Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: vaskidmark on June 01, 2013, 09:05:45 PM
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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/atomic-level-images/
For the first time, scientists have visually captured a molecule at single-atom resolution in the act of rearranging its bonds. The images look startlingly similar to the stick diagrams in chemistry textbooks.
Looks like I'm going to have to take back all the jokes I made about organic chemists playing with Tinker Toys.
Seems we are running out of things to "discover". Perhaps the final frontier will be explaining what a woman really means when she says "Well, fine then, go ahead" in that tone of voice.
stay safe.
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So, were the molecules bonding with a bro-hug, or were they spooning?
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Probably they were sitting in a circle and sharing their feelings =)
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It seems Alanis Morissette was right, isn't it ionic?
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It seems Alanis Morissette was right, isn't it ionic?
Can we leave the horrible puns to Tallpine?
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Seems we are running out of things to "discover".
I think we just opened up a new field of study to ask even more questions and discover more things.
Chemical reactions have what are the high probability products that we predict they make, or discover what they make when you make a test-tube full of quadrillions of the 99.99% probability molecules and test the product to see what it is, missing the .001% molecules at the bottom of the tube that could change the world, but we never knew about them.
Reading the article, it appears they already discovered some other chemical products nobody had guessed at.
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Pfffft. Some scientists. The photo is out of focus!
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I understand the rim to rim electron bonding of the atoms (like the "mickey mouse" shape of H2O) but what are the "sticks" made of: electrons dashing back and forth in a straight line ???
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Fascinating. Although in a way, not surprising. The scientists construct models based on known atomic facts.....and the real thing looks similar. If it looked very different some basic concepts about molecular chemistry should come under serious question.
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I understand the rim to rim electron bonding of the atoms (like the "mickey mouse" shape of H2O) but what are the "sticks" made of: electrons dashing back and forth in a straight line ???
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.overclock.net%2F9%2F96%2F9659bb6a_d61912a9_cant-tell-if-serious.jpeg&hash=18b5a6a85aed72340ad0a95698b038dcc7f6888a)
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I understand the rim to rim electron bonding of the atoms (like the "mickey mouse" shape of H2O) but what are the "sticks" made of: electrons dashing back and forth in a straight line ???
Really skinny areas of electron probability that make up shared orbitals. The regions the electrons could be look more like sausages and lobes that sort of look like balloon animals, but the "line" is the area of highest probability where the electron is most of the time. And the atomic force microscope shows the high probability area the strongest.
You can figure out an electron's velocity, or it's position, but not both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
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Somehow I always thought the the electron(s) had a constantly changing angle of orbit and were so fast (C ?) that they essentially created a sphere around the nucleus.
It's been a long time, and I haven't really had the occasion to study and remember such things. In my one college science class (meteorology) the professor (a retired Navy forecaster :cool: ) demonstrated how the H2O molecule had the two H atoms connected at something like 60 degrees forming a "mickey mouse" pattern, and how this caused hexagon ice/snow crystals.
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It's more like ~104.5 degrees... according to later information that I looked up. (I thought it was 60 degrees, too, from my HS chemistry classes.
I've always wondered how the electrostatic forces cause snowflakes to grow such that each of the 6 arms are so similar... or nearly identical, yet snowflakes are so dissimilar to each other.
I'd like to see that in ultravision microscopy.
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Somehow I always thought the the electron(s) had a constantly changing angle of orbit and were so fast (C ?) that they essentially created a sphere around the nucleus.
It's been a long time, and I haven't really had the occasion to study and remember such things. In my one college science class (meteorology) the professor (a retired Navy forecaster :cool: ) demonstrated how the H2O molecule had the two H atoms connected at something like 60 degrees forming a "mickey mouse" pattern, and how this caused hexagon ice/snow crystals.
There are orbitals that form spherical shells, but they are only one subset of the energy states for an atom.
This is just for Hydrogen. http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/HydrogenOrbitals/
http://designblog.rietveldacademie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/POS0007-A2-orbitron-20101.jpg Here are a few more states.
Other heavier elements with more electrons corresponding to their higher proton count in the nucleus gets hideously complex. Plus, due to the quantum wave/particle duality, these are also wave functions. Not just a little "dot" of an electron whizzing around like a planet in some tiny solar system analogy...
Actual electron velocities are a bit more complicated. Some representations of velocity are more of an energy figure sometimes. Not exactly a speed as we think of it on the macro scale.
Although electrons make quantum jumps, they kinda/sorta "teleport" which is instantaneous almost, or measured in Planck-time, OTOH, since electrons have mass, they can never actually move at c, since anything with mass gains additional rest-mass as it approaches c in an exponential curve, and to actually reach c for anything with even a shred of mass would take infinite energy/more than is available in the whole universe etc.
http://stedjee1.infinology.net/Velocity_Orbit_Electron/Velocity%20of%20Orbiting%20Electron.htm
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It's more like ~104.5 degrees... according to later information that I looked up. (I thought it was 60 degrees, too, from my HS chemistry classes.
...
Inflation, perhaps ? =|
:lol:
There are orbitals that form spherical shells, but they are only one subset of the energy states for an atom.
...
I really don't spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
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Looks like I'm going to have to take back all the jokes I made about organic chemists playing with Tinker Toys.
The theory for how chemicals 'look' has been worked out for quite a long time, its no surprise at all that compounds like like they theoretically look like.
Chemical reactions have what are the high probability products that we predict they make, or discover what they make when you make a test-tube full of quadrillions of the 99.99% probability molecules and test the product to see what it is, missing the .001% molecules at the bottom of the tube that could change the world, but we never knew about them.
A lot of what I've worked with were closer to 50/50, 60/40, etc, with the desired outcome sometimes being on the lower end of the probability as well as numerous side products being present. The real trick is to fine tune the reaction conditions to push the outcome into a favorable direction, using changes in pressure, temperature, time, stroichiometry, and often different synthetic routes altogether.
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I'm wondering what AFM tech they are using? You need a really freaking sharp point to get that kind of resolution. 3 Angstrom scale bar? I spent a good deal of time in grad school designing and fabricating novel AFM probes. My stuff was more for near-field optical microscopy which is basically an AFM that also does spectroscopy. I want to see how they made that thing.
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I'm wondering what AFM tech they are using? You need a really freaking sharp point to get that kind of resolution. 3 Angstrom scale bar? I spent a good deal of time in grad school designing and fabricating novel AFM probes. My stuff was more for near-field optical microscopy which is basically an AFM that also does spectroscopy. I want to see how they made that thing.
Its a mono-atomic point. But you can (and in most cases, do) get a resolution smaller than the actual tip. What matters is the positioning resolution of the tip, rather than its size (effectively), provided the tip isn't -that- big.
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"Seems we are running out of things to "discover"."
Aristotle said that a couple thousand years ago, and people actually believed him... Wasn't a good time for discovery...
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I took two (3?) years of chemistry in High School back in the 50s. I even still have my 1953 CRC Handbook. Then I took it as a minor in college.
I sure wish I'd've kept up with it. <sigh>
Terry
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I took two (3?) years of chemistry in High School back in the 50s. ...
So did you finally pass? :P
=D
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"Seems we are running out of things to "discover"."
Aristotle said that a couple thousand years ago, and people actually believed him... Wasn't a good time for discovery...
And more recently (1900) Lord Kelvin reputedly said ""There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
Then along came things like relativity, the photoelectric effect, the Big Bang theory, quantum mechanics, particle physics . . .
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"Then along came things like relativity, the photoelectric effect, the Big Bang theory, quantum mechanics, particle physics . . ."
The Big Bang Theory I've seen, but those other TV programs? They really don't sound very interesting at all...