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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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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #380 on: 21/03/2015 14:32:36 »
I understand the question and it leaves room for thought, if an electron is attracted to a Proton then what stops the electron just being connected directly to the Proton?

The answer is simply that atoms are so small, relatively Electrons  are connected directly to the Proton, there is hardly any space in something smaller than a dot?


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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 #381 on: 21/03/2015 17:55:26 »
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

quote from Steve Jobs
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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 #382 on: 12/06/2015 02:06:12 »
Quote from: UltimateTheory
Antiparticle has positive energy. Dirac was mistaken.
That's a misconception. The equation E2 + p2 = m2  has two solutions for E. One is positive and the other is negative. You're statement confuses the inertial energy = rest energy + kinetic energy with negative energy states. As explained here: http://quantummechanics.ucsd.edu/ph130a/130_notes/node490.html
Quote
We cannot discount the ``negative energy'' solutions since the positive energy solutions alone do not form a complete set. An electron which is localized in space, will have components of its wave function which are ``negative energy''.
...
The idea of an infinite sea of ``negative energy'' electrons is a strange one. What about all that charge and negative energy? Why is there an asymmetry in the vacuum between negative and positive energy when Dirac's equation is symmetric? (We could also have said that positrons have positive energy and there is an infinite sea of electrons in negative energy states.) This is probably not the right answer but it has many elements of truth in it. It also gives the right result for some simple calculations. When the Dirac field is quantized, we will no longer need the infinite ``negative energy'' sea, but electrons and positrons will behave as if it were there.
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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 #383 on: 22/06/2015 19:42:17 »
we have all kinds of high tech toys, why can scientists make a working model of an atom?

let's brainstorm, see if we can use 1 electron and 1 proton to make an atom.

first, let's think, if they are stick together in the beginning, we got to separate them first to make possible that electron able to orbiting/clouding.

if they are separate at a distance, they will accelerate and get closer, how could impact not happen? lucky electron just fall into orbit?

am i the only 1 so confused? 
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Offline chiralSPO

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #384 on: 22/06/2015 19:50:09 »
Quote from: jccc on 22/06/2015 19:42:17
am i the only 1 so confused?

only you and any others who can't let go of the intuition of classical physics...
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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 #385 on: 22/06/2015 20:35:17 »
seems to me the standard model of atomic structure is more confuse.

there is no clear logic to explain many facts we observe daily.

why atoms are not compressible as theory predicted? 99.99% empty space within atom right?

why electron not discharge into proton? any other em field is stronger? any other voltage is higher?

how neutral charged atoms able to form into group?

all legit questions, agree?
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Offline chiralSPO

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #386 on: 22/06/2015 20:35:52 »
I would refer you again to my post (much) earlier in this thread (also check out the attachment in the original post):

Quote from: chiralSPO on 16/03/2015 19:35:10
jccc, I have thought of another way of describing the hydrogen atom pictorially. It's not a completely accurate model, just an analogy that might help.

Think of the electric potential produced by the proton as a surface--essentially like the gravity wells represented in curved space-time. The proton is very small, so it can essentially be treated as a point particle, or we can use a nonzero radius for the cutoff of the well (finite depth of the well), either way it doesn't matter.

The electron can be thought of as a marble that is free to roll around on this surface. It will naturally roll down into the potential well created by the proton, and it will eventually get stuck in the well. It is centered at the same x-y coordinates as the proton (center of the marble is directly over the center of the well), but because it has a determined diameter, the marble can only go so far down into the well.

I have illustrated a 1-dimensional version of this (two including potential, but only one spatial coordinate: x). The size of the "marble" is determined by how massive the particle is (more massive means smaller marble) (the size of this marble represents the de Broglie wavelength λ = h/p, where p is momentum and h is Planck's constant).

Thus when a negative particle heavier than the electron is modeled, we get a smaller marble. For instance, the muon has the same charge as an electron, but is about 200 times more massive. The exotic atom formed by the interaction of a muon and a proton is exactly the same as a normal hydrogen atom, except the muon is distributed much closer to the proton (this is how muons catalyze fusion). Going even further, an antiproton (1832 times heavier than an electron) would be extremely close to the proton. The antiproton and proton would also interact via the strong force (which the electron and muon would not do) and would fairly quickly annihilate with the proton.
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Offline chiralSPO

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #387 on: 22/06/2015 20:41:54 »
Quote from: jccc on 22/06/2015 20:35:17

why atoms are not compressible as theory predicted? 99.99% empty space within atom right?

why electron not discharge into proton? any other em field is stronger? any other voltage is higher?

how neutral charged atoms able to form into group?

all legit questions, agree?

all legit questions, all with legit answers.

For instance: neutral atoms form into groups because it is usually energetically favorable for the electrons to be shared between multiple nuclei. The atomic orbitals we continuously talk about morph into molecular orbitals when there are multiple nuclei to be considered. We have developed excellent ways of modeling the electronic structures of molecules--to the extent that we can say how many bonds atoms will make with each other; whether molecules will be paramagnetic or diamagnetic; what frequencies of light a molecule is likely to absorb; whether molecules will conduct electricity or not; etc. etc. etc.
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #388 on: 22/06/2015 21:42:05 »
Quote from: chiralSPO
only you and any others who can't let go of the intuition of classical physics...
We've told him that countless times and he ignores it as if we never even said it. He's terrible that way.
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #389 on: 22/06/2015 21:54:19 »
Quote from: chiralSPO on 22/06/2015 20:41:54
Quote from: jccc on 22/06/2015 20:35:17

why atoms are not compressible as theory predicted? 99.99% empty space within atom right?

why electron not discharge into proton? any other em field is stronger? any other voltage is higher?

how neutral charged atoms able to form into group?

all legit questions, agree?

all legit questions, all with legit answers.

For instance: neutral atoms form into groups because it is usually energetically favorable for the electrons to be shared between multiple nuclei.

ok. then if atoms are apart, the same energetically favorable should be for the atoms to share the outer electrons and attract each other that causes gravitation.

am i have a point?
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #390 on: 22/06/2015 22:45:21 »
Quote from: jccc on 22/06/2015 21:54:19
ok. then if atoms are apart, the same energetically favorable should be for the atoms to share the outer electrons and attract each other that causes gravitation.

am i have a point?

except that the attraction between atoms to form molecules is only over very short distances (more than 5 Å, or 5x10–10 between nuclei, and there is no substantial effect) because it requires sharing of electrons, and the effect becomes repulsive (antibonding) if there are too many electrons around. Typically atoms come together to form very discrete molecular units (like H2O or C6H6), and once the stable molecule is formed, it becomes very difficult to add more atoms. There are much weaker interactions between molecules that make it favorable for molecules to attract oneanother (this is how gases condense into liquids, how geckos can walk on walls, and how drugs bind to receptors)
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #391 on: 22/06/2015 23:48:37 »
2 separate atoms each is neutral charged, what attraction force there is?

atom 1 proton attracts atom 2 electron or what? how it exactly works? if not induction?

are the 2 atoms share electrons or clouds? or orbitals? is all this imaginary?
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #392 on: 23/06/2015 00:05:05 »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covalent_bond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_orbital_theory
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #393 on: 23/06/2015 00:14:20 »
Quote from: chiralSPO on 23/06/2015 00:05:05
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covalent_bond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_orbital_theory

if i believe/understand those theory, i won't be here.

if you understand, please explain in your words. those wiki knowledge to me not like science.
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #394 on: 23/06/2015 04:47:17 »
Quote from: jccc on 23/06/2015 00:14:20
Quote from: chiralSPO on 23/06/2015 00:05:05
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covalent_bond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_orbital_theory

if i believe/understand those theory, i won't be here.

if you understand, please explain in your words. those wiki knowledge to me not like science.
Wiki does explain it all in words. As we keep telling you, and which you keep choosing to ignore, is that since you refuse to learn physics the correct way, rather than asking a zillion questions whose answers you readily forget, you'll never understand it. Why on Earth do you think physicists have to study so hard. Don't you think that we would have preferred an explanation so simple that even you could understand it. Forget it. It doesn't exist. Nature is a great deal more complicated for a description so simplistic that even you could understand it.
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #395 on: 23/06/2015 05:11:50 »

Quote from: jccc on 27/02/2015 15:43:14
Quote from: PmbPhy on 27/02/2015 15:21:28
Quote from: jccc
we need to start from the light source. if atoms are like qm suggested, 99% empty space, why is water/matter not compressible?
It is compressible. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water#Compressibility
water's compressibility is about 10 ^-10, sounds like 99% empty space to you?

how about the discharge? is the empty space such a good insulator?
what's your answer?
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #266 on: 28/02/2015 02:36:57 »
Quote
Quote from: jccc
what's your answer?
I don't have an answer. Who ever said I know everything!
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #267 on: 28/02/2015 02:43:18 »
QuoteModifyRemove
thank you Pete!

all my respect to you.

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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #268 on: 28/02/2015 03:17:57 »
Quote
Quote from: jccc on 28/02/2015 02:43:18
thank you Pete!

all my respect to you.
You're welcome.  ^

do you have answers now?
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #396 on: 23/06/2015 05:50:32 »
Quote from: jccc

Quote from: jccc on 27/02/2015 15:43:14
Quote from: PmbPhy on 27/02/2015 15:21:28
Quote from: jccc
we need to start from the light source. if atoms are like qm suggested, 99% empty space, why is water/matter not compressible?
It is compressible. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water#Compressibility
water's compressibility is about 10 ^-10, sounds like 99% empty space to you?

how about the discharge? is the empty space such a good insulator?
what's your answer?
Modify message
Report to moderator     173.22.244.21
PmbPhy
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<snipped garbage>
Well, that was about the most useless post that I've ever seen in any forum that I've ever visited. Then again, nothing that you do surprises me anymore.
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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 #397 on: 23/06/2015 05:54:24 »
you don't remember what you said earlier in this thread?
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #398 on: 23/06/2015 06:08:29 »
Quote from: jccc
you don't remember what you said earlier in this thread?
You nut. There are 396 posts in this forum. I've posted in many threads. Why should I recall what I posted earlier in this thread?

Sheeesh!
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Re: Why don't an atom's electrons fall into the nucleus and stick to the protons?
« Reply #399 on: 23/06/2015 06:31:56 »
you do remember your science knowledge right?

you can read right?

do you have answers now?

why is atoms not compressible as 99% empty space?

why electron not discharge into proton? is the space between them such great insulator?
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