INTRODUCTION - As seen in chapter one,
the size of the hydrogen atom depends directly on the Bohr radius, which
itself varies with the mass of the electron. Is that the case for all
atoms? And what about molecules and crystals? Before we answer these
questions rigorously, let us try to answer them intuitively.
Consider for
example the hydrogen molecule, H2. It is made of two hydrogen
atoms sharing their electrons. Since the size of the two hydrogen atoms
taken separately varies with the Bohr radius, it would be reasonable to
expect the size of the hydrogen molecule to do the same. If the radius of
all atoms depended on the Bohr radius, we could apply the same reasoning
to all molecules and crystals. Intuitively, we would arrive to the
conclusion that the dimensions of matter depend on the Bohr radius. If
this were to be the case, then according to chapter one, the size of any
object would be different depending on its location in a gravitational
potential. In this appendix, we will see how the dimensions of matter are
predicted to vary theoretically. We will first look at all atoms. We will
then study molecules which will be followed by crystals and metals.
THE BOHR RADIUS - Before we start our
study of the dimensions of matter, a comment needs to be made about the
Bohr radius and its use. Until now, ao has always been
considered a constant because ,eo, e
and me have been supposed constants. With this in mind, most
experimentalists present their results in units of bohrs using 1 bohr =
ao = 5.29177×10-11 m [1]
(page 349). For an experimentalist, by definition, that numerical value is
equal to one bohr unit whether the electron orbit in hydrogen is constant
or not. For theoretical
results, this is different. Theoreticians could decide to give the results
of their calculations in function of ao (i.e. in units
of ao) to be able to compare them to the
experimentalists' results. For the theoreticians, ao is
defined as a combination of parameters. Therefore ao is
constant only if all the parameters are constant. One then has to be
careful in reading theoretical results and look at the method used to see
if there really is a dependence of ao or if it is just a
unit. Let us make sure that the physics is not lost in those
calculations. Most authors do their
calculations in atomic units. In those units, me = e
= = 1.
This means that the unit of mass is the electron mass. When the
Schrödinger equation (or the Dirac equation) is expressed in those units,
we end up with an equation that seems independent of me. The
authors then go on with numerical calculations to solve the equations. But
if the mass of the electron is not a constant, then it is not necessarily
equal to one in atomic units (with respect to the initial frame of
reference). This changes the Schrödinger (or Dirac) equation which changes
its solution which changes the value of the parameter we are looking for
(e.g. the bond length or the radius of an atom in the initial frame of
reference). All the results in this appendix being theoretical, we made
sure that their dependence in ao was real.
ATOMS
-
It is easy to derive the radius of all hydrogenlike atoms by supposing
that they are just like a hydrogen atom with an electron orbiting a
nucleus of charge Z. According to Levine [1]
(page 525):
"The average radius of a hydrogenlike atom
is proportional to the Bohr radius ao, and ao is
inversely proportional to the electron
mass".
The radius of all other
atoms has been well investigated [2, 3] and the results given are
proportional to the Bohr radius. The method used in [2]
was the Hartree-Fock method [4]
and in [3],
the Dirac-Fock method which is just the Hartree-Fock method with
relativistic corrections due to the mass of the electron with respect to
the nucleus frame of reference. The Dirac-Fock method gives no
relativistic correction of the electron mass with respect to an external
gravitational potential.
THE HYDROGEN MOLECULE ION - The hydrogen molecule
is composed of two hydrogen atoms, each made of one electron and one
proton. Its positive ion, H2+ , made of two protons
and one electron, is a system that can easily be solved [1, 5, 6]. Upon
finding its wave function and the potential of the nucleus (in the
Born-Oppenheimer approximation), it is possible to calculate the distance
between the two protons. This gives 2.00ao. (The
variational method is used to solve this problem [5].
It uses wave functions of the hydrogen atom which depend on the Bohr
radius.) The internuclear distance of a molecule is in direct relationship
with the size of that molecule. We see then that the size of the hydrogen
molecule ion is proportional to ao . This means that when we
change the mass of the particle moving about the nucleus, the size of the
hydrogen molecule ion also changes. This has already been realized by
Levine [1]
(page 355):
"The negative muon (symbolm-) is a short-lived (half-life 2×10-6 s) elementary
particle whose charge is the same as that of an electron but whose mass
mmis 207 times me. When a beam of negative
muons (produced when ions accelerated to high speed collide with
ordinary matter) enters H2 gas, a series of processes leads to the
formation of muomolecular ions that consist of two protons and one muon.
This species, symbolized by (pmp)+, is an H2+
ion in which the electron has been replaced by a muon. Its Re [the
distance between the two protons] is 2.00 2/(mme2) = 2.00 2/(207mee2) = (2.00/207)
bohr =
0.0051Å."
It is
about one hundred times smaller than the Bohr radius. If one day we are
able to produce a molecule with a proton and an anti-proton, the
internucleus distance of that molecule will be amazingly small. It is
obvious from this result that the size of the hydrogen molecule ion
depends on the electron mass.
OTHER MOLECULES - A lot of calculations
have been done to find the size of molecules (i.e. the length of the bonds
in the molecule) [7, 8, 9]. Some of the molecules studied include
F2, Cl2, LiCl, Ni , HF and HCl. For heavier
molecules, the calculations were done using internal relativistic
corrections [10, 11, 12] because of the higher mass of the electron.
Relativistic corrections due to an external gravitational potential were
never taken into account. Some of the molecules studied in this way are
N2, N2+ , Au2, AuH, AuCl,
Cl2, F2, Xe2, Xe2+
, TlH and Bi2. The table published by Pyykkö [10]
is extensive and covers more than one hundred molecules. All the results
cited in the references are in units of ao or in units
that are related to ao and are proportional to
ao.
CRYSTALS AND METALS - According to Zhdanov [13]
(page 201), the equilibrium distance between particles in a crystal is
proportional to the equilibrium spacing in a diatomic molecule having the
same parameters for the potential energy. (The constant of proportionality
depends only on the structure of the crystal.) This means that the size of
crystals is proportional to the Bohr radius since we have seen in the
previous section that the size of all molecules (and thus the distance
between the nuclei in diatomic molecules) is proportional to the Bohr
radius. Furthermore, the same author [13]
(pages 208-209) develops an ionic model for metals. According to this
model, the atomic radius in a metallic crystal (which is defined as half
the shortest interatomic distance) can be expressed as:

where h is Planck's constant, A is Madelung's constant, m
is the electron mass, e is the charge of the electron and z is the valency
of the atom. We see then that the size of metals is proportional to the
Bohr radius as defined in chapter one.
CONCLUSION - It is obvious that the
size of all matter is strongly dependent on the Bohr radius and therefore
the mass of the electron. Even if relativistic corrections are applied
internally using Dirac's calculations, this correction does not take into
account the relativistic effect caused by an external gravitational
potential. This means that, since every object we know is made of either
atoms, molecules, crystals or metals, the results of chapter one
concerning the dilation and contraction of the Bohr radius in the hydrogen
atom apply to all matter including humans. Finally, we conclude that this
dilation or contraction is real.
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Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1991, 629 pages. [2] Froese Fischer, Charlotte,
Average-Energy-of-Configuration Hartree-Fock Results for the Atoms
Helium to Radon, Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables, volume
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Desclaux, J. P., Relativistic Dirac-Fock Expectation Values for Atoms
with Z=1 to Z=120, Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables, volume
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Froese, Charlotte, Numerical Solution of the Hartree-Fock
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Claude, Bernard Diu et Franck Laloë, Mécanique quantique, Hermann,
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Noell, J. Oakey, Marshall D. Newton, P. Jeffrey Hay, Richard L. Martin et
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Ziegler, Tom, Calculation of Bonding Energies by the Hartree-Fock
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