Early Quantum Theories
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Unerring in Her Scientific Enquiry and Not Afraid of Hard Work, Marie Curie Set a Shining Example for Generations of Scientists
Historical profile Elements of inspiration Unerring in her scientific enquiry and not afraid of hard work, Marie Curie set a shining example for generations of scientists. Bill Griffiths explores the life of a chemical heroine SCIENCE SOURCE / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY LIBRARY PHOTO SCIENCE / SOURCE SCIENCE 42 | Chemistry World | January 2011 www.chemistryworld.org On 10 December 1911, Marie Curie only elements then known to or ammonia, having a water- In short was awarded the Nobel prize exhibit radioactivity. Her samples insoluble carbonate akin to BaCO3 in chemistry for ‘services to the were placed on a condenser plate It is 100 years since and a chloride slightly less soluble advancement of chemistry by the charged to 100 Volts and attached Marie Curie became the than BaCl2 which acted as a carrier discovery of the elements radium to one of Pierre’s electrometers, and first person ever to win for it. This they named radium, and polonium’. She was the first thereby she measured quantitatively two Nobel prizes publishing their results on Boxing female recipient of any Nobel prize their radioactivity. She found the Marie and her husband day 1898;2 French spectroscopist and the first person ever to be minerals pitchblende (UO2) and Pierre pioneered the Eugène-Anatole Demarçay found awarded two (she, Pierre Curie and chalcolite (Cu(UO2)2(PO4)2.12H2O) study of radiactivity a new atomic spectral line from Henri Becquerel had shared the to be more radioactive than pure and discovered two new the element, helping to confirm 1903 physics prize for their work on uranium, so reasoned that they must elements, radium and its status. -
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz's Struggle with Quantum Theory A. J
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s struggle with quantum theory A. J. Kox Archive for History of Exact Sciences ISSN 0003-9519 Volume 67 Number 2 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. (2013) 67:149-170 DOI 10.1007/s00407-012-0107-8 1 23 Your article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution license which allows users to read, copy, distribute and make derivative works, as long as the author of the original work is cited. You may self- archive this article on your own website, an institutional repository or funder’s repository and make it publicly available immediately. 1 23 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. (2013) 67:149–170 DOI 10.1007/s00407-012-0107-8 Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s struggle with quantum theory A. J. Kox Received: 15 June 2012 / Published online: 24 July 2012 © The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract A historical overview is given of the contributions of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz in quantum theory. Although especially his early work is valuable, the main importance of Lorentz’s work lies in the conceptual clarifications he provided and in his critique of the foundations of quantum theory. 1 Introduction The Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928) is generally viewed as an icon of classical, nineteenth-century physics—indeed, as one of the last masters of that era. Thus, it may come as a bit of a surprise that he also made important contribu- tions to quantum theory, the quintessential non-classical twentieth-century develop- ment in physics. The importance of Lorentz’s work lies not so much in his concrete contributions to the actual physics—although some of his early work was ground- breaking—but rather in the conceptual clarifications he provided and his critique of the foundations and interpretations of the new ideas. -
Wave Extraction in Numerical Relativity
Doctoral Dissertation Wave Extraction in Numerical Relativity Dissertation zur Erlangung des naturwissenschaftlichen Doktorgrades der Bayrischen Julius-Maximilians-Universitat¨ Wurzburg¨ vorgelegt von Oliver Elbracht aus Warendorf Institut fur¨ Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik Fakultat¨ fur¨ Physik und Astronomie Julius-Maximilians-Universitat¨ Wurzburg¨ Wurzburg,¨ August 2009 Eingereicht am: 27. August 2009 bei der Fakultat¨ fur¨ Physik und Astronomie 1. Gutachter:Prof.Dr.Karl Mannheim 2. Gutachter:Prof.Dr.Thomas Trefzger 3. Gutachter:- der Dissertation. 1. Prufer¨ :Prof.Dr.Karl Mannheim 2. Prufer¨ :Prof.Dr.Thomas Trefzger 3. Prufer¨ :Prof.Dr.Thorsten Ohl im Promotionskolloquium. Tag des Promotionskolloquiums: 26. November 2009 Doktorurkunde ausgehandigt¨ am: Gewidmet meinen Eltern, Gertrud und Peter, f¨urall ihre Liebe und Unterst¨utzung. To my parents Gertrud and Peter, for all their love, encouragement and support. Wave Extraction in Numerical Relativity Abstract This work focuses on a fundamental problem in modern numerical rela- tivity: Extracting gravitational waves in a coordinate and gauge independent way to nourish a unique and physically meaningful expression. We adopt a new procedure to extract the physically relevant quantities from the numerically evolved space-time. We introduce a general canonical form for the Weyl scalars in terms of fundamental space-time invariants, and demonstrate how this ap- proach supersedes the explicit definition of a particular null tetrad. As a second objective, we further characterize a particular sub-class of tetrads in the Newman-Penrose formalism: the transverse frames. We establish a new connection between the two major frames for wave extraction: namely the Gram-Schmidt frame, and the quasi-Kinnersley frame. Finally, we study how the expressions for the Weyl scalars depend on the tetrad we choose, in a space-time containing distorted black holes. -
Philosophical Rhetoric in Early Quantum Mechanics, 1925-1927
b1043_Chapter-2.4.qxd 1/27/2011 7:30 PM Page 319 b1043 Quantum Mechanics and Weimar Culture FA 319 Philosophical Rhetoric in Early Quantum Mechanics 1925–27: High Principles, Cultural Values and Professional Anxieties Alexei Kojevnikov* ‘I look on most general reasoning in science as [an] opportunistic (success- or unsuccessful) relationship between conceptions more or less defined by other conception[s] and helping us to overlook [danicism for “survey”] things.’ Niels Bohr (1919)1 This paper considers the role played by philosophical conceptions in the process of the development of quantum mechanics, 1925–1927, and analyses stances taken by key participants on four main issues of the controversy (Anschaulichkeit, quantum discontinuity, the wave-particle dilemma and causality). Social and cultural values and anxieties at the time of general crisis, as identified by Paul Forman, strongly affected the language of the debate. At the same time, individual philosophical positions presented as strongly-held principles were in fact flexible and sometimes reversible to almost their opposites. One can understand the dynamics of rhetorical shifts and changing strategies, if one considers interpretational debates as a way * Department of History, University of British Columbia, 1873 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z1; [email protected]. The following abbreviations are used: AHQP, Archive for History of Quantum Physics, NBA, Copenhagen; AP, Annalen der Physik; HSPS, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences; NBA, Niels Bohr Archive, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen; NW, Die Naturwissenschaften; PWB, Wolfgang Pauli, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg a.o., Band I: 1919–1929, ed. A. Hermann, K.V. -
Einstein's Mistakes
Einstein’s Mistakes Einstein was the greatest genius of the Twentieth Century, but his discoveries were blighted with mistakes. The Human Failing of Genius. 1 PART 1 An evaluation of the man Here, Einstein grows up, his thinking evolves, and many quotations from him are listed. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein at 14 Einstein at 26 Einstein at 42 3 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein at age 61 (1940) 4 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Born in Ulm, Swabian region of Southern Germany. From a Jewish merchant family. Had a sister Maja. Family rejected Jewish customs. Did not inherit any mathematical talent. Inherited stubbornness, Inherited a roguish sense of humor, An inclination to mysticism, And a habit of grüblen or protracted, agonizing “brooding” over whatever was on its mind. Leading to the thought experiment. 5 Portrait in 1947 – age 68, and his habit of agonizing brooding over whatever was on its mind. He was in Princeton, NJ, USA. 6 Einstein the mystic •“Everyone who is seriously involved in pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man..” •“When I assess a theory, I ask myself, if I was God, would I have arranged the universe that way?” •His roguish sense of humor was always there. •When asked what will be his reactions to observational evidence against the bending of light predicted by his general theory of relativity, he said: •”Then I would feel sorry for the Good Lord. The theory is correct anyway.” 7 Einstein: Mathematics •More quotations from Einstein: •“How it is possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?” •Questions asked by many people and Einstein: •“Is God a mathematician?” •His conclusion: •“ The Lord is cunning, but not malicious.” 8 Einstein the Stubborn Mystic “What interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” Some broadcasters expunged the comment from the soundtrack because they thought it was blasphemous. -
Von Richthofen, Einstein and the AGA Estimating Achievement from Fame
Von Richthofen, Einstein and the AGA Estimating achievement from fame Every schoolboy has heard of Einstein; fewer have heard of Antoine Becquerel; almost nobody has heard of Nils Dalén. Yet they all won Nobel Prizes for Physics. Can we gauge a scientist’s achievements by his or her fame? If so, how? And how do fighter pilots help? Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury look for the linkages. “It was a famous victory.” We instinctively rank the had published. However, in 2001–2002 popular French achievements of great men and women by how famous TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff published they are. But is instinct enough? And how exactly does a great man’s fame relate to the greatness of his achieve- ment? Some achievements are easy to quantify. Such is the case with fighter pilots of the First World War. Their achievements can be easily measured and ranked, in terms of their victories – the number of enemy planes they shot down. These aces achieved varying degrees of fame, which have lasted down to the internet age. A few years ago we compared1 the fame of First World War fighter pilot aces (measured in Google hits) with their achievement (measured in victories); and we found that We can estimate fame grows exponentially with achievement. fame from Google; Is the same true in other areas of excellence? Bagrow et al. have studied the relationship between can this tell us 2 achievement and fame for physicists . The relationship Manfred von Richthofen (in cockpit) with members of his so- about actual they found was linear. -
Blackbody Radiation: (Vibrational Energies of Atoms in Solid Produce BB Radiation)
Independent study in physics The Thermodynamic Interaction of Light with Matter Mirna Alhanash Project in Physics Uppsala University Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Blackbody Radiation: (vibrational energies of atoms in solid produce BB radiation) .................................... 4 Stefan-Boltzmann .............................................................................................................................................................. 6 Wien displacement law..................................................................................................................................................... 7 Photoelectric effect ......................................................................................................................................................... 12 Frequency dependence/Atom model & electron excitation .................................................................................. 12 Why we see colours ....................................................................................................................................................... 14 Optical properties of materials: .................................................................................................................................. -
Wolfgang Pauli Niels Bohr Paul Dirac Max Planck Richard Feynman
Wolfgang Pauli Niels Bohr Paul Dirac Max Planck Richard Feynman Louis de Broglie Norman Ramsey Willis Lamb Otto Stern Werner Heisenberg Walther Gerlach Ernest Rutherford Satyendranath Bose Max Born Erwin Schrödinger Eugene Wigner Arnold Sommerfeld Julian Schwinger David Bohm Enrico Fermi Albert Einstein Where discovery meets practice Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology IQ ST in Baden-Württemberg . Introduction “But I do not wish to be forced into abandoning strict These two quotes by Albert Einstein not only express his well more securely, develop new types of computer or construct highly causality without having defended it quite differently known aversion to quantum theory, they also come from two quite accurate measuring equipment. than I have so far. The idea that an electron exposed to a different periods of his life. The first is from a letter dated 19 April Thus quantum theory extends beyond the field of physics into other 1924 to Max Born regarding the latter’s statistical interpretation of areas, e.g. mathematics, engineering, chemistry, and even biology. beam freely chooses the moment and direction in which quantum mechanics. The second is from Einstein’s last lecture as Let us look at a few examples which illustrate this. The field of crypt it wants to move is unbearable to me. If that is the case, part of a series of classes by the American physicist John Archibald ography uses number theory, which constitutes a subdiscipline of then I would rather be a cobbler or a casino employee Wheeler in 1954 at Princeton. pure mathematics. Producing a quantum computer with new types than a physicist.” The realization that, in the quantum world, objects only exist when of gates on the basis of the superposition principle from quantum they are measured – and this is what is behind the moon/mouse mechanics requires the involvement of engineering. -
Evolution of Mathematics: a Brief Sketch
Open Access Journal of Mathematical and Theoretical Physics Mini Review Open Access Evolution of mathematics: a brief sketch Ancient beginnings: numbers and figures Volume 1 Issue 6 - 2018 It is no exaggeration that Mathematics is ubiquitously Sujit K Bose present in our everyday life, be it in our school, play ground, SN Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, Kolkata mobile number and so on. But was that the case in prehistoric times, before the dawn of civilization? Necessity is the mother Correspondence: Sujit K Bose, Professor of Mathematics (retired), SN Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, Kolkata, of invenp tion or discovery and evolution in this case. So India, Email mathematical concepts must have been seen through or created by those who could, and use that to derive benefit from the Received: October 12, 2018 | Published: December 18, 2018 discovery. The creative process of discovery and later putting that to use must have been arduous and slow. I try to look back from my limited Indian perspective, and reflect up on what might have been the course taken up by mathematics during 10, 11, 12, 13, etc., giving place value to each digit. The barrier the long journey, since ancient times. of writing very large numbers was thus broken. For instance, the numbers mentioned in Yajur Veda could easily be represented A very early method necessitated for counting of objects as Dasha 10, Shata (102), Sahsra (103), Ayuta (104), Niuta (enumeration) was the Tally Marks used in the late Stone Age. In (105), Prayuta (106), ArA bud (107), Nyarbud (108), Samudra some parts of Europe, Africa and Australia the system consisted (109), Madhya (1010), Anta (1011) and Parartha (1012). -
Henry Andrews Bumstead 1870-1920
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOLUME XIII SECOND MEMOIR BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF HENRY ANDREWS BUMSTEAD 1870-1920 BY LEIGH PAGE PRESENTED TO THE ACADEMY AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, 1929 HENRY ANDREWS BUMSTEAD BY LIUGH PAGE Henry Andrews Bumstead was born in the small town of Pekin, Illinois, on March 12th, 1870, son of Samuel Josiah Bumstead and Sarah Ellen Seiwell. His father, who was a physician of considerable local prominence, had graduated from the medical school in Philadelphia and was one of the first American students of medicine to go to Vienna to complete his studies. While the family was in Vienna, Bumstead, then a child three years of age, learned to speak German as fluently as he spoke English, an accomplishment which was to prove valuable to him in his subsequent career. Bumstead was descended from an old New England family which traces its origin to Thomas Bumstead, a native of Eng- land, who settled in Boston, Massachusetts, about 1640. Many of his ancestors were engaged in the professions, his paternal grandfather, the Reverend Samuel Andrews Bumstead, being a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and a minister in active service. From them he inherited a keen mind and an unusually retentive memory. It is related that long before he had learned to read, his Sunday school teacher surprised his mother by complimenting her on the ease with which her son had rendered the Sunday lesson. It turned out that his mother made a habit of reading the lesson to Bumstead before he left for school, and the child's remarkable performance there was due to his ability to hold in his memory every word of the lesson after hearing it read to him a single time. -
25 Years of Quantum Hall Effect
S´eminaire Poincar´e2 (2004) 1 – 16 S´eminaire Poincar´e 25 Years of Quantum Hall Effect (QHE) A Personal View on the Discovery, Physics and Applications of this Quantum Effect Klaus von Klitzing Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Festk¨orperforschung Heisenbergstr. 1 D-70569 Stuttgart Germany 1 Historical Aspects The birthday of the quantum Hall effect (QHE) can be fixed very accurately. It was the night of the 4th to the 5th of February 1980 at around 2 a.m. during an experiment at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Grenoble. The research topic included the characterization of the electronic transport of silicon field effect transistors. How can one improve the mobility of these devices? Which scattering processes (surface roughness, interface charges, impurities etc.) dominate the motion of the electrons in the very thin layer of only a few nanometers at the interface between silicon and silicon dioxide? For this research, Dr. Dorda (Siemens AG) and Dr. Pepper (Plessey Company) provided specially designed devices (Hall devices) as shown in Fig.1, which allow direct measurements of the resistivity tensor. Figure 1: Typical silicon MOSFET device used for measurements of the xx- and xy-components of the resistivity tensor. For a fixed source-drain current between the contacts S and D, the potential drops between the probes P − P and H − H are directly proportional to the resistivities ρxx and ρxy. A positive gate voltage increases the carrier density below the gate. For the experiments, low temperatures (typically 4.2 K) were used in order to suppress dis- turbing scattering processes originating from electron-phonon interactions. -
The Riches of Uranium Uranium Is Best Known, and Feared, for Its Involvement in Nuclear Energy
in your element The riches of uranium Uranium is best known, and feared, for its involvement in nuclear energy. Marisa J. Monreal and Paula L. Diaconescu take a look at how its unique combination of properties is now increasingly attracting the attention of chemists. t is nearly impossible to find an uplifting, and can be arrested by the skin, making found about uranium’s superior catalytic funny, or otherwise endearing quote on depleted uranium (composed mainly of 238U) activity may not be an isolated event. The Iuranium — the following dark wisecrack1 safe to work with as long as it is not inhaled organometallic chemistry of uranium was reflects people’s sinister feelings about this or ingested. born during the ‘Manhattan project’ — code element: “For years uranium cost only a few Studying the fundamental chemistry of name of the development of the first nuclear dollars a ton until scientists discovered you uranium is an exotic endeavour, but those who weapon during the Second World War. This could kill people with it”. But, in the spirit of embrace it will reap its benefits. Haber and field truly began to attract interest in 1956 rebranding, it is interesting to note that the Bosch found that uranium was a better catalyst when Reynolds and Wilkinson reported the main source of Earth’s internal heat comes than iron for making ammonia2. The preparation of the first cyclopentadienyl from the radioactive decay of uranium, isolation of an η1-OCO complex derivatives6. The discovery of thorium and potassium-40 that keeps the of uranium3 also showed uranocene electrified the field outer core liquid, induces mantle convection that, even though it is as much as that of ferrocene and, subsequently, drives plate tectonics.