"An atom has a diameter of about 0.00000001 cm. The nucleus [at the centre] has a diameter of about 0.0000000000001 cm. If we had an atom and wished to see the nucleus, we would have to magnify it until the whole atom was the size of a large room, and then the nucleus would be a bare speck which you could just about make out with the eye, but very nearly all the weight of the atom is in that infinitesimal nucleus."
... Richard Feynman (1918-1988), theoretical physicist
... Richard Feynman (1918-1988), theoretical physicist
With all that mass concentrated at the centre of the atom, what keeps the
ReplyDeleteelectrons whizzing around from simply falling in? In the weird world of quantum mechanics, very large kinetic energies simply overwhelm electrical forces and gravitational forces are almost insignificant.