What keeps an electron from skipping over one another?

[Dnkldorf]

Does electron #5 of one atom, collide with #7 electron on another atom, and then #4 of that one......and down the line the collisions go?

The electron can not leave it's atoms field, but can orbit around it freely? This makes sense I think.

Are we then actually transforming a magentic force, into a kinetic energy force in a way?


Or am I still way off?

 

[skeshesh]

I don't think the atoms and electrons care much about their personal identity as do some of us peoples The electron's movement is a function of probability not distance and it's pretty hard to know which electron is where and where its going next - in fact there's no other way than to track its movement which results is a picture with random movements forming wavelike patterns at different energy levels. I'm pretty sure in both ionic and covalence bonding the "transferred" or "shared" electrons are not necessarily belonging to one or another atom and it may not even be the same electron occupying each energy state at a given time. As far as the electrons leaving the atom's field... I don't really know, we're talking about a great distance compared to the particles size, but I'm gonno guess that at times electrons from the environment are exchanged with the ones in the atoms. Would love to hear others' opinion.

 

[__dan]

Quantum well

Quantum well

Imagine an infinite, perfectly flat, and level surface with marbles rolling around, no friction. Imagine the marbles marginally repel each other so they achieve an equal proportional distribution on the surface, like the distribution of gas molecules in a container. The marbles are free to achieve a state of thermal or electrical equilibrium, frictionless movement.

Now in this surface drill an infinite number of exactly specified holes, places for the marble to fall into. The rules for hole drilling are very regimented by design, not random.

When a marble falls into a hole it becomes 'stable' or 'trapped' at a lower potential energy. By conservation of energy, the energy given up by the marble (losing momentum or potential energy) goes somewhere else. Either the emission of a balancing photon, or into the binding energy of the molecule the electron has fallen into, or heat.

The depth of the hole or "well" is a step . The latin word for step is "quanta". The marble falls into a hole and loses an exact quanta of potential or kinetic energy. Similarly, for the marble trapped in a well, it takes an exact quanta of energy input to pop the marble out of the hole and back onto the frictionless plane surface. Absorption of a suitable photon will do it.

The frictionless surface is the electron in the free state. The holes or wells it falls into are the atom and molecule valence shells. Rules for the valence shell filling are very deterministic. A filled shell is very hard to disturb, the material is inert or an electrical insulator. When the outer valence shell is normally unfilled the material is very reactive and looking to bind to something to fill its outer valence shell. The configuration of the outer valence shell determines many material properties, conductivity, chemical reactivity, what the material reacts with.

Electrons that are loosely bound in the outer valence shell are conductors (the metals). The atom is ionized momentarily when it loses the outer balancing electron, so the lost electron is exactly instantly replaced for the material to remain in equilibrium. For copper, I would think of the outer valence electron moving like a gas in the copper material. Voltage potentials between atoms would be kept to a minimum, in balance, except under the influence of an externally applied voltage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valence_electron#Valence_electrons_and_electrical_conductivity