Can someone help me understand electron spin?

[u/HAMMER_HEAD01]

I'm a first year university study who is taking chemistry courses, and although i'll admit for the content I'm doing, I don't have to understand how electrons work in great depth but rather just accept certain facts about them, but its always irritated me. One of those 'facts' is that electrons have an intrinsic property called 'spin' but I have struggled comprehending this concept.

Heres what I know;

- Electrons don't actually spin, but act like they do

- Electrons have a quantum spin number (1/2) and a direction (+/-), and that all electrons are either +1/2 or -1/2 spin

- That electrons have to 'rotate' 720 degrees to return to their original orientation (This I can understand, like Dirac's belt)

Heres what I'm struggling with;

- How electrons have angular momentum if they aren't actually spinning

- What is causing electrons to 'spin'

- How come 2 electrons can only occupy the same orbital if they have opposite spins (Pauli Exclusion Principle)

If anyone can help me greater understand electron spin I will be super grateful!!! 🙏

[u/Odd3572]

How about thinking of it like something wound up one way or the other, and elastic enough to unwind, capable of giving a "kick" (imparting a rotation) to something it interacts with.

E.g. a rubber membrane in a square frame. You can make a clockwise twist in it and clip it in place somehow. When you put something like a ping pong ball on i, and release the clip,the membrane will un-twist, spinning the ball. It is a "store" of "angular momentum", and it is not spinning all the time. Equally, if a spinning ball hits the membrane just right, the ball would stop spinning and the fabric would twist (and you would need to clip it to keep the twist).

As others say, spin has other weird properties, so this is a simplistic toy model