Page 1 of 1
Proton madness
Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 7:04 pm
by Ann
So the picture at left is how I used to think about protons (and neutrons, and electrons too, come to think of it). Like neat little balls. You know, like "Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights."
![👨](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f468.svg)
(Oh, that was Shakespeare, I guess, Julius Caesar, Act One, Scene Two. But my idea of protons really did look like sleek-headed men that sleep well at night.)🥱
Well! The real proton is something else, that's for sure! Three quarks, bound together by a "chromatic" force, representing the (very virtual!) colors red, green and blue, interact through their chromatics and through the binding force of gluons, which also come in three "colors". This description means nothing to me, but seeing the animation knocks my socks off.
So you must see the animation, too. It is
here, but it is large, almost 2 MB. But it's really worth it!
Don't know about you, but the proton will never be the same to me.
Ann
Re: Proton madness
Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 7:13 pm
by Chris Peterson
Ann wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 7:04 pm
So the picture at left is how I used to think about protons (and neutrons, and electrons too, come to think of it). Like neat little balls. You know, like "Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights." 👨 (Oh, that was Shakespeare, I guess, Julius Caesar, Act One, Scene Two. But my idea of protons really did look like sleek-headed men that sleep well at night.)🥱
Well! The real proton is something else, that's for sure! Three quarks, bound together by a "chromatic" force, representing the (very virtual!) colors red, green and blue, interact through their chromatics and through the binding force of gluons, which also come in three "colors". This description means nothing to me, but seeing the animation knocks my socks off.
So you must see the animation, too. It is
here, but it is large, almost 2 MB. But it's really worth it!
Don't know about you, but the proton will never be the same to me.
And don't forget that the electrons aren't orbiting the nucleus, either.
Re: Proton madness
Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 12:43 am
by orin stepanek
Oh Ann! Kinda like a rhythmic heart beat!
![đź’ť](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f49d.svg)
Re: Proton madness
Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 5:31 am
by Ann
Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 7:13 pm
And don't forget that the electrons aren't orbiting the nucleus, either.
I know - well, I sort of know it - but I absolutely can't picture it in my mind. Does the electron create a sort of "cloud of possible positions" (I was about to write "a cloud of possible positrons") around the proton?
Ann
Re: Proton madness
Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 5:33 am
by Ann
orin stepanek wrote: ↑Sat May 09, 2020 12:43 am
Oh Ann! Kinda like a rhythmic heart beat!
Exactly!
Ann
Zitterbewegung
Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 2:12 pm
by neufer
Ann wrote: ↑Sat May 09, 2020 5:31 am
Does the electron create a sort of "cloud of possible positions"
(I was about to write "a cloud of possible positrons") around the proton?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zitterbewegung wrote:
Zitterbewegung ("trembling motion" in German) is a predicted rapid oscillatory motion of elementary particles that obey relativistic wave equations. The existence of such motion was first proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1930 as a result of his analysis of the wave packet solutions of the Dirac equation for relativistic electrons in free space, in which an interference between positive and negative energy states produces what appears to be a fluctuation (up to the speed of light) of the position of an electron around the median, with an angular frequency of 2mc
2/â„Ź, or approximately 1.6Ă—10
21 radians per second. For the hydrogen atom, zitterbewegung can be invoked as a heuristic way to derive the Darwin term, a small correction of the energy level of the s-orbitals.
Re: Proton madness
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2022 4:20 pm
by Fred the Cat
The ether has made way to the
sea. On course, through the waves, particles storm around leaving us in the wake while the bosun's mate tries to stay aboard.
“Then along came a tsunami, that sat down beside me, and we charted new ways to parley”
You have to admire particle physicists’ ability to
describe an ocean yet fully mapped. Now if we could only sail from sea to
shining c.
![Cool 8-)](./images/smilies/icon_cool.gif)