Re: electron/proton

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 18:13 -0400 8/8/01, Meredith, Justin wrote:

> what exactly is a proton/electron? i assume they are physical mediums for
> positive and negative "charges" respectively.

"Exactly"? Do you have eight or nine years to spend on this? Or are
we looking for something a little more approximate here? Your
assumption is superficially correct, but ignores lots of other
aspects of both. Like the apparent fact that the elctron is a
structureless point particle (or at least smaller than we have been
able to measure) with a mass 1/1837 that of the proton, which is an
object made up of other objects, which I won't delve into now. And
yet the "charge" of the two is numerically exactly equal. Also there
are two types of each, with everything the same except the charge.
That is, there are "positrons" with a positive charge instead of the
normal negative charge that electrons have, and yet in every other
respect they are identical to electrons. And there are anti-protons,
which are in every respect identical to protons, but have a negative
charge. Our ordinary everyday matter (called atoms) is made up of
protons, electrons and neutrons. Neutrons are similar to protons
except that they have no charge, only a mass close to, but slightly
larger than the proton. But we can create anti-atoms, made up of
anti-protons, anti-neutrons, and positrons. This has been done in the
laboratory, at least with anti-hydrogen. When a particle and its anti
particle get too close together, they "annihilate" each  other,
giving off a burst of energy. If you gather up enough pure enrgy
(called "photons") you can "create" a particle and its anti-particle
together.

Is that enough. Am I going in the right direction?

> what exactly is a "charge"? does the charge itself consist of energy to make
> it "negative" or "positive"?

Nobody knows. All we can say about charge is that it is that property
of matter than responds to electromagnetic forces, just as mass is
that property of matter that responds to gravitaional forces.

> is energy harnessed by pulling an electon away from a proton, or is it
> harnessed by electron meeting proton?

This is the only one of your three questions with a relatively easy
answer. "Harnessed" is not a very good term for what goes on here,
though. When an electron meets a proton, and the energies of the two
are right, the result is called "hydrogen." When this happens some
light is emitted from our new atom. Since light is a form of energy,
we see that energy is released. Since hydrogen atoms don't fall apart
spontaneously, it follows that we have to do something to the
hydrogen atom to separate the proton and electron. Since energy was
released when they came together, it follows that we need to put
energy into the atom in order to separate the proton and electron.

Enough?
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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