Electrons

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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

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Its not a ball its described by a wave in quantum physics, although we nay never know if thats really the 100% correct form, or if its just a good model for it. According to this it has no shape or volume, so it cant rotate/spin.

It has an intrinsic angular momentum, just like it has intrinsic mass (lets ignore Higgs here) or electric charge, which we call spin or intrinsic spin. But thats just the name because its analogous to if it actually were spinning, but its not.

[Here](https://youtu.be/pYeRS5a3HbE) is a video that actually explains what spin really is, geometrically. Im no expert so i cant be sure, but i thought they did a really good job at least, i thought it was the single best explanation on the internet so far.

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