I Can’t Sleep - Electrons | Gentle Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Drift off with this calm bedtime reading as Benjamin explores the fascinating world of electrons, helping you relax and ease the struggles of insomnia. You’ll learn about their discovery, their role in atoms, and how they shape the science of electricity, chemistry, and technology. Benjamin’s soothing cadence transforms scientific details into peaceful storytelling that quiets the mind and reduces stress. This is not whispering or hypnosis—just gentle, fact-filled narration designed to guide you into rest. Press play, settle in, and let this exploration of electrons carry you into deep sleep. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Electrons, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Electrons. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch.

I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause. With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, and become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Electron.

The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the leptin particle family and are generally sought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure. The electron's mass is approximately 1 over 1,800. that of the proton.

Quantum mechanical properties of the electron include an intrinsic angular momentum, spin of a half-integer value, expressed in the units of the reduced plon constant H-bar. Being fermions, no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state, per the Polly Exclusion principle. Like all elementary particles, electrons exhibit properties of both particles and waves. They can collide with other particles and can be diffracted like light. The wave properties of electrons are easier to observe with experiments than those of other particles like neutrons and protons,

because electrons have a lower mass and hence a longer debroi wavelength for a given energy. electrons play in a central role in numerous physical phenomena, such as electricity, magnetism, chemistry, and thermal conductivity. They also participate in gravitational electromagnetic and weak interactions. Since an electron has charge, it has a surrounding electric field. If that electron is moving relative to an observer, the observer, the observer will observe it to generate a magnetic field. Electromagnetic fields produced from other sources

will affect the motion of an electron according to the Lawrence force law. Electrons radiate or absorb energy in the form of photons when they are accelerated. Laboratory instruments are capable of trapping individual electrons as well as electron plasma by the use of electromagnetic fields. Special telescopes can detect electron plasma in outer space. Electrons are involved in many applications, such as tribiology or frictional charging, electrolysis, electrochemistry, battery technologies, electronics, welding, cathode ray tubes, photoelectricity, photovoltaic solar panels, electron micros, electron micros,

radiations therapy, lasers, gaseous ionization detectors, and particle accelerators. Interactions involving electrons with other subatomic particles are of interest in fields such as chemistry and nuclear physics. The column force interaction between the positive protons within atomic nuclei and the negative electrons without allows the composition of the two known as atoms. Ionization or differences in the proportions of negative electrons versus positive nuclei changes the binding energy of an atomic system. The exchange or sharing of the electrons between two or more atoms is the main cause of chemical bonding. In 1838, British natural philosopher Richard Laming first hypothesized the concept of an indivisible,

quantity of electric charge to explain the chemical properties of atoms. Irish physicist George John Stone Stoney named this charge electron in 1991, and J.J. Thompson and his team of British physicists identified it as a particle in 1997 during the cathode ray tube experiment. Electrons participate in nuclear reactions, such as nucleosynthesis and and stars, where they are known as beta particles. Electrons can be created through beta decay of radioactive isotopes and in high-energy collisions, for instance, when cosmic rays enter the atmosphere. The antiparticle of the electron is called the positron. It is identical to the electron, except that it carries electrical charge of the opposite sign. When an electron collides with the

positron, both particles can be annihilated, producing gamma-ray photons. The ancient Greeks noticed that amber attracted small objects when rubbed with fur. Along with lightning, this phenomenon is one of humanity's earliest recorded experiences with electricity. In his 1600 treatise de Magnete, the English scientist William Gilbert coined the neo-Latinian term electrica, to refer to those substances with property similar to that of amber, which attract small objects after being rubbed. Both electric and electricity are derived from the Latin electron, also the root of the alloy of the same name, which came from the Greek word for

amber, electron. In the early 1700s, French chemist Charles Francois de Fei found that if a charged gold leaf is repulsed by glass rubbed with silk, then the same charged gold leaf is attracted by amber rubbed with wool. From this and other results of similar types of experiments, Dufi concluded that electricity consists of two electrical fluids, vitreous fluid from glass rubbed with silk and resinous fluid from amber rubbed with wool. These two fluids can neutralize each other when combined. American scientist Ebenezer Kinnersley later also independently reached the same conclusion. A decade later, Benjamin Franklin proposed that electricity was not from different types of

electrical fluid, but a single electrical fluid showing an excess, positive, or deficit, negative. He gave them the modern charge nomenclature of positive and negative, respectively. Franklin thought of the charge carrier as being positive, but he did not correctly identify which situation was a surplus of the charge carrier and which situation was a deficit. Between 1838 and 1851, British national philosopher Richard Laming developed the idea

that an atom is composed of a core of matter, surrounded by subatomic particles that had unit electric charges. beginning in 1846, German physicist Wilhelm Edward Weber theorized that electricity was composed of positively and negatively charged fluids and their interaction was governed by the inverse square law. After studying the phenomenon of electrolysis in 1874, Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney suggested that there existed a single definite quantity of electricity,

the charge of a monovalent ion. He was able to estimate the value of this elementary charge E by means of Faraday's law of electrolysis. However, Stony believed these charges were permanently attached to atoms and could not be removed. In 1881, German physicist Hermann von Helmoldz argued that both positive and negative charges were divided into elementary parts, each of which behaves like atoms of electricity. Stony initially coined the term Electrolean in 1881. 10 years later, he switched to

electron to describe these elementary charges, writing in 1994, an estimate was made of the actual amount of this most remarkable fundamental unit of electricity, for which I have since ventured to suggest the name electron. In 1906 proposal to change the Electrion failed because Hendrik Lawrence preferred to keep electron. The word electron is a combination of the words electric and ion. The suffix on, which is now used to designate other subatomic particles, such as a proton or neutron is in turn derived from electron. While studying electrical conductivity in rare field gases in 1859, the German physicist Julius Pluquer observed the radiation admitted from the cathode, caused phosphorescent light to appear on the tube wall near the cathode, and the region of the

phosphorescent light could be moved by application of a magnetic field. In 1869, Pluquer's student Johann Wilfem Hiddorf found that a solid body placed in between the cathode and the phosphorescence would cast a shadow upon the phosphorescent region of the tube. Hidorf inferred that there are straight rays emitted from the cathode and that the phosphorescence was caused by the rays striking the tube walls. In 1876, the German physicist Eugene Goldstein showed that the rays were emitted perpendicular to the cathode surface, which distinguished between the rays that were emitted from the cathode and the incandescent light.

Goldstein dubbed the rays cathode rays. Decades of experimental and theoretical research involving cathode rays were important in J.J. Thompson's eventual discovery of electrons. During the 1870s, the English chemist and physicist Sirwerexie, William Crooks developed the first cathode ray tube to have a high vacuum inside. He then showed in 1874 that the cathode rays can turn a small paddle wheel when placed in their path. Therefore, he concluded that the rays carried momentum. Furthermore, by applying a magnetic field, he was able to deflect the rays, thereby demonstrating that the beam

behaved as though it were negatively charged. In 1879, He proposed that these properties could be explained by regarding cathode rays as composed of negatively charged gaseous molecules in a fourth state of matter, in which the mean free path of the particles is so long that collisions may be ignored. The German-born British physicist Arthur Schuster expanded upon Crook's experiments by placing metal plates parallel to the cathode rays and applying an electric potential between the plates. The field deflected the rays toward the positively charged plate, providing further evidence that the rays carried negative charge.

By measuring the amount of deflection for a given electric and magnetic field, in 1890 Schuster was able to estimate the charge-to-mass ratio of the ray components. However, this produced a value that was more than a thousand times greater than what was expected, so little credence was given to its calculations at the time. This is because it was assumed that the charge carriers were much heavier hydrogen or nitrogen atoms. Schuster's estimates would subsequently turn out to be largely correct. In 1892, Hendrik Lawrence suggested that the mass of these particles, electrons, could be a consequence of their electric charge.

While studying naturally fluorescing minerals in 1996, the French physicist Henri Bacarelle discovered that they emitted radiation without any exposure to an external energy source. These radioactive materials became the subject of much interest by scientists, including the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford, who discovered they emitted particles. He designated these particles alpha and beta on the basis of their ability to penetrate matter.

In 1900, Beccarell showed that the beta rays emitted by radium could be deflected by an electric field, and that their mass-to-charge ratio was the same as for cathode rays. This evidence strengthened the view that electrons existed as components of atoms. In 1897, the British physicist J.J. Thompson, with his colleagues John S. Townsend and H. A. Wilson, performed experiments indicating that cathode rays really were unique particles, rather than waves, atoms or molecules, as was believed earlier. Thompson made good estimates of both the charge E and the mass M, finding that cathode ray particles

which he called corpuscles, had perhaps one thousandth of the mass of the least massive ion known, hydrogen. He showed that their charge to mass ratio, E over M, was independent of cathode material. He further showed that the negatively charged particles produced by radioactive materials, by heat of materials, and by illuminated materials were universal. The name electron was adopted for these particles by the scientific community, mainly due to the advocation by G.F. Fitzgerald, J. Larmore and H.A. Lawrence. In the same year, Emil Wiechert and Walter Kaufman also calculated the E. Over M. ratio, but they failed short of interpreting their results, while J.J. Thompson would subsequently in 1890 give estimates,

for the electron charge and mass as well. E is roughly 6.8 times 10 to the negative 10th, ESU, and M is roughly 3 times 10 to the negative 6 grams. The electron's charge was more carefully measured by the American physicist Robert Milliken and Harvey Fletcher in their oil drop experiment of 1909, the results of which were published in 1911. This experiment used in electric field,

field to prevent a charged droplet of oil from falling as a result of gravity. This device could measure the electric charge from as few as 1 to 150 ions with an error margin of less than 0.3%. Comparable experiments had been done earlier by Thompson's team, using clouds of charged water droplets generated by electrolysis, and in 1911 by Abramiof. who independently obtained the same results as Milliken, using charged microparticles of metals,

then published his results in 1913. However, oil drops were more stable than water drops because of their slower evaporation rate, and thus more suited to precise experimentation over a long period of time. Around the beginning of the 20th century, it was found that under certain conditions, a fast-moving charged particle caused a condensation of super-saturated water vapor along its path. In 1911, Charles Wilson used this principle to devise his cloud chamber

so he could photograph the tracks of charged particles such as fast-moving electrons. By 1914, experiments by physicist Ernest Rutherford, Henry Mosley, James Frank, and Gustav. Duff Hertz had largely established the structure of an atom as a dense nucleus of positive charge surrounded by lower mass electrons. In 1913, Danish physicist Niels Bohr postulated that electrons resided in quantized energy states, with their energies determined by the angular momentum of the electron's orbit about the nucleus. The electrons could move between those states, or orbits by the emission of absorption of photons of specific frequencies. By means of these quantized orbits, he accurately explained the spectral lines of the hydrogen atom.

However, Bohr's model failed to account for the relative intensities of the spectral lines, and it was unsuccessful in explaining the spectra of more complex atoms. chemical bonds between atoms were explained by Gilbert Newton Lewis, who in 1916 proposed that a covalent bond between two atoms is maintained by a pair of electrons shared between them. Later in 1927, Walter Heitler and Fritz London gave the full explanation of the electron pair formation and chemical bonding in terms of quantum mechanics.

In 1919, the American chemist Irving Langmuir elaborated on the Lewis's static model of the atom and suggested that all electrons were distributed in successive, concentric, nearly spherical shells, all of equal thickness. In turn, he divided the shells into a number of cells, each of which contained one pair of electrons. With this model, Langmuir was able to qualitatively explain the chemical properties of all elements in the periodic table, which were known to largely repeat themselves according to the periodic law. In 1924, Austrian physicist Wolfgang Paoli observed that the shell-like structure of the atom could be explained by a set of four parameters that defined every quantum energy state, as long as each state was occupied by no more than a single electron.

This prohibition against more than one electron occupying the same quantum energy state became known as the Pauley Exclusion Principle. The physical mechanism to explain the fourth parameter, which had two distinct possible values, was provided by the Dutch physicists, Samuel Gautzmitt, and George Ulenbeck. In 1925 they suggested that an electron in addition to the angular momentum of its orbit possesses an intrinsic angular momentum and magnetic dipole moment. This is analogous to the rotation of the Earth on its axis as it orbits the sun.

The intrinsic angular momentum became known as spin and explained the previously mysterious splitting of spectral lines observed with a high-resolution spectrograph. This phenomenon is known as fine structure splitting. In his 1924 dissertation research on quantum theory, French

physicist Louis de Broil hypothesized that all matter can be represented as a de broil wave in the manner of light. That is, under the appropriate conditions, electrons and other matter would show properties of either particles or waves. The corpuscular properties of a particle are demonstrated when it shows to have a localized position in space along its trajectory at any given moment.

The wave-like nature of light is displayed, for example, when a beam of light is passed through parallel slits, thereby creating interference patterns. In 1927, George Paget Thompson and Alexander Reed discovered the interference effect was produced when a beam of electrons was passed through thin celluloid foils and later metal films, and by American physicist Clinton Davison and Lester Gürmer, by the reflection of electrons from a crystal of nickel. Alexander Reed, who was Thompson's graduate student, performed the first experiments, but he died soon after in a motorcycle accident and is rarely mentioned. De Broil's prediction of a wave nature for electrons led Erwin Schrodinger to postulate a wave

equation for electrons, moving under the influence of the nucleus in the atom. In 1926, this equation, the Schrodinger equation, successfully described how electron waves propagated. Rather than yielding a solution that determined the location of an electron over time, this wave equation also could be used to predict the probability of finding an electron near a position, especially a position near where the electron was bound in space, for which the electron wave equation did not change in time. This approach led to a second formulation of quantum mechanics, and solutions of Schrodinger's equation, like Heisenberg's, provided derivations of the energy states of an electron in a hydrogen atom

that were equivalent to those that had been derived first by Bohr in 1913, and that were known to reproduce the hydrogen spectrum. One spin and the interaction between multiple electrons were describable. Quantum mechanics made it possible to predict the configuration of electrons and atoms, with atomic numbers greater than hydrogen. In 1928, building on Wolfgang Paoli's work, Hall Dirac produced a model of the electron, the Dirac equation, consistent with relativity theory by applying relativistic and symmetry considerations

to the Hamiltonian formulation of the quantum mechanics of the electromagnetic field. In order to resolve some problems within his relativistic equation, Dirac developed in 1930 a model of the vacuum as an infinite sea of particles with negative energy, later dubbed the Dirac C. This led him to predict the existence of a positron, the antimatter counterpart of the electron. This particle was discovered in 1932 by Carl Anderson, who proposed calling standard electrons negatrons and using electron as a generic term to describe both the positively and negatively charged variants.

In 1947, Willis Lamb, working in collaboration with graduate student Robert Rutherford, found that certain quantum states of the hydrogen atom, which should have the same energy, were shifted in relation to each other. The difference came to be called the Lamb Shift. About the same time, Polycarp Cush, working with Henry, M. Foley discovered the magnetic moment of the electron is slightly larger than predicted by Dirac theory. This small difference was later called anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron. This difference was later explained by the theory of quantum electrodynamics, developed by

Sin Etiro Tomonaga, Julian Swinger, and Richard Feynman in the late 1940s. With the development of the particle accelerator during the first half of the 20th century, physicists began to delve deeper into the properties of subatomic particles. The first successful attempt to accelerate electrons using electromagnetic induction was made in 1942 by Donald Kirst. His initial Betatron reached energies of 2.3 mega electron volts, while subsequent Betatrons achieved 300 mega electron volts. In 1947, synchrotron radiation was discovered with a 70-mageon-volt electron-electron at General Electric. This radiation was caused by the acceleration of electrons through a magnetic field as they moved near the speed of light. With the beam of energy of 1.5 giga electron volts, the first high-energy particle collider was adone, which began operations in

1968. This device accelerated electrons and positrons in opposite directions, effectively doubling the energy of their collision when compared to striking a static target with an electron. The large electron-positron collider, LAP at CERN, which was operational from 1989 to 2000, achieved collision energies of 209 giga electron volts, and made important measurements for the standard model of particle physics. Individual electrons can now be easily confined in ultra-small CMOS transistors, operated at cryogenic temperatures over a range of 4 Kelvin to about 15 Kelvin. The electron wave function spreads in a semiconductor lattice

and negligibly interacts with the valence-band electrons, so it can be treated in the single particle formalism by replacing its mass with the effective mass tensor. In the standard model of particle physics, electrons belong to the group of subatomic particles called leptons, which are believed to be fundamental or elementary particles. Electrons have the lowest mass of any charged leptin, or electrically charged particle of any type,

and belong to the first generation of fundamental particles. The second and third generation contain charged leptons, the muon and the tau, which are identical to the electron on charge, spin, and interactions, but are more massive. Leptons differ from the other basic constituent of matter, the quarks, by their lack of strong interaction. All members of the leptin group are fermions, because they all have half-odd integer spin. the electron has spin one-half. The invariant mass of an electron is approximately 9.109 times 10 to the negative 31st kilograms, or 5.489 times 10 to the negative 4 atomic mass units.

Due to mass energy equivalence, this corresponds to a rest energy of 0.511 mega electron volts. The ratio between the mass of a proton and that of an electron is about 1,836. Astronomical measurements show that the proton to electron mass ratio has held the same value, as is predicted by the standard model, for at least half the age of the universe. Electrons have an electric charge of negative 1.602-17634 times 10 to the negative 19 columns, which is used as a standard unit of charge for subatomic particles that is also called the elementary charge. Within the limits of experimental accuracy,

the electron charge is identical to the charge of a proton, but with the opposite sign. The electron is commonly symbolized by E minus, and the positron is symbolized by E plus. The electron has an intrinsic angular momentum or spin of bar h over 2. This property is usually stated by referring to the electron as a spin half particle. For such particles, the spin magnitude is bar h over 2,

while the result of the measurement of a projection of the spin on any axis can only be plus or minus bar h over 2. In addition to spin, the electron has an intrinsic magnetic moment along its spin axis. It is approximately equal to one bore magneton, which is a physical constant equal to 9.274.00915 times 23 by 10 to the negative 24 joules per Tesla. The orientation of the spin, with respect to the momentum of the electron, defines the property of elementary particles known as illicit. The electron has no known substructure. Nevertheless, in condensed matter physics, spin charge separation can occur in some materials. In such cases, electrons split into three independent particles,

the spin-on, the orbidon, and the halon, or charge-on. The electron can always be theoretically considered as a bound state of the three, with the spin-on-carrying the spin of the electron, the orbidon carrying the orbital degree of freedom, and the charge on carrying the charge, but in certain conditions they can behave as independent quasi-particles. The issue of the radius of the electron is a challenging problem of modern theoretical physics. The admission of the hypothesis of a finite radius of the electron

is incompatible to the premises of the theory of relativity. On the other hand, a point-like electron, zero radius, generates serious mathematical difficulties due to the self-energy of the electron tending to infinity. Observation of a single electron in a penning trap suggests the upper limit of the particle's radius to be 10 to the negative 22 meters. The upper bound of the electron radius of 10 to the negative 18 meters can be derived using the uncertainty relation in energy. There is also a physical constant called the classical electron radius, with the much larger value of 2.8179 times 10 to the negative 15 meters, greater than the radius of the proton. However, the terminology comes from a simplistic

calculation that ignores the effects of quantum mechanics. In reality, the so-called classical electron radius has little to do with the true fundamental structure of the electron. There are elementary particles that spontaneously decay into less massive particles. An example is the muon, with a mean lifetime of 2.2 times 10 to the negative 6 seconds, which decays into an electron, a muon neutrino, and an electron anti-nutrino. The electron, on the other hand, is thought to be stable on the theoretical grounds. The electron is the least massive particle with non-zero electric charge, so its decay would violate charge conservation. The experimental lower bound for the electrons mean lifetime is 6.6 times 10 to the 28th years

at a 90% confidence level. As with all particles, electrons can act as waves. This is called the wave particle duality and can be demonstrated using the double slit experiment. The wave-like nature of nature of the electron allows it to pass through two parallel slits simultaneously, rather than just one slit, as would be the case for a classical particle. In quantum mechanics, the wave-like property of one particle can be described mathematically as a complex valued function, the wave function, commonly denoted by the Greek letter si. When the absolute value of this function is squared, it gives the probability that a particle will

be observed near a location, a probability density. Electrons are identical particles because they cannot be distinguished from each other by their intrinsic physical properties. In quantum mechanics, this means that a pair of interacting electrons must be able to swap positions without an observable change to the state of the system. The wave function of fermions, including electrons, is antisymmetric. meaning that it changes sign when two electrons are swapped. Since the absolute value is not changed by a sign swap, this corresponds to equal probabilities. Bosons, such as the photon, have symmetric wave functions instead.

In the case of anti-symmetry, solutions of the wave equation for interacting electrons results in a zero probability that each pair will occupy the same location or state. This is responsible for the Pali Exclusion Principle, which precludes any two electrons from occupying the same quantum state. This principle explains many of the properties of electrons. For example, it causes groups of bound electrons to occupy different orbitals in an atom, rather than all overlapping each other in the same orbit. In a simplified picture, which often tends to give the wrong idea, but may serve to illustrate

some aspects. Every photon spends some time as a combination of a virtual electron plus its antiparticle, the virtual positron, which rapidly annihilate each other shortly thereafter. The combination of the energy variation needed to create these particles and the time during which they exist fall under the threshold of detectability expressed by the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. In effect, the energy needed to create these virtual. particles can be borrowed from the vacuum for a period of time so that their product is no more than the reduced plonk constant. While an electron positron virtual pair is in existence, the column force from the ambient electric field surrounding an electron causes a created positron

to be attracted to the original electron, while a created electron experiences a repulsion. This causes what is called vacuum polarization. In effect, the vacuum behaves like a medium having a dielectric permutivity more than unity. Thus, the effective charge of an electron is actually smaller than its true value, and the charge decreases with increasing distance from the electron. This polarization was confirmed experimentally in 1997, using the Japanese Tristan particle accelerator. Virtual particles cause a comparable shielding effect for the mass of the electron. The interaction with virtual particles also explains the small deviation of the intrinsic magnetic

moment of the electron from the bore magneton. The extraordinarily precise agreement of this predicted difference with the experimentally determined value is viewed as one of the great achievements of quantum electrodynamics. The apparent paradox and classical physics of a point particle electron having intrinsic angular momentum and magnetic moment can be explained by the formation of virtual photons in the electric field generated by the electron.