electrons jumping down energy levels

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by dazzlepecs, Sep 4, 2007.

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  1. dazzlepecs Registered Senior Member

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    do they not bypass the space between levels?? As in teleport from one level to the other?


    (yes very limited knowledge)
     
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  3. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    from what I understand, every space is quantized, so there is no such thing as teleporting. But you should look it up to make sure.
     
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  5. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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  7. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    What do you mean by "the space between levels"? The electron changes from having one amount of energy to another amount instantly without having the intermediate amounts of energy.

    But if you're talking about the electron's location in space, I believe that every energy level has at least some spatial overlap with ever other possible energy level. No matter what energy level the electron is in, there's always a non-zero possibility that it could be in almost any point in space around the nucleus, and (I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure I'm not) every energy level will share some areas around the nucleus with every other energy level.
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    The electron doesn't have a well-defined position around the atom. It is not like a little planet orbiting a star-like nucleus.

    So, in a sense, you could say that it is "teleporting" even when it isn't changing energy levels - jumping randomly around in its appropriate electron "shell". But that's not the most accurate picture, since the electron itself is not exactly a localised point-like object.
     
  9. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Even more than that. It's not even restricted to a "shell" as you seem to be saying. The electrons simply form a cloud around the nucleus and can be anywhere in that cloud from moment to moment. The so-called "valence shell" is just a matter of convience rather than a physical fact. The electron(s) that last combined with another atom to form a molecule, once released, may never join with another in future reactions. Which one does is simply a matter of chance.
     
  10. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    From what I understand, electrons don't like each other, so they try to stay away from each other as much as possible, which is why we have clouds or orbits. It takes a release of energy to accept an electron, which is why a cluster of electrons is almost always accompanied with very low or stable energy. The orbitals S,P,D etc are a result of energy and electron affinity. But even orbitals overlap, especially in hybridization, which means the space between orbitals are theoritical at best-electrons are not exactly localized. James R said it best, though I wouldn't use the word teleporting because I've never heard anyone describe it that way.
     
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2007
  11. Scull Registered Member

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    Seems to me that electrons in some weird way can teleport. I can't remember where I read that though, but it has something to do with the principles of quantum mechanics.
     
  12. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    what does it mean to teleport?
     
  13. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    It means to disappear from one place and re-appear in another without traveling through the distance in between. But again, I'm pretty sure that most (all?) electron wave-functions overlap in space with most other wave functions...if you insist on thinking of the electron as being in a specific place.
     
  14. Scull Registered Member

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    Heisenburg uncertainty principle: cannot know both velocity and position.

    I don't know anything about the wave function stuff, other than light and its wave/ particle duality.
     
  15. Gerhard Kemmerer Banned Banned

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    Most people would guess that electrons cannot teleport, but there are many indications that parts of matter do just that. Space and time anomolies are the clues to understanding the manner in which matter is propogated on a continual basis. (The very suggestion that matter is a momentary occurrence, or something renewed moment by moment horrifies most, it challenges their billiard ball self existant world, little realizing that the forces that cradle matter are far more permanent than it).
     
  16. Aman shah Registered Senior Member

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    Information about orbital states of electron for an atom has been successfully teleported as atomic information transfer by IBM Scientists.However no material have been teleported till now.
    I don't think,that materialistic teleportation will be ever possible.Neither time machine is possible.
     
  17. Prof.Layman totally internally reflected Registered Senior Member

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    The irony of it all is that Bhor worked with Heisenburg and neither said the other was really wrong and both theories were put into mainstream physics. There is reason to this madness. In a way they where both right. All Heisenburg did was show that the electrons didn't have specific locations at the different orbitals, but they still only exist at these orbitals. There is a property of particles that travel close to the speed of light were they only exist in places where there could be no self interference along its world line where the wavelength don't match up. It is said that they "know" this information before even setting down that particlular path and will not take it altogether. So the distance between these orbitals would be the same distance for an orbit to in effect "cancel" its own wave, so it will never choose that path. So then it vanishes and completely disseapers untill it goes to another orbital or valance shell. No official explanation can be made about this because physicist say you can't explain partical behaivor because it doesn't make any sense or common sense, but I think it is obvious that it has to do with self interaction by traveling close to the speed of light. So we just assume that particles "know" or "plan" their paths faster than light with some spooky action at a distance and they prefer to plan routes where their own wavlength would not cancel itself. Oh and Bhor didn't beleive in quanta...
     
  18. Gerhard Kemmerer Banned Banned

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    I have heard it said by a scientist, - as if there is only one electron in the universe, shared by all matter.
    While there is this apparent sharing going on, at the speed of light, or it would have to be instantaneous if so, there is the other side that demands material to be in a specific place in a specific time, more along the lines of QT.

    Both these conditions are met in matter, so that both a quantum world and a continuum coexist. I undersatnd these are produced by the duality of a background force in matter, which not only provides the fabric for matter to exist, but maintains and affects changes in matter.

    The Higgs boson and its field is the most recent discovery that to my mind demonstrates the edge between the tangible and intangible forces, and that all particles and waves are capable of the same actions as a Higgs under special conditions with the background force, but such changes rarely take place (naturally, because they can be artificially induced).

    However, conditions of change in matter happen all the time, due to the background force, or other surrounding particles, such as the electron which will operate at different energy levels, that reflect predictable harmonics in nature.
     
  19. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Was this scientist on LSD when he said this?
     
  20. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    origin:

    The scientist in question was, from memory, either Dirac or Fermi. And no, I don't think he was on drugs at the time.
     
  21. el es Registered Senior Member

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  22. Gerhard Kemmerer Banned Banned

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    It does seem like a brazen thing to say, but it sounds like part of the string theory as well.

    In one aspect, I look at matter as a wave on water, where the impact or effect of the wave is what we call matter, and the water itself is the background force or substance. Since we are made of matter or a wave, we can only recognise or see what happens to other waves, but the water itself escapes our perception.

    So an electron can appear and disappear at any time and place, and while it is not the same electron, it is the same water that causes it to appear on the stage of matter.

    It is a simple illustration, but it is extremely complex, for eg, the process of appearing on the stage of matter is through graduations of what could be called space time harmonics.
     
  23. wlminex Banned Banned

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    When an electron 'moves' (convenience again) to a lower energy 'level', it likely assumes a lower position in the 'electron cloud' (convenience again), it yields the lost energy as emitted photons (e.g., characteristic X-rays, or EM waves of a specific wavelength). Likewise, it takes addition of energy to kick (excite, move) an electron to a higher energy level, which is usually a temporary phenomenon, and the electron then resumes its normal level with emission of the added energy as a photon or EM of wavelength characteristic of the specific atomic excitation . Ref. Electron microprobe quantitative analysis. The emitted EM is detectible via wavelength (diffraction) or energy dispersive detectors.
     
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