Electron 'Clouds' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [4]

Gribbin (1988: 117-8):

There is one oddity here, which calls for a little explanation and which brings in the dual particle–wave nature of the electron once again.  Just when you thought it was safe to think of electrons as waves, there's a catch.  Why should there be room for two electrons in each orbital?  The explanation for this has to do with a property of the electron that has, unfortunately, been called 'spin', even though it bears little resemblance to the spin of an object in the everyday world, like a child's top or the Earth in space.  Electrons can be slotted into orbitals in one of two states, 'up' or 'down'.  Quantum mechanics — quantum maths — predicts that no two identical electrons can ever occupy exactly the same energy state at the same time.  But an electron with spin up is not in identically the same state as an electron with spin down.  So two electrons, paired with opposite spins, can occupy each orbital allowed by the wave equation.  Indeed, this is a particularly stable state.  Just as the atom 'likes' to have its outermost shell full of electrons, so it 'likes' to have two paired electrons in each orbital within that shell.  And, of course, it can all be explained in terms of waves, matched up to mesh in with each other in a state of minimum energy.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the wave perspective is a construal of experience as quantum potential, whereas the particle perspective is a construal of experience as an instance of that quantum potential.  Both perspectives are required, and this interpretation of the distinction between them provides clear thinking on wave–particle complementarity and on the relation between electron clouds and individual electrons in the quantum model of chemistry.