Is that really a hydrogen atom? Is a hydrogen atom just an electron orbiting around a proton?
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Well, long ago, physicists like Ernest Rutherford
thought that
might be a good way to picture a hydrogen atom, but, as
we'll see later, the
discoveries of quantum mechanics completely changed our thinking and our
models of atoms.
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So, does that mean that electrons don't go in orbits around atoms?
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It's not the best model for an atom, but just recently, physicists figured out
how to make a large number of electrons stick to particles of dust,
and then made such charged dust particles go around a positively charged
metal ball in the laboratory.
Here's a movie of two charged dust particles in
orbit around a ball (the orbit is seen from the side).
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 This movie's size is 364 Kb. |
