By the end of this unit, a successful student will be able to:
- Photons:
- Describe what a black body is and the general character of its spectrum as seen by Kirkhoff, Stefan and Wien.
- Describe conceptually that the statistics of PlanckÕs law for light quanta leads to the observed blackbody radiation
- Use PlanckÕs Law to solve problems relating energy and frequency of light.
- Interpret the E/M spectrum in terms of energy
- Describe the early experiments that indicated the quantum/particle nature of light including the photoelectric effect and Compton scattering
- Solve problems treating a photon as a particle with momentum
- Describe the Bohr and quantum atoms in terms of quantized electron energy levels. Use this description to determine the wavelengths of photons absorbed or emitted during different transitions
- Describe evidence of the wave nature of objects with mass, such as the Davisson-Germer experiment, and JoenssonÕs Young double-slit diffraction of electrons.
- Use de BroglieÕs relation to determine the wavelengths of objects with mass
- Describe TaylorÕs Young double-slit experiment and the key ideas (uncertainty principle, complimentary principle) of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics
- Nuclear Physics and mass-energy:
- Solve nuclear chemistry equations based on principles of conservation of mass number and of charge including alpha decay, beta+ decay, beta- decay, proton decay, neutron decay, fission and fusion.
- Use the principle of conservation of mass-energy to explain the results of certain reactions; use E=mc2 to determine the energies of photons produced or annihilated in such reactions.
This unit used to be given as a summer/fall assignment. Instead we will be doing it in the spring along with the rest of the class and the summer assignment will focus on a review of material from 554 Physics using the AP Physics textbook.
Read 26
Do: 1, 2, 4, 43
Read 27
Do: pp. 782ff problems: 10, 14, 16, 17, 26, 27, 29, 34, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 48, 52, 63, 84
Read 28-3, 28-7
Do Questions p 808: 2, 4, 7
Read 30-1, 2,3,4,5,6,7, 8,9,10,11
Do question p. 859: 11, 14a,b,c,d,e
Do: pp. 860ff problems: 2, 22, 23, 36, 37, 39, 40,
Read 31-1, 2, 3
Do question 1a,b,c,d on p. 885
Do: pp. 886ff problems: 16, 26, 61
You will find that Ch 27, 28, 30 and 31 overlap with chemistry class to some extent.
Those of you who will first be taking physics in the fall, may have some difficulty with the material, and may wish to postpone work on the tricker questions until the fall. Some of these questions are more difficult than what we will see on the AP itself.
I will be checking my e-mail at csiren at gdrsd dot org periodically through the summer, and may be able to give some assistance that way.
- Prentice Hall's web page on Giancoli Chapters 26-31 (link coming soon)
- Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity describes how objects behave as they move faster and faster, approaching, but never reaching the speed of light. It also shows how an objects energy and its rest mass (mass when not moving) are proportional to each other and relies on the speed of light being observed as the same by everyone - regardless of what velocities they may be moving relative to each other. Einstein's 1915 expansion to that theory, general relativity, describes how the masses of objects can be seen as bending the fabric of space and time and that bending is responsible for the effects of gravity - both on objects with mass, and on light.
- Bondi K-Calculus - a method of deriving the effects of Special Relativity, using only basic math.
- Usenet Relativity FAQ
- Jason W. Hinson's Relativty and FTL (Faster than Light) Travel Homepage
- Modern Relativity is a collection of pages on General Relativity. While many of these pages have a fair amount of qualitative description, they also rely on multivariable calculus and differential equations. (undergraduate-graduate level)
- Sean M. Carroll's Lecture Notes on General Relativity derived from a graduate level course and with related links.
- If relativity is the physics of the very large, quantum mechanics is the physics of the very small. Quantum mechanics gets its name from the observation that there is not a continuous spectrum of energy levels of such things as electrons surrounding atoms or protons and neutrons within the nucleii of such atoms. Rather, electrons can only change their potential energy in bursts of discrete "quanta" or packets. These jumps correspond to the energy of a photon, a quantum of light, released when the electorn's energy drops or absorbed to make the electron's energy rise. They must be those specific values, no less.
- In the first half of the 20th century, the foundations of quantum mechanics were laid out. These included the discovery that particles can behave like waves and that light, thought to behave more like a wave, can also behave like a particle. In addition quantum mechanics shows that it is impossible to pin down how fast and in what direction a particular particle at a particular location is moving - there must always be a certain level of uncertainty in such a measurement. There is a similar uncertainty in a particle's energy and the time that it has that energy. In addition when ever we try to pin down whether a thing is acting more like a wave or a particle or where exactly it is and where it's moving, the way we go about making our check will change the experiment. Because we're making the observation, that will change the outcome.
- Tom from the Queen Mary University of London presents a series of pages describing the dual wave-particle natures of light and things we usually think of as particles like electrons in this Wave Particle Duality site. The text is mostly concept oriented with a little algebra and has several questions scattered throughout.
- David Harrison of the University of Toronto describes the Stern-Gerlach Experiment which, in 1922 established electron spin polarization. He also describes the use of Stern-Gerlach apparati in correlation experiments
- Nuclear and Particle Physics
- The ABC's of Nuclear Science
- Contemporary Physics Education Project
- General Atomics Fusion Group Educational Home Page
- The Particle Data Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Particle Adventure
- The Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC)'s Virtual Visitor Center includes a large section describing particle theory, mostly at a conceptual level, with some algebra. Some familiarity with physics is helpful here, such as knowledge of the concepts of force, momentum and energy. Otherwise, it is appropriate for high school students and above.
- Northwestern University's Radiation Safety Handbook
- Matthew L. Wald assesses storage options of radioactive waste such as at Yucca Mountain in his article A New Vision for Nuclear Waste for Technology Review. New! 5/24/07
- GUTs, TOEs, String Theory and M-Brane Theory
- GUTs are Grand Unification Theories - theories which unite the four fundamental forces of Electromagnetism, and the Weak and Strong Nuclear forces. TOEs are Theories of Everything - which unite those three forces with the force of Gravity. If these forces behave as if they are the same force, it appears that they do so only at very high energies, which makes experimental verification of GUTs rather difficult. Currently there is solid experimental evidence verifying Electroweak theories - those which unify Electromagnetism with the Weak nuclear force. Superstring theory, aka string theory, is currently the best candidate for a working GUT & TOE, but the energies that would be required to verify it are cosmologically large, far exceeding that of any accelerator we could build in the forseable future. String theory also incorporates the earlier Supersymmetry theory (SUSY), versions of which continue to evolve independently of string theory.
- Kenneth Koehler presents this Quantum Gravity Concept Map. New! 3/2/03
- David Wagner presents Introduction to Supersymmetry at the NLC the Next Linear Collider at Colorado University.
- John Pierre's Superstrings! String Theory Home Page
- The Official String Theory Web Site
- Offline
- Perhaps the best source for the interested layperson on string theory is:
- Greene, Brian The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1999. Reading Level: High School & above.