No, the language of “perfect sphere” versus “bumpy sphere” used by the article is just an analogy with a classical object that would interact with an external e

No, the language of “perfect sphere” versus “bumpy sphere” used by the article is just an analogy with a classical object that would interact with an external electric field in a similar way. Even when it is in a single position eigenstate, an electron has another degree of freedom, its spin orientation, that has nothing to do with its position. This is “like” a spinning pool ball in the sense that it possesses angular momentum in a certain direction and reacts to torques like a spinning thing, but beyond this the analogy breaks down. For one thing, its spin can never be increased nor slowed; for another it has this intrinsic spin even when its position is localized to a dot. Similarly, a non vanishing Electric Dipole Moment would be some preferred direction to its electric interactions in relation to its spin. Its electric field would be slightly oblong even when position is localized to a dot. So to clarify, there are multiple senses of “electron cloud” at play — the superpositions of positions is what is usually meant by the term, as in electron cloud around nucleus of atom. The article’s use of the term is a tad sloppy since it invites confusion with this — it means something that generates an oblong electric field and reacts to an external electric field through a term in the energy of the form p.E (with p the EDM and E the external electric field).