27k views

### Why do electrons occupy the space around nuclei, and not collide with them?

We all learn in grade school that electrons are negatively-charged particles that inhabit the space around the nucleus of an atom, that protons are positively-charged and are embedded within the ...
3k views

### Why don't loop currents produce light?

If a charge travels in a circle it must accelerate, thereby producing EM. However, a wire in a circular loop is analogous to many charges moving in a circle. So, why don't circular currents produce ...
2k views

### If an electron is an excitation of the electron field, what causes the excitation to be stable?

I won't pretend I understand even the basics of QFT, but from what I've heard about electrons, there are really two main ways of thinking about them. Quantum Mechanics describes an electron by a wave ...
2k views

### Why doesn't orbital electron fall into the nucleus of Rb85, but falls into the nucleus of Rb83?

Rb83 is unstable and decays to Kr-83. Mode of decay is electron capture. Rb85 is stable. The nuclei Rb83 and Rb85 have the same charge, but Rb85 is heavier than Rb83. While gravity acts more strongly ...
35k views

### Where do electrons get their ever-lasting circulating energy?

We all know (or maybe know) that to move, we need to spend energy. If you want to drive a car, you gotta spend gasoline. We also know that energy can't be created (first law of thermodynamics, and ...
3k views

### What do we know about the interactions between the protons and neutrons in a nucleus?

In a nucleus, the strong nuclear force causes interactions between protons and protons, between neutrons and neutrons, and between protons and neutrons. What do we know about this interaction? ...
20k views

### What happens when we bring an electron and a proton together?

I have a couple of conceptual questions that I have always been asking myself. Suppose we have an electron and a proton at very large distance apart, with nothing in their way. They would feel each ...
385 views

### Electron falling into proton approaches infinite kinetic energy why?

Foreword I believe this question to be different from the usual "Why don't electrons fall into the nucleus" because this A: asks about the details of explanations for why electrons don't fall into ...
3k views

### Prove that an electron in a hydrogen atom doesn't emit radiation [duplicate]

According to electrodynamics, accelerating charged particles emit electromagnetic radiation. I'm asking myself if the electron in an hydrogen atom emits such radiation. In How can one describe ...
3k views

### Planetary model of atom still valid?

When I was in school, I learned (from Democritus) that an atom was similar to a solar system, with the nucleus being the sun, and the electrons being the planets. Of course, there are some ...
2k views

### What causes Potassium to decay into Argon the way it does

From evolutionwiki: "Potassium 40 decays into argon 40 through a process known as electron capture. In electron capture, an electron from the innermost electron shell "falls" into the nucleus, ...
19k views

### What prevents an atom's electrons from “collapsing” onto its protons? [duplicate]

Forgive me if the answer to this is obvious. I have no formal physics training, and I remember that when I asked my physics teacher this, she just frowned and said "Good question." An electron is ...
2k views

### Why can't electrons fall into the nucleus? [duplicate]

I read a book on pop sci book on quantum mechanics and the author said that electrons do not fall into the nucleus due to quantum mechanics- which principles suggest this (I think it was Heisenberg's ...