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snorkack
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- TL;DR Summary
- Order of magnitude estimates of electrons in nuclei
How much electrons do nuclei contain? Are there any numeric estimates around?
I am quite aware that while estimating the numbers might be somewhat simple exercise for quantum mechanics, it is still complicated numeric computation which is not very closely related to observables, so somewhat limited point in performing it. Nevertheless, it seems like a nice illustration to question "why don´t electrons fall into the nucleus".
Simple search yields no quantitative estimates. First answers are two types: one is that "electrons cannot enter nucleus because of uncertainty principle", the other is "electrons do enter nucleus and have a cusp there", but without any estimates about actual quantity of electrons in the cusp.
But someone might have done and presented estimates - just that they don´t show up in simple search. Has anyone actually encountered any numeric estimates? At least order of magnitude?
Like:
How much electrons does the proton contain in ground state of hydrogen?
How much electrons total does an U atom nucleus contain?
What kinds of electrons does the U nucleus contain, total? Like, 1s has cusp in the U nucleus, but U has a total of 14 s electrons, and all s orbitals have a cusp in nucleus. How much of the electrons in U nucleus are 2s...6s electrons, how much are 7s (and therefore valence) electrons?
How much 1s electrons does a Be-7 nucleus contain, how much of the electrons in Be-7 are instead 2s electrons or molecular orbital or Fermi sea electrons?
Does the numeric amount of electrons of various orbitals inside the nucleus have tight tie to the observable probability/branching ratio that electron will be captured from that orbital?
I am quite aware that while estimating the numbers might be somewhat simple exercise for quantum mechanics, it is still complicated numeric computation which is not very closely related to observables, so somewhat limited point in performing it. Nevertheless, it seems like a nice illustration to question "why don´t electrons fall into the nucleus".
Simple search yields no quantitative estimates. First answers are two types: one is that "electrons cannot enter nucleus because of uncertainty principle", the other is "electrons do enter nucleus and have a cusp there", but without any estimates about actual quantity of electrons in the cusp.
But someone might have done and presented estimates - just that they don´t show up in simple search. Has anyone actually encountered any numeric estimates? At least order of magnitude?
Like:
How much electrons does the proton contain in ground state of hydrogen?
How much electrons total does an U atom nucleus contain?
What kinds of electrons does the U nucleus contain, total? Like, 1s has cusp in the U nucleus, but U has a total of 14 s electrons, and all s orbitals have a cusp in nucleus. How much of the electrons in U nucleus are 2s...6s electrons, how much are 7s (and therefore valence) electrons?
How much 1s electrons does a Be-7 nucleus contain, how much of the electrons in Be-7 are instead 2s electrons or molecular orbital or Fermi sea electrons?
Does the numeric amount of electrons of various orbitals inside the nucleus have tight tie to the observable probability/branching ratio that electron will be captured from that orbital?