[alancalverd]

Metal atoms bond by sharing electrons. Those in the middle of a blob are surrounded by other nuclei and electrons but those on the surface are not competely surrounded, so their binding force is "spread sideways". The mesoscopic result is the same whether the interatomic bonds are metallic, covalent or ionic, and in the liquid state it is described as surface tension. 

[jccc]

Quantum mechanics; the electron doesn't have enough mass to be localised to a very small area- it doesn't have a short enough wavelength, so it spreads out around the nucleus in a standing wave.

Turns out these waves have lots of funky shapes, and some of these shapes can fit between each other, or even overlap each other and form a very strong chemical bond between two atoms.

ya, very funky waves. i don't get it. do you? be honest.

[wolfekeeper]

Well, I've been trained in solving the wave equation, and studied chemistry.

Here are the funky shapes you get around a hydrogen atom:



Still, as Feynman said: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics"  []

[jccc]

that's pretty safe science. congrats!

[wolfekeeper]

It is actually, some of the predictions of quantum mechanics have been experimentally verified to about 10 decimal places.

But the equations are incredibly difficult to solve in many cases; but that's true of Newtonian mechanics also.

[jccc]

in a hydrogen atom, there's 1 electron and 1 proton.

there is only 1 force f=k x 1x1/r^2.

what equation is hard to solve? what is that equation based on?

[wolfekeeper]

It's been solved for hydrogen, but solving it for the other elements cannot be done exactly. Solving it for molecules is more challenging still. The difficulty is the QM wave equation; it's more or less infinite dimensional in many cases.

Anyway, we're straying off topic.

[alancalverd]

in a hydrogen atom, there's 1 electron and 1 proton.

there is only 1 force f=k x 1x1/r^2.

what equation is hard to solve? what is that equation based on?

Wrong.

Since your equation does not describe the observed hydrogen atom, it clearly isn't correct. You will find that the equations of quantum mechanics are a much better fit to reality.

[wolfekeeper]

That is actually pretty much a good equation for the force, but you have to stick it into the wave equation to solve it. If you try to use it in the context of Newtonian mechanics it goes seriously bad- all atoms would be radiating EM radiation like crazy till they essentially formed minuscule black holes and all molecules would fall apart; this was known in the late 19th century, it wasn't till QM was invented that they came up with a reason why that doesn't happen.

[jccc]

what reason? please be precise in science.

what reason make electron standing waving around the proton?

what reason keeps 2 particles under 10^40 g attraction force without stick together?

[gazza711 (OP)]

Water creates itself into a ball shape on iss?why?

It's actually the same reason that bubbles do.

The surface of the ball has surface tension, and that compresses the ball; the trick is; it turns out that the smaller the ball, the sharper the curvature, and so the higher the pressure inside it caused by surface tension.

So let's take an example, suppose you break the ball into two, with one bigger than the other.

Now touch them into each other, what's going to happen? The smaller ball is higher pressure, so it will decant itself, really quickly, into the bigger one, and the smaller one will shrink and the bigger one will grow until it's just one big ball.

Similar things happen with smaller distortions, basically, the ball hates sharp curvatures, because that implies higher pressure, so the sharp curvature areas rapidly get the water squeezed out of them, and they disappear until it's all the same curvature/pressure.

p.s. everything everyone else is saying in this thread is basically true as well, they're looking at it from a very high level view; what I've given is the worms-eye view of what's happening.

p.p.s. there's a table of pressures versus radius (of curvature) here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_tension#Surface_curvature_and_pressure

So if u placed 10 more bubbles each injected to the centre of the last,and a grain of sand in the centre of that,the grain would stay there.i deffo look from the worms eye view.

[wolfekeeper]

what reason? please be precise in science.

what reason make electron standing waving around the proton?

what reason keeps 2 particles under 10^40 g attraction force without stick together?

Electrons aren't exactly particles, they're mostly more like waves at this scale.

It turns out that there's a connection between the wavelength, and the energy/mass, so to have a smaller wavelength, the lightweight electrons would need a lot more kinetic energy, but then the atom couldn't hold onto them, it would be too much kinetic energy. So the electron wave is always much bigger than the heavier nucleus; and that discrepancy allows the electron to interact with multiple nuclei and form molecules and... skin effect is another result.

[jccc]

that's pretty precise.

you are right, i am wrong.

Thanks!