----- Original Message -----
From: George Holz & Stephen Lawrence
If my mental picture is right, then a free electron's dipole
must be
aligned with the external field (parallel or antiparallel).
This is experimentally observed but is something that I find
extremely strange. Although one of the orientations is a true
stable equilibrium the other should be an unstable equilibrium and
the dipole should flip with any perturbation. Spin must come in
here somehow but I don't see quite how.
Eight?
Aha ... maybe the answer is "eight" in the sense of QM (excuse
this comment from the peanut gallery, as this is an interesting
thread) - aren't you assuming in that 'mental picture' that the
electron dipole is a result of classical spin - when it could just
as well be the "figure eight" type looping from the QM model ?
And going much further afield ... 'field' being the operative
word, does the honeybee routinely use QM principles in the
insect's characteristic "figure eight" type looping (performed to
communicate a food source to other bees)?
http://www.physics.helsinki.fi/~matpitka/honey.html
One of those synchronicity things - I happened to be reading the
honeybee thing when this post came in...
Jones
