Читать книгу Quantum Physics is NOT Weird - Paul J. van Leeuwen - Страница 28

“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

John Archibald Wheeler, 1911 – 2008

The classical idea of electrons as little charged particles orbiting a positive core encountered serious problems:

 Why are the orbits of the electrons around the atom not circular like planetary orbits, but spherical? The hydrogen atom with only a single electron in a circular orbit should be flatter than a dime. But spherical orbiting electrons which would continually have to change their courses, buzzing around like annoying flies around your head, are even more inconceivable.

 Is it possible that the circular orbit of the electron slowly changes its tilt thus creating a sphere of ephemeral presence? This would be unstable with heavier atoms having multiple electrons repelling each other.

 The image of electrons buzzing around, all of them together in the outer shell of any atom heavier than hydrogen, represents a highly unstable atom shell since they all will repel each other.

 Why is it that orbiting electrons, where orbiting means that they are continually changing their velocities, do not lose their kinetic energy, as Maxwell equations predict, through the emission of electromagnetic radiation to eventually spiral down into the core?

The last-mentioned problem follows immediately from Maxwell's classical electromagnetic theory. A circularly moving charge is technically an alternating electric current. Alternating currents generate changing electric fields and therefore EM-waves. That is the principle of every radio transmitter. Emitting EM-waves means loss of energy. The moving electron should therefore quickly lose its kinetic energy in an extremely short time.

In fact, the number of questions kept increasing instead of decreasing after each new discovery. Incidentally, this expanding sea of unknowns is nowadays still the case, and it is not expected that this will change in the foreseeable future.