Wednesday, February 17, 2021

In quantum mechanics, elementary particles have a property called spin. Are they actually spinning?

Source:

"particles do not spin. Leptons, like electrons, muons, and taus, have no structure whatsoever as best as we can tell. So there is nothing that even can spin. Yet the particles (except for those with spin 0) have angular momentum. It turns out that you can't conserve angular momentum in an atom without generalizing it to include spin (which is sometimes called intrinsic angular momentum). You also need spin to explain how particles can have a magnetic field, one with a magnetic moment that comes in discrete values, no less. (A magnetic moment is a number that represents the overall strength of the particle's magnetic field.) 
(...) This is explained using the spin of a particle, which can only be multiples of 1/2. So you have spins of 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, etc., and nothing else."



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