A Note on Electron Orbits

Potential builds until, all at once, change happens. We see, as always, this fulfills the Potentialism equation of:

Q4P∞ → C+ → E+.

That can be a lot of chemistry to get your head around all at once. So, let’s look at the simple takeaway. An atom will start at a certain size. If you add energy, nothing will happen until enough Potential is built up, then suddenly, like magic, the atom will change in size. The important takeaway is that when you look at things on the atomic scale, you can actually see Potential at work.

A Note on Electron Orbits

We have all seen the classic picture of an atom. There is a clump in the middle, the nucleus, with the electrons orbiting around it like planets around the sun. As it turns out, this isn’t actually true.

An electron shell is more like a field or an area of Potential. Electrons don’t circle the nucleus at all. Rather, they’re just somewhere in that shell. In fact, there is some argument whether they are anywhere in particular at all except for when we try and find them. Otherwise, it’s better to just think of 55

them as somewhere in there and nowhere in particular until they need to be.

I know. This is very strange and hard to think about. It doesn’t make intuitive sense. However, that is part of the nature of quantum physics – it just doesn’t act like things we see in the larger world. But how electrons work will be especially important as we move forward.

So, try and drop the notion of electrons orbiting. Think instead of the shell as a field of potential energy, like a grid, where at any given point, one of those grid spaces will have the electron we expect to find. Further, the electron doesn’t “move” in ways we think of things in motion. It will simply appear in one place in one moment and an entirely different place in the next moment.

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