The electron is a theory. But the theory is so good we can almost consider them real.
An electron is real; a probability is not.
I hitched my wagon to an electron rather than the proverbial star.
You will get your difficulties with the point electron.
One might talk about the sanity of the atom the sanity of space the sanity of the electron the sanity of water- For it is all alive and has something comparable to that which we call sanity in ourselves. The only oneness is the oneness of sanity.
Nobody has ever seen an electron. Nor a thought. You can't see a thought, you can't measure, weigh, nor taste it- but thoughts are the most real things in the Galaxy.
Indeed, nothing more beautifully simplifying has ever happened in the history of science than the whole series of discoveries culminating about 1914 which finally brought practically universal acceptance to the theory that the material world contains but two fundamental entities, namely, positive and negative electrons, exactly alike in charge, but differing widely in mass, the positive electron-now usually called a proton-being 1850 times heavier than the negative, now usually called simply the electron.
The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrödinger's mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.
The electron is first of all your concept of the electron.
We have learnt through experience that when an electrical ray strikes the surface of an atom, an electron, and in some circumstances a second and even a third electron, can be detached.
In 1956 we observed the electron antineutrino.
The magnetic cleavage of the spectral lines is dependent on the size of the charge of the electron, or, more accurately, on the ratio between the mass and the charge of the electron.
There can never be two or more equivalent electrons in an atom, for which in a strong field the values of all the quantum numbers n, k1, k2 and m are the same. If an electron is present, for which these quantum numbers (in an external field) have definite values, then this state is 'occupied. '
But it is necessary to insist more strongly than usual that what I am putting before you is a model-the Bohr model atom-because later I shall take you to a profounder level of representation in which the electron instead of being confined to a particular locality is distributed in a sort of probability haze all over the atom.
If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no'.
The electron: may it never be of any use to anybody!
The Goddess falls in love with Herself, drawing forth her own emanation, which takes on a life of its own. Love of self for self is the creative force of the universe. Desire is the primal energy, and that energy is erotic: the attraction of lover to beloved, of planet to star, the lust of electron for proton. Love is the glue that holds the world together.
