Moontanman Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 Can electrons and photons or any other particle be said to have an actual shape? They are portrayed as spheres in any illustration but aren't they more blurry locations? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 Electrons are point particles and have a spherically symmetric charge distribution (i.e. no dipole moment, as far as we can tell). So "shape" doesn't really come to mind as a description. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted July 15, 2012 Author Share Posted July 15, 2012 Thank you, I have often wondered about that, I guess for illustration purposes a sphere makes sense but in recent years I've seen more of the diffused location type illustrations for particles like electrons, I was wondering if or which was more accurate. I know things like protons have internal structure then the nucleus has several of those and atoms are imaged as vaguely roundish or as peaks. What about things like photons? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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