In school, we were/are taught the Bohr model of the atom, that an electron ***orbits*** a nucleus in an elliptical path. Since quantum mechanics entered popular culture, talk has turned to an ***orbital***. Wikipedia defines this as “a mathematical function describing the ***location*** … of an electron in an atom”, I presume in a moment of time. My question is, where do we think the electron will be in the next moment? Will it
(A) Be in an adjacent location? That is to say, does the electrom move in a continuous manner?
(B) Disappear and re-appear in a non-adjacent location? Or
(C) We don’t know?
(If my premise is wrong, please correct me. Otherwise, I hope to steer clear of digressions which don’t answer specifically A, B or C.)
Thanks in advance.
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Oh boy, this one is going to be confusing but there’s not much we can do about it. Your premise isn’t wrong so much as quantum mechanics left Bohr and his orbitals way behind but they’re still useful for early understanding
Fundamentally you cannot know the location and momentum(speed/direction) of a particle at the same time, finding out one changes the other, so its really hard to say if an electron moves in a continuous manner around a nucleus
The orbitals are instead considered to be probability clouds where you’re likely to find the electron. [Here’s the probability clouds for Hydrogen with different numbers of electrons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Hydrogen_Density_Plots.png), the brighter the color the more likely an electron is to be there. You can see the that P orbitals (2,1,0) and (2,1,1) are very strong in the center of their shape but fade as you go further out because the electron isn’t bound to a specific distance from the nucleus at all times.
What this leaves us with is that A and B (continuous manner or sudden appearance) are indistinguishable based off the rules of the universe. Even knowing that it existed in two nearby spots right after another still doesn’t tell you its the same electron, it could have been moving away when you first measured it but its impossible for you to know what way it was moving.
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