Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Recollection

I know I've asked this before, but it keeps coming back to me, again and again:

Does a proton possess orbitals?

If you say I'm silly, then consider the thousands of Chemists worldwide who speak of the hydrogen ion (H+) as having orbitals.

Isn't a hydrogen ion a proton?

But isn't a proton a free particle by itself?

Quantum mechanics is just plain weird, period. :)

1 comment:

boonleong said...

No, a proton is the source of an electric field around it, which is spherically symmetric. The resulting spherical harmonics give rise to the orbitals.