SCIENTIFIC EDUCATIONAL CENTER science idea

The electrons in an atom actually get into the nucleus. In fact, the electrons in the s - states tend to peak at the nucleus. Electrons are not small balls that can fall into the nucleus under the influence of electrostatic attraction.

Rather, electrons are quantized wave functions that propagate through space and can sometimes act as particles in a limited way. An electron in an atom propagates according to its energy. States with more energy are more scattered. All electronic states overlap with the nucleus, so the concept of an electron" falling "or" entering " the nucleus doesn't make sense. The electrons are always partially located in the nucleus.

If the question was supposed to be asked: "Why are the electrons in the atom not localized in the nucleus?» then the answer is still "they do it". The electrons can be localized in the nucleus, but this requires interaction. This process is known as" electron capture " and is an important method of radioactive decay.

When an electron is captured, it is absorbed by a proton in the nucleus, turning the proton into a neutron. An electron starts out as an ordinary atomic electron, with its wave function propagating through the atom and overlapping with the nucleus.

Over time, the electron reacts with the proton through its overlapping part, collapses to a point in the nucleus, and disappears when it becomes part of a new neutron. Since there is now one less proton in the atom, electron capture is a type of radioactive decay in which one element is transformed into another.

If you were supposed to ask the question: "Why does the localization of electrons in the nucleus occur rarely?” , then the answer is: it takes interaction in the nucleus to completely localize the electron there, and the electron often has nothing to interact with.

An electron will react with a proton only into the nucleus by trapping an electron if there are too many protons in the nucleus. When there are too many protons, some of the outer protons are loosely bound and are more free to interact with the electron.

But most atoms don't have too many protons, so the electron has nothing to interact with. As a result, each electron in a stable atom remains in its extended wave function form.

Each electron continues to "flow" in, out, and around the nucleus, finding nothing in the nucleus to interact with that would destroy it inside the nucleus. This is also a good thing, because if electron capture were more common, matter would not be stable, but would collapse to a handful of nuclei.

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