You are about to access information that has been systematically withheld from the public for over one hundred years. What you learn here cannot be unlearned. Your relationship with Chapter 3 will never be the same.
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By proceeding, you acknowledge that electrons do not orbit the nucleus and that Mrs. Henderson knew the whole time.
Your high school chemistry teacher knew the Rutherford–Bohr model was wrong. They taught it anyway.
In classrooms across the world, students are shown a picture of an atom that looks like a tiny solar system. Neat little electrons, orbiting a nucleus in perfect circles. It's clean. It's simple. And it's completely, demonstrably wrong.
The scientific establishment has known since 1926 that electrons do not orbit the nucleus. They exist in probabilistic "clouds" — smeared across space in ways that defy common sense. Erwin Schrödinger literally wrote the equation that proved it. That was one hundred years ago.
And yet, every September, millions of children sit down in chemistry class and are shown the same debunked diagram. Why?
Neat circular orbits. Electrons as tiny billiard balls. A solar system you can draw on a whiteboard in 30 seconds. Convenient, isn't it?
Probabilistic wavefunctions. Electron density clouds. A mathematical abstraction that requires differential equations to describe. They didn't think you could handle it.
The Rutherford–Bohr model proposes that electrons orbit the nucleus in fixed, circular paths at specific energy levels (n=1, 2, 3…). Each orbit corresponds to a quantized energy state, and electrons can jump between orbits by absorbing or emitting photons of exact energies.
The quantum mechanical model treats electrons not as particles in orbits, but as wavefunctions (ψ) — mathematical functions that describe the probability of finding an electron at any given point in space. The square of the wavefunction (|ψ|²) gives the probability density.
Instead of orbits, electrons occupy orbitals — three-dimensional regions of space where there's a high probability (typically 90%) of finding the electron. These shapes come from solving the Schrödinger equation:
Ĥψ = Eψ
The quantum model correctly predicts the behavior of every element, explains chemical bonding, molecular shapes, material properties, and is the foundation of essentially all modern chemistry and solid-state physics. It's not just "more accurate" — it's a fundamentally different (and correct) way of understanding matter.
The truth has been systematically suppressed for over 100 years. Here is the timeline they don't want you to see:
We've been mapping the connections. The web of complicity goes deeper than you think.
Ask yourself: who benefits from keeping the lie alive? Every time the curriculum stays the same, textbook publishers save millions in revision costs.
Pearson Education alone reported $4.7 billion in revenue last year. You think they want to redesign Chapter 3? Follow the money. Always follow the money.
These brave educators risked their pensions to tell you the truth.
The following document was obtained through a freedom of information request filed in Ontario, Canada. Several passages have been redacted by the Ministry.
We've reviewed the worst offenders in the textbook world. These diagrams have caused more scientific damage than any experiment gone wrong.
Three perfect concentric circles. Primary-colored electrons evenly spaced like ornaments on a Christmas tree. The nucleus is smiling. The nucleus is smiling. This isn't a textbook — it's propaganda for a universe that doesn't exist.
This one has the audacity to show electron orbits as 3D ellipses — as if adding perspective somehow makes the lie more truthful. It's like upgrading from a 2D lie to a 3D lie. Now in IMAX.
Shows the Bohr model on page 112, then quietly introduces electron clouds on page 389. That's 277 pages of living a lie before the truth appears — buried in a chapter most teachers skip "due to time constraints."
Not a textbook per se, but a genre. The photocopied worksheet featuring a Bohr model drawn in Microsoft Paint circa 2003. The electrons are squares because someone didn't know how to make circles. It's been copied so many times the nucleus is just a grey blob. These worksheets will outlive us all.
This groundbreaking documentary follows three whistleblower teachers, a rogue textbook illustrator, and a retired Pearson executive as they expose the century-long conspiracy to teach children a fundamentally incorrect model of atomic structure.
Featuring never-before-seen footage of curriculum board meetings, hidden camera recordings from teacher's lounges, and a dramatic recreation of the 1926 Schrödinger paper being "lost in the mail" on its way to the Ontario Ministry of Education.
We've heard every excuse. Here are our responses.
A "simplification" is rounding π to 3.14. A "simplification" is saying the Earth is a sphere when it's technically an oblate spheroid. Teaching the Bohr model is not a simplification — it's a completely different physical description of reality. Electrons do not orbit. There are no orbits. Saying "it's a simplification" is like saying "the stork brings babies" is a simplification of reproductive biology. Technically, both involve delivery.
…Fine. Yes. The Bohr model correctly predicts the emission spectrum of hydrogen (and only hydrogen). It's useful for introducing the concept of quantized energy levels. There. We said it. Are you happy? Are you HAPPY, Big Textbook? We admitted your obsolete model has marginal pedagogical utility for exactly one element. But does that justify teaching it as THE model of the atom? No. That's like teaching Flat Earth Theory because "it's useful for short-distance navigation."
Grade 10 students can learn TikTok dances with 47 steps, memorize every Pokémon evolution chain, and understand the lore of five interconnected anime universes. But you're telling me they can't grasp "electrons exist in probability clouds instead of fixed orbits"? The concept isn't hard. The math behind it is hard. Nobody's asking 15-year-olds to solve the Schrödinger equation — we're asking them to look at a fuzzy sphere instead of a circle. A fuzzy sphere.
The tone is satire. The science is not. The Rutherford–Bohr model really is wrong. It really has been known to be wrong for a hundred years. Textbook publishers really do charge $300 for books that teach it. Teachers really do know better. The conspiracy theory framing is a joke. The underlying facts are not. Think of us as the court jester who's the only one allowed to tell the king the truth.
You're right, and we feel bad about Mrs. Henderson specifically. She was a lovely woman who brought homemade cookies on test days. But she also drew those circles with such confidence. Such unwavering, cookie-scented confidence. The curriculum is the system. The teachers are the vectors. The textbook publishers are the profiteers. And the students? The students are the victims. We are all, in some way, casualties of page 47.
They walk among us. In faculty lounges, in online forums, in your family's group chat.
Says things like "models are tools, not truth" and "pedagogical scaffolding is important." Has a suspiciously large collection of complimentary textbook review copies.
"My child is doing fine with the current curriculum." Doing fine is not the same as being told the truth, Karen. Your child also did fine believing in Santa Claus.
Visits schools with branded pens and "sample chapters." Makes casual remarks like "the next edition has minor updates" (it doesn't). Eyes glaze over when you mention wavefunctions.
Posts "actually, the Bohr model is a perfectly valid approximation" with suspicious regularity. Account is 3 months old. Only comments on chemistry education threads.
"I learned the Bohr model and I turned out fine." Did you, though? Can you explain why gold is yellow? No? Because the Bohr model can't explain that either.
Ask an AI to "draw an atom" and watch it produce a Bohr model every single time. The training data is compromised. Big Textbook has infiltrated the machine learning pipeline.
Take this brief diagnostic assessment to determine your exposure level.
Wear the truth. Drink from it. Stick it on your car.*
*This is a comedy website. There is no merch. But there should be.
Don't take our word for it. Read the primary sources. (Fair warning: they used math to make it harder for you to understand. Classic.)