"Vortex Based Mathematics by Marko Rodin"

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Thank you. So the 'flow of electrons' is the key concept.

What are the properties of the atomic 'electron' that allows for this 'flow', in your opinion?

Originally posted by beebs
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Thank you. So the 'flow of electrons' is the key concept.

What are the properties of the atomic 'electron' that allows for this 'flow', in your opinion?

That depends.

The electrons are not as free to flow in some materials, but the reason we use metals like copper in the wires of your home appliances is that the electrons are relatively free to flow. This isn't a specific property of just the electron but a function of the way the electron interacts with the atom, especially in metals:

farside.ph.utexas.edu...

The conduction electrons in a metal are non-localized (i.e., they are not tied to any particular atoms). In conventional metals, each atom contributes a single such electron.

This is not true of many other materials where the electrons are in fact tied to particular atoms.

The fact that they aren't tied to particular atoms in metals allows them to flow relatively freely with little resistance, and in superconductors this resistance to electron flow becomes effectively zero.

On the other hand, semiconductors are selected and engineered for very unique properties of electron flow that are different than solid metals.
Doping (semiconductor)

In semiconductor production, doping intentionally introduces impurities into an extremely pure (also referred to as intrinsic) semiconductor for the purpose of modulating its electrical properties....

Small numbers of dopant atoms can change the ability of a semiconductor to conduct electricity. When on the order of one dopant atom is added per 100 million atoms, the doping is said to be low or light. When many more dopant atoms are added, on the order of one per ten thousand atoms, the doping is referred to as heavy or high.

So in semiconductors, like the ones you're using to post on ATS, the dopant level affects the electron flow.

In a given material, once an electric field is applied, the elementary charge of the electron is a key property that causes the electron to move or flow, but how it flows has a lot to do with the material properties and how well the electrons are or are not bound to the atoms.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


So is the electron a literal experimental negatively charged 'particle' of the atom, or is it a statistical probability of negatively charged energy density in the atom? How does 'one electron' flow from one atom to another, in either case?

Is the electron the same electron once it transfers to the new atom?

Since I know the standard arguments about the electron, I will appeal to these relatively unknown arguments by Dewey Larson for further discussion:

Because preconceived ideas concerning the electron suggest that it could be an atomic constituent, the evidence from the disintegrations is accepted as proof that it is, whereas similar preconceived ideas concerning the photon suggest that it could not be an atomic constituent, and exactly the same evidence is therefore taken to mean that the photon was created in the process. Actually, of course, the physical evidence does not distinguish between these alternatives, nor does it preclude the possibility that some other explanation may be correct. What the evidence shows is that the electron either

(a) was a constituent of the atom, or
(b) was preexisting within, but not a part of, the atom, or
(c) was derived from the surrounding space, or
(d) was created in the disintegration process, or
(e) originated from some combination of the foregoing, or
(f) had some other origin consistent with the evidence.

At the time the nuclear atom was originally conceived, the existing physical knowledge was not extensive enough to permit visualizing these alternatives that have been listed. The idea that electrons might be created in some physical process, for instance, was probably altogether inconceivable to Thomson or to Rutherford. But today this is commonplace. Such creation is currently being observed in a great variety of processes, ranging all the way from the production of a single electron-positron pair by an energetic photon to the production of a shower of millions of particles by a cosmic ray primary. This new information has made it apparent that the emission of electrons from radioactive material does not necessarily have the significance which was originally attached to it. Current thinking favors the creation hypothesis as the best explanation of this phenomenon, and the textbooks are slowly and reluctantly trying to incorporate this new viewpoint. Kaplan tells us, for example, “... it must be concluded that in beta radioactivity, the electron is created in the act of emission.”26

But the same textbook which gives us, on page 154, this conclusion based on up-to-date evidence, still repeats on page 39 the completely contradictory nineteenth-century judgment that the emission of electrons by matter is “convincing evidence that electrons exist as such inside atoms,” and it goes on to present the atomic theory based largely on that outmoded idea as if it were fully in accord with present-day factual knowledge. This is not a peculiarity of this particular text. Any other modern text which we might select gives us essentially the same contradictory picture. For instance, another text book tells us, “The disintegration experiments (which indicated emission of protons by atoms) provided definite proof that protons are components of nuclei of all elements.”27 Then on the very next page the text goes on to say, “It might be argued that if an electron can be emitted from a nucleus, it must have been there before,” but in spite of the fact that this is exactly the same argument which is characterized as “definite proof” on the preceding page, it is here dismissed with the statement, “This solution... could not, however, be upheld.” Here is a graphic example of what was meant in the introductory chapter when the present-day atomic theory was described as a curious and contradictory mixture of half-century old ideas with up-to-date conclusions. Any theory which is so confused that the textbook authors can “prove” a basic point of far-reaching importance on one page and flatly contradict this proof on the following page, without anyone seeing that there is a conflict, is badly in need of an overhauling.

The information now available makes it quite clear that the electron is not the permanent “building block” type of entity that was envisioned in 1911, but an evanescent particle that can be created or destroyed with relative ease. Recognition of this fact should carry with it the realization that it is not only radioactivity that has ceased to be evidence of the presence of electrons in matter; the appearance of electrons in any physical process can no longer be taken as an indication that these electrons existed prior to the initiation of that process. In fact, the weight of evidence is now strongly in favor of the conclusion that in most cases they are created in the process, and that where electrons do actually have a prior existence, they exist in, and not as a part of, the atoms of matter.

Summarizing the foregoing, it is now apparent that electrons, and electric charges in general, are easily created in physical processes of various kinds, and hence the emission of electrons from matter during such processes can no longer be considered as proof, or even as good evidence, that the electrons, as such, existed in the matter before the process took place.

One of the characteristics of a sound physical theory is that it leads in an easy and natural way “with the appearance of a certain inevitableness,” as Bridgman puts it, to explanations of physical phenomena other than that for which it was originally developed. Planck's original Quantum Theory, for example, was developed to explain the behavior of radiation from an energy distribution standpoint, but one of its first important consequences was a simple and logical explanation of the photo-electric effect: a related but totally different phenomenon. Similarly, we could expect that if the concept of the electron as a constituent of matter were valid, we would find it leading easily and naturally to solutions of other related problems. But the whole history of this concept has been just the opposite. Nothing has developed easily and naturally; every step that has been taken has been forced and artificial, and each advance into new territory has been made only by sacrificing some part of existing physical knowledge, so far as its application to the atom is concerned.

As one observer expresses it, “Bohr solved the problem of the stability of a system of moving electric charges simply by postulating that the cause of the instability... did not exist.”29 To the layman his might seem to involve a rather drastic redefinition of the word “solve,” but be that as it may, the ensuing history of the Bohr atom and its lineal descendants is one long series of problems for which there seems to be no solution other than to postulate that they do not exist. The orbits which Bohr postulated for the electrons could not be located specifically, hence it was postulated that no definite orbits exist; the theoretical momentum and position of an individual electron could not be reconciled, and a “Principle of Uncertainty” was therefore formulated, asserting that the electron could not have a definite momentum and a definite position at the same time; even with the benefit of this extraordinary principle, identification of positions was found to be impossible, so it was postulated that the impossibility was inherent and that the best that could be done was to calculate a probability that the electron might be found at a certain location; some of the theoretical consequences were inconsistent with the usual cause and effect relationships, and it was therefore postulated that causal relations are not operative at the subatomic level. Now in relatively recent years, the long list of assumptions and postulates has been climaxed by the assumption, sponsored by the Copenhagen school of theorists (who represent the “official” viewpoint of present-day theoretical physics), and expressed by Heisenberg in the previously quoted passage, that this atomic electron does not even “exist objectively.”

My opinion of course, is that the 'electron' and phenomenon of 'electricity' are more accurately described in terms of wave mechanics, and space cymatics. The whole concept of electrical 'flow' is more like a longitudinal wave traveling through a fluid medium of adjacent WSM atoms to me, rather than the jumping to and fro of point-like particles. An electron could just be a stable wave structure in space, that somehow 'disassociates' or 'phases off' of the parent atom's density in space, complete with its own temporary wave center until it 'disintegrates' as its vibrations are absorbed into the background density of space and the environment.

Also, there should be a sharp distinction made between the electron we produce in experimentation, and the electron that is theorized to be a part of the functional atomic structure in nature:

All of these “solutions” of the problems that have been encountered in the development of the concept of the electron as an atomic constituent have, of course, modified the characteristics of the atomic electron very drastically. As the nuclear atom was originally conceived, the negatively-charged constituent was presumed to be the same electron that is observed experimentally. This experimental electron is a definite and well-defined thing, notwithstanding its impermanence. We can produce it at will by specific processes. We can measure its mass, its charge, and its velocity. We can control its movement and we have methods by which we can record the path that it takes in response to these controls. Indeed, we have such precise control over the electron movement that we can utilize it as a powerful means of producing magnified images of objects which are too small for optical magnification. In short, the experimental electron is a well-behaved and perfectly normal physical entity. But such an electron cannot even begin to meet the requirements which have been established step by step for the atomic electron, as the concept of this particle has been gradually modified to “solve” one problem after another. The atomic electron, as it is now portrayed, is not a definite and tangible entity such as the experimental electron. It does not conform to the usual physical laws in the manner of its experimental counterpart, but has some unique and unprecedented behavior characteristics of its own, including a strange and totally unexplained ability to jump from one orbit to another (or to do something entirely incomprehensible which has the same effect) with no apparent reason and, so it seems, complete immunity from all physical limitations. We can deal with it only on a statistical basis, and even then, as Herbert Dingle points out, we can make our statistical methods for dealing with such particles effective “only by ascribing to the particles properties not possessed by any imaginable objects at all.”30 Furthermore, as already mentioned, the leading theorists of the present day tell us that the atomic electron cannot be accommodated within the three-dimensional framework of physical space; it must be regarded merely as a symbol rather than as an objectively real particle.

Just as it is natural to conclude that the existence of radioactive disintegration proves that the atom is composed of individual parts, so it is natural to conclude that the particles ejected from the atom in the process of disintegration are the parts of which the atom is composed. In fact, this conclusion seems to be implicit in the first. But this second of the natural and seemingly obvious conclusions turns out to be entirely erroneous. Three types of particles emanate from the disintegrating atom, and existing knowledge indicates that not one of these three existed as such in the atom prior to the disintegration. The alpha particles are positively charged helium atoms, and it was quickly realized that they could not be primary atomic “building blocks”; present-day opinion, as previously noted, is that the beta particles, which are electrons, are created in the disintegration process; and the gamma particles (if we stretch the definition of “particle” far enough to include them) are photons, units of radiation, and have always been considered to be products of the disintegration, not as pre-existing entities.

I recommend reading the entire chapter for the full 'gravity' of his argument ( ) :
The Case Against the Nuclear Atom, Chapter Three: The Electron

Chapter Three in Milo Wolff's Schroedinger's Universe also discusses this problem. Suffice it to say, that his argument is even stronger than Larson's to discard the material 'point like' electron.

I will leave this post here, and further discussion will get us into why the atom should be considered as a cymatic structure of space, rather than anything else.

Originally posted by beebs
How does 'one electron' flow from one atom to another, in either case?

I already answered that question for a metal. Some people call the electrons in metal an "electron soup". One electron from each atom isn't attached to any atom so it doesn't move from atom to atom. The "electron soup" moves. In insulators, the electron normally doesn't move from one atom to the next, that's why they are insulators.

Also, there should be a sharp distinction made between the electron we produce in experimentation, and the electron that is theorized to be a part of the functional atomic structure in nature:

I read that following text but I don't think the distinction is all that sharp. Experimentation is one way we observe nature, aside from just plain old observing which is about all we can do in cosmology due to the distances involved.

This sounds like the same-old same-old type of argument that nature can't possibly be as bizarre as experiments show with quantized amounts of energy absorbed and re-emitted by changing electron orbits, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming:

The atomic electron, as it is now portrayed, is not a definite and tangible entity such as the experimental electron. It does not conform to the usual physical laws in the manner of its experimental counterpart, but has some unique and unprecedented behavior characteristics of its own, including a strange and totally unexplained ability to jump from one orbit to another (or to do something entirely incomprehensible which has the same effect) with no apparent reason and, so it seems, complete immunity from all physical limitations. We can deal with it only on a statistical basis, and even then, as Herbert Dingle points out, we can make our statistical methods for dealing with such particles effective “only by ascribing to the particles properties not possessed by any imaginable objects at all.”

The point being?

As Feynman said, to paraphrase, this is the way the universe is (as we know it), if you don't like it, go somewhere else.

If you doubt it's the same electron just experiment with plasma. You can heat up a gas until it becomes a plasma and the electrons start breaking free of the atoms, but then when you let the plasma cool down back into a gas, the electrons re-attach to atoms:

www.nacd.in...

When electrons are stripped from atoms and molecules, those particles change state and become plasma. Plasmas are naturally energetic because stripping electrons takes constant energy. If the energy dissipates, the electrons reattach and the plasma particles become a gas once again.

Doesn't that show it's the same electron in that statement alone (and in experiments which support that)? I fail to see the "sharp distinction".

If you take a single basketball player and put him on the court, he's got no teammates to pass the ball to, so pretty much all he can do is shoot at the basket. Take the same player, and other players to the court, and now all kinds of interactions are possible with the other players, passing, blocking, and other things the single player couldn't do until he was part of a "system". Likewise with the electron, just because you observe different behaviors when it's part of an atom (or interacting with other players in the analogy) doesn't mean it's not the same electron that behaved differently when it was isolated, just as the basketball player did. So he's still the same basketball player, and it's still the same electron, right?

This Larson site, containing posts from same authors as the other one, features such obvious falsehood I couldn't bear to read further:

That bosons, the class of particles of which photon is a member, do not interact with each other is an observed fact.

Huh? Just wow. Bosons do interact, thank you very much.

The postulated electron in the atom is them imputed with strange characteristics as compared to a free electron, such as the lack of definite location, jumping from one orbit to another without traversing the intervening space, etc.

As the atom itself is found to be electrically neutral, the negative charge of the electron is assumed to be neutralized by an equal amount of positive charge in the nucleus. But in actuality a negative and a positive charge brought into mutual contact do not merely neutralize each other: they destroy each other, as is amply demonstrated (by the same science) in the annihilation reactions between matter and anti-matter!

What the heck is he talking about? It is particles and antiparticles that do annihilate, not just any positive and any negative charge.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Arb,

I live that quote from that source your post:

The atomic electron, as it is now portrayed, is not a definite and tangible entity such as the experimental electron.

Experimental electron! What a jewel. There are neutrons and experimental neutrons, there are protons and experimental protons. There is milk and experimental milk.

Tales from the loonie bin.

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Tales from the loonie bin.

reply to post by beebs
That reminded me of Carl Sagan talking about his limo driver, William Buckley (not THE William Buckley, just a limo driver with the same name).

Beebs, you reemind me a lot of what Sagan said about that limo driver.

Sagan said he was kind of impressed with the guy because he was widely read, in a way, except for the fact he had been reading all of the wrong sources and filling his head with nonsense.

But he had good qualities like an insatiable curiosity and a desire to understand things. Sagan tried to get the guy to read more reliable material, but I don't know if he succeeded.

Likewise Beebs, if you spent as much time reading reliable sources as you appear to spend reading unreliable sources, you'd be a force to reckon with.

Originally posted by buddhasystem
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Arb,

I live that quote from that source your post:

The atomic electron, as it is now portrayed, is not a definite and tangible entity such as the experimental electron.

Experimental electron! What a jewel. There are neutrons and experimental neutrons, there are protons and experimental protons. There is milk and experimental milk.

Tales from the loonie bin.

There are virtual massless particles and there are not virtual massless particles. So in your bin of childish retorts, there's bound to be an answer for where the electron goes as it disappears. Your willingness to order something off the kid's menu doesn't fuel the adult appetite.

While you're at it detail the double-slit experiment.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Tales from the loonie bin.

reply to post by beebs

 

That reminded me of Carl Sagan talking about his limo driver, William Buckley (not THE William Buckley, just a limo driver with the same name).

Beebs, you reemind me a lot of what Sagan said about that limo driver.

Sagan said he was kind of impressed with the guy because he was widely read, in a way, except for the fact he had been reading all of the wrong sources and filling his head with nonsense.

But he had good qualities like an insatiable curiosity and a desire to understand things. Sagan tried to get the guy to read more reliable material, but I don't know if he succeeded.

Likewise Beebs, if you spent as much time reading reliable sources as you appear to spend reading unreliable sources, you'd be a force to reckon with.

If the limo driver ever needs a diversion, he'd be headed towards your direction.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Haha, yes... that is a cool basketball analogy.

The only problem, is that the basketball has to be in statistical superposition/probability density in a spherical wave pattern around the person.

An electron from an Electron gun is not the same thing as the wave function of a stable atom found in nature.

I am sure you have been able to tell by now, that I understand the argument that electrons are like basketballs... I think that it is completely ridiculous.

Originally posted by beebs
An electron from an Electron gun is not the same thing as the wave function of a stable atom found in nature.

A condom being tossed across the room may look spectacular, but in essence it's same condom as can be found in a 36 count Trojan box.

Originally posted by beebs
An electron from an Electron gun is not the same thing as the wave function of a stable atom found in nature.

I am sure you have been able to tell by now, that I understand the argument that electrons are like basketballs... I think that it is completely ridiculous.

I didn't compare it to basketballs, I compared it to a basketball player but I see the basketball confused you so let me change the analogy to figure skaters instead. A figure skater can't do a death spiral in isolation, it requires a partner to interact with.

I don't expect an individual skater to be able to do a death spiral just like I don't expect an individual electron not part of an atom to display an atomic wave function. To expect otherwise in either case is not logical.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I didn't compare it to basketballs, I compared it to a basketball player but I see the basketball confused you so let me change the analogy to figure skaters instead. A figure skater can't do a death spiral in isolation, it requires a partner to interact with.

I don't expect an individual skater to be able to do a death spiral just like I don't expect an individual electron not part of an atom to display an atomic wave function. To expect otherwise in either case is not logical.

Well, have fun with your basketball and figure skating.

I am not sure where superposition, uncertainty, and wave functions will ever fit into those types of analogies.

However, if we drop the erroneous concept of point-like 'particles'...

I refuse to go down the slippery slope which you have chosen. In no way, is an electron from an electron gun, the same thing as a functional probability density wave function of an atom.

Critical thinking about what is known is necessary, when trying to patch the wholes in our understanding of the physical universe.

Here we find that on the basis of exactly the same evidence, the physicist arrives at diametrically opposite conclusions. Because preconceived ideas concerning the electron suggest that it could be an atomic constituent, the evidence from the disintegrations is accepted as proof that it is, whereas similar preconceived ideas concerning the photon suggest that it could not be an atomic constituent, and exactly the same evidence is therefore taken to mean that the photon was created in the process. Actually, of course, the physical evidence does not distinguish between these alternatives, nor does it preclude the possibility that some other explanation may be correct. What the evidence shows is that the electron either

(a) was a constituent of the atom, or
(b) was preexisting within, but not a part of, the atom, or
(c) was derived from the surrounding space, or
(d) was created in the disintegration process, or
(e) originated from some combination of the foregoing, or
(f) had some other origin consistent with the evidence.

As one observer expresses it, “Bohr solved the problem of the stability of a system of moving electric charges simply by postulating that the cause of the instability... did not exist.”29 To the layman his might seem to involve a rather drastic redefinition of the word “solve,” but be that as it may, the ensuing history of the Bohr atom and its lineal descendants is one long series of problems for which there seems to be no solution other than to postulate that they do not exist. The orbits which Bohr postulated for the electrons could not be located specifically, hence it was postulated that no definite orbits exist; the theoretical momentum and position of an individual electron could not be reconciled, and a “Principle of Uncertainty” was therefore formulated, asserting that the electron could not have a definite momentum and a definite position at the same time; even with the benefit of this extraordinary principle, identification of positions was found to be impossible, so it was postulated that the impossibility was inherent and that the best that could be done was to calculate a probability that the electron might be found at a certain location; some of the theoretical consequences were inconsistent with the usual cause and effect relationships, and it was therefore postulated that causal relations are not operative at the subatomic level. Now in relatively recent years, the long list of assumptions and postulates has been climaxed by the assumption, sponsored by the Copenhagen school of theorists (who represent the “official” viewpoint of present-day theoretical physics), and expressed by Heisenberg in the previously quoted passage, that this atomic electron does not even “exist objectively.”

Originally posted by beebs
However, if we drop the erroneous concept of point-like 'particles'...

Can you explain why it is an erroneous concept? It is actually measured to behave like a particle. How do you explain the particle like behavior when you consider it to only have wave properties?

So, tell me, if mathematics and physics don't gel, how in the hell are you supposed to describe anything without the mathematics of periodic functions if everything is a wave?

reply to post by -PLB-


I think everything can be explained by cymatics.

For a clear discussion of problems with the classical opinion:

Chapter III

reply to post by 547000


Mathematics and physics do gel.

It is only our opinions of our perceptions that disagree with the theoretical implications.

We still have great math, great observations, great experiments, etc.

It is the theoretical and imaginative understanding of the actual physical reality that has taken a back seat compared to capitalism science, gov't funded science, and general lack of institutional interest in the problem.

reply to post by beebs


It is hard to extract the point from that text, its not well written in my opinion. Maybe you should give a short summery.

Anyway, it seems that the text tries to prove that there are no electrons in an atom. I don't see how that has anything to do with an electron not having particle properties.

reply to post by beebs


Weren't you one of the ones complaining about mathematics in physics? Or was that only Mary?

reply to post by 547000


Yes of course, a large amount of modern mathematics are unnecessary abstractions and wild speculation.

That doesn't mean that every single equation, or math in general, should be abandoned.