Quantum Riddle

Question: Of the bound hydrogen atom eigenstates, which has the highest kinetic energy?

Answer: The lowest energy state.

Ain’t that curious? Kepler’s laws helped me understand this one. Oh, and this holds for all molecules – I leave the proof as an exercise.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Curious, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Quantum Riddle”

  1. Elia Diodati says:
    2007/05/22 at 11:02 pm

    Am I missing something, or shouldn’t this be “obvious” from the virial theorem.

  2. chiaolun says:
    2007/05/22 at 11:21 pm

    now how about the morse potential? obviousness of the base case should mean generalizability in some sense right?