On this day in physics: 22 January 1997, Lottie Williams becomes the first person to cross paths with a piece of falling space-vehicle debris. On a walk at 3 a.m. in Tulsa, OK (What??) she sees overhead what she believes to be a meteor, a bright glowing object in the sky. Some time later she gets struck in the shoulder by a six-inch piece of metal. It is believed to be the debris of a Delta II rocket which had burned up in Earth's atmosphere earlier that night.[Source.]
Word of the day- Electron- A fundamental particle, meaning that it does not break down into any other particles. It is one of three types of particles which makes up all atoms of matter: Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons. As stated before, whereas protons and neutrons are made up of up and down quarks, electrons do not break down. They can be modeled as "orbiting" the protons and neutrons, which make up the nucleus of the atom. The "distance" of the electron's orbit can be thought of as follows: If an electron was to "orbit" circularly around the very highest seats of a football stadium, the nucleus would be a quarter on the 50 yard line.
We know very well in 2016 that electron's don't actually orbit the nucleus of an atom, the way the earth orbits the sun. Instead, electrons don't really have a definite position of any sort. Rather, they have "probability densities", places where they are most likely to be, were you to measure their position. Hydrogen has a single electron orbiting a single proton. This makes the overall charge of the atom neutral, because the electron's charge exactly opposes the charge of a proton.
As we look at atoms with more and more protons, generally we find atoms with more and more electrons. These electrons all orbit the nucleus, but the shape of the probability densities changes based on how many electrons there are. They actually group together in clusters with different "radiuses" and shapes of their probability densities. These are called shells.
Killer Resource: Hydrogen Atom Orbitals Very excellent poster of the the different electron orbitals, or "shells".
Keywords: Electron, Proton, Atom, Orbital, Shell, Particle, Quark
