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Einstein Jr.
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Can you please explain the difference between ground state and stationary state? In the stationary state, are the electrons at rest inside the atom?
The ground state is a stationary state: the one with lowest energy. Stationary states with higher energy are excited states.Einstein Jr. said:Can you please explain the difference between ground state and stationary state?
In a stationary state, the position probability distribution of an electron does not change with time. Nor does the momentum probability distribution. QM does not address the question of what an electron is "really doing", "inside" the probability distribution, before something happens that "measures" the position or momentum.Einstein Jr. said:In the stationary state, are the electrons at rest inside the atom?
The ground state is the lowest energy state that an atom or molecule can occupy, while stationary states refer to any energy state that is not changing over time. In other words, the ground state is a specific stationary state, but not all stationary states are ground states.
Electrons can transition between ground state and stationary states by either absorbing or emitting energy in the form of photons. When an electron absorbs energy, it moves to a higher stationary state, and when it emits energy, it moves to a lower stationary state.
Yes, a system can be in multiple stationary states at once. This is known as superposition and is a fundamental principle in quantum mechanics. In fact, it is the basis for the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment.
Ground state and stationary states play a crucial role in an atom's spectral lines. When an electron transitions between these states, it emits or absorbs photons of specific energies, which correspond to specific spectral lines. This allows scientists to identify the elements present in a substance by analyzing its spectral lines.
No, ground state and stationary states cannot be observed directly because they are quantum states, and the act of observation would collapse the system into a single state. However, their effects can be observed through experiments and measurements, such as in spectroscopy and quantum computing.