Speed of electrons?
My latest rant -- the speed of electrons.
This is a complicated question for anyone who knows hard stuff about science, really.
While I was in science class today, we were learning about electrons, neutrons, protons, etc...
Of course, electrons orbit around the nucleus of an atom, for those of you that didn't know that.
Well, I asked my science teacher, "Can electrons go faster than the speed of light?" and she said, "You know, I've never been asked that one before, and I honestly don't know. When you get home, look it up and let me know what the answer is, if it's been figured out."
So I got home and googled it. As far as my studies show, an electron travels less than 1% of the speed of light, and (unless I'm mistaken), the farther away the electrons are from the atom, the slower they move.
For example, the valence electrons (electrons in the very outer shell) of say, a Uranium atom would move much, much slower than the electrons in the most inner shell.
I'm curious though. Does anyone know if this is true? And I'd really like to know how fast electrons move on average, and if there's some kind of formula to tell how fast they're moving.
This is a complicated question for anyone who knows hard stuff about science, really.
While I was in science class today, we were learning about electrons, neutrons, protons, etc...
Of course, electrons orbit around the nucleus of an atom, for those of you that didn't know that.
Well, I asked my science teacher, "Can electrons go faster than the speed of light?" and she said, "You know, I've never been asked that one before, and I honestly don't know. When you get home, look it up and let me know what the answer is, if it's been figured out."
So I got home and googled it. As far as my studies show, an electron travels less than 1% of the speed of light, and (unless I'm mistaken), the farther away the electrons are from the atom, the slower they move.
For example, the valence electrons (electrons in the very outer shell) of say, a Uranium atom would move much, much slower than the electrons in the most inner shell.
I'm curious though. Does anyone know if this is true? And I'd really like to know how fast electrons move on average, and if there's some kind of formula to tell how fast they're moving.
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Comments
electons usually move very slowly unless attracted by an extremely large positive charge (or negative if its a positron)
if you look at those images especially 4 f you can see the energy levels (shells) of an atom if you notice a gap in the middle thats because the nucleus (protons and neutrons) is there, this is tiny, however electrons can go between 2 of these of the same type of energy level at will, how this happens is uncertain it has been said that they just teleport somehow. the same would happen if you excited an electron to a higher energy level, then it would return to its base level unless it were ionised.
electrons don't have an average speed per-se. but can travel at many speeds dependant on their environment ( i guess the average would be that of a hydrogen atoms electron as that is the most abundant element).
however as electrons are the closest object we can accelerate to light speed due to their lightness 1/1800 of a proton. and as an object accelerates towards the speed of light it gains mass so an electron can get closer to light speed as it weighs less.
along the bottom? they represent the electrons configuration