RE: [asa] Explainability of hydrogen atom

" Are the properties of the hydrogen atom explainable in terms of the properties of an electron and proton?"

With all of the numerous sub-atomic particles being discovered, I don't see how... the electron and proton are not themselves fundamental elements.

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of wjp
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 10:57 AM
To: asa
Subject: [asa] Explainability of hydrogen atom

For reasons that I will discuss later, I have a physics
question:

Are the properties of the hydrogen atom explainable in
terms of the properties of an electron and proton?

In particular, I am thinking of at least two properties:
1) That the energy levels of the electron are discrete
2) That the hydrogen atom radiates only when the electron
falls from a higher level to a lower one (entailing by
conservation of energy that the radiation emitted is
also discrete).

At this point, I am not interested in whether the particular
values of the energy levels are explainable in terms of the
properties of hydrogenic constituents.

thanks,

bill

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Received on Fri May 1 14:09:40 2009