Don’t you find it ironic that the circular motion is such an important part of life we know it. I mean if you look at an atom and see that the nucleus could act like the sun and the electrons could act like a planets going around you wonder why we have the same exact thing going on in our solar system.

Well not exact and the same reasons perhaps, but have you ever thought about this circular motion that we have in both aspects of a atom and our universe?



Yes I know that in our solar system the planets go around the sun in one direction pretty much, but do all solar systems with planets on them do that? Do all planets rotate the same direction and not the opposite or going up and down around the sun like atoms would?



I mean this might not make sense, but maybe you can make sense out of it and explain it better then I can. I just find it ironic. Do you?

Why didn't we get square planets and square suns instead? Have square dancing happening instead. Just weird why the circular motion is more popular. I guess it has something to do with motion without being interrrupted. Turning corners would slow down a object like a cube would offer as opposed to a circular planet that spins and circles around a sun you can just go at a constant speed like on a NASCAR race track.

Also if we had square planets and rotate in one direction there would be no life right. The movement maybe to harsh, yet if the planet rotated slowly would that make a difference.

Well just weird thoughts. Don't mind me.

The "circle" of life.

or the ring of trust

not sure about the orbits of electrons but i don't think that there is evidence that the orbits of planets are circular. as far as i know they all follow eliptical orbit patterns.

Okay, but do you see the similiarity at all or get the jist of what I am trying to say?

I mean we know it isn't a exact circular motion, but the motion itself and in comparing both the atom and the universe has my puzzled.

I could imagine there are other universes that actually function quiet differently then how we know it. Perhaps not in a circular or oval or as described by jrbogie eliptical orbit patterns.

Afterall, these universes or galaxies are so huge we haven't even discovered a percentage of it yet. Would you agree everyone?

I do. And I agree that - from a philosophical perspective - it is an interesting parallel. Two different forces at work (gravity and electromagentism), but they both produce that same phenomena.

sorry but i didn't understand that you are saying anything. seems to me you're asking a question or two. you refer to planets orbiting in other directions or up and down. what is up and down in space? i once saw a photo taken by the appollo astronauts of the earth while traveling to the moon. at the top of the photo was the south pole as referenced with the position of the space craft. the caption of the photo said, "australia, no longer down under". so just what is up and down, left and right, in outer space?

christians trying to prove the bible often use a passage that said that the earth is a circle. it's not. it's a spere and even that is not entirely correct. the equator is longer than any of the meridians that intersect the poles because of the centrifugal force created by the earths rotation. insignificant? sure but we're dealing with science here where details matter.

Imagine that our planet wouldn't rotate from left to right but instead from up and down. How would the weather be then? Would we change the equator line as we know it to go a different direction? How would time be calculated? How would the seasons be? Perhaps longer or shorter or perhaps the same just backwards, if that is possible?

I mean imagine the solar system functioning exactly like an atom!

Okay this maybe a bit to bizzare for most to think about since it isn't possible. Or is it?

Perhaps in another universe there are planets that do this?


How do we know that we are actually upset down in this universe, but think we are right side up? Does gravity alone determine that?

Perhaps the gravity we know is actually inverted, yet we believe we are not.

Strange right!

For better terms let us use "motion" instead of circular for it looks circular or oval to me when it comes to looking at the actions of a atom and the actions of our universe with its planets rotating around our sun.

I just wanted to have people to observe or be aware that there is similiarity in both of them. Of course not exact similiarity and exact reasons, but the end result of the same motion practically is there.

electrons don't really "orbit" the atom. they are potentially at all places at all times. more like a cloud of probability.

well I guess they are restricted by their energy level to a specific valence shell so maybe in that sense

so these electrons don't go in a type of circular motion around the center of the atom? They go in all different directions.

I mean one electron goes in a type of circular rotation doesn't it.

If not then these atom diagrams surely are misleading to me for it shows that they are orbiting around the center.

This is a little difficult to picture since it's somewhat counter-intuitive. But consider that an atom is thought of as having a sphereical shape (like a ball), not a flat/disc shape (like the solar system with it's planetary orbits).

So yes, it is true that the diagrams are not really accurate - the electrons are not really moving in a "circular" orbit. If they could be considered to be "moving" at all, they would be moving in a "spherical" orbit.

But from the perspective of quantum mechanics, they aren't really "moving". It is more accurate to say that they are at all points in the spherical orbit (or "valence shell" as Quiet correctly labeled it) at the same time. (That's the counter-intuitive part, and what Quiet means by "they are potentially at all places at all times. more like a cloud of probability.")

Also, just a little more on "valence shell"...

The electron orbits are divided into "layers" that are different distances from the uncleus, similar to the different distances of the planetary orbits from the sun. And if I recall correctly, the innermost shell can have a maximum of two electrons, the next shell heading "outward"from the nucleus can have four electrons, and so on, doubling with each layer of shell.

and then when you get into electricty and covalant bonding and stuff it gets worse

and "hole flow"

Very interesting and thank you for taking the time to explain

Circular motion is due to centripetal force exerted by nucleus on electron and sun on planet.this force keeps the planet and sun at a fixed distance which is only possible in circular motion.for the same region if an electron enter in a magnetic field in a perpendicular direction it starts revolving in circle due to force exerted by magnetic field

Just to clarify a bit here, centripital force can be any force that keeps an orbiting object from flying away from it's center of orbit. In the case of Sun/Planet or planet/moon, the centripital force is gravity. In the case of electron/nucleus, the centripital force is magnetism. If you were to tie a string to a rock and swing it around, the centripital force would be the string.

Back at the turn of the century, Rutherford theorized
that the atom looked like planets revolving around
the sun like your picture. Neils Bohr made the big
leap in quantum physics by saying that the orbits
could only be at certain locations and if an
electron jumped from one high orbit to a lower
orbit the resulting loss of energy would be
expelled as one quanta (photon) of light.
The picture you have is usually referred to
as the Bohr atom.

It was later discovered that the theory was
wrong. The part about emitting photons was
correct but the orbits were really clouds
of probability and most were not even round.
You can photograph them with an x-ray diffraction
microscope or a few more modern methods.

This is what the clouds actually look like.

Yes, that is correct. All of those atom diagrams are misleading, very misleading.

Even our best 'diagram' would still be misleading. Its the nature of electrons. Best stick to the wave equation, and treat diagrams with a grain of salt.