Electron Transitions and the Uncertainty Principle

[rewebster]

I'll get off the photon 'reflection' for a "quick"--(really quick) question:

This may have been answered somewhere, but----when an electron moves from one shell to the next [you pick a shell--direction doesn't matter (too much) for this question-(in being extremely exact, I think it would though)]---if it moved (jumped) at the speed of light (I wouldn't guess that it would, but in this question, just for a hypothetical standpoint)----how long would it take?

 

[Terry Giblin]

Stats Probability density function (1-p)

ZapperZ, thank you for your last comments and pointing out my wrong choice of words, but you are absolutely correct, an electron does not exist only the properties, which we associate with electrons.

"An electron (or should I say its properties) only exist, when it (they) are observed."

But what about the properties that we cannot measure or simply ignore, as in the case of the flatlanders?

Or perhaps we are looking at everything from the wrong perspective.

In statistics, you normally calculate the probability of an event occurring, however sometimes it is easier to calculate to probability of the event Not happening and subtracting it from 1.

How would you calculate the probability of an electron tunnelling through an infinite number of quantum wells, its easier calculate the probability that it doesn't happen and subtract from 1.

But the result becomes meaningless, if we only measure success when the electron properties appear, what about the other 99.99% chance that they did not appear 1 - 1 = 1, only if -1 is imaginary.

Its the only way you can get a square peg in a round hole and we have already proven it works, its amazing what you can convince yourself of applying reverse logic.

Regards

Terry Giblin

 

[ZapperZ]

ZapperZ, thank you for your last comments and pointing out my wrong choice of words, but you are absolutely correct, an electron does not exist only the properties, which we associate with electrons.

"An electron (or should I say its properties) only exist, when it (they) are observed."

But what about the properties that we cannot measure or simply ignore, as in the case of the flatlanders?

What exactly are the properties of electrons that cannot be measured?

Zz.

 

[-Job-]

Does a photon curve space-time, even if just a little? If they do, then from now on to me they're just tiny massless space-time bumps, it's easier for me this way.

 

[rewebster]

On my question in 51 and in relation to the electron 'jump':

What I was moving toward was two possibilities.

The first, taking one given radius of the hydrogen atom and hypothetically taking it as the distance between shells (I haven't found anything on the measured distances between shells) in a Copernican based model, the time may be around 5 x 10 to the minus 21 sec. for the electron (at LS) to jump. Would that be considered instantaneous? Even if the speed of the jump occurred a million times slower, it would still be to the minus 15 sec. (if my math is right ) ---Still fast.

The other model could be of a tangentially based orbit of the electron (Gryziński M.)--of which, in this case, the electron, when, at 'some' time during its cycle (orbit, tangential or distal?), would lose the photon. The crossing point to another shell could very easily be at the tangential proximity to the nucleus with a much shorter distance to make the 'jump'. In this case, the 'jump' may be of even a less time difference than the first scenario (even more instantaneous).

Anyone have any other thoughts?---(I hope that this post isn't considered overly-speculative.)

 

[rewebster]

Well, I don't think either scenario is correct.


I think that both imply the speed, at least, which the 'jump' could occur.

 

[rewebster]

Does the electron disappear?

As for the topic of the thread itself--IMHO--no --I would say that it reacts so quickly that present day measuring devices just can't record the transition.







And as to 'reflection' of a photon, I guess I'll have to keep to my own hypothesis of what happens --(which I can't post here for several reasons--one, it being VERY over-speculative; and, two, there are still a few loose ends to the whole)

 

[reilly]

Of course we can consider a gazillion particles. Both in classical and quantum physics, we can replace the motion of the gazillion particles by the motion of the center of mass -- that's how we obtain planetary and lunar orbits. So. to a first approximation, the QM of the moon can be safely described by the QM of a point particle of moon mass M -- one could go a next step, and consider the moon to be made of the gazillion particles in a potential well roughly the size of the moon. For the first approximation, standard tunneling will show that the probability of the moon to tunnel through almost any potential barrier is of the order (guesswork) 10**-(100)(an estimate of the transmission coefficient. )For the second approximation, the WKB method should work nicely -- a good homework problem. (A great irony: one of the best discussions of tunneling, including the WKB method, can be found in Bohm's QM book.)

Once again, I agree with vanesch (Post 14).
Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

 

[reilly]

rewebster: Once again, this problem was worked to death in the 1930s. Time dependent perturbation theory does an excellent job of describing the dynamics of atomic jumps, cf, Weisskopf and Wigner, Breit and Wigner (after WWII) Go back, whether in Google, or such classics as Condon and Shortley -- Theory of Atomic Spectra, and, if I recall correctly, see also Blatt and Weisskopf's book Theoretical Nuclear Physics;, Schwinger's volume of key QED papers, Quantum Electrodynamics, Dirac's QM book, Books by Jauch and Rohrlich, Schweber -- his old text, and more recent history of QED -- Wentzel,, Akheiser and Berestski and on and on and on.

Everything you want to know about this issue can be found in the literature.

If you want to pursue what you write below, then your best bet is probably the WKB method, which ties together QM and classical mechanics. (And, don't forget the Dirac Eq. for hydrogen).

In QM, as we know it now, there really is no "jump", as there was in the old quantum theory of Bohr and Sommerfeld. That's why it's important to study the time dependence of the radiation process, which shows a smooth transition from one state to another -- for electrons and other charged particles, and photons as well.

Check out the literature. What you want to know has been there a long, long time.

Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

On my question in 51 and in relation to the electron 'jump':

What I was moving toward was two possibilities.

The first, taking one given radius of the hydrogen atom and hypothetically taking it as the distance between shells (I haven't found anything on the measured distances between shells) in a Copernican based model, the time may be around 5 x 10 to the minus 21 sec. for the electron (at LS) to jump. Would that be considered instantaneous? Even if the speed of the jump occurred a million times slower, it would still be to the minus 15 sec. (if my math is right ) ---Still fast.

The other model could be of a tangentially based orbit of the electron (Gryziński M.)--of which, in this case, the electron, when, at 'some' time during its cycle (orbit, tangential or distal?), would lose the photon. The crossing point to another shell could very easily be at the tangential proximity to the nucleus with a much shorter distance to make the 'jump'. In this case, the 'jump' may be of even a less time difference than the first scenario (even more instantaneous).

Anyone have any other thoughts?---(I hope that this post isn't considered overly-speculative.)

 

[Tyris]

The thing about the moon is, people are always looking at it. It contains so many entities, that it would take a few hundred years to decohere and become uncertain - but people keep observing it, and it collapses back to one state of being.