Re: [SI-LIST] : Atomic animation

Doug Brooks ([email protected])
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 09:33:48 -0800

Thank you both Doug and Christian fo an interesting response. This may be
getting deeper than I want to go or than is necessary to make my point! But
now you bring up another question in my mind.......

>
>you were pretty close to a value I found in a text book. There
>it says for the mean free path (in brackets: mean time between
>collisions):
>
> Au: 410 Angstroms (tau = 2.9e-14 s)
> Cu: 430 Angstroms (tau = 2.7e-14 s)
> Ag: 560 Angstroms (tau = 4.1e-14 s)
>

If the 'mean free path' between collisions is approximately 400 angstroms
(in copper) how far apart are the individual atoms in a copper lattice?

As an aside, I had forgotten how much "empty space" there actually is in an
atom until I recently read the following analogy (which may not be correct
at all). The allegation was that if a typical atom (defined by the size of
the electron rings) were the size of the earth, the nucleus would be the
size of a football field! Is that even close to the truth?

Thanks again for the thoughts.

Doug
.
****************************************************
Doug Brooks, President [email protected]
UltraCAD Design, Inc. http://www.ultracad.com

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