This is a really naive question, but isn't an unexcited hydrogen atom an example of "perpetual motion without energy", on account of the way the electron keeps moving? (I agree that an unexcited hydrogen atom doesn't have a "pulse".) Jim Propp On Sun, Jan 29, 2017 at 12:08 PM, Veit Elser <ve10@cornell.edu> wrote:
On Jan 29, 2017, at 10:10 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
Perpetual motion without energy.
A non-exotic manifestation of this is the ordinary O_2 molecule. Because of the Pauli principle it is required to rotate (angular momentum = hbar) even in its ground state. More precisely: arbitrarily weak perturbations produce a time-dependent state because the ground state (in the absence of perturbations) is degenerate.
-Veit _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun