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 October 12th, 2017, 01:34 AM #11 Senior Member   Joined: Apr 2014 From: Glasgow Posts: 2,093 Thanks: 701 Math Focus: Physics, mathematical modelling, numerical and computational solutions Dorky... you need a textbook. Try getting a copy of "University Physics" by Sears and Zemansky: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&...l_5sbod2sa2g_b Before you break the rules, you need to know them...
October 12th, 2017, 05:13 AM   #12
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 Before you break the rules, you need to know them...
Why?

Surely it's more fun just ignoring them?

October 12th, 2017, 05:35 AM   #13
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Quote:
 Originally Posted by studiot Why? Surely it's more fun just ignoring them?
Haha! It depends on what you prefer; discovery or poetry

 October 14th, 2017, 02:01 AM #14 Newbie   Joined: May 2017 From: Monaco Posts: 21 Thanks: 0 I admit I'm a bit of a tool because of my lack of mathematical knowledge but this is the binding theory that I had https://imgur.com/a/gFMzB the waves are a light wave basically, or any sort of wave for that matter... the wave changes to a lower frequency because of the attraction between positive and negative components in the atom which have become debound. sorry just bored, like to think a lot sorry if i waste your time!! i looked up some stuff online about it photon absorption, but i just wanted to see what you thought of this idea..
October 14th, 2017, 03:40 AM   #15
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 like to think a lot
That's good, very good.

But to look at a theory that works and ask how it might be different just for the sake of being different,
That's not so good.
Science is not like art. Art is where we are constantly looking for something new and different to avoid repetition.

You should only change things to fix something that doesn't work.

For example the first model of the atom was called the plum pudding model.

It was right in that it incorporated (some of) the main constituent particles of the atom.
But it gave wrong results in many ways, ie it didn't work properly.

Some of these problems were resolved when the theory of a positive nucleus orbited by negative electrons was proposed.

But there were still problems.

Again some of these were resolved by changing the orbits from circles to ellipses.

But again problems remained.....

and so the cycle goes on and on.

But the orbiting model did satisfactorily explain the energy levels and the correctly predict the spectroscopic activity you are interested in.

You could look up the names Lyman, Paschen and Balmer for this.

But yet (spectral) problems appeared at finer resolution, which required more modification and led to the present day quantum theory.

Look up the name Zeeman.

October 16th, 2017, 05:16 AM   #16
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 Originally Posted by Dorky0 I admit I'm a bit of a tool because of my lack of mathematical knowledge
Don't put yourself down... everyone has to start somewhere.

However, this is super important: if you want to get good at physics, you must learn mathematics. It's an unmitigated requirement.

This why the mathematicians don't kick us out of their maths forum!

Quote:
 but this is the binding theory that I had https://imgur.com/a/gFMzB the waves are a light wave basically, or any sort of wave for that matter... the wave changes to a lower frequency because of the attraction between positive and negative components in the atom which have become debound.
Binding energy in atoms is a very interesting problem and there has certainly been a lot of work in the late 1800s and early 1900s to study it. You would learn a lot by reading about it in a textbook

Firstly, let's look at light. You've probably seen the classic sinusoidal "wave" pattern being used to describe light waves. You've probably also investigated circular motion and the fact that the displacement, velocity and acceleration can be described using sinusoids. The pendulum is a good example of this.
Indeed, you drew a sinusoid in the diagram.

The reason for the sinusoid to describe the electric and magnetic field in a light wave, however, is actually nothing to do with the atom, binding energy or circular motion... the sinusoid is a natural consequence of Maxwell's equations, which are a set of equations that describe how electricity and magnetism interact with each other. The solutions to those equations can be given in terms of sine (or cosine) waves revealing that light, fundamentally, is both fluctuating electric and magnetic fields in space, which can transfer energy and momentum along the direction of the wave's propagation. Small "packets" of these light waves are referred to as "photons" and have particle-like behaviour.

Secondly, lets look at particles. When particles, like electrons, photons and protons, interact with each other, they exchange energy and/or momentum. At the atomic and sub-atomic levels, these interactions cannot be adequately described using classical mechanics or classical wave theory. The main experiments that revealed this were the "Ultraviolet catastrophe", Young's double slit experiment with electrons and the photoelectric effect (among others, such as heat capacity of gases at low temperatures); all of those phenomena simply could not be satisfactorily explained using classical theories and new theories had to be invented, such as the idea of a "photon" and the "electron cloud". These ideas ultimately led to quantum mechanics taking over as the superior theory at the atomic and sub-atomic level.

This is the main reason why your line of reasoning is incorrect. It's natural to want to connect light waves with circular motion and the electron orbitals... but that's classical thinking and it leads to the incorrect solutions.

There's a lot of matter for you to learn when it comes to quantum mechanics... this is going to take some time!

In quantum mechanics, particles do not interact as you'd expect. There are all sorts of strange things that can happen and the theories that describe the behaviour of particles at the atomic and sub-atomic levels are extremely complex. Yet, despite how complicated they are, they can (and indeed have) predicted many new phenomena and results and you can learn those before leaning the mathematics

So... what is the correct picture?

Let's start with electrons. The alpha-scattering on gold foil experiment (Rutherford) showed that electrons "orbit" a tiny nucleus that contains the protons and neutrons. However, this orbit is nothing like the orbits of the planets around the Sun... the electrons should not be seen as little blobs that travels around the outside in an orbit. The real picture is more like a "cloud" where the electron has a probability of being at certain parts of the cloud at a point int time. The cloud is also only spherical for the hydrogen atom: for electrons in other atoms, the "cloud" has a much more complicated structure (see for example https://quantumwavetheory.files.word...ron-clouds.jpg)

Like I said in my previous post, the binding energy can be calculated based on the interactions between electrons and protons using quantum mechanics. The binding energy is different based on the orbitals that the electrons are in and their quantum numbers.

Quote:
 sorry just bored, like to think a lot sorry if i waste your time!! i looked up some stuff online about it photon absorption, but i just wanted to see what you thought of this idea..

Photon absorption causes changes in the energy levels. Electrons that have been promoted to a new energy level are called "excited" electrons. The energy level difference is related to the frequency using:

$\displaystyle \Delta E = hf$

where $\displaystyle h$ is Planck's constant. This is an equation which can be derived in quantum electrodynamics (QED).

If the excited electron naturally drops back down to its lower energy level, it will emit a photon with frequency

$\displaystyle f = \frac{\Delta E}{h}$

which is the same formula, but rearranged for frequency.

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