If an electron in an atom can be thought of as a single violinist, then an atom with multiple electrons is string quartet, or octet, or a full orchestra. Setting aside the difficulty of suspending an entire orchestra in mid-air, imagine what the sound would now look like.
The sound would still be a sphere but with a few changes:
- The sphere would certainly be bigger. Even if all of the players are playing quietly, the sound of the orchestra will be louder (and bigger) than that of a single player.
- The sound would not be a single shade of green anymore. Instead, I imagine a constantly changing rainbow of sound - pulsing and throbbing.
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| Symphony No. 1 by Brahms |
In the same way, great physicists might be able to see (or calculate) the sound of JUST the strings, or JUST the oboe, and they might see interesting shapes and twists within the larger bubble of sound.
What makes great music (orchestral, country, R&B, whatever) is the interplay of the sounds, sometimes reinforcing each other, sometimes “arguing” with each other, but in all cases combining to make one overarching sound.
Electrons in atoms play the same way. The waves (the electrons) sometime reinforce each other, sometimes “argue”, but in the end they create an electron structure of the atom that defines the properties of that atom.
The image on the left is the atomic equivalent of an orchestral score, showing many (not even all) of the different wave forms that an electron can take in an atom separated out. This is how great musical scholars can "hear" an orchestra, and in this case, how physicists and chemists think about individual electrons in an atom.
The image on the right is an image of a molecule made of several atoms as it breaks apart. Each "blob" in that picture is an atom with all of its "musicians" playing together. What we see is the big picture - the sound of the orchestra.
Let's take a (very basic) look at the math that generated these images.
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