It is also appropriate to point out that the electrons are located not only in circular orbits, but also along their own separately defined paths, the shapes of which resemble "8" on different axes. This allows you to place a much larger number of electrons, for example, for such large atoms as uranium, with the ordinal number 92, neptunium-93, curium-96, californium-98 and many others. These paths are given from a separate theory of orbitals, which also proves the phenomenon of quantization in the world of elementary particles, from which it can be concluded that electrons do not move, however, like all micro-objects, they appear-disappear, appear-disappear, such is their nature of existence.
And all this forms the complete structure of the atom. This structure forms the so-called «quantum ladder», which is clearly manifested when determining the size of all particles. The atom itself has a diameter of about 108 cm, of course it differs from each atom, but the average size is equal to this indicator. In the center of the atom there is its own nucleus with a radius of about 1012 cm. Electrons with a diameter less than 1017 cm rotate around the nucleus, but this is a point particle for experimenters, since the exact size of the electron is difficult to consider at the moment and even when viewed with such an indicator as 1017 cm, there will be no loss in accuracy. Unless you take into account experiments with increased accuracy aimed at studying higher resolutions.
Figure 2.6. The quantum ladder
The nucleus itself is composite and consists of particles called nucleons, with further approximation it can be seen that there are 2 types of nucleons inside the nucleus: protons and neutrons. Each of them is approximately 10-13 cm in its own size . And with further approximation, smaller particles quarks can be observed. Quarks themselves are already point particles and have a size also smaller than 10-17, as well as electrons.
If we talk about further increase and passage even further into the depths of matter, then what will be there and how it looks is unknown today. But the fact is that it is quite difficult to do this even today.
And today the quantum world appears exactly in this form. Amazing operations are performed with these and many other particles, many other particles are formed. The study of the quantum world itself is very important, because today the study in this area has led to a number of discoveries, a vivid example of which is the creation of nuclear power plant technologies, the creation of particle accelerators, research in the field of thermonuclear reactions, widely known as "the creation of an artificial Sun" and many other studies have their origins in this area. And it was also in this area that the Electron research was born, to which this narrative is being conducted.
The discovery by Conrad X-Ray of special signals emitted by the cathode tube, which later received the name of the X-ray itself, caused a great furor. Many scientists began active research, but before the world could recover from this surprise, amazing materials that emitted these amazing rays were suddenly discovered. Henri Becquerel, who is one of the famous scientists who studied fluorescence, decided to prove the fact of the connection of this phenomenon with a radioactive source uranium salt. It was then that Becquerel, in 1896, left the material on the photographic plate without illumination by chance and noticed that there were darkenings on the photographic plate, proving that the salt itself emits amazing rays. Many scientists have investigated this phenomenon until it was proved that these emissions are the result of radioactive decay of atomic nuclei.
Figure 2.7 Photo taken by Becquerel
It is for this reason that 1896 is considered the year of the beginning of research in the field of the atomic nucleus. It was also known that if you direct focused radiation from a radioactive source (uranium salt) by placing it in a lead chamber with a single slit, and then place magnets on the path of this study, then this radiation will be divided into 3 types. At the same time, the radiation flux that was directed to the right has a negative charge, the flux that was turned to the left has a positive charge, which is easily proved from Lorentz's law. And the third radiation that has not been rejected has no charge.
Thus, the positive radiation was called alpha particles, and after measuring the masses of these particles based on the Lorentz force formula, when the magnetic field induction changes (the principle of operation of the mass spectrometer), it was possible to make sure that these are the nuclei of the helium atom. Negative particles, which were called beta particles, with the same analysis turned out to be just fast electrons, and rays that were not rejected were called gamma radiation.
After the initial analysis of the structure of radioactive radiation was carried out, it can be made sure that the radiation itself consists of 2 types of particles and 1 type of waves, namely gamma radiation, thanks to which it is already possible to give a general definition of radioactivity:
Radioactivity is the spontaneous emission of various particles and radiation by atomic nuclei.
Speaking in more detail about the dates of determination and research of radioactivity, it should be pointed out that by 1900 all types of radioactivity had already been investigated, although the atomic nucleus itself was discovered by Ernest Rutherford only in 1911. The first radiation, alpha radiation, which, as already determined, consists of helium nuclei, was discovered in 1898 by the same Ernest Rutherford and became known as alpha decay. Also beta decay or electron flight was discovered by the same Rutherford in the same 1898. But gamma radiation was determined and investigated only in 1900 by Paul Ulrich Willard.
These studies proved that the darkening of the plates observed by Becquerel was caused by radioactive radiation. Consequently, it is now possible to come to the concept of radioactive decay:
Radioactive decay is a spontaneous process characteristic of the phenomena of the microcosm at the quantum level. At the same time, the result of radioactive decay cannot be predicted accurately, only to determine the probability. Such a nature of phenomena is not an imperfection of devices, but is a representation of the processes of the quantum world themselves.
From this statement, we can conclude that there must be some generally accepted law explaining this phenomenon. The conclusion of the law of radioactive decay is as follows:
Let there be N (t) identical radioactive nuclei or unstable particles at a certain time t and the probability of the decay of a single nucleus (particle) per unit of time is equal to λ.
In this case, over a period of time dt, the number of radioactive nuclei (particles) will decrease by dN, which implies the following expression (2.7).
If we deduce a change in time from this ratio, we get (2.8).
In (2.8), the concept of τ is defined in (2.9) and is the average lifetime of the nucleus (before decay), which is quite convenient to use, and N (0) in this case is the number of nuclei at the initial time.
It is also possible to present another more simplified form (2.8) in (2.10).
Where the half-index time is the half-life and is calculated by (2.11) and is equal to a separate value for each radioactive nucleus.