AJ Bently said:
This is a simple question, asked at a high-school level.
It is unlikely being asked at HS level since this topic is seldom covered at HS level. It is reasonable to consider that OP is reading ahead of his level and is trying to make links with his prior learning.
Dragging in the subtleties of QM is unnecessary and damaging.
All teaching is potentially damaging - in this case, there is more damage in leaving them out. The "subtleties" involved are not, in practise, a problem for HS students capable of asking the question. It is not a problem for HS students to realize that the electron "spin" is not a literal spinning like a top. Did you have a look at the link I supplied? It should bridge the concepts in a way accessible to HS students.
For all intents and purposes, it's spin. It's certainly not a 'mistake' to say so, any more than it's a mistake to say 'a particle at x moving with velocity v' at the same level.
But you did more than that - you modeled the electron spin as that of a macroscopic object with an uneven distribution of charge without any cautionary note about the misunderstandings that are commonly found on PF that result from this image.
I cover QM issues, briefly, in my HS class when they come up. I make a distinction between classical and "modern" physics and try not to mix them up. This, particular, mixup results in a lot of questions on PF and elsewhere involving misunderstandings of spin.
Anyway HS students are capable of questions like:
andrien said:
But electron is a point particle. How can it spin?
One of the complexities in modern teaching (what with the internet, science TV, and all) is that the teacher can no longer rely on the separation of different levels of explanation. It is more important than ever to try to anticipate future problems... especially considering how pseudoscience scams like to exploit them.
There is, naturally, a balance to be struck with the students level of understanding when answering these things - when I feel that a classical model is more appropriate I will preface the model with a note that it is a
classical one and that there are others. That usually helps avoid some confusion later and the student has the option to ask for a more advanced model if they feel up to it.
But there is no need to squabble over pedagogy - in an open forum it is certain that several approaches will be attempted. There is no "one true path" to learning or teaching. Here, two approaches have been presented and discussed, thus any perceived or anticipated harm should be mitigated. To recap:
Classically: the electron acts, to HS level, as though it is a spinning object.
For the future: the student is cautioned against thinking of this as a literal spin.
No problem.
