[vannrox]

A Fun Read.

[Mr. Lucky]

I thought it was going to be about those really keen wooden boats from Ohio.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Junior]

Ping.

[MineralMan]

"Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; Politics/Elections"

A fun read, but not one that fits any of these categories you posted it under.

Sorry, but this belongs in Chat.

[Doug Loss]

You know, I never expected to see a column from Analog posted here! John Cramer is a respected physicist who does these speculative columns as a lark. He's pretty good at them, too!

[PatrickHenry]

An electron in the innermost n=1 orbit is bound with an energy of 13.6 electron volts (or eV). Here, an electron volt is the energy required to move an object with an electron charge through a potential of one volt. The higher orbits are bound with energy En=(13.6 eV)/n², so the n=2 orbit has a binding energy of E2=(13.6 eV)/4 = 3.4 eV.

I'll put this question to you, although anyone else is welcome to chime in. The question: in reading this, it seems that the strength of the binding energy, being electro-magnetic, is governed by the inverse square law. Are the successive orbits of the atom arranged as neatly as the sentence I've quoted seems to indicate? That is, orbit 2 is twice the distance from the nucleus as orbit 1, and orbit 3 is 3 times the distance, etc. Assuming the binding energy is well-established, I guess that would have to be the situation.