At the turn of the 20th century, physics entered into a new world, the invisible silent world of atoms, atomic nuclei and elementary particles. Our twentieth century then produced the theory that has been serving physicists so faithfully for over sixty years -- quantum mechanics. The landscape of the new world is quire unlike our own. So different that phsyicists frequently lack words to describe it. Quantum mechanics had to create new conceptions for the world of the ultrasmall, bizarre conceptions beyond the scope of pictorial imagery.
Customary physical laws cease to operate in the new world. Particles lose their dimensions and acquire the properties of waves. Electrons and the other building stones of matter can pass through impenetrable barriers, or they can vanish altogether leaving only photons in their place. Those are the things quantum mechanics dealt with.
This book will tell you about the origin and development of quantum mechanics, about its new concepts. It will describe how the new theory deciphered the secrets of the structure of atoms, molecules, crystals, atomic nulei, and how quantum mechanics is dealing with the problem of the most fundamental of all properties of matter --the interaction of particles and the relationships between fields and matter.
Author(s): V. Rydnik
Publisher: Mir Publishers
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 328
City: Moscow
Preface
From Classical Mechanics To Quantum Mechanics
In Lieu of an Introduction
The Outlines of the New World
The Temple of Classical Mechanics
The Temple Collapses
How the New Theory was Named
Physicists Build Models
Not Everything Can be Modelled
The Invisible, Untouchable World
Difficult but Interesting
The First Steps Of The New Theory
Heat and Light
Blacker than Black
Exact Laws, Not Rough Approximations
The Ultraviolet Catastrophe
Classical Physics at an Impasse
The Way out
Quanta of Energy
The Elusive Quanta
An Unaccountable Phenomenon
Photons
What is Light?
The Visiting Cards of Atoms
Why do Bodies Emit Light?
The Biography of the Atom Written by Niels Bohr
From Where do We Reckon the Energy?
Excited Atoms
The First Setbacks
From Bohr's Theory To Quantum Mechanics
A Remarkable Article
A Little about Ordinary Waves
Getting Acquainted with Matter Waves
Why Can't We See de Broglie Waves?
The Wave is Found
Two-Faced Particles
Pilot Waves
Together or Separately?
A Visit to the Shooting Range
Waves of Probability
Probability Enters into Physics
Cautious Predictions
Waves of Particles and Particles of Waves
On the Way to the Wave Law
Measuring Instruments Take over
The Uncertainty Relation
What is to Blame, the Instrument or the Electron?
An Attempt with Rather Faulty Tools
Another Marvel
The Uncertainty Relation Once Again
Matter Waves Again
The Wave Function
Waves and Quanta are United
Atoms, Molecules, Crystals
Clouds in Place of Orbits
Monotony in Diversity
Another Marvel? But as Yet Unexplained
The Atomic Architect at Work
Crazy Atoms
Atoms and Chemistry
The Birth of a Spectrum
Fat Lines and Double Lines
Atoms Get Married
Solid Bodies are Really Solid!
Skeletons and Multistorey Structures of Crystals
Insulators Can Conduct Current!
How Does Current Move in a Metal?
Those Wonderful 'Semi-Things'
Useful `Dirt'
Generous and Greedy Atoms
The Interior Of The Atomic Nucleus
On the Threshold
The First Step
The Second Step
The Search for the Mysterious Meson
The Strongest Forces of All
Once Again about the Stability of Nuclei
Tunnels in Nuclei
Does the Nucleus Consist of Shells?
Where do Gamma Rays Come from?
The Nucleus as a Liquid Drop?
The Liquid-Drop Nucleus Splits
The Secrets of Nuclear Fission
How Many Nuclei Can There Be?
The Nucleus as Shells and Liquid Drop Together!
Particles Fly out of the Nucleus that Were Never There!
The Electron Has an Accomplice
Electrons are Born in Nuclei
The Hungry Nucleus
From Atomic Nuclei To Elementary Particles
The Discovery of a New World
The Invisible Dividing Line
A Bit More about the Theory of Relativity
The First Difficulties
An Unexpected Discovery
A Still More Unexpected Discovery
The Birth of a `Hole'
The Outlines of Emptiness
Complete Emptiness?
Emptiness Depends on Bodies!
Matter and Fields
There is No Emptiness!
What the Whales Rest on
Particles Change Their Guise
The Two-Faced Pi-Meson
A Clue to Meson Exchange
The Secret of Interaction
The Kingdom of Virtualities
The Virtual Becomes Real
In the Search for New Particles
Sorting the Booty
Antiparticles Come into Action
Particles Disintegrate
Physicists Classify Interactions
The Mystery of the K-Mesons
Is the Left Any Different from the Right?
A Way out is Found!
Worlds and Antiworlds
What Goes on Inside Particles?
The Mysterious Resonances
The Curtain Rises
Resonances Get Citizenship
Triplets, Octets -
Quarks
Old Ideas Hold One Back
The Reverse of the Obvious
The Ubiquitous Quantum
From Quantum Mechanics To …?
Indeterminable Determinacies
The Biography of Quantum Mechanics
Quantum Mechanics Gets Its Second Wind
