>> Wait, back up a sec - you mean there's a *reason* why the transition 
>> metals exist? And people actually know WTF this reason is??
> 
> Yes.

OK, that's quite impressive.

Last time I heard, an atomic nucleous has a cloud of electrons floating 
around it. (Seems reasonable - they're negatively charged, while the 
nucleous is positively charged. Why wouldn't they orbit it?) Except that 
rather than just floating around, they all stay 100% rigidly confined to 
a discrete set of orbit shells. (Um, WTF? Why?) And the inner-most shell 
can only hold 2 electrons (OK), the next shell can only hold 8 (um... 
OK), and next one out also holds 8 (er... why?), and the next shell can 
contain up to 18 electrons but when you start filling that shell you can 
only fill it up to a certain point, and then you have to go back and 
fill the shell below and then you can finish filling this shell (WTF?!) 
And the shell numbers are apparently just plucked out of the air, and 
the shell filling orders are completely arbitrary. And this is all 
assuming an atom with zero energy; apparently real atoms have more 
energy than that, which causes electrons to migrate between different 
shells, and when one falls back to a lower shell it emits energy 
(usually in the form of EMR). And don't even get me started on chemical 
bonding...

It all seems wildly complicated and completely random.

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Invisible wrote:
>>> Wait, back up a sec - you mean there's a *reason* why the transition
>>> metals exist? And people actually know WTF this reason is??
>>
>> Yes.
> 
> OK, that's quite impressive.
> 
> Last time I heard, an atomic nucleous has a cloud of electrons floating
> around it. (Seems reasonable - they're negatively charged, while the
> nucleous is positively charged. Why wouldn't they orbit it?) Except that
> rather than just floating around, they all stay 100% rigidly confined to
> a discrete set of orbit shells. (Um, WTF? Why?) And the inner-most shell
> can only hold 2 electrons (OK), the next shell can only hold 8 (um...
> OK), and next one out also holds 8 (er... why?), and the next shell can
> contain up to 18 electrons but when you start filling that shell you can
> only fill it up to a certain point, and then you have to go back and
> fill the shell below and then you can finish filling this shell (WTF?!)
> And the shell numbers are apparently just plucked out of the air, and
> the shell filling orders are completely arbitrary. And this is all
> assuming an atom with zero energy; apparently real atoms have more
> energy than that, which causes electrons to migrate between different
> shells, and when one falls back to a lower shell it emits energy
> (usually in the form of EMR). And don't even get me started on chemical
> bonding...
> 
> It all seems wildly complicated and completely random.

And now you can see that the electrons are actually in those fields.
http://insidescience.org/research/first_detailed_photos_of_atoms

I had done the math in chem class, I could understand that this model
worked and predicted everything we knew, but seeing these images is
still a stunner.

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Invisible wrote:
> Last time I heard, an atomic nucleous has a cloud of electrons floating 
> around it. (Seems reasonable - they're negatively charged, while the 
> nucleous is positively charged. Why wouldn't they orbit it?) 

Because they're oppositely charged, and therefore would be attracted far too 
hard towards the nucleus for centripital force to hold them out.

> Except that 
> rather than just floating around, they all stay 100% rigidly confined to 
> a discrete set of orbit shells. (Um, WTF? Why?) 

Because of the fermi exclusion principle, and the fact that they *are* 
quantum particles, and there's only so much "room" that close to the 
nucleus. (Where "room" is measured in terms of possible quantum states.)

 > And the inner-most shell
> can only hold 2 electrons (OK), the next shell can only hold 8 (um... 
> OK), and next one out also holds 8 (er... why?), and the next shell can 
> contain up to 18 electrons but when you start filling that shell you can 
> only fill it up to a certain point, and then you have to go back and 
> fill the shell below and then you can finish filling this shell (WTF?!) 

Yep.

> And the shell numbers are apparently just plucked out of the air, and 
> the shell filling orders are completely arbitrary. 

No. It's just relatively complicated math.

> It all seems wildly complicated and completely random.

Well, somewhat random and fairly complicated when you look at the results of 
the arithmetic, yes. It's all based on sums of infinite series of complex 
numbers, where the values of the individual complex numbers are based on 
what particles are interacting and where (in 4-D space) they are.

But you're looking at stuff like "A handful of the dots move relative to the 
background, and sometimes even go backwards (WTF?) but most don't, except 
some show up every 76 years and they aren't even round, and then there's 
this big one that changes shape over the course of a month. It all seems 
wildly complicated and completely random."  And you're missing orbital 
mechanics, which is a small handful of simple math.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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Invisible wrote:
> And the inner-most shell
> can only hold 2 electrons (OK), the next shell can only hold 8 (um...
> OK), and next one out also holds 8 (er... why?), and the next shell can
> contain up to 18 electrons but when you start filling that shell you can
> only fill it up to a certain point, and then you have to go back and
> fill the shell below and then you can finish filling this shell (WTF?!)
> And the shell numbers are apparently just plucked out of the air, and
> the shell filling orders are completely arbitrary.

I recall it's 2 * n^2

2, 8, 18, 32...

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