General thoughts about matter

[Adam Szendrey]

Umm...again i'm gonna ask a few rather basic sounding questions, which i'm not really sure of.
First of all i have been thinking about electrons orbiting a nucleus. Since there should be a centripetal acceleration, shouldn't there be EM radiation? Since accelerated particles emit EM radiation. Electrons do produce a magnetic field in their orbit, since they move. But if they move on a circular path, there is acceleration...but where is the radiation? Charged particles moving in a particle accelartor on a bent path do emit radiation. What am i missing.
Also, i wonder how exactly magnetic fields of electrons on different layers around the nucleus interact.
And since we are talking about magnetism, shouldn't the field of a permanent magnet at least slightly oscillate, due to the orbit of the electrons, or maybe some sort of noise...If there is a periodic oscillation, what if i feed it with a resonant signal from the outside?
Well , i hope those questions make sense .

Adam

[Richard Hull]

Your questions are sage and are asked by many.

In general, and in theory, electrons are not considered to describe the classic mechanical eliptical orbits about the nucleus that you describe. This allows for no constant acceleratory force needed and thus no fixed frequency RF radiation. There are other explanations, of course, depending on who you are listening too.

Probably one of the best electron models is the one posited by Common Sense Science which is actually a rebirth of a 1916 model by Parson. check them out at

http://www.commonsensescience.org

There is an inspired physical model that was formulated in ~1990 where permenant ring magnets from radio shack were hung (a al mobile) from strings. What was stunning is that the only stable patterns emerging from this "science fair" setup was
two magnets in the first shell, eight magnets in the second, 18 in the third and so on to the tune of what is actually seen in the electron shell model of the atom!

This observation was deemed highly mechanically suggestive to the folks at common sense science and so they view this as the actual mechanical basis for the shells based on a ring model of the electron with its associated magnetic field.

I have heard a lot more far out thoughts than this in nuclear physics. The idea has merit in my mind and allows for electrons to be more static in their positions. This model definitely deals directly with the magnetic interactions of the ring electrons in the shell.

In addition their model allows for physical extent and mass of an electron in a more classical sense.

Certainly their model is just another in a series of guesses at the nature of things, but at least it appeals to those who seek repeatable, common sense structure over mathematical single dimensional point particles hoping about as needed.

[Adam Szendrey]

Hmm...but still, they "act" like they move along a straight line at a constant velocity, in a sense, that they create a magnetic field.
Okay, so an electron around a nucleus is described by a wave function, but how is the magnetic field described, when an electron is considered to be a wave? I'm kinda' confused with all this quantum stuff mixing up with various other theories....

Adam

[longstreet]

So you have gotten to the idea of the wave function. The schrodenger wave function is just a partial differential equation. This is applied to the hydrogen atom by assuming the nucleus to cause a potential energy well such that the wave becomes trapped inside.

The partial differential equation must be solved to find the probability density. This must be done in some coordinate system, which you would probably choose a spherical one. Here is a explanation if you are unfamiliar with them. http://www.math.montana.edu/frankw/ccp/ ... l/body.htm

When the wave function is solved in spherical coordinates you basically get three degrees of freedom for the wave matching the three coordinate directions (n, l, m). So, not only can the wave move in-out in the radial direction, but flip-flops from pole to pole and around-around the equater. This creates the angular momentum and the magnetic moment. It's like a small current loop making a magnetic field, but very complex. Applying external magnetic fields changes the wave function which results in spectrum splitting and other cool things.

Carter

[Frank Sanns]

Hi Adam,

Glad your studies are making you question the universe. There is so much we don't know and most people don't even know it.

The first thing you need to know is that the rules for big things and small things are different but the current understadings of physics. For all normal big things there are the classical physics rules. For the very small atomic and subatomics, there are the quantum rules. If you have a ton of quantum mechanical small atoms put together into a big object, then their individual quantum properties can not longer be obseved and you see the classical bulk physics properties. If you can see it with your eyes or even with an optical microscope, you can ignore quantum effects because the item contains so many quantum elements that the item obeys classically.

Now for the electron producing a magentic field around an atom. By current understanding, the electron does not spin or go around the atom in any orbit. Quantum mechanics is different than classical even in its vocabulary. Spin in quantum is not spin in classical. Spin in classical is a true rotation ( turning on an axis) or revolution ( going around something). Spin in quantum is only and attribute and does not imply motion around or on. It is a differnt attribute that just happens to have the same name as a classical propertie but they are not the same and that is why in quantum you have "spins" of descrete fractions and numbers.

You will also encounter spins up, down, and you will come in find colors and flavors, and strange. None of these attributes of quantum can be translated to classical physics. Made up totally new and unique name should have been applied to avoid confusion but it just didn' happen that way. It will be a long confusing ride by this unecessarily complex theory that physics operates these days. Good luck to us all.

Frank

[Richard Hull]

Frank added the part that confuses many. Spin is not physical spin. All of this is just a lot of made up stuff and rules that supposedly help show why we see what we see. By conserving spin and or matching spin we can show why stuff decays or evolves the way it does. Spin is just a word like color or charm. It has no physical meaning but supposedly explains physical observations and, as such, is whatever the big boys in quantum physics think it is. We assign spins to help us predict, hopefully, out comes.

My biggest beef with spin is that one of the biggest arguments against the neutron being a proton and and electron is that the spins won't play right. This makes me worry about the concept of spin at a core level.

In my gut I just now the neutron is a proton and an electron! The lone neutron decays to this pair in 10-15 minutes. In beta decay we allow the nuclear neutron to decay internally to a proton with the emission of the nuclear electron. So phooey to spin in this case, I say.

Something stunning and as yet unknown happen when neutrons are created. A branch of nuclear physics has yet to be born. Outside of the crushing forces found in the core of stars or the acreted, fused, stable nucleus, the neutron is a dis-allowed particle

The neutron is the atom builder. Protons can't fuse! The first fusion is the proton and electron. Once neutrons are present in the stellar core soup, real atom building is off to the races.

Richard Hull

[longstreet]

Apple is just a made up word too, to help us find stuff to eat.

[Richard Hull]

Apple has a physical imagery in our brain linked thorugh the eye. It has a hard physical emobdiment in the real world and can be a physically digestable and useful food substance of form and yields real energy when biologically consumed.

Ghost is a word, evil spirit is a word as are Particle Spin, Color and Charm all five terms or words exist in the minds of their creators and verbalizers, but all remain without physical embodiment, energy, (potential or dynamic) or other application outside of their respective areas of believer driven mombo-jumbo. In short, all five words are what the priests of the respective cults or sciences say they are and the mental imagery related to them by adherents are, taugh imagery and not physical imagery like that of the apple.

I sip cautiously at the chalice of particle physics and refuse to be forced to gulp down all that is swimming about in the bowl in spite of the fact that some others about me tell me it is all good to drink deeply of.

Richard Hull

[longstreet]

Those are all words used to describe the other words. There is no definition of an apple etched into the universe anywhere. There is only what *we* choose to call apples based on self serving needs, such as nurishment. If spin explains the quantum world it's just as "real" as apples ever can be.

[Richard Hull]

For real people in a real world apple,as a food substance,means apple. In the quantum world spin doesn't mean spin and color doesn't mean color, and charm doesn't mean charm.

For clarity they should have generated new words like sorugh, bijotic and elsingstof to describe these totally new concepts. The ghost huntersand ufo folks have their custom lingo to describe there supposed physical entities. ectoplasm, electrogravitic,etc.

The quantum realm is a mathematical one and not a physical one. It is chock full of zero extent point particles and omnipresent entities with no specific form or location, indifterent specific momenta and on and on. Still, I guess it is as good as religon or the fear of ghosts as something to cling to when physical reality is crumbling around you in the very small. If there is no physical salvation, there is at least a mathematical one.

Richard Hull

[DaveC]

I also have some strong reservations about what Quantum Mechanics is telling us. But I think it's the descriptions used for the different parts, that are as troublesome as the concepts themselves.

For example electron "spin". Paired spins, as I understand it, are associated with a ferro-magnetic property - permeability greater than that of space. It seems plausible that originally, a "spinning" electronic charge was at least remotely connect-able to the classical idea that "moving charges" create a magnetic field.

Today these ideas have generalized to the point that it would probably cause less confusion if they were all called totally made up non-physcial names.... ummm.. let's see... like charm, color,(nope that's physical), ...well you can see where I'm going. It's the "Tale of the Jabberwock" some more.

I think we get less of a headache, by treating these names as identifiers ONLY... of some measurable or distinguishing characterisic of the subatomic particle world. What these properties actually mean.. and if they can at all be linked to the larger "classical physical" world has yet to be shown, in some cases.

One example of things we do, but don't actually do... is the phrase "inverting a matrix". There once was a programming language called APL (A Progamming Language..?) that even had such generalized capabilities that a matrix was representable by the same variable name as any other variable.. say.. A... and the inverse of that matrix or variable was just A^-1 (1/A) symbolically. Marvelous piece of coding... It just about eliminated the nasty bother of what was actually going on when you did some math acrobatics.

Now the physics types out there know that inverting matrices.. especially the "infinite dimensioned" bases for things n stuff...is just part of a routine day in Physics. You learn to do this, talk about this and act like you understand this, very early in your career. But .....literally, inverting an infinite dimensioned matrice is just wee bit time consuming...Ya can't do a whole lot of 'em in your lifetime Bucky... soooo we simplify... to a convenient few.. say 3 or 4 dimensions, find our favorite math routine to handle the heavy lifting...and it's a done deed. Piece of Cake!!. The hapless neophyte to physics... stumbles on mystified at the methods of these wizards... who "peep and mutter" incomprehensible phrases...but magically seem to come up with more or less correct or at least reasonable guesses at how lots of stuff works. So there must be something in all this that is essentially correct. "One these days, my son, you too will understand how it's done. Takes a few yrs of hard work before you are eligible to wear the pointy hat with stars, planets, moons and things...."

Seriously, each person has to work out a comfortable and consistent way to regard these mathematically entities that code something, measurable. Perhaps we will one day be able to tie up the loose ends and have something that even common folks can understand.

Dave Cooper

[Donald McKinley]

The photon is another "particle" which has a perpetual acceleration and which emits no EM of its own that I know of. Correct?

It is also physical because it can be pulled by a gravitational field.

Apparently the electron is thought to take a random walk around the nucleus and so it makes me wonder whether the EM field which you would expect to find associated with that motion is of such a high frequency that it is undetectable by our current technology.

Perhaps the EM of a perpetually accelerated particle is always directed toward the center because of geometrical consideration of the path of propagation.

If you visualize a point in space where each of the vectors of the right hand rule converge at right angles and assume equal magnitude of acceleration, mag vector, and elect vector, the rule of the right hand may stipulate that the field must build in a small area, a particle.

Another alternative:

When I see two magnets stuck together, I see acceleration but I see no EM emission. Just feel the pinch of two strong magnets on your finger and tell me that nothing dynamic is being produced. I know that no work is produced but it makes me think that there must be two types of acceleration: 1) Acceleration which is caused by the deflection of a mass by a force, and 2) acceleration which is intrinsic and not caused by anything apparent. The acceleration attributable to forces and masses would in this case be the accelerations describable by thermodynamics.

The acceleration not involving the operation of forces upon masses would presumably be observable by the simple perpetuation of the existence of the state of the mass whatever it may be, particle or photon. This acceleration produces no heat until it is slowed because no “work” is being done.

In this case it is not acceleration that produces EM radiation, it is work that produces EM radiation. Acceleration in this case produces a continuing persistence of force.

If this is true, the definition of acceleration would have to be reinterpreted. This would “explain” how there can be acceleration without EM radiation.

Don

[longstreet]

I don't really know what you are talking about. Light travels at c in a vacuum. It's not accelerating. Besides, light *is* electromagentic radiation.

What causes EM is a changing electro magnetic (EM) field. You gotta be carefull about expecting EM radiation from moving charges. True: Individual moving point charges is not electro-static; but electro-statics makes no distinction about the internal movement of charges in uniform charge distributions. Constant currents are described by magneto-statics. When I say constant current I don't mean constant velcity of the individual charges. The current can be straight, or loop-the-looped, or bowtied; it doesn't matter. As long as the *configuration* of current is constant you have a constant EM field. ie NO EM RADIATION.

ONLY when you have a change in currents, a change in charges, and hence a change in the EM field do you have electro-*dynamics*: ie EM radiation.

If you reguard as an electron around a nucleus as a single zero-dimensional particle of charge -e orbiting with bore radius do you have a problem of expecting EM radiation. However, if you just reguard it as a ring of charge orbiting the nucleus, causing a CONSTANT current, then there is no electro-dynamics. This is a simple electro-static, AND magneto-static, problem.

[Donald McKinley]

Hello C

I understand what you mean by the constant currents producing no EM field. I know that’s correct electro-statically, but something seems unsatisfying about leaving it at that, I can’t say just what.

As far as the acceleration goes, it just seems to me like there must be a “motor under the hood” making the thing go.

After all if you consider an idealized flash in empty space, the physical spherical area of influence of the wave front does grow at an exponential rate. (yes I know, so does a pond ripple which is definitely not accelerated) It still seems like a type of acceleration to me. I know “type” sounds funny here.

Does it bother you scientifically that things seem to be running down, but we are still here. I don’t think that it is running down, I just don’t believe it. I can’t conceive of a physical beginning to the universe. That seems very significant to me. I think that may be the real reason that I look somewhere for continuous acceleration.

Don

[longstreet]

"the physical spherical area of influence of the wave front does grow at an exponential rate. (yes I know, so does a pond ripple which is definitely not accelerated) It still seems like a type of acceleration to me. I know “type” sounds funny here."

Well, sure it grows at the square of the radius. But since energy is conserved the intensity of the wavefront also falls off at the square of the radius. I'm sure you know the inverse square law. The total energy is always constant. You are right it is a "type" of acceleration; the rate of change of the rate of change of the surface area. The area is increasing at faster and faster pace, but this is just a geometrical effect. The velocity of the light, which is perpendicular to the surface of the sphere, is not changing. You can't accelerate light in a vacuum anyway. Maybe you mean somehow changing its wavelength? Well, it does not change never-the-less.

[Richard Hull]

Ideas spread through discussions like this. Don made a key statement that is hardly casual in nature and shows he is noodling well.

I just found his statement that EM radiation is a sign that WORK HAS BEEN DONE incredibly fascinating and amazingly core level. You can't have charge without an associated real, physical mass. (the two are hopelessly linked as a pair and the source of all potential energies in the universe.) The only way EM radiation is emitted is when charged physical particles are accelerated (any change of state of motion). Work must be done to do this.

At the core level all work is done due to the exchange of potential energies at some core event. (there are many dynamic force intermediaries) EM radiation is one of them for EM radiation can die by transporting energy (dynamically) from one location to another and spending it there in the form of the re-kineticizing matter through change of motion. Ultimately though some potential energy gun had to go towards a ground state and accelerate charged matter or the EM would never be brought into existence.

This shoe horns in to my theory that all core energy in the universe is 100% potential and all dynamic energy, both kinematic and electromagnetic are the result of exchanges between the two great potential energies.

Yes, the idea of work being done in the universe as the sole source of electromagnetic radiation is a good one. When we see light we know real work had to be done. Constant velocity and constant acceleration, as normally observed, does no work and therefore creates no EM radiation. Work assumes a change of state in any static system.

Not all work produces EM, however. For lifting an electrically neutral matter brick emits no EM from the brick, but does leave it with an increased G field potential energy. (we cocked a PE energy gun). NOTE* there was heat (EM) released in the engine that lifted the brick - your body - as no mechanical system is 100% efficient.

The energy needed to lift the brick came from the food we ate which originated in the photosynthetic energy from the sun to grow the crops. The EM light intermediary was created on the sun in some gravitationally generated fusion event which was due to the infall of neutral hydrogen matter to make the star. The infalling matter was ultimately kineticized by light or its original de-ionization remenant kinetic energy from the primordial union of the proton and electron, electrostatically billions of years ago.

EM radiation is the death leak for potential energy. As photons are absorbed through any number of processes the result is always a dynamic energy. At the highest levels, this normally translates into motion of mass, as light is absorbed and degraded. This process stirs the universe at the lowest thermal levels where gravity can't effectively act on electrostatically neutral hydrogen atoms in interstellar space.

Light and magnetism are "resultants" and not primary entities.

The leak is at the billionth or trillionth of an ev photonic level where there is just no transfer possibility left in the photon. This little tiny amount is left as waste heat. It is incapable of much useful transferance. Thus the zero degree K heat death of the universe will occur when the electrostatic ionizability of all EM radiation is below that of the cesium atom and when the universe is gravitationally locked up in distantly separated neutron stars, black holes or other neutral matter super or even micro structures. (who can go this far forward with certainty?)

Richard Hull

[longstreet]

Work is defined as energy. When you do work on something you add energy to it. When it does work on you it adds energy to you. So you know that when an electro magnetic wave is created, because it carries energy with it, that energy had to be transformed at some level.

I feel that acceleration and work is not the same thing. For one, acceleration is a vector, and energy is a scalar. When velocity changes magnitude OR direction you have acceleration. But of course kinetic energy is only concerned with the magnitude of velocity. So you can have acceleration without changing the kinetic energy (no work). This is why magnetic fields donnot do work on charged particles.

Also, acceleration is the time rate of change of velocity, and work is just a change of energy; It is not a rate of change of anything. Although power is the time rate of work, or the time rate of change of energy.

This may seem pedantic but it is important to seperate the individual acceleration of particles from energy being exchanged with the electromagnetic field. A simple example is a simple circle of charges that is rotating. The individual charges are accelerating toward the center of the circle. They have to be or they would just fly off and they wouldn't form a circle anymore. However, no work is being done on them.

Another way of describing it is to consider the inward acceleration is perpendicular to the line of travel. A force is just mass times acceleration. And work is the force times the distance the force moves the mass. However, since the force here is always perpendicular to the line of travel, no work is being done. However, the force is still non-zero so you must have acceleration. I'm just illustrating that acceleration != work necessarily.

[Donald McKinley]

I understand what you mean that acceleration and work are not the same thing. Your explanation is a good one.

I hope this doesn't sound overly contentious, but I have to take issue with the no EM for a moved brick. If this isn't correct please let me know. I know that it isn't usually pictured in this way.

Neglecting the method of moving the brick, If the brick is accelerated evenly from zero to max and then back down to zero in a span of one second, there wil be a single half sinusoidal wave EM emission of exactly one lightyear in half wavelength with an amplitude directly proportional to the maximum velocity attained by the brick. This is also regardless of the magnetic properties of the brick. The magnetic properties would be very significant of course if they affected the force needed to accelerate the brick.

My guess is that if for example five pounds of force were applied to the brick to move it through the mentioned path, this would be the same EM wave which would be produced by a thin current carrying wire which also required five pounds of force to move it through the same path.

If the five pounds is exact, then in the case of the current carrying wire, the vast majority of the EM wave would be attributable to the five pounds acting on the charge flow and the small balance would be attributable to the five pounds acting on the mass of the small wire. But in both cases the actual wave would be more or less identical.

Also interesting, if you have a five pound weight orbiting something with a two second orbital period, the EM wave of the moving mass will be the same for a half orbit as for the brick and the wire. I'm not 100% sure about these examples.

Is this correct?

All changes of momentum are accompanied by respective EM emissions.

Don

[longstreet]

"there wil be a single half sinusoidal wave EM emission of exactly one lightyear in half wavelength with an amplitude directly proportional to the maximum velocity attained by the brick"

No offense, but that makes absolutely no sense to me.

Assuming the brick is electrically neutral there cannot be a current. So no electric or magnetic fields. If there are no fields to begin with you can't change them. If you aren't changing them there is no EM wave.

If the brick is some kind of dipole there is a different story. But I'm pretty sure Richard ment a uniformly neutral brick with no internal dipoles (or quads, or anything).

[Donald McKinley]

The brick that I mention is a real brick as neutral as possible. I'm not 100% sure of my point, but the brick has zillions of electrons in it, right? They are accelerated when the brick is accelerated, right?

That must mean a basic field configured according to the right hand rule with both E and M perpendicular to the line of motion and the curl vector oriented clockwise looking from the perspective of the brick toward the direction of propagation and having whatever strength a five pound accelerative force would give it.

If this is not right, I hope you see the fallacy in my thinking and can explain where it comes from.

Thanks,
Don

[longstreet]

Yes. there are zillions of electrons, but also zillions of protons. As the brick is moving you can imagin the electrons producing a current in one direction, and since there is equal and opposite charge of protons there is equal current in the opposite direction. The two currents cancel out.

Carter

[Alex Aitken]

There is a relatively simple reason for this.

To emit radiation you need an accelerating charge. You also need a lower energy state the electron can go to. For a free electron in an accelerator this is no problem, it can just slow down. For an electron in an excited atom, there are lower energy states and these produce atomic spectra. For a ground state atom though all the alternative states for any electron, including ones closer to the nucleus are higher energy overall, so they cannot radiate.

Its just conservation of energy.

[Richard Hull]

Carter's right. I did mean that was a plan old garden variety neutral matter brick.

EM is classically launched by forever extant charged particles undergoing acceleration

A magnetic field is common to all moving, forever extant, naked charged particles whether moving at constant velocity or accelerating.

Moving and accelerating, forever extant charged particles can create magnetic fields and EM radiation based on above examples.

A changing magnetic field can only move forever extant charged particles about, never create them.

No EM radiation can ever create net universal charge or mass.

No chicken or egg scenarios here. We know who the forever extant creators are as well as those who are the fleeting, doomed created entities.

Richard Hull