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Electron filmed in motion

"Scientists have filmed an electron in motion for the first time ..."

"Using another laser, scientists can guide the motion of the electron to capture a collision between an electron and an atom on film."

You gotta love journalists!
 
However they captured it, it's pretty cool. A chemistry prof says that he always expected it to look like ripples from a stone dropped in water, and that's basically what it looks like. I assume that's because we're seeing the waveform?
 
That's a good question about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle...

INRM
 
So now that the electron has been on film, how long before it's caught throwing up outside an after-hours club and cursing at photographers?






(well someone had to make that joke...)
 
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Gord_in_Toronto said:
I wonder which one it was? :D
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The universe only has one electron! You see, it bounces back and forth from the beginning to the end of time, and we see it as an electron in one direction and a positron in the other. So they should just say that they recorded the electron instead of just an electron.

- Dr. Trintignant
 
"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Freed Electron" -- The famous TANSTAAFE quote by Milton Lunch.
 
I watched it. Ending was a little predictable, though. I saw the twist from the beginning - it was the quark that did it.

Seriously, though, while the concept is cool I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was seeing. I'm sure it's a particle physicist's wet dream, but I only saw pretty patterns.

Athon
 
Timothy said:
You gotta love journalists!
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And their proofreaders?

It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10-18 seconds long
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By my calculations that means it takes 25 to 45 minutes for an electron to circle the nucleus.
 
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athon said:
Seriously, though, while the concept is cool I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was seeing. I'm sure it's a particle physicist's wet dream, but I only saw pretty patterns.
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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.

I'm going to reserve judgment on this film until I read a real summation of it, rather than some journalist's attempt.
 
I'm curious as to what this says about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle...
 
INRM said:
I'm curious as to what this says about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle...
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Well, I wouldn't get too excited. On the video the reporter said the laser beam "froze" the electron. Just what does that mean?

We have "frozen" electrons into very small & confined places before, but though these situations are small, they aren't confinements to an infinitely small point in space. Thus, it doesn't seem there would be any violation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

It should also be pointed out that because the electrons were moving around with "along a light beam", as the article states, that this would allow them to be observed in very small regions. This is consistent with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which states that one cannot know both the position and the speed of a particle precisely.

The devil is in the details. Terms such as "frozen" and "riding along a light beam" don't do a very good job of quantifying things.

Does anyone have a more technical source on this?
 
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