Electron 'Clouds' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Gribbin (1988: 115):

A particle is localised in space; the only way a particle can 'surround' the [atomic] nucleus is to whizz round it very rapidly.  But a wave is a spread out thing.  An electron wave trapped by an atomic nucleus can 'surround' the nucleus in a much more real sense, in the same way that a sound wave completely fills up an organ pipe.  Such a sound wave is called a standing wave; the electron waves around an atomic nucleus can also be thought of as standing waves, and described in mathematical terms as waves trapped in in the electric potential field of the nucleus.  Each single electron has to be regarded as a diffuse object spread out over a volume roughly as big as the whole atom.  This cloud corresponding to a single electron is thicker — more dense — in some places than in others.  If you try to explain that in terms of particles, it 'means' that the electron 'particle' is more likely to be found in some places (where the cloud is thickest) than in others.  The concept of uncertainty comes in again here.  If you insist on thinking of the electron as a particle, all you can say about its position is that it exists somewhere within a particular orbital, and that it is most likely to be found in the densest parts of that 'cloud'.  But it really is best to get rid of the image of an electron as a particle altogether now, and to think of the diffuse cloud around the nucleus as representing the 'real' electron.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Function Linguistic theory, the electron wave that surrounds an atomic nucleus is a construal of experience as a measure of quantum potential in terms of probability.  It is thus not more 'real' than any actual particle that is an instance of that potential. A sound wave, on the other hand, is actual, not potential, and, unlike an electron, it is a process, not a thing: the propagation of a disturbance through a medium.  Thus, it is electron potential (a probability wave) that is "trapped in in the electric potential field of the nucleus" and "spread out over a volume roughly as big as the whole atom".

By the same reasoning, the electron cloud of an atomic orbital represents the position of an electron as probabilistic potential, with cloud density proportional to probability.  That is, the electron as particle, as instance, is located more frequently where the cloud, as potential, is densest, since frequencies are instances of probabilities.