Undergrad Atom Construction: Electrons & Protons

[drl]

Am I right to say that an electron in the lowest level of an atom cannot fall into the nucleus because to do so requires it to give up energy in the process and it . does not possesses the energy at this atomic level.Electrons in higher levels can give up energy and fall to a lower level if there is room for them.
Now does a similar effect take place in the 28th proton of an iron atom to prevent it from combining with another proton to increase its atomic number so that in order to do so energy must be added instead of being given off.

 

[mattt]

The way we model things quantum-mechanically, you have (for the system that models an isolated atom, or an electron in an isolated atom) a Hamiltonian (a Self Adjoint Operator on a Hilbert Space, that is bounded from below), and there is one state of the system (eigen-state that corresponds to the minimum eigen-value of the Hamiltonian) that is the state of the system with lowest energy, (there is no way for the system to "transition" to a state of lower energy). In this state, the square of the modulus of the wavefunction is used to define "the orbitals" (regions of 3d-space with a probability-density above some threshold value, for the electron to be in), that "shows" you that the electron "is not permanently in the nucleus".

 

[drl]

I appreciate your time and effort .Can you get it down to dummy level if possible and what is the answer to the 2nd part of my question?

 

[bhobba]

This is an I level thread. You should have solved the Schrodinger equation for a hydrogen atom. It has a lowest energy level as one of its solutions. It can't go lower than that. This is a general feature of all such systems eg atoms, molecules, etc, and although its not an area I am that familiar with, even nuclei. Also remember protons are leptons, and like all leptons are fermions so you can not have two protons in the same state. Even simpler than that protons being positively charged repel each other so will be repelled by other atoms. What keeps the nucleus together is the strong nuclear force which is short ranged. You need to overcome the long range EM force in the other atom for the short range strong force to have an effect.

Thanks
Bill

 

[PeterDonis]

remember protons are leptons

Correction: protons are hadrons, made of quarks. Electrons are leptons. Leptons don't respond to the strong nuclear force; hadrons (and mesons, which are also made of quarks) do.