A Hydrogen atom is the simplest of all atoms. It has one proton and one electron. Modern physics tells us that we don't really know where the electron is, or what path it is following, but that is just because we are too big and our instruments are too crude. But imagine that an electron is following a roughly circular orbit around the nucleus. If the nucleus was the Earth, and the electron was following the moon's orbit, the Earth would only be four miles in diameter. The electron would have a diameter of two feet.
Or we could look at it another way. Imagine the single proton that comprises the hydrogen nucleus was the size of the Sun. Then the electron would be 16 light days away. The Earth is 8 light minutes from the Sun, meaning it takes light 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Pluto is much farther away from the Sun than the Earth. It is 4 light hours away. The nearest star is 4 light years away. Going back to our electron, given their relative sizes, the electron is 100 times farther away from the nucleus than Pluto is from the Sun. The sun is 1.4 billion miles in diameter. The electron in our solar scale model would be 1.4 million miles in diameter.
And how fast is that electron traveling around the nucleus? Pretty darn fast, almost 1% of the speed of light, which is faster than anything man has made. Even the fastest space craft have only reached 0.02% of the speed of light.
The negatively charged electron is attracted to the positively charged proton, but they never collide. Why is that? My conspiracy theory of the week is that the electron is trying to collide with the proton, but the proton is so small, and the electron is traveling so fast that it just keeps missing. Atomic theorists probably have another explanation, but it probably contains a lot of gooble-de-gook. In any case, try as it might, the electron does not hit the nucleus.
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