(January 3, 2018 at 8:54 pm)polymath257 Wrote: In fact, the lowest 'orbital' in an atom has no angular momentum! What actually happens is that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes into play. Essentially, if the electron tried to collapse close to the nucleus, we would know where it is located, which means its momentum would be uncertain, meaning it wouldn't *stay* close to the nucleus.
I don't understand how the bolded follows from Heisenberg's uncertainty. If I recall my chemistry correctly (probably not) isn't that just a limit of us measuring a particle's velocity or location, in that we can only measure one or the other? So how does that impact the location of the particle itself?
