question making it an unfair question.

Quote from: jccc
Electrons orbiting or not? Is there always acceleration between nucleus and electrons?
You should know the answer to this by now. Why do you keep asking it? I already told you that the concepts of velocity and acceleration at distances so small have no meaning whatsoever. I'm spending my summer doing a review of quantum mechanics using the text Introduction to Quantum Mechanics - Second Edition by David J. Griffiths. After the author derives the expression between d<x>/dt and the wave function on page 16 the author writes
Quote from: David J. Griffiths
What are we to make of this result? Note that we're talking about the "velocity" of the expectation value of x, which is not the same thing as the velocity of the particle. Nothing we have seen so far would enable us to calculate the velocity of a particle. It's not even clear what velocity means in quantum mechanics: If the particle doesn't have a determinate position (prior to measurement), neither does it have a well-defined velocity.

Since you keep asking questions such as Electrons orbiting or not? I can't see an end to it. Therefore I won't be responding to them again.
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Offline jccc

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #157 on: 27/07/2014 00:16:37 »
Pete, I went to college study physics and organic chemistry for 3 years. Bad bad score.

Don't remember your other questions, if I had the answers, should be replied.

All my confusion is very simple, my mind cannot imagine how subatomic world functioning according to what I read.

Is there a book less math more explanation about atomic structure? Everything I read online helped me little.
Such as quantum repulsion stuff. Not one place has a straight/decent answer to OP's question. How do you think I found this forum? I googled the OP"s question. So many people are like me, very simple and basic question.



 


 
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Offline PmbPhy

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #158 on: 27/07/2014 00:43:35 »
Quote from: jccc
Pete, I went to college study physics and organic chemistry for 3 years. Bad bad score.
Then you know math and physics then. That helps me a great deal.

Quote from: jccc
All my confusion is very simple, my mind cannot imagine how subatomic world functioning according to what I read.
It's not just you, Joe. Nobody understands it. That's how the Shut up and calculate rule came to be created.

Quote from: jccc
Is there a book less math more explanation about atomic structure? Everything I read online helped me little.
Such as quantum repulsion stuff.
What are you talking about when you write quantum repulsion stuff? This is the kind of question I've been asking all this time that never gets answered.

Quote from: jccc
Not one place has a straight/decent answer to OP's question.
That's because everybody thinks differently.

Quote from: jccc
Why is moving object slow down and stop? Because it get's tired.
No object in existence is like that. E.g. if you had an object in a vacuum in flat spacetime in an inertial frame and it had a constant velocity to start then it's velocity would remain at that velocity until something brought it to a stop. It would require doing work on the body to bring it to a halt.
« Last Edit: 27/07/2014 00:48:27 by PmbPhy »
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Offline JSS

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #159 on: 27/07/2014 01:16:22 »
Quantum Mechanics has absolutely nothing to do with WHY things happen. It is strictly a mathematical method for predicting things by assuming everything to have quantifiable properties, statistically found to be in certain ranges. Why any of it works is NOT the business of QM.
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