What would happen if you expanded a hydrogen atom to the size of a basketball?

Question

What characteristics would the "expanded" atom have? Distance from protron and electron? Electerical potentials(voltage) that these particles would have? Weight and mass?
Angular velocity? etc......

Answer 1

I think its all proportional I dunno

Answer 2

I have no clue. You really have to make some WAG and assumptions under such a condition. For example, are you presuming the strong and weak atom forces that keep a nucleus from flying apart keep their very short range force fields? If that's the case, the enlarged proton and neutron would fly apart because there would be nothing to hold them together. If you assume the atomic forces also increase their range proportionately, then the hydrogen atom with the thyroid condition would hang together.

What happens to the electron is also dependent on your assumptions. If the nucleus were expanded, what would force the electron cloud to expand similarly? I suggest nothing; so the electron cloud would be absorbed into the nucleus of your big atom. And, in quantum mechanics, the ability of an electron to flit about within a nucleus is certainly feasible.

As the proton is bigger and the electron is now within the nucleus, I would think the chances of the electron colliding with the proton would be pretty good. In which case, a new particle (a photon?) might very well be created. And the neutron would be left alone...like a wallflower.

Spin, color, and such are subatomic characteristics that may have no place in the macro world of a basketball sized atom. My guess is they would disappear, at least in the relative sense.

I think the bottom line is that your big ball model will not happen because it has no real basis in physics.