What is, really, the spin of an electron?

Question

(sorry for my english)

Hi everyone,

Earlier today, i was studying the electronic distribution of atoms and it was all going fine until it got to the part about spin. My textbook presented spin as if it was just a fact, with no causes or consequences, which is weird, since my physics teacher always tells us to try to contextualize phenomena so, i decided to do some research into why electrons spin, and it consequences.

I’ve spent pretty much the whole day trying to understand what causes the electron to spin, and what arises from it, but I still couldn’t find a satisfactory answer. At first, I read that the spin of electrons create the magnetic field of an atom, but then another page told me that it has little do with it. Then, there’s a whole thing that they don’t actually spin at all, which confused me even further.

To be frank I’m completely lost in the matter, and I would appreciate any direction as to Why and How the electron spins, and if the spin is what creates the magnetic field or not.

Thanks,

Terec

In: Physics

Answer 1

First off, the electron isn’t actually spinning. An electron isn’t a little sphere. “Spin” is a very unfortunate name because it doesn’t really have a physical analog that non-physicists can latch on to. Think if of it like charge…electrons have charge. It doesn’t really have a cause, it’s part of what being an electron *is*. Electrons have other properties too, like mass. Every electron has the same mass, every electron has the same charge.

Electrons also have angular momentum…this is where it gets weird because, in the macroscopic world, we associate angular momentum with spinning things. Down at the quantum level though, electrons just *have* angular momentum, just like they have mass and charge. We call that “spin”, in connection to the macroscopic equivalent we’re used to.