Why do people think that electrons in atoms are tiny beads flying in circles around the nucleus?

exchemist · Jul 15, 2019

Mindmaster said:
Well, like I said, it's definitely sort of OT in the context of what the school is trying to teach.

Most schools are teaching about atoms and the periodic table at the same time, but this other stuff would inject a whole lot of "exceptions" rather than teach any base rules. The short of it is, I think that's why it's avoided, not because it cannot be taught.

Yes they need to keep it simple at the start, certainly.

Jim · Jul 15, 2019

exchemist said:
If you learnt about Schrödinger's equation you must have covered wave-particle duality and atomic orbitals.

I might have learned about wave-particle duality long before that. I did a lot of reading on my own in math and physics in high school, and in math even before that.

robocop (actually) · Jul 15, 2019

Jim said:
Some people think that the electrons in atoms are tiny little beads flying in circles around the nucleus. Why do some people think that?

Because as above, so below and we have solar systems. I'm holding out with what Einstein thought.

Kangaroo Feathers · Jul 15, 2019

Jim said:
I’m not trying to say anything. I’m trying to find out what people think about something. When a teacher presents the planetary model, they could say “this is just an analogy, and not an actual physical description.” Instead sometimes teachers let their students think that it’s an actual physical description, even if they don’t believe that, themselves. Do you see anything wrong with that?

I answered your question. If you aren't going to listen, why bother asking?

mikkel_the_dane · Jul 15, 2019

exchemist said:
...

* evidence in the scientific sense has to meet certain criteria, viz. observations of nature, that can be reproduced by different people, in a variety of ways.

And here we go.

The cosmological principle is usually stated formally as 'Viewed on a sufficiently large scale, the properties of the universe are the same for all observers.' This amounts to the strongly philosophical statement that the part of the universe which we can see is a fair sample, and that the same physical laws apply throughout. In essence, this in a sense says that the universe is knowable and is playing fair with scientists.

William C. Keel (2007). The Road to Galaxy Formation (2nd ed.). Springer-Praxis. ISBN 978-3-540-72534-3.. p. 2.

If you start looking, you will notice the following. All science rests on the idea, that the world is natural and fair. Fair is that it is no different that what appears to you in your experience. That is connected to this version of objective - having reality independent of the mind. The problem is that you only know in the mind and everything outside your mind is taken on trust that the world is fair to you and that you are not a Boltzmann Brain or what not. But you don't know. Nor do I - I just admit it.
So the fundamental act of a human once you realize this is with faith to believe that the world is fair.
Faith as this version: strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
The spiritual conviction in you is properly that it doesn't make sense, if it is different than that the world is fair and natural. Doesn't make sense is nowhere but in your mind, hence spiritual.

Science is as a human behavior a weird form of religion, because it denies that it trusts something bigger than humans - i.e. the world, yet it does because it builds on the trust that the world is natural and fair.

And now the game begins as the following can happen:
You will ignore this.
You will start calling me names and/or assign negative words to me and/or my beliefs, how ever indirect and polite.
You will plead, that we ought to agree that, what makes sense to you, ought to make sense to me.
You will start doing philosophy unaware that there is a reason, how science is axiomatic. It rests on the non-formal axiom/assumption/belief/act of faith, that the world is natural and fair. (Technical: Foundationalism - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy ) Please, don't start doing philosophy with a global skeptic, start reading, check your own thinking and so on. It is there and have been known since around 1st century CE. You just don't learn that unless you do philosophy in earnest.

You know, science is let loose, because you don't need universities and what not. You need a basic education and learn to be as skeptical of your own beliefs as everybody else's. The rest is set free in books available to all and on the Internet.

The days of knowledge requiring that you want to the university is over.

exchemist · Jul 15, 2019

Jim said:
I’m not trying to say anything. I’m trying to find out what people think about something. When a teacher presents the planetary model, they could say “this is just an analogy, and not an actual physical description.” Instead sometimes teachers let their students think that it’s an actual physical description, even if they don’t believe that, themselves. Do you see anything wrong with that?

Then why ask the question in a tendentious way?

You've already had an answer saying simplification is quite a normal way to teach, and I've already told you it is not just an "analogy", as you put it. It is a physical description - the best that is possible without introducing QM concepts. In fact I recall at school we actually assigned some of the lines in the spectrum of atomic hydrogen to transitions between different Bohr orbits, using the Rydberg constant, a procedure that works very well for hydrogen and other single electron ions. More here: Rydberg constant - Wikipedia

I notice you have not started with moralising questions about Newtonian mechanics. But you could equally well ask why schools are allowed to teach that, without pointing out it is "wrong".

exchemist · Jul 15, 2019

mikkel_the_dane said:
And here we go.

William C. Keel (2007). The Road to Galaxy Formation (2nd ed.). Springer-Praxis. ISBN 978-3-540-72534-3.. p. 2.

If you start looking, you will notice the following. All science rests on the idea, that the world is natural and fair. Fair is that it is no different that what appears to you in your experience. That is connected to this version of objective - having reality independent of the mind. The problem is that you only know in the mind and everything outside your mind is taken on trust that the world is fair to you and that you are not a Boltzmann Brain or what not. But you don't know. Nor do I - I just admit it.
So the fundamental act of a human once you realize this is with faith to believe that the world is fair.
Faith as this version: strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
The spiritual conviction in you is properly that it doesn't make sense, if it is different than that the world is fair and natural. Doesn't make sense is nowhere but in your mind, hence spiritual.

Science is as a human behavior a weird form of religion, because it denies that it trusts something bigger than humans - i.e. the world, yet it does because it builds on the trust that the world is natural and fair.

And now the game begins as the following can happen:
You will ignore this.
You will start calling me names and/or assign negative words to me and/or my beliefs, how ever indirect and polite.
You will plead, that we ought to agree that, what makes sense to you, ought to make sense to me.
You will start doing philosophy unaware that there is a reason, how science is axiomatic. It rests on the non-formal axiom/assumption/belief/act of faith, that the world is natural and fair. (Technical: Foundationalism - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy ) Please, don't start doing philosophy with a global skeptic, start reading, check your own thinking and so on. It is there and have been known since around 1st century CE. You just don't learn that unless you do philosophy in earnest.

You know, science is let loose, because you don't need universities and what not. You need a basic education and learn to be as skeptical of your own beliefs as everybody else's. The rest is set free in books available to all and on the Internet.

The days of knowledge requiring that you want to the university is over.

Yes you make some excellent points about the philosophy of science.

I entirely agree it is an axiom of faith for science that the natural world can be explained in terms of patterns that it follows, and which we can uncover if we are persistent enough.

This axiom often goes unstated, although related principles do crop up more or less explicitly in things like the cosmological principle and, in a different way, in geology in Hutton's principle of gradualism - and uniformitarianism more generally.

The justification of such assumed simplifications seems to be entirely empirical, in that science has been so successful in detecting patterns and developing predictive models from them that do seem to work. So it becomes a result of Ockham's Razor: it is simpler to treat the natural world in this way and so far there is no reason not to do so.

What keeps science honest is reliance on reproducible observation.

mikkel_the_dane · Jul 15, 2019

exchemist said:
Yes you make some excellent points about the philosophy of science.

I entirely agree it is an axiom of faith for science that the natural world can be explained in terms of patterns that it follows, and which we can uncover if we are persistent enough.

This axiom often goes unstated, although related principles do crop up more or less explicitly in things like the cosmological principle and, in a different way, in geology in Hutton's principle of gradualism - and uniformitarianism more generally.

The justification of such assumed simplifications seems to be entirely empirical, in that science has been so successful in detecting patterns and developing predictive models from them that do seem to work. So it becomes a result of Ockham's Razor: it is simpler to treat the natural world in this way and so far there is no reason not to do so.

What keeps science honest is reliance on reproducible observation.

Yet, as for my bolds, they show that is your way of understanding it.

Science, since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity. It progresses by hunch, vision, and intuition. Much of its change through time does not record a closer approach to absolute truth, but the alteration of cultural contexts that influence it so strongly. Facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts; the source of imagination is also strongly cultural. [Stephen Jay Gould, introduction to "The Mismeasure of Man," 1981]

So how we treat science, is not science, it is culture and some of us question the current cultural Belief in science as used by some humans.

Now you restore my faith in humans. But don't tell what you wrote to me to some of the strong non-religious humans around here. As far as I can tell, they don't like to be told that science rests on faith.

Jim · Jul 15, 2019

exchemist said:
But you could equally well ask why schools are allowed to teach that, without pointing out it is "wrong".

That was going to be my next question.

exchemist · Jul 15, 2019

mikkel_the_dane said:
Yet, as for my bolds, they show that is your way of understanding it.

So how we treat science, is not science, it is culture and some of us question the current cultural Belief in science as used by some humans.

Now you restore my faith in humans. But don't tell what you wrote to me to some of the strong non-religious humans around here. As far as I can tell, they don't like to be told that science rests on faith.

Yes indeed. But don't forget my last sentence: its empirical foundation is what keeps science honest, by which I mean objective, so far as it is possible in human affairs, rather than subjective. So while it rests on faith in the predictability of the universe, that faith is objectively justified in practice, to a considerable degree.

mikkel_the_dane · Jul 15, 2019

exchemist said:
Yes indeed. But don't forget my last sentence: its empirical foundation is what keeps science honest, by which I mean objective, so far as it is possible in human affairs, rather than subjective. So while it rests on faith in the predictability of the universe, that faith is objectively justified in practice, to a considerable degree.

Yes, we agree.
The problem is that some humans believe they can apply science "one to one" on all parts of the everyday world. That is what I "fight" against.

exchemist · Jul 15, 2019

mikkel_the_dane said:
Yes, we agree.
The problem is that some humans believe they can apply science "one to one" on all parts of the everyday world. That is what I "fight" against.

The way I see it is that we need to use different toolkits for how to think about different aspects of human experience. The natural world is one aspect, and for that science is very powerful indeed - though we also have subjective experiences of nature that science does not address. For most of human affairs, human expression and human relationships, science is not especially useful. Hence we need the Humanities too. I think Gould's concept of non-overlapping magisteria has something to commend it.

mikkel_the_dane · Jul 15, 2019

exchemist said:
The way I see it is that we need to use different toolkits for how to think about different aspects of human experience. The natural world is one aspect, and for that science is very powerful indeed - though we also have subjective experiences of nature that science does not address. For most of human affairs, human expression and human relationships, science is not especially useful. Hence we need the Humanities too. I think Gould's concept of non-overlapping magisteria has something to commend it.

Now don't get me started on the "stupid" dichotomy of objective versus subjective and all its other variants. Because you hit it right on the head of the nail.
Here is my short take: Every time you get in context to everything/reality/the universe/the world is an "one factor" claim. for which the other is wrong, you know it gets funny. Not the natural or spiritual world, but e.g. everything is physical or from God.

Twilight Hue · Jul 15, 2019

Jim said:
Do you see anything wrong with teachers not telling their students that it’s only an analogy, and letting them think that the electrons in atoms really are tiny beads flying in circles around the nucleus?

I think it's put in a model that way because it's easier for students to learn and understand the mechanics and components of an atom.

Apparently it would seem electrons appear to 'pop in and out' throughout their respective shells in the genuine article.

exchemist · Jul 15, 2019

Nowhere Man said:
I think it's put in a model that way because it's easier for students to learn and understand the mechanics and components of an atom.

Apparently it would seem electrons appear to 'pop in and out' throughout their respective shells in the genuine article.

They do??

Twilight Hue · Jul 15, 2019

exchemist said:
They do??

I remember reading about it in a science journal for lay people.

Although they don't pop in and out literally , it's rather local and delocalized states by which the electrons seem to pop in and out in the cloud.

exchemist · Jul 15, 2019

Nowhere Man said:
I remember reading about it in a science journal for lay people.

Although they don't pop in and out literally , it's rather local and delocalized states by which the electrons seem to pop in and out.

Hmm. That sounds more like virtual photons in the vacuum to me. They are commonly said to "pop in and out" of existence. Could that be it?

Electrons in atoms are generally treated as being definitely there, somewhere, in their designated orbitals - though it is not possible to determine exactly where at any given instant.

Shadow Wolf · Jul 15, 2019

Jim said:
Some people think that the electrons in atoms are tiny little beads flying in circles around the nucleus. Why do some people think that?

Ever look in a science text book? A real picture (at least last time I saw one) is an indiscernible blur of a thingy. The "orbiting model" gives us a rough approximation to hold that thought in our head.
But, even the internal organs aren't really accurately depicted in books either (I've heard from a doctor those pictures are all based on dissected organs).

Sapiens · Jul 15, 2019

Jim said:
Thank you. That’s very helpful.

You gave me reasons for it being taught that way. My question is, why do people believe it? Can you think of any reason for people believing it, other than trusting what some other people say about it?

It is a "good" model that provides more understanding than confusion ... like Newtonian Physics, neither is wholly accurate and both are based on the value of the model, not on what "other people say."

The Hammer · Jul 15, 2019

Jim said:
Some people think that the electrons in atoms are tiny little beads flying in circles around the nucleus. Why do some people think that?

Because that is what Middle School/High School science taught a lot of people, and this usually isn't rectified until a college level science class, with the introduction of the Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Mechanics.

Why do people think that electrons in atoms are tiny beads flying in circles around the nucleus?

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