Electron filmed in motion

(off topic) Somewhere is an entire thread that explains all the codes you can use here, I just can't remember where it is!
 
Madalch said:
Same here. I keep telling my students that an electron does not go around the nucleus, it's simply spread out over a volume which surrounds the nucleus.
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Nyet. An Election is a point. While thinking of it as a cloud of negative charge can work under certian conditions it makes it hard to explain an nati bonding orbital.
 
geni said:
An Election is a point.
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Yes an election is a point in space and time but an electron must be thought of as a waveform otherwise we would still be working with the Bohr Hydrogen atom as our best model.
 
geni said:
Nyet. An Election is a point. While thinking of it as a cloud of negative charge can work under certian conditions it makes it hard to explain an nati bonding orbital.
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Quantum physics has clearly established that electrons and other subatomic particles exhibit wave-like properties. At the same time, they also exhibit particle-like properties. This is often referred to as wave-particle duality...

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

The reason why electrons are viewed in the form of a "cloud" of negative charge is due to another quirk of quantum mechanics, namely the concept of a probability distribution. The "cloud" is basically a mathematical construct that allows one to make guesses as to where electrons will be located with respect to the atom...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_cloud
 
If you look close, there's a face on the electron.

(looks like Mel Gibson to me)
 
a prediction:

the attosecond is downright long compared to subdivisions of time to come.

when violations of "C" become more mainstream, it will be a rebirth for the smallness of time.

if bhuddists got ahold of this,

the smallest unit of time is as close as you can get to "now".

(still off a bit)
 
Ancient Hindu Texts have all this division of time, really really small divisions, with explanations of what takes place in these tiny tiny divisions.

I have no idea where my ancient Hindu texts are at the moment, but I remember them claiming all these events took place in very small moments. How odd. I thought it was woo woo.
 
It is a bit mind-rattling to consider all events as being sequential.
I recall an olympic swimmer winning by 100th of a second.
using the old clocks, it would have been a tie.
 
quarky said:
a prediction:

the attosecond is downright long compared to subdivisions of time to come.

when violations of "C" become more mainstream, it will be a rebirth for the smallness of time.

if bhuddists got ahold of this,

the smallest unit of time is as close as you can get to "now".

(still off a bit)
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Well, the shortest time that is theoretically possible is the Plack time, which is about 10-44 seconds. Still quite a big bit off.
 
in a more philosophical vein,

the smallest units of time are dictated by the speed of thought.

its all a thought-construct...especially super strings.

We think in sequence, as individuals.
But now that we've thought up these tiny divisions of time, its more possible that we take turns with all the other thinkers...that we never think simultaneously.

(helps to picture the swim meet analogy taken to the attosecond)
 
Sorry to take so long to respond - I got derailed by other threads and a nasty cold :(


Acleron said:
Is this a picture of an electron?
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No, despite what the news stories say, this is not a picture of an electron. After having read the actual paper in question, this is a picture of the momentum-distribution of electrons after they've interfered with an infra-red laser beam.


From my admittedly poor knowledge of of physics the paper reads as if this a picture of the interaction of the release of an electron with light.

It may be pretty but what does it actually portray?
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You're not too far off the mark there. Basically, the process went like this. Electrons were driven along by an IR-laser field - sometimes the electrons were generated "in-phase" with the IR photons, and sometimes they were driven "out-of-phase" with the IR photons. It was the interference of the electrons with the IR-laser light that was "imaged" for the purposes of producing this picture.

The "imaging" process (if you want to think of it that way) was accomplished through the use of the attosecond (10-18 second) laser pulses. These ultra-high frequency pulses were fired at the region of interference at a direction perpendicular to the electron and IR beams. The resulting pattern of constructive and destructive interference fringes that we see are actually displaying the momentum distribution of the electrons involved in the process.

This is because we already have a good idea of where the electrons are located (since they're being "imaged" by the attosecond laser pulses), so according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP) their momenta have to be spread out. And that's what we see.

I hope this helps. Here's a picture from the paper that I stole to help illustrate the process...


 
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