Quote:
Originally Posted by mldavis2
Hmmm... "trapped electrons contain more energy." Where does this come from? An electron has a given mass regardless of whether it's trapped or not, I would think. If energy from the battery is used to "trap" or set a flag, it would be dissipated as heat and lost, leaving the electron in a stable, if trapped, state. A horse weighs the same whether the barn door is open or closed (except for the energy used to walk out the door.) I'm not sure I agree with the article's premise.  |
It comes down to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
By trapping an electron you're decreasing the uncertainty of its position - this leads to an increase in the uncertainty of its momentum (as the product of these two is constant) and hence of its energy. The electrons will have energy distributed through the range of this uncertainty, so as it increases the average energy will increase.
Having said that, the rest of the article is very flawed - it's not the case that electrons in memory not being used for books are any less trapped than those n used memory.
/JB