Electron 'Clouds' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [5]

Gribbin (1988: 118):

The chemical nature of an atom depends on the number of electrons in the highest energy shell that is occupied at all; those electrons are best thought of as spread out, three-dimensional objects with a definite shape, attached to the nucleus and sticking out into space, each one covering a volume comparable to the size of the atom itself; full shells are particularly stable, so that atoms 'like' to arrange themselves to get filled outer shells; and electrons come in two flavours, up and down, which 'like' to pair up with one another.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the "spread out, three-dimensional objects with a definite shape, attached to the nucleus and sticking out into space, each one covering a volume comparable to the size of the atom itself" — that is: electron clouds — are construals of the potential locations of electrons at the various energy shells (atomic orbitals).  An actual electron, as an instance of quantum potential, is a particle at one of these potential locations.