Discussion
Hi,
Sorry for the dumb question from a dumb person, so please be gentle :-)
If an element has a core of neutrons and protons then electrons in a cloud (in school they said spin around the core but I believe the electrons are in a cloud around the core).
I also understand that the electrons are nowhere near the core.... So my question is what is between the core of neutrons and protons and the electrons. It can't be "nothing" so any idea what is there?
Hope the above makes sense, I'm sure someone who knows about this stuff can answer.
Thanks
Pete
Sorry for the dumb question from a dumb person, so please be gentle :-)
If an element has a core of neutrons and protons then electrons in a cloud (in school they said spin around the core but I believe the electrons are in a cloud around the core).
I also understand that the electrons are nowhere near the core.... So my question is what is between the core of neutrons and protons and the electrons. It can't be "nothing" so any idea what is there?
Hope the above makes sense, I'm sure someone who knows about this stuff can answer.
Thanks
Pete
deckster said:
Exactly. There is literally nothing there.
What we call solid matter is, by and large, empty space.
Wow that kind of blows my mind .... So.... You have some material and most of it is "nothing" does that mean you can crush it down enough to squeeze all of the nothing out of it?What we call solid matter is, by and large, empty space.
PeterGadsby said:
Wow that kind of blows my mind .... So.... You have some material and most of it is "nothing" does that mean you can crush it down enough to squeeze all of the nothing out of it?
If you squeeze the nothing out, you end up with a neutron star...Wikipedia Link
It makes it all very dense:
"They are so dense that a normal-sized matchbox containing neutron-star material would have a weight of approximately 3 billion tonnes, the same weight as a 0.5 cubic kilometre chunk of the Earth (a cube with edges of about 800 metres) from Earth's surface"
So that empty space is quite important.
PeterGadsby said:
Ok so if you have Hydrogen as an element which is not dense, how come it can't just go through walls? couldn't the Hydrogen elements just go through the "gaps" of emptiness in the wall material?
So we're down to subatomic physics here and it all gets a bit complicated. But to a first degree of approximation, atoms will repel each other strongly enough that they can't get that close to each other. When you think you're touching something, actually the atoms in your finger are being repelled by the atoms in the table in the same way that two magnets repel each other to the extent that you can't force them any closer.Obviously it's much, much more complex than that. But it's a useful way to think of it.
deckster said:
PeterGadsby said:
Ok so if you have Hydrogen as an element which is not dense, how come it can't just go through walls? couldn't the Hydrogen elements just go through the "gaps" of emptiness in the wall material?
So we're down to subatomic physics here and it all gets a bit complicated. But to a first degree of approximation, atoms will repel each other strongly enough that they can't get that close to each other. When you think you're touching something, actually the atoms in your finger are being repelled by the atoms in the table in the same way that two magnets repel each other to the extent that you can't force them any closer.Obviously it's much, much more complex than that. But it's a useful way to think of it.
PeterGadsby said:
Wow that kind of blows my mind .... So.... You have some material and most of it is "nothing" does that mean you can crush it down enough to squeeze all of the nothing out of it?
Yes, atoms can be crushed to the point where all that empty space between the electron cloud and the nucleus is squeezed out of existence. It takes enormous pressures for this to happen but in nature these pressures are created when the core of a large star collapses. Atoms which have been squeezed in this manner is known as degenerate matter and is super-dense. One timble full of such matter will weigh millions of tons. Super-dense stars like this are called Neutron Stars (as they essentially become one giant neutron) and usually spin at very high rates emitting a pulse of energy each time they rotate. Neutron stars were first predicted in the 1930s and the first one was identified in 1967. It is the star located at the centre of the Crab Nebula - which is the remains of a larger star which exploded in a supernova in 1054. Since then, thousands of such objects have been discovered in our galaxy. They are often referred to as pulsars.
Einion Yrth said:
Furthermore Hydrogen atoms are so very, very small that to some extent they do go through walls. Hydrogen is an absolute bugger to contain.
which is particularly annoying if the hydrogen is the radioactive form H-3. Goes through glass and most other things eventually.Surprised no one has flipped your mind (yet) with the electron not necessarily being a particle in a specific place so there is a probability function for where it is in the space around the nucleus. 'wave-particle duality' if you want to lose yourself in google.
Eric Mc said:
... Neutron stars were first predicted in the 1930s and the first one was identified in 1967. It is the star located at the centre of the Crab Nebula - which is the remains of a larger star which exploded in a supernova in 1054 ,,,
Or, more accurately, was seen to explode in 1054. When it actually exploded depends on how far away it was, which determined how long the light from said explosion took to reach us,Yes - most of us are aware of the time delays due to stellar distances. For practical purposes, the dates given in astronomy books and records are the dates as seen by us on earth. Otherwise, it would get awfully confusing, especially as calculating stellar distances is not exact except for only the very closest stars.
Our records on earth show the observations of a "Nova" in 1054 - and in 1967 it was positively linked with the Crab Nebula.
Our records on earth show the observations of a "Nova" in 1054 - and in 1967 it was positively linked with the Crab Nebula.
llewop said:
which is particularly annoying if the hydrogen is the radioactive form H-3. Goes through glass and most other things eventually.Surprised no one has flipped your mind (yet) with the electron not necessarily being a particle in a specific place so there is a probability function for where it is in the space around the nucleus. 'wave-particle duality' if you want to lose yourself in google.
Wave/Particle duality (and the associated “double slit” experiment) is something of a head-f
k that leads rapidly to some hard maths! In theory it is perfectly possible for all the air in a room to suddenly congregate in one corner of the room and liquefy …. it’s just really, really unlikely which is why it never happens….llewop said:
Surprised no one has flipped your mind (yet) with the electron not necessarily being a particle in a specific place so there is a probability function for where it is in the space around the nucleus. 'wave-particle duality' if you want to lose yourself in google.
Bas!ard, that’s a particularly deep well of Google fu.. a bit like somebody reminding you that you’re playing the “game” 
(You’re all welcome, my son got me tonight)
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