com QUANTUM PHYSICS FOR BEGINNERS The new comprehensive guide to master the 7 hidden secrets of the law of attraction and relativity. Learn the origin of universe with step by step process Jason Test TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 4 Quantum Physics VS. Rocket Science Chapters Overview Mathematics Classical Physics Units Motion Mass Energy Electric Charge Momentum Temperature The Quantum Objects Atom Electron www.com Nucleus Isotopes Atomic Structure Atomic Properties Atomic Radiation CHAPTER 2: WAVES AND PARTICLES Traveling Waves and Standing Waves Interference Light Quanta Matter Waves Electron in a Box Varying Potential Energy Quantum Tunneling A Quantum Oscillator The Hydrogen Atom Other Atoms CHAPTER 3: THE POWER OF QUANTUM Chemical Fuels Nuclear Fuels Green Power CHAPTER 4: METALS AND INSULATORS What about the Ions? A bit more about Metals CHAPTER 5: SEMICONDUCTORS AND COMPUTER CHIPS The p–n Junction The Transistor The Photovoltaic Cell CHAPTER 6: SUPERCONDUCTIVITY ‘High-Temperature’ Superconductivity Flux Quantization and the Josephson Effect CHAPTER 7: Spin Doctoring Quantum Cryptography Quantum Computers What does it all Mean? The Measurement Problem Alternative Interpretations CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS www.com Early Years Since 1950 The Future www.com CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Quantum Physics VS. Rocket Science In modern years, rocket science has become a byword for something genuinely challenging.
Rocket specialists need a thorough understanding of the properties of the materials used in spacecraft construction; they need to understand the ability and risk of the fuels used to power the rockets, and they need a thorough understanding of how planets and satellites are moving under the influence of gravity. Quantum physics has a similar reputation for complexity, and, even for many highly educated physicists, a thorough understanding of the behaviour of many quantum phenomena definitely poses a significant challenge. Perhaps the best minds in physics are those working on the unsolved issue of how quantum physics can be applied to the incredibly strong gravitational forces that are supposed to exist inside black holes, which played a crucial role in our universe's early evolution. The basic ideas of quantum physics, however, are not rocket science: their problem is more to do with their unfamiliarity than with their inherent difficulty.
We have to abandon some of the ideas we all learned from our observation and knowledge of how the world functions, but once we have done so, it is more an exercise for the imagination than the intellect to replace them with the new concepts needed to understand quantum physics. It is also very easy to understand how many everyday phenomena underlie the concepts of quantum physics without using the complex mathematical research required for full clinical care. Chapters Overview The philosophical foundation of quantum physics is peculiar and unfamiliar, and it is still controversial in its interpretation. We will, however, postpone much of our discussion of this to the last chapter since the main purpose of this book is to understand how quantum physics explain many natural phenomena; these include the behavior of matter on www.com the very small scale of atoms and the like, but also many of the phenomena we in the modern world are familiar with.
We shall establish the basic concepts of quantum physics in Chapter 2, where we will find that the fundamental particles of matter are not like ordinary objects, such as footballs or grains of sand, but can, in certain cases, behave as if they were waves. We will find that in deciding the structure and properties of atoms and the 'subatomic' environment beyond them, this 'wave-particle duality' plays an important role. Chapter 3 starts our discussion of how important and common aspects of everyday life underlie the concepts of quantum physics. This chapter describes how quantum physics is central to many of the techniques used to produce power for modern society, called 'Power from the Quantum.' We can also find that the 'greenhouse effect' is essentially quantum, which plays an important role in regulating the temperature and, thus, our world's climate.
Much of our industrial technology contributes to the greenhouse effect, contributing to global warming issues, but quantum physics also plays a role in combating the physics of some of the 'green' technologies being developed. In Chapter 4, we can see how in some large-scale phenomena, wave- particle duality features; for instance; quantum physics explains why some materials are metals that can conduct electricity, while others are 'insulators' that fully block such current flow. The physics of 'semi-conductors' whose properties lie between metals and insulators are discussed in Chapter 5. In these materials, which were used to build the silicon chip, we will find out how quantum physics plays an important role.
This system forms the basis of modern electronics, which, in turn, underlies the technology of information and communication, which plays such a huge role in the modern world. We shall turn to the 'superconductivity' phenomenon in Chapter 6, where quantum properties are manifested in a particularly dramatic way: in this case, the large-scale existence of the quantum phenomena creates materials whose resistance to electric current flow disappears entirely. Another intrinsically quantum phenomenon relates to newly established information processing techniques, and some of these will be discussed in Chapter 7.com There, we can discover that it is possible to use quantum physics to relay information in a way that no unauthorized individual can interpret. We can also learn how to construct 'quantum computers' one day to perform certain calculations several millions of times faster than any current machine would.
Chapter 8 tries to bring everything together and make some guesses about where the topic might be going. Most of this book, as we see, relates to the influence of quantum physics on our daily world: by this, we mean phenomena where the quantum component is seen at the level of the phenomenon we are addressing and not just concealed in the quantum substructure of objects. For instance, while quantum physics is important to understand the internal structure of atoms, the atoms themselves follow the same physical laws in many circumstances as those governing the behavior of ordinary objects. Thus, the atoms move around in gas and clash with the container walls and with each other as if they were very tiny balls.
On the other hand, their internal structure is determined by quantum laws when a few atoms come together to form molecules, and these directly control essential properties such as their ability to absorb and re-emit greenhouse effect radiation (Chapter 3). The context needed to understand the ideas I will build in later chapters is set out in the current chapter. I begin by defining some basic ideas that were established before the quantum era in mathematics and physics; I then offer an account of some of the discoveries of the nineteenth century, especially about the nature of atoms, that revealed the need for a revolution in our thought that became known as 'quantum physics.' Mathematics Mathematics poses a major hurdle to their comprehension of science for many individuals. Certainly, for four hundred years or more, mathematics has been the language of physics, and without it, it is impossible to make progress in understanding the physical universe.
Why will this be the case? The physical universe seems to be primarily governed by the laws of cause www.com and effect, for one explanation (although these break down to some extent in the quantum context, as we shall see). Mathematics is widely used to evaluate such causal relationships: the mathematical statement two plus two equals four 'implies as a very simple example that if we take any two physical objects and combine them with any two others, we will end up with four objects. If an apple falls from a tree, to be a little more sophisticated, it will fall to the ground, and we can use mathematics to measure the time it will take, given we know the initial height of the apple and the strength of the gravity force acting on it. This shows the relevance of mathematics to science since the latter attempts to predict and compare the behavior of a physical system with the outcomes of 4 Quantum Physics: measurement.
Classical Physics If quantum physics is not rocket science, we can also assume that quantum physics is not 'rocket science.' This is because it is possible to measure the motion of the sun and the planets as well as that of rockets and artificial satellites with total precision using pre-quantum physics developed by Newton and others between two and three hundred years ago. The need for quantum physics was not understood until the end of the nineteenth century because in many familiar situation's quantum effects are far too small to be important. We refer to this earlier body of information as 'classical' when we address quantum physics.com In some scientific fields, the term 'classical' is used to mean anything like 'what was understood before the subject we are addressing became important,' so it refers to the body of scientific information that preceded the quantum revolution in our sense. The early quantum physicists were acquainted with the notions of classical physics and used them to generate new ideas where they could.
We will follow in their footsteps and will soon answer the key ideas of classical physics that will be needed in our subsequent debate. Units We have to use a scheme of 'units' when physical quantities are represented by numbers. For instance, we could calculate the distance in miles, in which case the mile would be the unit of distance, and time in hours, where the hour would be the unit of time, and so on. By the French name 'Systeme Internationale' or 'SI' for short, the system of units used in all scientific work is known.
The distance unit is the meter (abbreviation 'm') in this www.com system, the time unit is the second ('s'), mass is calculated in kilogram units ('kg'), and the electrical charge is measured in coulomb units ('C'). When the metric system was developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the dimensions of the fundamental units of mass, length, and time were originally specified. The meter was originally specified as one ten-millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator along the meridian that passes through Paris; the second as 1/86,400 of the average solar day; and the kilogram as one-thousandth of the mass of pure water per cubic meter. These concepts gave rise to problems because our ability to more precisely calculate the dimensions of the Earth and motion meant minor improvements in these standard values.
The meter and kilogram were redefined towards the end of the nineteenth century as, respectively, the distance between two marks on a standard platinum alloy rod and the mass of another particular piece of platinum; both of these standards were kept firmly in a standard laboratory near Paris, and 'secondary standards' were manufactured to be as identical as possible www.com to the originals. In 1960, the definition of the second was updated and expressed in terms of the year's average duration. As atomic measurements became more precise, the basic units were again redefined: the second is now known as 9,192,631,770 radiation oscillation cycles emitted during the change between the specific energy levels of the cesium atom, while the meter is defined as the distance traveled by light in a time equal to 1/299,792,458 of a second. The value of these concepts is that, everywhere on Earth, the standards can be replicated independently.
However, no similar definition of a kilogram has yet been accepted, and this is still referred to as the primary standard kept by the Bureau of Standards of France. In our labs, kitchens, and elsewhere, the values of the standard masses we use were all obtained by comparing their weights with standard weights, which were compared with others in turn, and so on until we finally reached the Paris standard.