MadSci Network: Physics |
Your questions are oddly phrased, but I think I understand what you are asking. There are simple (and not-so-simple) answers to your questions, but I'll try to explain what these answers mean as I go along. First, about the 'force' required to pull one object away from another: this is more properly described as an amount of work, which is to say the integral of the applied force along the direction in space that the force acts (or, to put it loosely, the average applied force multiplied by the distance over which the force acts). In the two cases of interest, the gravitational and electrical forces, the minimum amount of work required can be calculated from a simple formula. In the case of gravity, this minimum amount of work can be re-expressed in terms of a velocity (assuming that the two objects are at rest with respect to each other initially), and this velocity is called the 'escape velocity'. For a small-mass object escaping from the surface of a spherical body (such as a planet) with mass M and radius R, the escape velocity is the square root of 2*G*M/R, where G is the universal gravitational constant. In the case of a hydrogen atom, things are different, because the proper description of what happens is given by Quantum Mechanics. The energy required to strip the proton of its electron can be easily calculated, and also very easily confirmed experimentally: 13.596 electron-Volts, or 2.1784e-18 Joules in SI units. Making an equivalence between gravity in planetary systems and electric forces in an atom is tough, because the fundamental description of what's happening is so different: classical physics in the case of planets (loosely speaking, again) and quantum physics in the case of atoms. It's difficult to determine what you mean by 'the same relative mass and distance as the electron', or by comparing a planet to an electron 'if the proton was the size of the sun'. You might get some mileage comparing planetary systems with the Bohr model of the atom, but I'm not sure that this is exactly what you had in mind. In any case, I think you would be well-served by reading any calculus-based high-school or college physics textbook, especially those sections relating to Work and Energy, Gravitation and The Electric Force. You should also read any sections on so-called 'modern physics', including the Bohr model and some basic quantum physics for the hydrogen atom. Good luck, and if you have any more questions feel free to ask!
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