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Ludwik wrote:
. . .And I do not remember any explanations of the electrification
by contact, only a description of it. Therefore I still feel that I
have nothing to lean on when trying to explain the nature
of something that takes electrons away from Cu and delivers
them to Zn via salty water. . . .
This is a perennial, sticky problem, ignored in any useful way by texts.
As a stab at the suggestion of a beginning to an approach, consider:
1) Assume students have studied the discrete energy levels available to
electrons in a square well potential or in the electrostatic potential
well of a nucleus.
2) They recognize that in each of these situations there is a lowest
possible (ground) bound energy level, and a highest possible bound level
(below the continuum of positive energies). They also appreciate that
(neglecting spin) only one electron may occupy a particle state.
3) Now consider an electron sitting in the ground state of a hydrogen
nucleus' potential well.
4) Suppose there is available a second, different nucleus with a deeper
well. Suppose that this second system has unfilled electron states
available with energies lower than the hydrogen ground state energy (an
energy level diagram helps here).
5) If there were available a way for the hydrogen's electron to move into
the second nucleus' well, it could get rid of some energy. In its effect,
this is equivalent (perhaps not in the Newtonian sense, but in the QM
sense) to a force attracting this electron into the second well.
6) . . . go on to salt bridges between dissimilar metals, etc (?)
Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor