Hello there!
I’ve seen a meme saying something like: “Electron spin explained: imagine a ball that’s rotating, except it’s not a ball and it’s not rotating”.
I remember from school the electrons were represented like balls and there was this spin number also.
So, what’s wrong with that? What’s the true from of an Electron?
Sorry for the bad English.
In: Physics
That joke is surprisingly accurate.
There is a thing called angular momentum. It’s the thing that makes gyroscopes stay upright. Classically, it’s described by some mass rotating at some distance and speed around an axis. So that’s the rotating ball for you.
Quantum spin is also angular momentum. It has all the same properties… Only associated with elementary particles, which as far as we’re defining them are zero size, or alternatively are the waves that describe them.
But one thing they are NOT is a ball that rotates. School “lied”. That happens a lot, because trying to explain quantum physics to children is like… Explaining quantum physics to children. The information they’re giving you is sufficient for 99% purposes. If you’re interested in the details, you’ll follow up yourself, like you’re doing.
So you end up with a property associated with rotating objects, only no object is rotating. It’s weird, but the quantum world is weird and unintuitive. So properties just exist.
One side note is that there technically is a “thing” “spinning”, but not in the sense we normally understand. In a mathematical sense, where you have a change of an angle around a zero point. It’s called a spinor and it describes quantum spin. But it’s honestly difficult to explain what it does, where it comes from and why that matters. Enough to point out that, again, it’s not the same as a physical object spinning. Despite giving rise to the same property. Just go with it, lol.
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