How do electrons move? [Please read]

[Ziggs]

Bear in mind, I may be very misinformed, I'm going from something I found on this forum a while back. Are you sitting comfortably? Well I'll begin.


If the electron is indeed a point particle (zero volume) then how can it move without teleportation (of sorts) because say an electron has traveled 1 meter (free electron, just a simple electron, not in a field or anything) then at one point it must be half way there, 50cm, and then it must be half way to there (25cm) and then it must be half way there at some point (12.5cm) you get the point, yea?

So if this is indeed true (It might not be, please correct me) Then even after an infinite number of halves, it's still not 1 'measure of movement' away from itself at the start because it can never be touching itself, therefore to get to the '2nd' location it needs to go an infinite number of 'movements' therefore it would take an eternity to move 1 'movement' (as in the smallest measurement of movement, when you move you don't teleport, you have to take up every possible location between start/end point) This keeps repeating so basically to move an infinitely small distance then it would take an infinite amount of time.


/Discuss

 

[mathman]

You are stating one of Zeno's paradoxes (it has nothing to do with electrons).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes

(dichotomy paradox)

 

[Khashishi]

We only know what we can measure. If you measure the electron at point A and then again at point B, then that's all you know. You can't really infer that the electron was at some point between A and B unless you actually measure it there.

Actually, if you keep continuously making measurements of where the electron is, then it will an infinite amount of time to move from A to B, due to the Quantum Zeno Effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect

But because we don't constantly measure the position, the electron is allowed to "jump", bypassing the Zeno effect.