Physicists Create Millimeter-sized 'Bohr Atom'
Monday, June 30, 2008 - 22:28
in Physics & Chemistry
Nearly a century after Danish physicist Niels Bohr offered his planet-like model of the hydrogen atom, physicists have created giant, millimeter-sized atoms that resemble it more closely than any other experimental realization yet achieved. The scientists used lasers and electric fields to coax potassium atoms into a precise configuration with one point-like, "localized" electron orbiting far from the nucleus.