Topic: electrons

Do electrons always have the spinny top?

In the article Electron's Spin - Part 1, we discovered that the electrons’ pointy "hats" aren’t really hats at all, but rather a built-in feature of electrons known as spin. It's like your nose — you can’t take it off because it’s part of your face. Millie discovered it in Book 1. Do you rem...…
in questions
Do electrons always have the spinny top?

What's the real shape of an electron?

In Millie's stories, electrons look like little spheres with a funny pointy hat. But in real life, nobody knows what they really look like because they’re so tiny that we can’t see them. Some scientists think they might be like tiny spheres, others think they’re like little clouds, and some say they...…
in questions
What's the real shape of an electron?

What's an electron made of?

An electron is so tiny that we can't see it, even with the best microscopes. If you check out the article What is an elementary particle?, you'll learn that an electron isn’t made of smaller pieces — it’s one of the smallest building blocks of everything, called an elementary particle. In B...…
in questions
What's an electron made of?

Electron's spin - Part 1

In Book 1, Millie is intrigued by the electrons’ pointy "hats" and curiously asks about them. She soon discovers that these aren’t hats at all, but a built-in feature of electrons known as spin. Spin is an intrinsic property of electrons and all quantum particles. An intrinsic property is a ch...…
in quantum concepts
Electron's spin - Part 1

Discovery of electron spin

In 1922, Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach, two German physicists, conducted a groundbreaking experiment that demonstrated that electron spin and magnetism were related. To understand it, let’s imagine you have a strong magnet and a bunch of tiny beads. If you throw the non-magnetic beads through the m...…
in history
Discovery of electron spin

Electron's spin - Part 2

In the article Electron's spin - Part 1, we talked about how scientists first thought that electrons might be like tiny spinning balls and that they intrinsic “up” or “down” property was a sort of angular momentum. But this idea didn’t last long because: electrons don’t spin like regular obje...…
in quantum concepts
Electron's spin - Part 2