I was thinking along the same lines as you Eric. If you take a positive charge of tiny size and surround it with an equal amount of symmetrically distributed negative charge the structure is overall electrically neutral when viewed at a distance. An alpha approaching from the outside would not encounter any force until it passes through the negative electrical spherical shell.
Once the alpha passes through the negative charge shell it encounters a portion of the original positive field that is the same as previously observed without the negative charge shell present. In effect the alpha has avoided the energy required to breach the negative shell distance from the central charge. The negative field is balanced out within the region from its surface all the way to the central charge due to its symmetrical structure. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Mon, Nov 30, 2015 4:03 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]: How many atoms to make condensed matter? On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 2:41 PM, <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote: No, I'm saying it does both. When the alpha particle is far away it enhances it, but when it get close to a target nucleus it works against it. I'm not sure what the net result would be. If the volume of the surplus negative charge is spherical about the positively-charged nucleus, the shell theorem implies that one can neglect any negative charge that lies on the far side of the alpha particle from the nucleus. (It is probably not spherical, whatever it is, unless that s-orbital thing is what's going on.) Also, I'm going to guess that we have to be careful not to treat the negative and positive charge separately; i.e., what is seen by the alpha particle is the result of their overlap. So in this understanding, if the field of the nucleus is overwhelmingly positive, the negative charge is experienced by the alpha particle to be a little less positive charge. Eric
