In reply to Robin van Spaandonk's message of Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:12:16
[snip]I thought it was a well recognized fact that monatomic Hydrogen only combines to molecular Hydrogen in three body collisions? (I.e. not through emission of a photon). That's why the Langmuir atomic Hydrogen torch works. If recombination by emission of a photon were possible, then the atomic Hydrogen formed in the arc would recombine long before it reached the work piece, and the whole concept would be useless (i.e. one might just as well use an arc welder). [/snip] Robin you may be right but I didn't run into this in my first and only 2 years of engineering physics - I have a big gap where missing 3rd and 4th year topics I try to pick up on as I need them but this may be a case where I didn't even know I was lacking. I was under the impression from chemistry that h1 will almost instantly reform to h2 if not heated into disassociation -this 3 body collision stuff is news to me and not having too much luck with google search on "molecular hydrogen 3 body collisions" - I keep getting stuff on stellar hydrogen. Are you saying I should show a 3rd body in the animation to justify the recombination? Regards Fran