Right on-- And a changing magnetic field will change the orientation of the nuclei such that they pass through positions and projected angular momentum states that can couple with other nuclei and potentially facilitate energy changes to net lower potential energy—more stable systems.
I would note that the total angular momentum of a system includes its electron orbital angular momentum and the intrinsic angular momentum of the electrons and the particles that make up a the nuclei of the system. The total angular momentum can only change in discrete small quanta of h/2pi which means that each component, the orbital and the intrinsic angular momentum can only change in increments of h/2pi. Bob Cook From: Eric Walker Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 9:06 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: The vacuum is the glue that keeps the universe together. On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 10:48 PM, Bob Cook <frobertc...@hotmail.com> wrote: Thanks for making that interesting paper available. I have always assumed that angular momentum of particles and systems can only change in discrete small amounts. This reminds me (somewhat off on a tangent to the topic of this thread) -- for anyone who is still learning about nuclear spin, as I am, there's an important detail that is easy to lose sight of. It is that a nucleus of spin N, where N might be 0, 1/2, 7/2, 3, etc., will not necessarily interact with other particles with the full magnitude of spin. What is important is the projection of the spin onto the axis of travel, which is a function of its orientation. So a particle with spin 3 can potentially behave as a daughter in radioactive decays or in interactions with other particles in the manner of a spin 0, 1, 2, or 3 particle, depending on its relative orientation. Another way to say this is that there are two numbers that are important in an interaction -- the total angular momentum, J, which is a characteristic of the state of the particle, and the angular momentum along the z axis, "m," which is not a characteristic of its state. Eric
