• lugal@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    The atom model with the electrons going around the nucleus, is inspired by the solar system. The better model doesn’t look anything alike. This is a naturalistic circular fallacy

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      If atoms were like the solar system, all of the electron orbits would lose energy and decay by emitting electromagnetic radiation.

      The same type of decay does occur in the solar system as the planets emit gravitational radiation, but the decay rate is so miniscule we can’t really detect it.

      • gasgiant@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        Electrons do orbit like planets in the solar system however they’re also waves. Which is what gives the set radii they can orbit at and keeps it all stable. The orbits can and do change due to the emission or absorption of certain quanta of radiation.

        So saying like is fine. It’s not an exact description but more of a simile to help understanding. They do orbit like a solar system. Saying electrons orbit the same as a solar system would be incorrect. That’s when the maths doesn’t work and the electrons orbit would decay.

        • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 months ago

          that is not what i’ve learned, afaik electrons do not orbit with any sort of movement, and in fact talking about positions and movements at all on such a small scale is misleading.

          What i’ve learned is that electrons exist as a probability cloud, with a certain chance to observe them in any given position around the atom depending on the orbital and the amount of other electrons.

          Comparing it to gravitational orbits is just basically entirely incorrect, and certainly isn’t going to help someone pass advanced physics classes.

          • gasgiant@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            If they don’t orbit with any kind of movement then what does that say about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle?

            We know their mass. So once observed we would know everything about them.

            Unless your saying they just some how jump from one random point in that probability cloud to another?

            • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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              5 months ago

              i’m not sure why you think the uncertainty principle is a “gotcha”, it specifically states that you can’t know both the position and momentum of a particle and thus explicitly contradicts your claim that we’d know everything about them because we know their mass.

              I can’t be arsed to write out a whole scientific paper here so i’ll just link to the probability cloud model of orbitals and hope you can make sense of that.

              • gasgiant@lemmy.ml
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                5 months ago

                You specifically said “electrons do not orbit with any kind of movement”

                So by your own argument they’re not moving. We know the mass. So if we find one by your logic we know everything about it.

                Yes that is the probability cloud model well done.

                However my point again. You seem to think saying this renders the simile of planetary orbit obsolete. It doesn’t it’s a simile. It’s a way of explaining something that doesn’t have to exactly explain it.

                If someone said “that fell on my head like a ton of bricks” would you go and examine the object and check it was exactly a ton of bricks or that it exactly exhibited the properties of a ton of bricks?

                Or perhaps would you understand something from that about what had happened to them.

                You may find this useful. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simile

        • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Ok, hear me out for curiosity sake. What happens if you slow down time to magnitudes less then you can observe?

    • pantyhosewimp@lemmynsfw.com
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      5 months ago

      What if we’re all wrong and the Paulie exclusion principle is just electrons clearing their orbit of debris (sub electrons). Also, for the heaviest elements the outer shell is actually populated by dwarf-electrons. And electron sharing in molecules is just Oort Cloud stuff somehow. And our galaxy is a virus. And our bodies are a battleground. And humans are just batteries. Whait a minute —