[sdiy] OT: The spin of electrons!

[David Ingebretsen]

My graduate degree is in physics, but it's been some time since I cracked
open my quantum physics book (although I did buy a new one last year for
review...)

Ian is right. Nothing is really spinning.

Electrons are neither round, nor solid, nor do they necessarily even have a
shape or size. String theory would treat them as vibrating "strings" or even
a P-Brane, where "P" means a Brane (or membrane) of some higher dimension
which partially vibrates in our 4 dimensional time-space and partially in
other dimensions which collapsed right after the big bang.

They don't "spin" nor do they orbit the nucleus in the way Bohr's model
suggests. They are a wave function which is modeled by a probability.
Schrödinger's wave equation is what is used to study particles
theoretically. As my quantum teacher once joked (if we physicists can
actually joke) "there are an infinite number of solutions to the equation,
but only a few which are physically interesting. We'll study those and leave
the rest to the mathematicians..."

The best you can say about an electron is that it is probably there and
probably moving this fast.

Spin is a bookkeeping quantity. It has no real physical meaning, just like
color for a quark.

Even at absolute zero, an electron will still possess energy.

David

~~ -----Original Message-----
~~ From: synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl [mailto:synth-diy-
~~ bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of karl dalen
~~ Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 4:00 PM
~~ To: ijfritz at comcast.net
~~ Cc: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
~~ Subject: Re: [sdiy] OT: The spin of electrons!
~~ 
~~ OK i got it wrong, it seams to be some heritage from Samuel Goudsmit
~~ and George Uhlenbecknow but now electrons are apparently treated
~~ like of a dot shape in angular momentum vector something system etc!
~~ 
~~ Are there any quantum spin for dummies around,,,perhaps?
~~ I'm not to enthusiastic to dive into some Schrödinger calculus!
~~ 
~~ KD
~~ 
~~ --- Den tis 2009-12-29 skrev ijfritz at comcast.net <ijfritz at comcast.net>:
~~ 
~~ > Från: ijfritz at comcast.net <ijfritz at comcast.net>
~~ > Ämne: Re: [sdiy] OT: The spin of electrons!
~~ > Till: "karl dalen" <dalenkarl at yahoo.se>
~~ > Kopia: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
~~ > Datum: tisdag 29 december 2009 20.34
~~ > #yiv1519413180 p
~~ > {margin:0;}>>>
~~ > Does science know today what's causing the spin of the
~~ > electron?
~~ > <<<
~~ >
~~ > Spin is a quantum mechanical property.  There is
~~ > nothing physically spining -- the math involved is somewhat
~~ > similar to that for classical spin, and that's where the
~~ > name came from. ("It might as well be spin"). The
~~ > spin quantum number is always there.  The direction of
~~ > the spin may be manipulated with magnetic fields, but it
~~ > never goes away.
~~ >
~~ 
~~ 
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