Symmetry is not actually broken that badly. If you take any one symmetry axis (or plane or.), it exists in both cases.Lets do a thought experiment:. In the spherical case you have only one electron. Your only symmetry axis goes through the electron and the nucleus. In the case of three electrons, the symmetry axis goes through one of the electrons and the nucleus. Doing the above collapses the system in to one possible configuration from the many possible ones (you're measuring quantum system, Heisenberg, etc.).In other words, before you measure the location of one of the electrons, you don't know the symmetry axis and thus the two cases are equally symmetric. The probability of finding the electron number one at the 'north pole' of the atom is equally probable in both cases.Note that defining the symmetry axis is purely theoretical (mathematical) construction.
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Jul 05, 2017 Periorbital edema is a term for swelling around the eyes. The area around the eyes is called the eye socket or eye orbit. Sometimes people refer to this condition as periorbital puffiness or puffy.
The symmetry axis exists even if you don't do the measurement. See AcidFlask's comment below.Also, I'd like to highlight, that measuring electron states is becoming possible:. $begingroup$ In my understanding the superposition principle says that the system is in one of the states, but you don't know which state until you measure the system. In other words, if you take one electron and excite it to one of the p-states, it physically will be on one of the orbitals and this orbital is geometrically asymmetric. And superposition claims that because you cannot say which state it is, you say that the electron is in all the states with probability X. Now I have to get my quantum book to verify this. $endgroup$–May 11 '12 at 13:34.
$begingroup$ ii) According to standard Quantum Mechanics, the particle can be in any state of the Hilbert space including, of course, superposition states. If you adopt the view that they can only be in eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, then any individual molecule can not have any dynamics other than the trivial dynamics (evolution = $exp(-iEt/hbar)$); also then you would need to think of what happens when you measure any other observable incompatible with energy, etc. $endgroup$–Aug 28 '12 at 2:15.
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