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 Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
All electrons are identical.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Are they? I remember asking my chemistry professor: "Is a hydrogen electron, which the atom shares with oxygen to make h2o, a general electron or a hydrogen-specific one?" And he said hydrogen-specific. So if what he told me is true, wouldn't that mean all electrons aren't the same?
Electrons are indistinguishable from each other. I'm not sure exactly how you phrased the question or the exact answer, so it's tricky to know exactly what your professor meant. Chemists and Physicists understand things in different contexts, and use similar terminology in subtly different ways.
My guess as to why a chemist would say that:
In a sense, the electron that is bound to the Hydrogen atom is not an electron bound to the Oxygen atom. The quantum state of the electron in the Hydrogen atom is what holds the nucleus in the bond. Otherwise, the electron would just ionize off of the Hydrogen nucleus onto the Oxygen nucleus, and the Hydrogen nucleus would not be bound in the water molecule.
What a physicist would say, and a chemist would not argue with:
In another sense, it is indeterminate exactly which electron is bound to the Hydrogen atom. Once the molecular bond is formed, the electrons are in a bound state, and it is only clear that 1 is the Oxygen electron and 1 is the Hydrogen electron, but not which is which.
There is no measurable property of any electron which is distinct from any other electron.
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