- #1
thinktank2
- 9
- 0
When I was in School, my science teachers over-simplified everything to the point of being totally wrong. I guess, that's how they themselves were taught by their teachers.. or it could be that they have no idea they are wrong... or it could be that I didn't really understand them well (for a long time, I believed that electrons moved around the nucleus in a single plane, based on textbook projections).
The kids these days learn a lot from the Internet and even correct their teachers. I wasn't surprised when I lost a bet to a High school kid challenging my rusty knowledge on the electron but it sure hurt my ego :D Trying to refresh the science that I learned at school, I have used the Internet (Wikipedia in particular) to a large extent to gain a better understanding. Unfortunately, for me though, the picture is not always complete.
What I was taught at school: Electrons orbit around nucleus in discrete orbitals
What I now know: Electrons don't orbit but disappear from one point in orbital space to reappear in another point in orbital space.
What I want to know is:
The kids these days learn a lot from the Internet and even correct their teachers. I wasn't surprised when I lost a bet to a High school kid challenging my rusty knowledge on the electron but it sure hurt my ego :D Trying to refresh the science that I learned at school, I have used the Internet (Wikipedia in particular) to a large extent to gain a better understanding. Unfortunately, for me though, the picture is not always complete.
What I was taught at school: Electrons orbit around nucleus in discrete orbitals
What I now know: Electrons don't orbit but disappear from one point in orbital space to reappear in another point in orbital space.
What I want to know is:
- Does the electron instantly reappear at another spot in its orbital after it vanishes? or does the vanishing and reappearing happen simultaneously? Is there a time delay - (like, if time is quantized and the electron once vanished can reappear only after a certain quanta of time has elapsed)?
- Does the electron do the same Houdini vanishing act when it gets excited from a low energy shell to a higher energy shell and vice versa?
- When the electron vanishes and reappears, how does it maintain its state, say for example, it's spin?