• gasgiant@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    Electrons do orbit like planets in the solar system however they’re also waves. Which is what gives the set radii they can orbit at and keeps it all stable. The orbits can and do change due to the emission or absorption of certain quanta of radiation.

    So saying like is fine. It’s not an exact description but more of a simile to help understanding. They do orbit like a solar system. Saying electrons orbit the same as a solar system would be incorrect. That’s when the maths doesn’t work and the electrons orbit would decay.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago

      that is not what i’ve learned, afaik electrons do not orbit with any sort of movement, and in fact talking about positions and movements at all on such a small scale is misleading.

      What i’ve learned is that electrons exist as a probability cloud, with a certain chance to observe them in any given position around the atom depending on the orbital and the amount of other electrons.

      Comparing it to gravitational orbits is just basically entirely incorrect, and certainly isn’t going to help someone pass advanced physics classes.

      • gasgiant@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        If they don’t orbit with any kind of movement then what does that say about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle?

        We know their mass. So once observed we would know everything about them.

        Unless your saying they just some how jump from one random point in that probability cloud to another?

    • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Ok, hear me out for curiosity sake. What happens if you slow down time to magnitudes less then you can observe?

      • PiJiNWiNg@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        The passage of time is always consistent for the observer, in that a clock next to them will always tick at the same interval. The tidal wave planet from Interstellar is a good example of this, in that only a short time had elapsed for the people on the surface, but back home on earth over 20 years went by. -Edited, didnt explain correcty the first time