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When a particle decays and spits off some alpha radiation why doesnt it take with it some of the electrons from its parent particle? I would expect the electrons to "stick" to the helium nucleus and travel with it.
I am guessing it is a matter of moment. The alpha particle flys off at such speed the resting moment of the electrons may make it so they cant follow it... but considering that electrons arent at "rest" and that they have very very little mass I question myself on this answer.
This is Mur 
@freemo aren't you trying to apply classical physics to the quantum realm here?
@mur2501 The quantum realm has parallels to classical physics and moment and mass are all valid at the quantum level.
That said you may be right that the answer is a quantum one and wont work well at all with a classical analogy... but a lot of things at the quantum level do work well witha classical analogy, at least to a point.
@freemo
That does is true, at the end all fancy things happening on the quantum physics scale are supposed to generalise to classical physics when scaled.
Also it looks like Alpha particles have a very small probability of knocking out host atom's electrons from it's innermost orbits. This leads to X-rays being seen emitted from the atom with the alpha particle.
@mur2501 That makes sense... and sheds some light on it.
Accelerating electrons consume energy (And emit photons), which can be an additive effect to momentum (meaning an electron is harder to get moving than its mass alone would suggest).
So it makes perfect sense that it happens once in a while and looses some energy (in the form of x-rays) in doing so.
@freemo
I think this is related to bremsstrahlung radiation, though that much more applies to repulsive charges.
@mur2501 No I cant see why it would, the electron's path isnt curving via a large scale magnetic field.
If would be a direct result of the electrons acceleration.. its the same mechanism that causes pretty much all light.
@freemo
actually, I for once want to look at the chaos side of physics and particles. I think we miss alot of explanations there.
Especially cause we don't even know if chaos is real or not.
if chaos exists, then where does it originate?
chaos is where physics, and maths both collide into the same realm.
@mur2501 yes, and as it changes it will effect how many and what frequency of photons it emits.. faster acceleration means higher energy adn higher frequencies of photon.