odysseus2000 wrote:9873210 wrote:
You'll find the two chapters, albeit without the catchy titles in many standard texts, e.g. at
libretexts.
My point is that Bohr's atom was the last model where the electron actual orbited like a planet. In later models the electron not "moving" it's just sitting in a ground state, so "perpetual motion" comes from applying the wrong semantics.
There's a lot of bad semantics going around. There's a good explanation using math. But people convert it into some English and then complain about the math. Math is not the problem here.
For example IIRC we explained Compton scattering fully using wave equations. Original system has a wave equation for the electron and photon, the wave equation evolves over time. If you collapse it some time later you get the results of the scattering, which includes many occurrences of missing the electron. You do not need to collapse to particles in the middle.
Also lots of bad statements about the second law of thermodynamics. This is fundamentally statistical in nature. Nobody should be surprised that the statistics of a two-particle system manifest differently than a billion-particle system.
Sorry for the delay, just extremely busy at the moment.
The problem with the idea that electrons in atoms are standing waves is that for many aspects the electrons in hydrogen behave as though they are in a S-wave, angular momentum l =0, spherically symmetric distribution around the nucleus at a distance of 10**5 times the size of the nucleus, proton in this case. If one does an experiment one can collapse the electron to a specific point but how you go from a continuously variable standing wave to a condensed electron is easy in the maths but not easy conceptually. It is the argument about Schrodinger and his cat, how can a cat be both alive and dead? If one then goes on to consider atoms, one has various forms of ground states with non zero angular momentum, p,d,f... (l=1,2,3...) with various forms of electronic binding that lead to molecules and these then lead to macro parameters such as compressibility via Van de Waals forces that one can measure etc. One can also consider the added complications of intrinsic angular moment or spin with all fermions having half integer spin, all bosons having integer spin. In super conductivity one has Cooper pairs of Fermions that behave like bosons. Analogous processes exist in nuclei too. The concept of wave function or particle get applied where they work but as to understanding, that is beyond what we currently know.
Thermodynamics is a complicated business if one moves from macroscopic systems and begins to consider small or isolated or fluctuations in the vacuum it gets very complicated and it is not clear, at least to me, if we understand what is going on here as in the rest of quantum mechanics.
Regards,
To get better understanding you need to move beyond the "classical" quantum physics of Heisenberg/Schrödinger and study quantum field theory. Again, understanding meaning being able to explain observed behaviour in terms of mathematical models, not understand in being able to fully conceptualise.
The macroscopic laws of thermodynamics can be better understood in terms of the fundamental particle physics through study of statistical physics.