Quotes About Electron

The wavefunction tells us where we might potentially find an electron when we look; but what we do find in any given experiment is random, and we can't meaningfully say why we find it here rather than there.

T]he wavefunction of the electron in [a] box can penetrate into the walls. If the walls aren't too thick, the wavefunction can actually extend right through them, so that it still has a non-zero value on the outside. What this tells you is that there is a small chance – equal to the amplitude of the wavefunction squared in that part of space – that if you make a measurement of where the electron is, you might find it within the wall, or even outside the wall.

In the absence of a magnetic field the period of all these oscillations is the same. But as soon as the electron is exposed to the effect of a magnetic field, its motion changes.

The more precisely we determine the position [of an electron], the more imprecise is the determination of velocity at this instant, and vice versa.

I sense myself, I think of myself; and as I do this I dissolve, go away, am left with nothing, nothing, nothing - unless I am the wind that blows through the immense spaces that lie between electron and electron, proton and its attendants, spaces that cannot be filled with 'nothing', since nothing is 'nothing'... (84)

The removal of an electron from the surface of an atom - that is, the ionization of the atom - means a fundamental structural change in its surface layer.

On the basis of Lorentz's theory, if we limit ourselves to a single spectral line, it suffices to assume that each atom (or molecule) contains a single moving electron.

The electron can no longer be conceived as a single, small granule of electricity; it must be associated with a wave, and this wave is no myth; its wavelength can be measured and its interferences predicted.

The electron must have infinite mass. Of course, no one believes this is literally true. But it happens to be true in the best theory that we have at the moment. And, until a better theory comes along, viewing the electron in this manner will continue to be unavoidable

He spoke of "the possible existence of an atom of mass 1 which has zero nucleus charge." Such an atomic structure, he thought, seemed by no means impossible. It would not be a new elementary particle, he supposed, but a combination of existing particles, an electron and a proton intimately united, forming a single neutral particle.

Arnold Sommerfeld hailed the Compton effect—elastic scattering of a photon by an electron—as "probably the most important discovery which could have been made in the current state of physics" because it proved that photons exist, which hardly anyone in 1923 yet believed, and demonstrated clearly the dual nature of light as both particle and wave.

As a matter of fact we live in a world in which non-identity is as entirely general as gravitation, and so every identification is bound to be in some degree a mis-evaluation. In a four-dimentional world where 'every geometrical point has a date,' even an 'electron' at different dates is not identical with itself, because the sub-microscopic processes actually going on in this world cannot empirically be stopped but only transformed.

In the early 1950s, during the near avalanche of discoveries, rediscoveries, and redefinitions of subcellular components made possible by electron microscopy, those prospecting in this newly opened field were faced with the problem of what to do with their newly acquired wealth.

Boron is carbon's neighbor on the periodic table, which means it can do a passable carbon impression and wriggle its way into the matrix of a diamond. But it has one fewer electron, so it can't quite form the same four perfect bonds.

The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrodinger's mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.

I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will not only its moment to jump off but its direction. In that case I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist.

And just like with the cell phone, the replica is not only perfect, it even maintains the electron patterns of old texts, emails, and so on. Or, in the case of a man, the replica has every last neuronal pathway and memory intact. Along with whatever ineffable quality you call the spark of life.

Now if this electron is displaced from its equilibrium position, a force that is directly proportional to the displacement restores it like a pendulum to its position of rest.

According to well-known electrodynamic laws, an electron moving in a magnetic field is acted upon by a force which runs perpendicular to the direction of motion of the electron and to the direction of the magnetic field, and whose magnitude is easily determined.

If this sounds unbearably paradoxical, maybe you should quit reading here, because this won't be the last time we find paradox in Buddhist practice or Buddhist teachings. Then again, there's paradoxical stuff in modern physics (an electron is both a particle and a wave), and modern physics works fine.

Pero sólo cuando el observador se fija en cualquier localización de un electrón, es cuando aparece ese electrón. En suma, una partícula no puede manifestarse en la realidad, es decir, en el espacio-tiempo tal como nosotros lo conocemos, hasta que es observada.

According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, we never know where the electron is going to appear in the electron cloud, yet from nothing comes something. This is why quantum physics is so exciting and unpredictable: The electron is not always physical matter; rather, it exists as the energy or as the probability of a wave. It is only through the act of observation by an observer that it appears.

Life is a partial, continuous, progressive, multiform and conditionally interactive self-realization of the potentialities of atomic electron states.

Werner feels he is gazing down into the circuitry of an enormous radio, each soldier down there an electron flowing single file down his own electrical path, with no more say in the matter than an electron has.