An example of Special relativity

[BootinUp]

https://substack.com/@thephysicsjournal/note/c-130913979

[erronis]

1. Interesting, but not enough basic references to make it worthwhile following.

I tried going to this chaps substack but it wasn't very satisfying. Aren't there any scientific publications that can give more background?

[BootinUp]

3. I might look around and post back. nt

[BootinUp]

4. Found something

The best-known relativistic effects are the atypical color of gold 79 Au (Scerri 2020, 366) and the liquid state of mercury 80 Hg (Jansen 2005;McKelvey 1983;Norrby 1991;Pyykkö 1988;Schwerdtfeger 2002;Thayer 2005). The relativistic explanation for such anomalies is that as the nuclear charge increases, the velocity of the inner shell electrons increases and approaches the speed of light (Bardají and Laguna 1999, 202;McKelvey 1983, 115;Kratz and Lieser 2013, 12). ...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252466396_Relativistic_Effects_and_the_Chemistry_of_the_Heaviest_Main-Group_Elements

[unblock]

5. Here's one paper that seems relevant, but it's pretty dense.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/qua.27182

My lay understanding from a limited amount of googling is that relativistic effects are generally not particularly material until the proton count gets to around 60. Around that point, the innermost electrons have to move sufficiently fast to maintain their "orbit" that they gain enough mass as a relativistic effect to affect some properties of atoms and their molecular bonds.

Apparently the color of gold and the voltage of lead acid batteries cannot be fully explained with taking this additional mass into account.

[erronis]

7. Thanks. Worth a peruse!

[Permanut]

2. Cool!

How the hell do they know this stuff?

Asking as an accounting retiree; maybe in my next life I'll be a scientist.

[unblock]

6. A lot of this is done through computer models these days

I don't know about this result in particular. But it's been known for a long time that electrons travel fast enough to have relativistic effects. But the speed of an average electron id about 1/135th the speed of light, so the relativistic effect is tiny enough to ignore in practice.

So I imagine they built a computer model to simulate mercury droplets, and it didn't behave as expected. So they scratch their heads and eventually someone says maybe we need to adjust the electron mass due to relativistic effects. Then suddenly the model works.

[erronis]

8. Thanks for that quick synopsis. I like "So they scratch their heads..."

So much of eureka moments are produced by stepping back from the problem, having a good scratch, and rethinking it.

Sleep is another good lubricant for forming new viewpoints.