I’m not sure how this visualization is better than the hydrodynamic visualization, but it’s worse in one very important way - it uses “rotation” as a metaphor when angular momentum and spin are already very important. It would be hopelessly confusing to learn this metaphor (which has nothing to do with spin) and then try to disentangle it from your mental model when learning about spin later on.
More importantly, I don't understand what this model is trying to conceptualize.
The hydrostatic analogy helps a person understand the difference between voltage and current. But its real power is it gives you the building blocks that lets you understand more complicated behaviors by analogy.
Take power in the P=I*V sense. Pretending it's water, we can see how a supersoaker nozzle (ie high voltage, low current) is kinda moving the same amount of water in a unit of time as say a soda bottle tipped on its side (ie low voltage, high current). With the hydrostatic analogy, I can see how high voltage and high current are two different "things", AND I can extend those analogies to see how they explain additional concepts like power. That's a great mental framework! Now that I understand the basic dynamics and feel comfortable moving into the land of mathematical expressions, we can take off the training wheels and start talking about the really abstract stuff like capacitance.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what is the explanatory power of this "meshing gears" analogy. If you were to use this to explain electricity in say a high school physics class, what concept or insight does it help me grasp?
That electricity can be explained with atoms! And not the kind of bohr-model atoms that are thoroughly debunked (electron bead flying around nucleus magically). If we treat them like gearing shells, as chemists have for decades, we can provide a model of electricity that is consistent with quantum mathematical descriptions of the atom's shape and motion.
If you're the author, you should make clear who your audience is. "Demystifying Science" and "How to Visualize Electricity" imply a general high school audience... this sounds like it's specifically "How to Visualize Electricity for Quantum Physicists." Perhaps start off by stating some quantum formulas or misconceptions that aren't well served by the hydrostatic analogy but your analogy helps explain better. If I don't understand that framing, I'll know right away "ok, this is for a grad-level understanding, not high school."
Not saying this is bad work, it's just very niche work where people outside the niche won't really understand the point or appreciate it. Know your audience, and present appropriately. It fell flat to me because I was expecting it to be something that apparently it is not.
Thanks. There is no reason why high-school or younger children can't understand the basic modern conception of the atom. We hope to bring that down to everyone's level.
Physics should start with objects. So we start electricity with atoms, unlike the traditional analogies.
I feel like the hydrogen atom model (the rendering model) is ambiguous, which makes the rotation ambiguous
Also, I feel like you have to have a good grasp of symmetry and rotation to grasp the thought that they rotating in different directions - the top part of the thing, closest to the viewer, is going right for both of them. Why is that counter or clockwise? Thank God I took quantum chemistry and think I know what they're going for.
You have to view each terminal on its own terms: when viewed from above, each rotating atom at the end of each terminal is rotating oppositely (-/+ charge)...this means when you bring them together they coincide.
Yeah, I understand that they are mirror images of one another and their rotation ends up being complimentary
But if someone is at a very introductory level and doesn't know anything about rotational symmetry, the point that the terminal ends are rotating opposite directions may be confusing.
The transparency of the render models might lead to someone hearing that point about opposing rotations, stare at those rotating terminal ends, and then have something like the rotating mask illusion (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sKa0eaKsdA0) cause them to see that the terminal ends are visually rotating in opposite directions, rather than it being just in relative terms. I was able to do this on purpose with the faster-rotating negative terminal, and its rotation is genuinely kind of ambiguous at the scale I watched the video.
These aren't criticisms of the method, just a couple of points about the video that might pose some conflict with someone who is at a very introductory level.
I do like the idea generally. It's always fun to see new analogies for stuff.
aha i get your point exactly. Yes, i'll see if i can't address those for future vids. Unfortunately youtube doesn't let you update vids so i'll have to include those points in the next vid on magnetism. thank you!
If it were me, I'd probably have the camera fly down to between the two terminal ends (don't cut, so the viewer understands what's happening). Then, turn from one terminal and shoe the rotation with an arrow, then rotate and turn to the other and do the same. Maybe mention that they're mirror images, so the rotation coincides.
Obviously not a dictate, but if I were trying to explain it to my chemistry freshmen that is how I would do initially.
It might be useful to seek out some non-expert boards that help undergrads in physical science or engineering to see what they think!
Good luck! I'll bookmark your stuff and ref it to some EE people.
I had similar problem. I understood how it should be from the picture but "opposite" made me think there is some phenomena there. I had to look closely to debunk it.
Spin and angular momentum are the same physical quantity - their sum is conserved, but not each on its own. Spin just seems to occur in SU(2) rather than SO(3) if I remember correctly.
it is impossible to deconvolve speed/direction in terms of momentum of the electron, so we simplified the idea with rotation speed. Ideally, the high charge atoms would be more cohesive as well as faster.
I'm out of my depth now, but wouldn't this have the same issues in a rotating frame of reference? Surely, if position/direction is conflated, then rotation is too, no?
You have to really look at the Heisenberg uncertainty relation.
Position cannot be sharply determined if we know direction (angular momentum). Speed is problematic too. The state of an electron (or electrons) in the atoms isn't an eigenstate of the velocity (or speed) operator, so no way to nail down the speed precisely.
That being said, we chose to abbreviate momentum with rotation speed for our visualization. Reality includes coherence of the shells. They must effectively rotate together to produce coherent momentum and force the other terminal.
Thanks for linking that spin paper earlier - I'm reading it and it's interesting.
With respect to uncertainty of angmom vs position - I would expect the pontryagin dual of angmom (which would be affected by the H.U.P.) to be angular density distribution, not "position" as such. Do you have any information on this relationship?
Also, do you know what the energy eigenstates of electrons in the fermi band look like, and how those relate to velocity eigenstates? As I understand, fermi band electrons that carry electrical current are usually not bound to atoms, but in a much wider (space basis) state, which I would expect to be closer to momentum/velocity eigenstates.
Also, how literal are you claiming the OP is? I've never heard this "gearing" analogy before, and I'm wondering if it's highly metaphorical or if this reflects some actual physical process I'm just not familiar with.
Density distribution can be transformed to position with spherical shell slice processing from what i understand.
This visualization is an interpretation of all of the math we could get our hands on. Hopefully we get closer to what the atoms are actually doing. Quite literally, electron volt can be considered momentum, so we did our best to illustrate this...simplifying it to rotation speed. In all cases, we are trying to get closer to what the physical object atoms are doing to provide for the phenomenon.
For instance, ionization means delocalized surface of the atom in this illustration because we can't imagine the electron to be a bead that flies around magically and moves through the wire providing motive pressure, per se. So we use shell gearing instead as a rationalization that fits the math and makes more intuitive sense.
Our belief is that QM is absolutely correct in its descriptions but lacking in its interpretations. There is a lot of woo out there because of this.
If you know any other QM experts that would be willing to help us develop the model further, that would be great- can you PM me through the website?
