How fast do electrons move around a nucleus?

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15 Jan 2006, 2:14 pm

I'm reading a biology book, and the question came to me. Also, would it be a chemistry book that details this kind of stuff? Or physics?

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Sarah
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15 Jan 2006, 2:44 pm

Your probably more likely to find it in a physics book.

vetivert
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15 Jan 2006, 2:58 pm

could be either, but i agree that a particle physics book would probably be best.

Emettman
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15 Jan 2006, 3:02 pm

Chemisty is interested in electron shells around atoms, for valency and bonding questions. To question what an electron is, and what it's doing, you will need to shade over to physics.

The Bohr model of the atom has orbits, and it's a very useful model if it's remembered that's what it is. ( It doesn't necessarily mean electrons *are* whizzing round like lots of space stations round the Earth) At that scale quantum makes a major difference.

If I read my quick search aright, the answer is around 1/137 of the speed of light,
which makes for a really fast orbit of the order of 10 to the -16 of a second.

sandra3
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15 Jan 2006, 7:17 pm

i have no idea, even though i have a chemistry class they never talked about how fast things move around eachother. im sure they move pretty slow

snowman
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15 Jan 2006, 9:22 pm

I looked it up on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron

Namiko
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16 Jan 2006, 12:10 am

Definately out of my area of study at the moment. If you want to do more research, start with physics. Yeah, all chemistry says really is an electron is a particle within an atom that has a negative charge and is whizzing around in a "electron cloud" around the nucleus of the atom/molecule.

Quantem mechanics rocks!

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Wowbagger
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16 Jan 2006, 1:35 am

Thanks to Heisenberg, there isn't an answer for how fast electrons move. Physicists/chemists don't talk about velocity because at the quantum level, what matters is energy and angular momentum and wavelength.

hell_grey
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16 Jan 2006, 1:36 am

yeah the heisenberg uncertainty principle says you can't know the speed of an electron if you know its position and vice versa so i dont think its possible to know o.0 im prolly wrong though but thast what we learned in my HS physics class last year anyway.

Namiko
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16 Jan 2006, 12:23 pm

hell_grey wrote:

Makes sense.

Electrons are so small that it's hard to know exactly what they're doing. As soon as you figure out what is happening at one moment, it changes for the next moment. So, basically it's impossible (or near impossible) to know what is happening with the electrons all the time.

That's why there are electron clouds. Electron clouds are areas of space where the electron is most likely to be found around the nucleus of the atom. Orbitals, VSEPR, hybrid orbital theory.... the list of things like that goes on and on.

Yes, chemistry is one of my obsessions... :roll:

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kevv729
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16 Jan 2006, 4:40 pm

The simple answer is so fast We can not yet detirmend this yet. Though We will yet try to find this out for sure in the end too.

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