A Better Way To Picture Atoms

Thanks to Google for sponsoring a portion of this video, supporting small businesses, and helping people find jobs. More on that at the end. Atomic orbitals have long been a source of frustration for me. On the one hand, you have simple cartoon diagrams that make them look friendly... but are so varied and vague that they don't really convey much beyond the basic idea that

atoms

have a nucleus and some electrons. Some people try to take the cartoonish diagrams and make them look more random or "quantum" (which is an improvement), but they are still largely substitutes for the vague idea of ​​"atom." On the other hand, you have atomic orbitals represented as fuzzy clouds or balloons or rainbow donuts, which are definitely more technically accurate (or technically inspired), but neither of which seem to give me any idea of ​​what's really going on, like , What does this thing have to do with particles in orbit?

Is the electron inside it? Or on the surface? Why do some have more spots and others donuts? And why are some donuts rainbow colored? I want to know what an atom looks like! And I want that image to actually have something to do with the essential reality of

atoms

(since they are, in fact, real things). You know, how a diagram of the solar system is both a totally not-to-scale cartoon and yet also represents the very real idea that all the planets orbit the sun in roughly the same plane, and that some are more far away and some are closer; and if it is animated we can see that the closer planets complete their orbits more frequently.

It's a beautiful photo! And that's what I want for atoms: a good image. There are a few things I would like that image to convey, some because they are important to the physics of atoms and others because they are questions my brain wants answers to. Like: Where is the electron? At what speed does it orbit? How much energy does it have? How big is the image in relation to other images? Of course, the wave-particle nature of quantum mechanics means that some of these ideas (like the position of the electron) don't translate exactly from our everyday intuition to the atomic scale...

BUT, there is a way to think about the wave. -particle. duality where you imagine the wave function as a bunch of water and the particle as a speck of dust in that water; the particle is guided primarily by where the water goes (and the water is guided by the equations that determine how the water behaves depending on its circumstances). And if you apply the mathematics of that idea to atomic orbitals and then render them in 3D, this is what you get. It is not beautiful? Here's another one. And other. I actually made a bunch of these.

And they are all fascinating and beautiful, and isn't the ground state of the hydrogen atom just as pretty? And aren't states of excitement so majestic? There is so much structure and detail to them that I love it. You can see the patterns in the orbitals, you can get the feeling that they actually ARE orbitals (I mean, something is orbiting!). Well, I have to be clear: each of the dots does not represent a separate electron: the entire collection represents the wave function of a single electron, and the individual dots represent all the places that electron could be (a higher density of dots means a higher probability that the electron is there).

Electrons with higher energy are more likely to be far from the nucleus, so higher-energy orbitals are larger. The motion of the points shows the "flow" of the wave function and DOES correspond to some extent with their actual angular momentum, although they are NOT electron trajectories. Unless you believe Bohm trajectories are real (in which case, they really are electron trajectories!). I'll let the philosophers of physics fight that. But the point is that these images are created by representing real electron wave functions in a visual language that our brain can understand: that of objects, light, shadows and movement in 3D space.

There are actually things orbiting!! And they are pretty! I hope you like them too. Oh, one last thing: I 100% understand that they are not easy to draw. So if you want a cartoon representation of an atom that is simple but more based on atomic physics, here is my proposal: It is based on the three "P" orbitals (those in the "P" block of the periodic table): one In them the electron orbits in one direction, one in the opposite direction and in the third the electron orbits in the same amount but around some perpendicular direction, and we cannot know which one, so the points do not move in the orbital middle, and why I have drawn a dotted line and a question mark for the side circle.

And if you want, you can add one electron to each orbital, or two electrons, if one is facing up and the other is facing down. THIS is a MinutePhysics-approved animated representation of an atom. Thanks to Google for sponsoring this part of my video. When Google reached out to sponsor MinutePhysics, I immediately said yes, because I use Google Search literally every day for everything from 3D software tutorials to physics equations, weather, recipes, and of course, vaccine information. coronavirus. And Google has put a lot of focus on supporting people and small businesses over the last year: Google can even help *you* or your family and friends discover opportunities and find jobs where you live.

Simply search for “jobs for physics students” or “jobs for veterans in Montana” or “jobs for” whatever you do, and Google will help you find opportunities tailored to your needs. Thanks again to Google for sponsoring this part of my video, making it easy to convert centimeters to inches, and helping us all find the information we need. Ok, the sponsored segment is over and you're still here! You probably want to know about rainbow donuts. The color there represents the "phase" of the wave function, which reports how different wave functions interfere with each other, and is essentially represented by motion in my 3D images.