Q&A: Electron
Electron
Question
For some reason I remember hearing from you that nobody has ever seen an electron or an electric field, but physicists learn about their existence from certain phenomena in nature.
I said this to my physics lecturer, and the guy laughed like there was no tomorrow. He asked me a few questions that even I, with the vast knowledge I’ve accumulated so far in half a Physics 1 course, didn’t know how to answer. For that matter, he claimed, among other things, that today they know for every element how many electrons move around its nucleus and even what orbitals they occupy, and besides that the electron is the bread and butter of physics, so it can’t be that nobody has ever seen it, and so on and so forth (all in good humor, of course)…
And now my question is:
Did I really hear that from you? And if so, is there really disagreement about this among physicists?
Answer
I don’t see any connection between his claims and the conclusion. The fact that we know how many electrons there are around each atom means they’ve seen an electron? What’s the connection? Has he also seen the force of gravity? He must have very sharp eyes.
That’s regarding the electron. An electric field, on the other hand, you actually can see. Light is an electric field.
Discussion on Answer
Do you need GPT for that? It’s obvious.
Tell the lecturer not to get all excited and go run to ChatGPT:
No, nobody has ever “seen” an electron with their eyes or with a regular optical microscope. Electrons are far too small to be seen directly, even with the most powerful instruments operating in the visible-light range.
But we do know they exist! There is plenty of evidence for that: