why doesn't electron and proton actually stick together in H atom?

Question

so i understand that the reason why e's and p's don't stick together in atoms w/ more than 1 electron is b/c that other e would have a repelling force on the other e, so that counters the attraction btwn e and p, but when you've only got 1 e (in H atom), why doesn't it just stick to p since only that attraction is present? why does the lone e still orbit about the neutron?

Answer 1

There's a lot of quantum mechanics to know for this one... The gist is that the electron is smeared out around the proton in a cloud, it's not a little ball like we were told, but everywhere at the same time with decreasing probability of seeing it further away from the center, UNTIL you look at it, THEN it chooses a position (yes quantum is REALLY weird). For Hydrogen, there IS a chance that it is in the center, but it has momentum so there's other places it can be, too.

Answer 2

ahhh, this is one of the questions that physicists asked at the beginning of this century. They surmised that if everything worked according to classical mechanics the electrons would eventually decay into the nucleus. We know that does not happen, therefore classical mechanics is wrong. They came up with a new theory called quantum mechanics that could explain this. It gets more complicated from there. However using the schrodinger equation it can be shown that there is a lowest possible level energy level for that electron. It can go no lower. If the electron and proton stuck to each other that energy level would be zero. The solution of the schrodinger equation gives a non-zero energy level.

I wish I could explain it better.

Answer 3

The same reason the moon doesn't hit the Earth. It is falling towards the earth all the time, but because it is moving it never gets there. If it stopped moving it would fall into the Earth. The other answers above refer to the problem that electrons going in circles radiate energy, so they lose energy, so they should spiral into the nucleus. To avoid this Bohr suggested that there are certain orbits that don't do this (easy way out)