M0008Clark

Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist

In his website at York University

somewhere in Merrie Old England

, Jim Clark has come up

with a third

version of the

Quantum atom that is a little different than either Bohr’s or Born’s.

[

]

lark begins his

presentation by instructing us

not to confuse an orbit with an orbital:

“ When the a planet moves around the sun, you can plot a definite path for

it which is called an orbit. A simple view of the atom looks similar and you

may have pictured the electrons as orbiting around the nucleus. The truth

is different, and electrons in fact inhabit regions of space known as orbitals.

Orbits and orbitals sound similar, but they have quite different meanings.

It is essential that you understand the difference between them.”

[

]

Thus with this seemingly inoffensive remark, Clark

seemingly

disintegrates Bohr’s planetary

model in one fell

blow.

Bill: So what is an orbital, Professor Clark?

Clark: Allow me explain student Bill…

“ Suppose you had a single hydrogen atom and at a particular instant

plotted the position of the one electron. Soon afterwards, you do the

same thing, and find that it is in a new position. You have no idea how

it got from the first place to the second. You keep on doing this over

and over again, and gradually build up a sort of 3D map of the places

that the electron is likely to be found. In the hydrogen case, the electron

can be found anywhere within a spherical space surrounding the nucleus...

Such a region of space is called an orbital. You can think of an orbital as

being the region of space in which the electron lives.”

[

]

" An orbital is just a bit of space where there is a 95% chance of finding

that

particular electron.

[

]

Bill: So why did they call it an

orbital

? Why couldn’t they just have called it a

region? Or maybe a

Cage of Death

so that freshmen wouldn’t

confuse the

motorcycle with the cage? After all,

orbital

sounds pretty much

like

orbit

doesn't it?

Clark: Well I don’t really know, Bill. Tradition, I guess. Perhaps it comes from

Bohr’s old planetary model in which electrons orbited the nucleus. Yeah!

That’s it! Orbital derives from the word orbit. Huh, can you believe it? I never

realized that until now!

Bill: So, is this ‘orbital’ that you are proposing a physical interpretation of the

atom?

Is an orbital a physical object?

Clark: Well, yes and no. Not quite. You see, Bill, an orbital is formed by

countless orbits of one H-atom electron. An orbital is the

region

within which

we can mathematically find an electron.

Bill: Oh. I see. So let’s see if I got

this

right

, professor

. The electron is this little

bead that

orbits a planet. We take all these orbits, not the electron bead, but its

orbits

and construct an orbital with them.

Clark: Well… yes, more or less. The orbital is a

region

…

Bill: ...and if an orbit is an itinerary -- you know, kinda like a movie of a bead

around a bowling ball -- we are constructing

each

orbital with strips of film.

Isn’t this like building an orbital with Mighty Mouse’s

contrails

Clark: I wouldn’t exactly put it that way…

Bill: ...and then you have -- not the electron beads -- but these abstract

contrails interacting

and binding

with other

to form molecules?

[

]

Clark: Yes. I know. It is a bit counter-intuitive… but actually the 'region'

analogy is somewhat misleading. So in order to avoid confusing you let’s

scrap it altogether. Think of an orbital as an energy band.

Bill: You what? An energy band? I thought you said that… How did the region

convert to…

Clark: Now with this model it is a piece of cake to show

you

how one energy

level

interacts with another.

Bill: But how did the set of orbits that became an orbital which is really a

region become an energy band that now

forms a bond

with an

other

orbit?

Clark: Oh dear. I fear that you may not have taken the prerequisite

for this

course. But let’s see if I can bring you up to speed. Let’s forget about the

electron, about its orbit, about the orbital, and about the region. Just think of

energy levels. So we have a nuc

leus surrounded by an energy level. And the

energy level of an H-atom now interacts with the energy level of another

H-atom to form a covalent bond. For example, water consists of an oxygen

atom covalently bonded to two hydrogen atoms each of which is bound to

another water molecule via hydrogen bonds.

Bill: You lost me,

rofessor. I still didn’t get the part about how the

itinerary

of a particle becomes energy let alone the part where energy interacts with

an orbit.

Clark: Yes! It takes many years of schooling to understand this high level

material. You should perhaps start at a lower ‘energy level’, ha, ha, ha.

Bill: You know what? I’m sorry professor. Can you believe it? I just realized

that

I’m in the wrong room. How stupid of me. I was supposed to be in a

chemistry

class and here I end up by mistake in your metaphysics lecture.

Clark's 'region' does not quite qualify as a physical interpretation because a region is

not a

physical

object.

The Clark atom

consists of a bowling ball circled by a bead, no

different in this

sense than

Bohr’

planetary

model

" electron: A negatively charged subatomic particle usually found in orbits about the

nuclei of atoms" (p. 616)

[

]

So his objections to the planetary model are overruled.

However, Clark now

takes his

video camera

and films

100 orbits of

this bead. Next he

develops this film, cuts each

individual

frame,

and

pastes them onto

a board.

He calls this

collage an

'orbital' and

asks you not to confuse it

with one

of the

orbits (purportedly a

movie

synthesized

within a

single frame

of the

original film)

(

Fig. 1

)

James' Bonds:
A day at the York Chemistry Lab

So let

spell it out for the mathematicians

in order

stop the irrational

nonsense

propounded by

the

religion of

Quantum

Mechanics

. Anyone using the word

energy

to explain

phenomenon

of nature is

an idiot

plain and simple!

Now what

part of idiot did you not understand?

There is no such object called

energy

in science.

You

cannot transfer 'energy'

because you cannot make a movie of what you are

describing. You

cannot draw a picture of 'energy'.

There is therefore

no such physical

object such as an

‘energy band’ that can physically interact and

form interfaces with

physical objects.

he word

energy

like the other four words of

the religion of

athematical

Physics

(force, mass, time,

and field): a joker

card game.

Energy

is an

explain-it-all

word, a

Ptolemaic

interpretation to

a physical phenomenon. A

ball

can interact

with a wall, but

energy

cannot interact with energy

or with mass or with field

or with an

orbital

The

lamebrains

who

propose

such an

amusing

explanation in science ha

to begin by drawing

a picture

of energy.

Then, and only then can

we conceive of the surface of one

energy

touching the

surface

another

energy

. Th

e mathematician may dismiss this

hilosophy.

It is

not. It is

called Physics. It is as a

result of

bypassing the

preliminaries

of the scientific

method

that

the idiots of Quantum

Mechanics end up

explaining the

interaction of atoms

terms of 'energy

bands

In Physics, there is no run-around. It is straight forward. The first thing we do is clean

our

asses with the

textbook of

Mathematics. In Physics, we use the sacred books

written by the

brightest minds from

Leibniz

to Gauss and from Hilbert

to Weyl as toilet

paper. In Physics, if

we verify in the lab that two

‘orbitals’

interact, we instantly reject

the possibility that

an orbital

could possibly be

a spirit, a bunch of

orbits, a

region, God, a wave,

a number,

a wave

function, a state

vector,

energy, a point particle, or all of the above.

If we verify

and are

absolutely certain that

two 'orbitals' physically interact,

we instantly conclude

without

even

doubting that we have

before us an invisible

physical object

Of course, religionists and mathematical physicists will band together and tell me that

there is

difference between my

invisible physical object and a ghost or a spirit.

There is a trifling difference that I wish them to consider. A ghost has one-way touch:

you

touch the

apparition with your

sight, but you can’t touch her with your hands.

our dead

granny moves curtains

and lamps within your room at will

and you can't stop her

. The

orbital

obviously

works in reverse. You

touch it with your hand, but not with your sight.

(

I guess

the way 'the Boss' wanted it.

) An 'orbital'

clearly interacts with another 'orbital' to form a

physical bond

(i.e., a molecule). All the matter in the

Universe is constructed with these

orbitals.

Therefore, an orbital is not energy or an

energy band. An

orbital is not a concept. It is a physical object, and people who confuse them have to begin by learning

the

scientific method.

herefore, what remains to be

resolved is what this physical object known as

orbital is.

What is an

orbital made of if not of

electron bead

orbits

', energy, or fields

Come on guys, help us
out. Our halos formed
a covalent bond when
we collided!

Is an orbital a region where we can find an electron?

Not

exactly

! You have little imagination! The orbital is an energy band! The Clark

collage somehow

morphs into an unrelated,

totally off-the-wall concept that has

absolutely

nothing to do with orbits or

regions or even with electron beads. Clark

gets rid

of the electron altogether and henceforth does his

lab chemistry with

nothing but ‘energy bands’. He takes the energy band (a

concept) of one H-atom

and

somehow binds it with another energy band (another concept) to create a

covalent bond (a physical

interaction that keeps two atoms together). The movie

of an electron itinerary now interacts with the

movie of another electron

itinerary.

Think of

binding a woman’s love with a man’s love. You end up with

covalent

matrimony. The guy is

‘physically’ bound

in perpetuum by his ‘vows’. Clark calls

this ‘science’

or ‘chemistry’ or whatever he teaches at York. He has the gall to

exclaim

self-assuredly: ‘Wrong, wrong,

wrong, wrong!’ to a picture of Bohr's

ludicrous atom when his proposal is essentially no

different than

his mentor's

(

Fig.

)

Fig. 1 Quantum poppycock

The Quantum atom consists of an electron
bead and a proton bowling ball. That’s
what we should see in the photograph
before we move anything. According to
QM, the electron bead orbits the proton
bowling ball. This movie consists of many
frames. Many orbits of the electron bead
comprise one ‘orbital.’ Therefore, the
orbital movie consists of many more
frames than just a single orbit. The
mechanics now take the orbital movie of
one atom and make it interact with the
orbital movie of another. This is how they
explain atomic bonding. This is like saying
that the contrails of two jets tangle and
change the direction of the jets!

J. Clark, Atomic orbitals (2004) and Orbits and orbitals (2006), Chemguide.

Fig. 2 A Scientific comparison:

The idiotic Bohr atom vs the idiotic Clark atom

Bohr had his electron orbiting a nucleus.
They called it an orbital in those early
days of Quantum. Clark's cloud model
has the electron orbiting the nucleus
many times. He calls this movie an
orbital. The H2 molecule no longer
consists of two interlinking rings.
Now it consists of two merged regions,
energy levels, fields, or whatever.

The problem is that 'region' and 'energy level' are not physical objects. They lack the one thing
that would allow these terms to be used in Physics: shape. A region and an energy level are
concepts. We cannot move, interlock, or blend concepts in science. If an 'orbital' of one atom
binds with the 'orbital' of another, you can be absolutely sure that an orbital is a physical
object (i.e., it has shape). Hence, an orbital cannot be a 'region' and it cannot be 'energy'
(whatever that is). We just have to figure out now what an orbital is and is made of.