Well yes the cloud idea is good (enough).

Tom Stoppard said that in an atom, if the nucleus is like the altar of St Paul's cathedral, then an electron is like a moth in the cathedral, one moment by the altar, the next by the dome.

So for a copper atom, you are talking about 29 moths in the whole expanse of the cathedral. Not much of a cloud considering what it can achieve...

 

So while it may be a bit difficult I think that the content is very enlightening.

It's not that it's difficult, rather I find it unnecessary and the explanation comes across like the author himself is a little confused. Especially his explanation of his objections.

I don't think I am unusual in any way, but we were taught about the electric and magnetic fields and electrons well before we were introduced to the practical side, like Ohm's Law, Kirchhof's law and the study of electric circuits and their dynamic properties. Perhaps it's because I studied it as a part of an education in physics rather than electrical engineering. I don't know, but we knew the right way of thinking about it before we had to think about it. If you get my drift.

 

Tom Stoppard said that in an atom, if the nucleus is like the altar of St Paul's cathedral, then an electron is like a moth in the cathedral, one moment by the altar, the next by the dome.

So for a copper atom, you are talking about 29 moths in the whole expanse of the cathedral. Not much of a cloud considering what it can achieve...

Well, perhaps more like 27 caught on the fly paper on the alter and 2 free to fly around.
For a copper atom in a copper lattice...

 

Wow! This is a really good thread! Correct and helpful answers going on for pages without some bellicose troll braying in the background. I'd say, "Moderators, please put some of those stars on this thread, the ones that mean, Good Thread." but they don't have much meaning after the way they have been used for things like beginners trying to brag about their 555 timer circuit. It's difficult to advertise how well this thread addresses the question. A, "Thank You" to all contributors. There is nothing left for me to contribute. You covered everything I know, a lot I didn't, and left almost nothing unexplored.

Number Twelve

 

Perhaps it's because I studied it as a part of an education in physics rather than electrical engineering. I don't know, but we knew the right way of thinking about it before we had to think about it. If you get my drift.

Bingo! The 'Physics' of electricity vs the 'Application' of electricity so you are not really the target for that article. It's not that people are ignorant of fields and how they move energy but the importance of the interplay of matter and fields gets blended differently for a electronics student who's 'first impression' of electricity is sometimes tied to a kinetic water analogy that's hard to shake off later. IMO That 'first impression' is a very important reason a student in a physics based education usually will not see this as a problem.

 

Wow! This is a really good thread! Correct and helpful answers going on for pages without some bellicose troll braying in the background. I'd say, "Moderators, please put some of those stars on this thread, the ones that mean, Good Thread." but they don't have much meaning after the way they have been used for things like beginners trying to brag about their 555 timer circuit. It's difficult to advertise how well this thread addresses the question. A, "Thank You" to all contributors. There is nothing left for me to contribute. You covered everything I know, a lot I didn't, and left almost nothing unexplored.

Number Twelve

Totally agree #12, I am very grateful for this thread as well, and if anything it has reassured me that I will not be trolled for asking what I thought might have been a silly question to begin with. Thank you all for being so thorough and patient with your answers and replies.

 

We're always more than happy to help someone with a genuine interest and shoot the breeze with them.

Keep 'em coming

and go well in your studies.

 

Got trolls?

Anyway...the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread title, was, "Of course electrons move." Think of a lightning bolt.

Is anyone here seriously going to tell me that those electrons are NOT moving at near the speed of light?

 

Okay, I'm going to seriously tell you that those electroncs are NOT moving at near the speed of light.

Imagine taking a pipe that is one mile long and filling it with ball bearings that just barely fit (loosely). Now pound in another ball bearing into one end. One will drop out of the other end very shortly afterward. For discussion sake, let's say that it took one second - does that mean that the ball bearings are moving at nearly five times the speed of sound? No, not even close. But the effect - transmitted in the interactions from one ball-bearing to the next - travelled that fast.

The same thing with lightning.

 

I concede the point.

Further reading reveals to me that, even though the estimated speeds are all over the place, they are not 'near the speed of light' as I mistakenly thought. the highest estimate I found was 1 x 10^8 Meters per second and the lowest 1 x 10^5.

I also found a fact I would not have suspected. Lightning can generate antimatter!

 

Yes, they move, but at a very slow rate. You have to understand the numbers involved are vast, 1A = 6.241 × 10e18 / second passing a point on a conductor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere

The actual speed of an electron is several inches per hour.

The electric field, which forces this drift, travels close to the speed of light in a wire, this relates very closely to antenna theory.

I might mention that one case where actual electron movement is significant and important is in vacuum tubes, where the actual electrons can approach the speed of light. Another instance is in ionospheric plasma, where you have significant numbers of free electrons.

But in a normal solid conductor, the speed of electrons is slower than a drugged slug.

 

Do electrons move ? IMO it depends on how to define motion.

My question relates to the very concept of moving, or how best to conceptualize the movement of a physical object like an electron, or any particle or entity for that sake.

Motion IMO involve the act of one entity changing position relative to another. In that case there must be free void involved. Alternatively the concept of motion should instead be RECONFIGURATION IN SITU by something smaller, and in such a way that this smaller by itself could act as a medium playing a pattern that express said "moving" entities.

Xenon articulated the fundamental problem involved with motion, with his Fletcher paradox. David Bohm enlightened the problem with his Changing Wholeness. Is it possible to conceptualize change without having discreteness at hand ? And if so, what is smallest, and can smallest be thought into existence ?

One can also say that the big challenge for Nature is on one hand to express itself as a Changing Wholeness, and on the other hand showing what we humans at least see as a non-chaotic behavior. Which are the rules for moving particles, and how are such rules being governed , how can such rules being thought COMMUNICATED ? If one ask me, I cannot accept true void as a communicating medium. Free void is free void.

The question about whether and to what extent electrons move is a good eye-opener to these fundamental physical / philosophical questions.

One of the first posts in this thread logically asked if a moving electron would leave a hole or a vacuum space behind itself. Would that cause ionization ?

My thinking is that Cosmos best can be conceptualized as a homogenous field, of discretions filling up space, and scale-wise arranged, involving the infinite regress, and in such a way that each scale arrange itself in an extremely ordered 3d lattice. Such a lattice can play wavelike patterns via their domino-like reconfigurations relative to each other. And such wave patterns can be seen as standing wave-expressions that show a particle-like structure when being observed over a certain period of time.

Cosmos can IMO best be conceptualized as such a medium, that can EXPRESS motion as something apparent but not real, and motion becomes a derived function of observing.

Another question relates to how can we know what IS moving when we are measuring. At start measurement one can measure say an electron, and at the end measurement one can identify an electron - but what do we have during its flight ?

Like Feynman noticed, "particles change when they move".

So YES, IMO it is a good question, "do electrons move", and what are electrons when they move, IF they move.

 

I'm not too much a fan of philosophy, science is more fun and you can do more with it.

Electrons are matter, we routinely create positrons nowdays (antimatter). They can fly through space just like any other object, be it a vacuum tube or the solar wind. They have weight, and momentum. Being so small quantum physics has a big say in how they act, but they are on the matter side of e=mc² .

 

I'm not too much a fan of philosophy, science is more fun and you can do more with it.

Electrons are matter, we routinely create positrons nowdays (antimatter). They can fly through space just like any other object, be it a vacuum tube or the solar wind. They have weight, and momentum. Being so small quantum physics has a big say in how they act, but they are on the matter side of e=mc² .

Agreed, - that they are on the matter side.

Everything which can or perhaps better say IS being assigned the object of change, is on the matter side.

The philosophical aspect is being introduced when one ask the question about whom, what makes the observation, and whom what introduces the concept of entity, particle, object, call it what one like.

Anyhow, difficult to disagree that one can do more with physics, but on the very bottom-line, philosophic considerations IMO is at least as powerful and useful a tool as compared to the human physical senses, when trying to get a deeper insight in cosmos.

We can discuss the sun black, whether electrons move when seen (observed, interfered with) by human physical senses, or whether the motion of electrons is apparent and illusionary as a result of how human intellectual senses translate the underlying cosmic reality into a physical reality via the interface of human mind.

The advantage by using human mind intellectual senses is that one avoid and one get rid of many of the physical paradoxes, when conceptualizing cosmos.

Shall cosmos be understood and explained solely based on what can be sensed by human physical senses, i.e. electron / photon, or should one include deeper and smaller structures that can be intellectually imagined and played with by human mind.


I am not the one to judge the usefulness of one over the other, it is solely according to the agenda in question. What is more fun is a matter of taste.

I see philosophy and physics as two science disciplines, complementary to each other and of equal significance. The differences are mainly in cost and applicability.

 

Yes, the Cosmos can only be understood by what is sensed, human or otherwise. This is the basis for experimentation, always. It is the core problem I have with philosophy. If something can not be proved or disproved, it is speculation, and not worth much. Testing theories is core to science.

Math is much closer to philosophy, but it also has its proofs. It has to be internally self consistent.

 

Math is an axiomatically founded science, so as long the results are self consistent the math results are inherently correct. Math is useful to predict, but says nothing about HOW WHY.

Physics is a SENSE science, and it is the interpretation of data that leads to answers about HOW WHY, so fundamentally it is a mental mind act . Philosophy is also a mental mind act.

However not only is physics a sense science, but reality is a sense based reality, there is nothing that can be assigned a defined existence per se.

The way we perceive Cosmos is via human (mind) as interface, that translates the underlying Cosmos into what we humans see as the existing physical world.

The science of Physics is among others about how to form a consistent idea about this underlying existing cosmos out from metaphors taken from our sensed physical world.

Such ideas are still incomplete because there are many paradoxes in any and all of the existing theories, and they are mutually incompatible. Experimentation is one way of getting better insight, and philosophizing is still another way.

Both of these two approaches or methods are fundamentally being based upon the sensing act where cosmos via the interface of human mind is being brought into existence.

Neither experimental data nor thought data can be assigned any form of inherent truth, and there is no good reasons to make any "quality rating".

It makes no sense to me when people (physicists) insist that date originating from observation and experiment (the scientific method) gives more trustworthy information as compared to data originating from the thinking process. Both types of information is the result of a circular process, and cannot be assigned any inherent proofs that they reflect cosmos.

On the bottom line one can philosophize and say that it is about how information observe information, it is about how a smaller part of the cosmos, which can be defined as the human Qbit, interfere with (observe) the surrounding cosmos (also consisting of Qbits), and how the human Qbit must be assigned this impossible to grasp ability of translating such interferences into qualia, feelings, emotions, physical senses and mental skills.

I suggest that in order to judge the relevance and the quality of any idea about cosmos, the ultimate acid test is to what extent the said idea gives rise to paradoxes.

And one paradox is MOTION.

It is not possible IMO to embrace physical world without including the two metaphors of DIMENSION (3D, body, particle, entity) and CHANGE, respectively. The challenge is how best to understand and describe WHAT is changing and HOW.

The question asked "Do electrons move", is IMO not well answered by saying that electrons move slowly. Good enough is enemy of the best.

 

Philosophy proves nothing, the ancient Greeks did more to prove that than anyone else, and were frequently wrong in the fundamentals. This carried over to the Dark Ages, whose tradition of a pretty line of thoughts equaled reality. Your logic (if indeed it can be called logic) is fundamentally flawed.

You are allowed to have your opinions, of course, but they are not science and fall far short of reality. Reality can be tested, philosophy cannot.

 

No big deal

Seems we agree to disagree.

 

I might mention that one case where actual electron movement is significant and important is in vacuum tubes, where the actual electrons can approach the speed of light. Another instance is in ionospheric plasma, where you have significant numbers of free electrons.

But in a normal solid conductor, the speed of electrons is slower than a drugged slug.

I think it is a very, very rare vacuum tube in which you see electron speeds near the speed of light. To get to 50% of light speed you need an accelerating voltage of 79kV and to get to 90% you need 661kV and 99% of light speed would require over 3 million volts. None-the-less, they are still pretty zippy since just 26V gets you over 1% of light speed, 2.6kV get you 10%, and 30kV gets you one-third of light speed.

 

The question asked "Do electrons move", is IMO not well answered by saying that electrons move slowly.

This statement is fair enough but it is counterproductive for any reader to have to wade through the rest of your spiel to get to it. Most will give up.