Brian Skinner

Interesting article, I’m not sure if I agree yet but I do see where you’re coming from

Give it time to let yourself become more jaded

Hi Brian, very well-written article! I agree with you that the Bohr model should also be taught—especially in the way you do in your article, that is, in my opinion, a historical one. It is very educating to see how with such a "simple" model you can get certain things right. 1/2

And it is also instructive to see how you get some others wrong. Unfortunately, some people will only ever take "lower-level physics classes" (high school) and will always see the atom as a miniature Solar system. 2/2

I think it's fine to teach it as long as it is prefaced with a simple "This is an outdated but sometimes useful way of thinking about it." What actually irks me about the Bohr model is how it is used as the universal symbol for science as a whole. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=science%20symbol&tbs=imgo:1 …

What theory feels more "scientific" to you? To me, the Bohr model actually feels pretty representative of big leaps forward in science, so I'm okay with it as a de facto logo.

A snapshot of an atom would look more like the picture on the left (minus the orbits) than the one on the right. Plus, the ground state of any atom is spherically symmetric. Squaring that with orbitals is challenging.

Yeah, someone tell @InertialObservr to make a picture with the superposition of all possible choices of the z axis