3 Ways Electrons are like Layers of an Onion

Explaining chemical bonding is hard — onions make it easier

I’m not going to lie, I hardcore struggled with a segue into the topics we’re about to cover.

I struggled because I wanted to frame the importance of what we’re about to dig into without immediately alienating 98.4% of readers. We’re very much nearing the end of the journey of the history of chemistry (because we’re coming very close to the modern understanding of the atom), and this discussion could get weird, annoying, convoluted, and downright esoteric very fast. For example, there’s this beauty:

Seeing that will amaze a few and annoy the rest…but that’s Schrodinger’s equation for an electron in a hydrogen atom! It describes the probability of where an electron could be at any given time! It’s super important!

Yet, most people will react like this:

Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash

And so, that’s why I struggled. I think most people have a genuine curiosity about these types of things (little “mysteries of the universe”), but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the science, it just bores the shit out of everyone. So, this is going to be a multi-part attempt at making a very complex topic into something fun and entertaining while also dropping some knowledge on your ass. But first, it’s probably…