What happens when electrons collide circling an atom?

I don’t think they can because the Pauli exclusion principle says no two electrons can have the same state within the atom so they line up in patterns and don’t collide.

I don’t think they do because they’re all negatively charged so they repel each other. But in that simulater thing a year or two ago, when it had one in a million chance of ending the world, remember, was that what they were trying to do? Crash electrons off each other? Hopefully someone will have more info than me…

1)They make the trip so fast that the area they occupy is generally referred to as the “electron cloud” and are largely considered to be areas rather than single points.
2)They do not collide. As stated they are both negatively charged and would repel one another. Having too many electrons in an orbital in fact makes an atom highly “charged” or reactive.

@lemming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

Oh ok, I was wrong, it wasn’t electrons. Thanks @tedd

So, physical chemistry, yay! First misconception: they do not ‘circle’, per se. Electrons are subject to wave-particle duality, and so position and movement do not really have as much meaning. They do move, but circling isn’t really how it is done. Arg, talking about this is strange.

Okay, so, short way: They move, but they move in complex and, frankly, unknown patterns. We know where they should/can be, and we know the kinetic energy they carry, but we do not know in what way they move. Reasons for the this are myriad, but i can tell you most electrons do not circle the nucleus, but move in their own spaces, in the clouds. And most clouds don’t circle the nucleus.

And the reason for the ‘electron cloud’ is not the fast movement, but the fact that they are not points, but potentials. Those clouds show where the electron may be, the most probably areas for the electron to be localized, but because of wave-particle duality, they don’t exist and move as points most of the time.

Think about it like this: if you go to the beach, and see a wave, can you point out where, precisely, that wave ‘is’? You can show the crest, draw the trough, show where it originated, where the next wave ‘starts’ (though that’s more a matter of conception then reality), but can you pick one point where it exists as a particle? That’s what it would be to point out where an electron is.

So, with that, there’s a few reasons that electrons don’t collide. Part is charge, but only part. If it was just charge, electrons would be colliding with protons all the time and that wouldn’t work out very well for us. Some of it has to do with the Pauli Exclusion Principle @flutherother mentioned, but not entirely.

The first reason is that electrons tend to associate in pairs, but these pairs do not interact directly. Almost all electron clouds have a ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ area (not charge, but mathematical signs. Things get abstract fast), and each electron stays in one area, and will not enter into the other. If they were to enter, the electrons would flip simultaneously and they still wouldn’t see each other. So, they just never come close enough. This is the practical upshot of the exclusion principle.

Then there’s electrons from other clouds, but that is covered much by charges, with clouds repelling each other as you may expect. There’s also similar reasons to above between clouds, with electrons that come close jumping between levels and displacing other electrons, but this mostly just happens because of external stimuli. For the most part, electrons stick to their clouds and don’t bother each other.

A last reason is because of the wave state. Because of being a wave property, electrons with different energy can find it hard to interact with electrons of different energy. They just don’t ‘see’ each other. Since the only electron with exactly the same energy is localized in another part of the cloud, the electrons from different levels tend not to interact, even if they come close.

Again, think about water waves. They ‘collide’, sort of, but they really just tend to move past each other. They may grow or shrink depending on how they interact (interference patterns), but after the split second of interaction the waves each go on their way, pretty much unaffected. Same deal here.

Last bit: we have collided electrons, it’s relatively simple to do. I used electron beams in intro physics lab, even. But that requires lots of energy to do, far in excess of what is typically found in an electron, and so it happening in a normal, non-collider setting is essentially impossible, because it has to overcome all the forces I mentioned above, and probably a few i neglected to mention.

@BhacSsylan

Lovely answer!

I think that all those years and years of grade-school textbooks and diagrams showing electrons “circling” atoms have lead to many misconceptions!

@crisw They have. Oh, god, the pictures i get grading exams sometimes. It hurts my brain. chemistry teaching has this annoying notion that it’s better to tell easy to understand lies in the beginning, and then replace them as you go on. Mostly with better worded lies, though. So, those learning chemistry (like me) have to reorganize thier thoughts every few years. It’s bloody annoying. I’m a Ph.D student, and just last year (my second semester here), I learned that one of the main tenets of organic chemistry, that carbon can only have 4 bonds, isn’t always true. Is, in fact, frequently not true. Gah!

So, yeah. The fact that those who don’t study chemistry are lost with this stuff is no surprise at all.

@BhacSsylan Very helpful.

I’m a little unclear on the paired electron concept. If a valence ring or shell or whatever it is (40 years out of chemistry here) has more than two electrons, are you saying they will not have the same energy state – except for these pairs?

@6rant6 Precisely. Er, mostly. The common term is shell, by the way (since it’s no longer considered like an orbit). So, electrons in a given shell may have the same amount of energy (such a 6 p electrons in a shell), but they’re oriented differently, and that makes a lot of difference. This energy is known as a ‘vector’ quantity, and so direction matters. A ‘scaler’ does not depend on direction. Take speed and velocity. Speed is a scalar, and if you’re going 40 mph, no matter the direction you’re going 40 mph. But, if you’re going north, then your velocity is 40 mph north, and that’s different then 40 mph South.

And to take that a little farther, if you have two cars, one with a velocity 40 mph north and one 40 mph South, they may collide, while two with the same velocity never will, since they’d just stay exactly the same relative position. So, though the scalar quantity of ‘speed’ is the same in both cases, the velocity is different, and result in two different outcomes.

So, with electrons, this extra direction component makes a large difference, and makes it so that two electrons with the same magnitude of energy (a scalar), will still not be able to interact easily, since their direction is different. To continue with the p electrons i mentioned above, they’re separated into 3 pairs, and each pair is oriented differently. If you have them in front of you, one pair goes up and down, one left and right, and one forward and back.

They can’t collide. Electrons are quantum objects. On the atomic scale, electrons are less like a point and more like a probability field of where an electron is likely to be. Also, the Pauli exclusion principle states that 2 electrons cannot share the same state of motion (have identical motion properties), so electrons are forced into shells. If an extra electron was to be put in a shell, more than one electron would have to be in the same state.

The reason the electron come in pairs is due to a property called spin. Without spin, the first electron shell should only have one possible state of motion, thereby only one electron. Each shell would in turn have half of the electrons that they acually do. However, electrons also have another property as its spin, which can come in two values for electrons. This in turn doubles the amount of possible states of motion. So electrons come in pairs, each sharing every property except spin, which is an almost unobservable quantum property.

@PhiNotPi They can collide, as I said. Just requires tons of every to overcome barrier forces. Also, it depends on how you’re meaning ‘unobservable’. Chemists observe spin all the time, it drives some of our most powerful tools, NMR and EPR, and others. And that’s how MRI works, by the way (which is just a modified version of NMR)

@BhacSsylan It sounds like you and I are talking about different types of spin (or at least different sizes of it). I am talking about the spin of electrons and other “point” particles. I think that you are thinking about the rotation of a nucleus, which is on a much, much larger scale. Here is the type of spin that I am talking about. (click on the type that says Spin (Physics); I can’t get Fluther to accept the actual page as a link)

it’s the same physical quantity. EPR does work on electron spin. If you mean ‘directly’ observable, sure, but very few things are ever truly directly observable, especially in chemistry/particle physics. EPR works on the coupling of electron and proton spins.

And from your article, “spin is a fundamental characteristic property of elementary particles, composite particles (hadrons), and atomic nuclei.” Emphasis mine.

@BhacSsylan It took you that far into your PhD to realize that one of the major tenets of organic chem has a major “exception?” lol…. :P

Yah O-chem sucks like that… Its like they give you the rules and then explain all the exceptions to the rules. Like if they told you that all red lights mean stop in traffic….... except on the east side of town its actually yellow lights, and on the south side of town it just means slow down, and in the next town, red lights mean free coffee.

Well, I’m not an organic chemist by trade, so it took me a little longer then others, probably. My main issue is that it’s presented as LAW. Damn teaching traditions.

Hey that’s how they teach English and eventually everyone get it, no se?

@6rant6 I can’t tell if you’re joking or not >.<

@BhacSsylan Both. That is how they teach English – rules first, then twelve years of exceptions, “and what exactly does ‘nauseous’ mean anyway?” But not everyone actually learns it. “No se,” I think is Spanish for “ya know.”

Eh, debateable. There’s still a lot of people who don’t know the proper use of lots of language. Like constant misuse of ‘they’re’ and ‘their’, people saying ‘alot’, etc etc. And it’s a major problem in sciences, because it furthers the gap between academics and the public. This is a major cause for why a lot of anti-science rhetoric can get a foothold, because people don’t know how chemistry actually works! Because what most people get is a jumbled and flat-out wrong idea, because they’ve only gotten the convenient lies.

As an academic, especially one in biochemistry (which happens to be where most of the current attacks are aimed), this frustrates me to no end.

[edit] and, it should be pointed out that most people get the full gamut for English in middle and high school. Not really nitty gritty, but they get to the point of a good understanding of the language, and understanding of exceptions. Not true of chemistry and biochemistry. Most people who are not studying it as a major get only the lies, and very frequently are not told how it actually works. Again, for public relations this is a horrible idea. It would be like the level of English taught in schools meant that an English professor would be essentially speaking a different language then the general public. Hyperbole aside, this isn’t the case.

@BhacSsylan What’s debatable?

I look at your last answer and think, “He should have spent more time learning to write.”

”...the proper use of lots of language…”?
”...get the full gamut for English…”?

Maybe you can find someone who studied English in college to help you craft something more readable. I’m thinking that it could be the inability of scientists to express themselves well that will forever preclude the general populace figuring out what the hell they’re talking about.

Well, you are in fact proving my point that English is not learned/taught all that well. But, even still, you were able to understand me. I should have double checked my writing, for sure. I do suffer from some grammatical mistakes, especially when typing on public forums. I beg your forgiveness.

But, you seemed to understand my descriptions of electron movements just fine, or at least you said they were helpful. Was this not true? Because had i explained it as it is typically explained in general chemistry, you still would have been confused, because the descriptions given in general level chemistry are worlds away from what actually occurs.

And, on the other side, had I linked you to a physical chemistry paper you would have been lost. Much of that is terminology, to be sure, but still large parts are simple gaps caused by those teaching methods.

And, just to say, being patronizing is never a good idea. I have had much success on this site explaining complex chemistry by not handing out lies and hand waving, but explaining the realities of biochemistry and chemistry. I may have some typographical and grammatical mistakes, but I’ve never had anyone say what i was saying was not understandable.

@BhacSsylan I actually didn’t get what you meant by “It’s debatable.” That’s why I commented on the writing. I guess it seemed condescending to me to comment, “A lot of people who don’t know the proper use of lots of language.” and then…

I think it’s also pretty naive to believe that the current explanation of subatomic physics is ”... how chemistry actually works.” It’s theory right? Even with phenomena we can see, science gets rewritten occasionally. All of this language describing physics stuff is toward the development of a predictive model; saying that we’re uncovering the truth is not only inaccurate but contributes to the confusion lay people suffer.

Fox News followers say, “Oh, they keep changing what’s true.” No, they don’t, they just keep making adjustments to the conceptual model which seems to predict what’s going on out there – and in there. Science by its nature is fuzzy round the edges. No one KNOWS that what they use to describe reality is actually reality. Scientists are supposed to know that. Sometimes that gets lost in the stampede toward a new idea.

And just so I don’t come off as a total curmudgeon, I do appreciate your contributions to this and other threads. I’m going to hold off and not regard it as the truth, but it certainly takes me leaps and bounds in understanding current thinking.

Well, to be fair, I never said I wasn’t one of those people. One of my favorite phrases used to be “Of the three languages I studied, I only ever understood Latin. And that’s counting English”.

Now, as to the gist of your response, yes, they’re all still theory. Everything is still a theory. Logically, it is impossible to prove anything true or false. And science does get re-written occasionally, even quite frequently, frankly. Though those re-writes tend to be at the ragged edge, not the central concepts.

Heck, even that is a common misconception in science, because that isn’t adequately explained. My main issue is that lay persons do not, usually, have any real understanding of science. This is not, in my opinion, their fault. I lay blame with the fact that easy lies are passed off as truth all along the way, and we never even get to telling people what a ‘theory’ means in scientific terms!

Almost everyone still thinks electrons still circle the nucleus, when that’s been known as untrue since the early 1900s. Why is this? It’s because it’s what gets told to people in high school, even early college chemistry. Everyone who’s not a chemist goes off to other classes before the truth comes out. Then, when a scientist tries to talk about electron clouds, no one but other scientists have any idea what he’s talking about. Where’s the sense in that?

So, my response is yes, this is all, and shall forever be, theory. However, it is an extremely well vetted theory, and one I assume to hold true. Why? Because if we don’t assume some predictive model, we may as well just go around waving out hands at the sky. This model has been very well proven and documented, and been well known for decades. May it be displaced? Certainly. If string or quantum gravity theory ever gets proven, they could turn things around. But until then, this is considered as true as we can get, and it should be taught as such, in my opinion.

@BhacSsylan No argument that the best idea we have should be taught! I like the word “model” that you just used. I think that’s a concept that would help people to understand but still have a place for updates. In other word, this way of thinking about things seems to mirror what we observe. So as we work to refine it further, we’ll continue to use it to predict how things will go.

I really don’t know that there is an answer for the lazy thinking masses. Fox had a news report this week that “debunked” global warning. Even people who are quoted in the article and who openly oppose some of the conclusions that support the placing of blame on industrialized society said flatly, “It didn’t make any sense.” Still I’m sure my mother now believes that global warming is total liberal bullshit.

Well, I’d say under unusual circumstances electrons do “collide” in a way (before they are no longer electrons) when a neutron star or a black hole is being formed. The Pauli exclusion principle works for living stars and white dwarfs, right?

@mattbrowne It seems you are right and the Pauli Exclusion Principle doesn’t hold in extreme circumstances.

The circling orbiting point electrons are part of a model used at the beginning of the development of the quantum mechanics. It is a logical transition from the classical forces that act on points to quantum theory. But later development of quantum theory showed that the orbitals are not alike planets circling around nuclei but their presence is spread in clouds around the nuclei, as mentioned earlier in this discussion. Electrons (or any quantum particles) can also be represented by arrows (not points). So I often use another model to visualize electron clouds around nuclei, where an electron is extended like a spinning needle at both sides of the nuclei. This makes it easier to explain to layman, as you can encounter these situations in daily life, Electron spin and Pauli exclusion principle

@ArjenD – Welcome to Fluther! It’s great to have so many scientists in our community. It seems hard to get the atom / solar system comparison out of people’s heads. Mine included ;-)