Why do planets only seems to revolve on a plain axis around a star and not more like an electron in an atom
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Why do planets only seems to revolve on a plain axis around a star and not more like an electron in an atom

[From: ] [author: ] [Date: 11-04-22] [Hit: ]
Suppose you had a single hydrogen atom and at a particular instant plotted the position of its one electron. Soon afterward, 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 and gradually build up a sort of 3D map of the places that the electron is likely to be found.......
No one truly knows how an electron moves.

When a planet moves around the sun, you can plot a definite path for it that is called an orbit. A planet orbits because of gravity. An electron moves because of the electromagnetic force, which is trillions of times stronger than the gravitational force.

Suppose you had a single hydrogen atom and at a particular instant plotted the position of its one electron. Soon afterward, 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 and gradually build up a sort of 3D map of the places that the electron is likely to be found.

In the hydrogen case, most of the time the electron can be found anywhere within a spherical, easily defined region of space surrounding and quite close to the nucleus. Such a region of space is called an orbital. In a more complex atom some of its electrons inhabit bizarre and strangely shaped orbitals.

What is the electron doing in the orbital? We don't know, we can't know. All you can say is that if an electron is in a particular orbital it will have a particular definable energy.
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Don't you mean rotate? Planets rotate around their own axes: They revolve around the Sun. If you would take the time to check the inclinations of the orbits of all the planets and dwarf planets in the solar system, you'll find that none of them really goes around the Sun in exactly the same plane as the Earth does. Their rotational axes tilt at various degrees to the ecliptic and the planes of their orbits. Both the tilts of the axes and the inclination of their orbits change over geologic periods of time, so in a sense, the orbits of the planets ARE approximately like the probability orbitals/shells of electrons in atoms. Yes I know that is a gross over-simplification.

Edit: Planets have a lot more mass, therefore more inertia, than an electron does. It would take a prohibitive amount of energy, that has to come from where somehow, to make even a small asteroid, let alone a planet or dwarf planet, orbit like an electron does. Planets can't "jump" to different energy levels/ change orbits like electrons do.

Measuring the positions of the electron alters the closed system. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
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