A question about molecular structure

[lazarus]

So, I'm doing some reading on the series of tube. I run across a reference that says that some people still believe that atoms are built so that the electrons "orbit" the neucleus like a planet orbit the son. This, apparently, is wrong.

Since I last took chemistry 30 years ago, I'm one of those who believed this. Can y'all smart folks tell me the real structure of an atom as understood by science these days?

Or is the reference that this is wrong itself wrong and the atoms are "planetary" in structure?

[Warpy]

1. Think about a moth around a porch light

Then think about a whole bunch of moths. They don't collide and they don't go in predictable movements, either. That's sort of like how electrons "orbit" the nucleus, like moths around a light. Were you to be able to see this with a super powerful microscope, it would look like a fog around the nucleus, not a bunch of tidy little points of "stuff" orbiting a tidy little center of "other stuff."

[meeshrox]

5. I like the way you think...

wonderful analogy!

[RandomThoughts]

6. So would the electron be a charge around the atoms

Or a distinct particle?

Would that particle be moving at light speed, basically being a charge?

[Warpy]

7. Electrons do have mass

but at the quantum level, Newtonian physics break down. They're not like planets orbiting a star.

[RandomThoughts]

9. I remember they had mass, but thought it might be like a photon

that is both a particle and a wave.

Is the mass in one point or distributed? What is the argument or proof of one point versus distributed? I sorta thought that it being a point was a easier way to represent it, and not being a single particle would explain lack of collision.

Well it would not explain lack of collision, but collision would be uniform in any atom due to dispersal, so it would not be detectable like a random collision could be. More overlap then collision at that level.

But just guessing.


I know they have done proton splitting, but don't know if anyone has tried to split electrons in collides. Not sure if that is possible, never heard of sub electrons.


Really a great question, if they were distributed, then why would they prefer certain shell levels, by being a point, it is easier to find some balance point that 2 or 8 might find, but if distributed, that favorite balance point is harder to rationalize.

Actually a wave pattern within the molecule could explain the prefered shell levels.

[nebenaube]

10. that's correct...

There are orbital layers of electron energy states surrounding the nucleus but the electrons are not bound to a single layer, i.e. they can be 'excited' to higher orbitals, can emit photons when their energy states decay and there is nothing equatorial about the orbital path (transition energy states induce random vector changes hence the term 'cloud').

At least that's my understanding... I'm frequently wrong though.

[lazarus]

8. so it's more like a "cloud"

than discrete orbits. Makes sense. Thanks to you, and everyone else on the thread.

:hi:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Check this out.

http://www.millsian.com/

[darkstar3]

3. It's been a while since chem, and it wasn't my favorite class,

but I was always taught that electrons had different states, depending on their energy level and on how many electrons were actually contained in the atom itself. Those states corresponded to "shells", and the higher state, the farther the "shell" was from the atom's nucleus.

I remember there were s-states, p-states, d-states, and f-states (like the digital audio SPDIF), though I don't remember which order they went in, and basically you just kinda stacked electrons in there like filling a box from the ground up. Of course, it was more like an inverted cone, because the number of electrons you could fit in each state started small at the shell closest to the nucleus and grew larger as you went outward.

Hey, I remembered something from high school!

Anyway, the whole idea of electrons orbiting nuclei isn't entirely wrong, it's just oversimplified. "Orbit" implies that electrons would follow a path, either circular or elliptical in nature, in a regular fashion around the nucleus, when the truth is that they tend to jump around randomly inside their state shells.

Of course, in 20 years we'll figure out that's not true either...

[TheMadMonk]

15. Check out Rydberg atoms. If you force an electron into a high enough...

..."orbital" it does begin to look like a clasical atom, with the electron following a well defined orbital path.

For electrons in their ground state, they behave like that cloud of moths.

[RandomThoughts]

4. Well if atoms make up molecules

Then the atoms of the molecules share the same electrons to complete a shell level.

So in that case they could not orbit an atom, since they would have to be orbiting both atoms.

Would the actual patern be like a figure 8 if orbiting two atoms, or might the electron more be a charge represented by a particle in an orbit, but not actually a single object, so it could exist in multiple places throughout the shell at once, not really orbiting but more of some charge equal to whatever counter charge from the proton exist. Or maybe it is a stationary charge between the atoms. Although there could be a wave effect that would be like a particle moving.

Not sure,

Guess would be if they travel they travel in complete shells, since molecules are created by full shells.


Wasn't the orginal patern gotten from lines of magnetic force? Or maybe I am thinking of something else there, since magnetic lines of force travel like stacked shells outward from a north and south point, and electrons do not enter and leave an atom in that fashion.

Shrug, not sure. Interesting question.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. When atoms form bonds with other atoms to make molecules...

the electrons that participate in the bonding leave their atomic orbital to new molecular orbitals.



The electrons that don't participate in bonding remain in their atomic orbitals.

[RandomThoughts]

11. There is that one experiment

That catches photons through an opening. The one where light through a small hole spreads out after leaving the hole. And the Hubble had a photon counter till they put in the lens correction device. So photons are distinct objects.

And if photons are distinct objects then it would make sense electrons are, but it could also be that photons are that way by some self attraction forming units, would that charge size be a cloud within the distinct unit of a photon? explaining how they could also be a wave.

Interesting topic.

It would be funny if some mathematical formula could show a photon as a distributed group within some border that is the photon object. And the equivalent of vibration within that distributed group could be shown to be its wave.

Then that how it could be both a particle and a wave could be answered.

But there would have to be some effect that creates the distinct unit, while still being distributed. Something like a completed shell but a size for a photon, maybe circumference based at some point the size is larger then stable, or like how water droplets form ideal sizes.

Interesting concept, anyone read anything making this impossible?


Then again I always thought the cosmopolitan constant of the expanding universe was creation of space time possibly in low grav areas, possibly big bang like echo wave, and not really expansion but the illusion of expansion by new space time creation. Although that should be able to be shown and proven, since if correct there would be slight deviations of constant in some areas.

But anyway, anyone look into dark energy being multi verse leakage into this verse?

Those were all ideas for scifi short stories.

[Igel]

12. We talk one way and understand something else.

We talk of electrons as particles and that they're in "orbits"--"orbital" is the term of art now--and these form shells. Then we talk about shapes for these orbitals--the first orbital is spherical, the second is sort of dumbell shaped, etc. The orbitals are lettered spdf.

But we understand that electons are also waves, and that we don't track individual points of matter. Instead, there are probabilities: The s-orbital isn't a sphere, it's an amorphous cloud, but where the electrons in the s-orbital are most likely to be is the sphere. The farther away from that region of space around the nucleus, the less likely the probability. And the odds fall off rather sharply, so the s-orbital is the place to bet to find an s-electron.

Each orbital contains a set number of pairs of electrons. And with each electron there's a minimum amount of energy that it has.

We just number the shells, 1, 2, 3, etc. And we recognize that the orbital for one shell comes very close to, or even goes beyond the s orbital for the next higher shell in the case of some f orbitals.

That's an atom at its resting state, minimum energy. If you pitch energy into the electron shell--in specific lumps--you can excite an electron. Then it can jump to a higher slot within its orbital, to a higher orbital, to a higher shell, or just escape entirely.

That's atoms.

When you talk molecules you're looking at hybridizing the orbitals, and this both biases the probabilities as to where a given electron in an orbital is likely to be, which is to say, it changes the shape of the orbital. I'm sure if you Google or just check out Wiki for "orbital" and "hybrid orbital" or even things like sp-orbital you'll get interesting attempts at showing the 3-D shapes. Just keep in mind that the orbital isn't a solid, that it's just likely that the electron "in" that orbital will be within the volume enclosed by that shape, and that the probability isn't the same for each bit of that volume.

Images that they've managed to get of atoms and molecules show fuzzy pieces of lint, since the electrons are very fast and the "shutter speed" not that small.

[arendt]

14. Think "probability clouds", not classical orbits

Remember the "particle wave duality". Electron orbitals are also waves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital