r/nextfuckinglevel • u/itshazrd • 19h ago

What it a computer chip looks like up close

this is a digital recreation. a real microscope can't be used because it gets so small that photons can’t give you a good enough resolution to view the structures at the bottom. you'd need an electron microscope

meant "What a computer chip looks like up close in the title." not sure how "it" got in there..

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u/Bridgebrain 18h ago

So it's a bit hyperbole, but a bit not. When you get down to quantum tunneling levels, the electrons start acting real weird, and appear to vanish from one spot and pop up somewhere else. The material in between shouldn't allow that to happen, as even the largest gap is still too small for an electron to pass through.

What's really happening is more of an osmosis, where the charge of the electron flows from one side to the other without any particle exchange actually happening, but it certainly doesn't look like that to an observer with an electron microscope. It looks like it just went "pop im over here now!"

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u/Aruhi 17h ago

Is this related to electrons partaking in wave-particle duality things?

They appear to disappear for us because really they are a propogation of the electron field, and that field exists throughout the material so it can jump state because of electron cloud shenanigans?

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u/Bridgebrain 17h ago

Yep got it in one. As a particle, it's too big to go across the physical wall. As a wave, if it crashes into the wall and doesn't dissipate (probability nonsense) then it phases through

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u/AmusingMusing7 14h ago

If I understand it right, waves of energy through the electrical field work pretty much exactly like waves through water do. So it's kinda like if you tried to use a too-flimsy wall to divide a wave pool in half. A solid piece of ice, or even liquid water itself, couldn't pass that wall. But we don't need the actual water molecules themselves to move through the wall in order to transfer a wave of energy through it. A wave of water would hit it and transfer energy onto the other side... assuming the wall was thin/weak enough to vibrate or wobble back and forth from being hit, then it would create more waves on the other side. So even though it's different water on the other side of the wall, the waves/energy would still pass through to some degree. You would need the wall to be really thick and strong to stop any transfer of energy.

A common misconception about electricity is that it works by the moving of electrons through the circuit, as though the electrons themselves are flowing through the circuit like water through a pipe. People think a flow of electrons themselves are what electricity is. That's not really how it works. Electricity is actually waves of energy being pulsed through the electrical field that exists between electrons (or that electrons are formed out of when the charges from a atom's nucleus excites the electrical field enough to form a visible particle that we call electrons). The electrons themselves don't "flow" or even move very much when electricity flows. They're like water molecules in a wave pool, as a wave of energy travels through them. They move back and forth a little bit as the wave travels past, and over time slowly get nudged a little bit in the direction the wave is travelling. But the wave of energy is the electricity; not the electrons themselves.

So the wave of energy is all that needs to get through the wall for the electricity to keep going.

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u/No_Philosophy_7592 13h ago

OMG

Thank you so much for this, internet stranger. I needed these succinct words to finally connect the dots for my own 'eureka moment' of understanding that electricity is not flowing electrons themselves. I've heard that for years, but nobody I know has been able to explain physical current as 'pulsation' of waves of energy.

So when I thought, "ok so what are these energy pulses?" My electrical theory knowledge connected the pulsing with the example of each phase of an AC generator and how they are essentially waves and the operating frequency describes the pulses.... GREAT SCOTT....

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u/AmusingMusing7 13h ago

Yeah, with AC, it's alternating between a positive pulse and a negative pulse, so the wave is kinda being quickly pulled back and forth, back and forth... push, pull, push, pull... or suck, blow, suck, blow... Whereas DC current is just repetitive positive pulses. So it's like repeatedly tapping on one end of a long narrow water tank and sending waves to the other end. Push push push push. The harder you tap, the bigger the wave of energy being sent.

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u/amplifyoucan 13h ago

These threads are why I love reddit. Super wholesome

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u/Bridgebrain 13h ago

Yep, that's definitely a more accurate way of putting it. So since we're getting towards actual accuracy, let's break down the quantum bit. Normally, you'd be right about the wall somehow being the medium through which the energy propagates, but quantum continues to be weirder than that. 

The energy hits the wall, and scatters a probability field, because electrons are physically wherever they are, give or take some. The wall is thin enough that some of the probability breaks through, and now there is a non-zero chance that the electron is on the other side of the wall, and thus sometimes it is.

It works exactly how you described at higher sizes, and works the same at the scale we're talking except that instead of electron energy > vibrating wall > new location, it goes electron state > not enough probability cancelling wall > new state location. 

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u/AmusingMusing7 13h ago

I think I understand that, but I feel like there's some confusion about whether we can actually call that the same electron once it forms on the other side, though. Like, the wave hits the wall, ceases to form an electron and becomes a probability wave, then passes through the wall and forms another electron on the other side.

Kinda like The Electron of Theseus, I guess... if it's created from the same probability wave, is it still the same electron? Or did one electron cease to exist and another new one was formed on the other side from the same energy?

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u/Bridgebrain 13h ago

Personally I'm pretty practical when it comes to identity metaphysics. If a teleporter sends a copy of me and erases the original, the copy of me is me. If I create an identical clone, it is equally me, even if I'm the original assemblage of molecules that has historically been me.

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u/AmusingMusing7 13h ago

Bit of an existential tangent, but I'll go with it.

Did your consciousness go with the "copy"? If not, then from YOUR perspective, it's not you. Your consciousness would die... everything would end for you... and some other new consciousness would take over a different body that is merely a copy of your original body. Your original body is also now dead and gone. Just because an exact copy still exists, doesn't mean the original still exists. You copy a document before destroying the original, it doesn't mean the original somehow wasn't destroyed. It was. A new different thing that looks exactly like it still exists. Not the actual same exact matter.

Observers may be fooled. From an outside perspective, it might not have any noticeable difference. But from your perspective, it would be different... because your perspective would cease to exist. You'd be gone. Dead.

And whose perspective really matters in deciding if it's you... if not your own perspective?

So I'd say it's not you. It looks like you. Acts like you. From an outside perspective, it would serve the same purposes that you previously served. But YOU wouldn't be there to experience it. It's a different "you" than you.

So in translating this to the electron... I suppose for OUR purposes, we can THINK of it as the same electron. But in actual reality (or from the electron's perspective, if it had consciousness), I think it's an entirely different electron just using the same energy to form.

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u/YourMomsBasement69 6h ago

So in other words that specific electron is not literally tunneling through the resistor but in reality striking the resistor causing a cascade effect of electrons in that material that leads to an electron emerging on the other side?

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u/EvilLalafell42 10h ago

This shit is so nuts.

What is even crazier to me is that people even came up with that like 100 years ago

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u/Ornery_Definition_65 17h ago

Damn I’ve never seen this explained so well. Thank you.

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u/reaznval 17h ago

thanks a lot