Friday Lecture

[Dakota Walker 1L]

When he went over the 2 models of electrons orbiting a nucleus, was the only thing you were supposed to take away from that the fact that an open line (electron path) would not work?
I feel like i missed the concept we were meant to learn here does anyone know what it is?

[nehashetty_2G]

Yeah! Essentially, electrons are described as a circular standing wave around the nucleus. Therefore, the connected line indicated a wave in line or in phase, which is stable whereas the disconnected line is a wave out of phase which is not stable. It is basically explaining why electrons have quantized energy states in an atom.

[Chem_Mod]

The takeaway is that only electrons with certain wavelengths (and therefore energies) are allowed inside an atom because electrons are described as stable, circular standing waves around the nucleus. This explains why electrons in atoms have quantized rather than continuous energy states.