Learning something new is always worth it. Whether one has the time at the moment or whether there aren't other things to learn that have a higher priority is another question, but you can never go wrong expanding your knowledge base.
I would guess the OP is thinking along the lines of a character passing through walls by squeezing through the space between the molecules, it would be helpful to enlarge that space, which is what is happening all the time when we walk through the atmosphere. Now as far as compressing molecules together closer, prime example would be a hydrogen bomb, two hydrogen atoms forced so close together they become a helium atom but have to give off a bit of energy as a result. Kind of makes you wonder what is happening in a black hole, nothing escapes, so just where does all the energy go?
This is true, but doesn't change the fact that they can move from excited states toward ground state, and give off energy doing so (or can do the reverse if energy is absorbed).
True but this can't be accomplished by simply changing the physical position of the electron as electrons move by themselves in an orbital (using the word orbital instead of orbit for a reason) and their positions are anything but constant. In order to change the energy state you would have to do something like, as I mentioned before, send a photon to be absorbed by the electron in order to excite the electron and then the electron would move back to its regular orbital and would give off energy. But that can only be accomplished by a photon with the same energy as the electron you wish to excite.... or was it the same energy as the difference in energy of both orbitals I can't remember already finished my bio exam lol (photosynthesis for reference). Also doing this to a molecule that isn't a pigment molecule might make this even more difficult... now that I think about it bioluminescence might also be something to look into.
Yep. All true. I think the energy used to excite has to be the same as the difference between the current energy and the next orbital. Been a while, though
I guess you could just say that the person had a power that could excite electrons to a higher or lower orbital and never really explain it in depth... what this would accomplish exactly I'm not really certain... or that he/she could readily oxidize molecules and take the electrons for themselves... again other than wicked chemistry applications I'm not sure this would be too useful other than making any molecule become unstable and reactive. I'm sure these ideas are far from what the OP had in mind
Really the most interesting thing you can do with this ability is start chemical reactions. That might be a good path to take.
I believe thirdwind's point was not that it was a waste of time in life, but not worth the reward in terms of writing.
Yes ... all of this stuff in the last few points is 'interesting' and all, and I congratulate the posters on their memories ... but imho it is not wholly relevant or helpfull to the original issue. The original question about "the magical ability to adjust the space between atoms and the space between the parts that make up atoms (proton, neutrons, electrons)" would clearly involve changing the fundamentals, the fundamental constants that give rise to the energy levels and 'orbital' gaps and distances .. resulting in different fundamental distances, and quantum gaps, between the nuclei and the orbiting electrons in the region controlled by the OP's character. So the issues to do with the energy changes in orbitals, and the jumping, and the energy needed and released would all change correspondingly. Hence I still believe that the OP's proposed scenario is ill conceived and without any expressed benefit.
Very interesting thread! I'm no math expert, but I love learning about this sort of thing. I do have one question though, when the OP mentioned pulling at the atoms, I thought, 'Wait, we can pretty much cut atoms in half now, right?' Is this what the OP is trying to suggest? How is that we can split apart the atom, but we can't jiggle the spaces between the atoms? Is it more like we can't just rip an electron off of an atom willy nilly because it just doesn't work that way?
Can we ? You may be referring to the old headlines that sued to say "We split the atom !" That just referred to the discovery of the separate electrons and neutrons etc. He is asking about a character having the "ability to adjust the space between atoms and the space between the parts that make up atoms (proton, neutrons, electrons)." The 'space' between electrons and the nucleus is not like normal space. When electrons orbit around the nucleus they can only do so at specific 'set' distances, which is something that is built in to the very structure of matter. So if you want to 'jiggle' you can only do so in specific 'jumps' as it were. Check out some basic lessons on the web with easy to understand diagrams (that's not being patronising ... just a suggestion)
