On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 2:41 PM, <[email protected]> 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
