I feel like this answer is "no, there is no reason for that to be the sequence you are seeing: it is an accident, as you can see from this careful analysis which demonstrates exactly why it is that sequence"... it is like saying "I noticed a bunch of random processes fall into a normal curve, is there a mathematical reason for that?" and saying "oh no, that is entirely on accident; here, let me show you the math for how a particular kind of random selection causes that exact distribution you are seeing, along with the equations that characterize if... as you can see, no math is involved here: this was just an accident" :/.
It always seemed natural to me that the number of electrons would grow quadratically with the distance (principal atomic number), just like the surface area of a sphere grows quadratically with increasing radius.<p>I feel like the author of the comment calling it "by accident" would be extremely unhappy with number theory. In number theory all sorts of properties seem to crop up "by accident" but turn out to have incredible consequences and you realize that virtually every "accident" couldn't have gone any other way without destroying all of mathematics.
Forgive me for posting this idiotic question in advance since I have very little knowledge of physics, but I have often been confused about one thing recently. From what I could gather a little isn't the whole electrons revolve in orbits thing proved false and outdated like universe is made of ether?<p>I heard that even the iconic atom logo is all wrong since it is proved that electrons don't revolve around anything rather come in and out of existence and present themselves in probability clouds. If that is true then why do we still keep talking about shells and energy levels?<p>Like I said my question may sound like a troll but I assure you it's not. Just want to know what's what.
This is such a classic physicist’s answer. It starts off promising, with a lot of context and detailed exposition which leads one to hope that perhaps it will be pulled together into an enlightening explanation at the end.<p>But when one reaches the end, one finds merely the truism “It is this way because that’s what you get when you solve the equations.”<p>(yes, I have spent a lot of time working with physicists.)
There's a series I've enjoyed recently: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKbZeUvPnWI&list=PLpH1IDQEoE8Q8842yVe-V8m7PN-R9rlwi" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKbZeUvPnWI&list=PLpH1IDQEoE...</a><p>"How Small is it" by David Butler. Offers a nice summary of electrons and goes deeper into the Higgs field.<p>My two cents - after watching it - is it could all (i.e., wave/particle duality of electrons) be explained a lot more clearly if we just accept there is another dimension in space that electrons move into and out of, which we've not yet figured out how to observe.<p>Would explain dark matter / dark energy a lot too. The model seems so incredibly simple to me that I just don't get why more people haven't tried to build on it (am so busy with other stuff I doubt I'll have the time to figure out unexplained Cosmological or other phenomena that could be better explained by this model).<p>But it seems really straightforward this way. Electrons are small enough, independent enough to move out of and back into another magnitude of space that we can't measure. To us in 3-space it looks like they leave and come back (the idea of a particle being a "wave with itself" is less clear if you ask me). Everything is particles, it's just some particles have axis of motion in space that we don't know how to perceive yet.<p>One can think about it by analogy. Suppose we all lived in 2 space. If particles in 2 space where small enough to detach from our plane and pop up and down above and below the plane they would seem to appear and disappear.<p>It's the same thing with 3 -> 4 space. At some point people will realize that thinking about space as 3 space only is like thinking that the world is the center of the solar system. Our three dimensions are simply the closest / most defined / perceived ones to us. They're not even the "central" ones. They're the closest one's to our perception / how we've evolved.<p>If you get into the smaller spaces of things, there's less binding energy that constrains matter and more flexibility in moving between other dimensions. Likely there's a major 4th dimension that matter moves through / oscillates if you prefer since it's smaller particles that move the most (though cosmologically we see the effects in the large). And likely once you get deep in the 4th, there's a fifth, etc.<p>Again the analogy from "Flatland" / 2d space is you don't realize the freedom to move into 3 space until you separate yourself from the structure of what Flatland is made of at the sort of macro level. For us in 3 space the macro level is atoms. As you dive deeper inside, you're not bound by these constraints.<p>Gravity, everything can be modeled as particle forces if you just realize there's dimensions we don't perceive at the macro level yet (but which can be perceived indirectly by their effects on our 3 space - just as in time you can figure out what something moving in and out of a plane is sort of doing in 3 space).