This book leapfrogs over the usual pedagogical progression, taking readers to a real understanding of quantum, relativistic, nuclear and particle physics. These areas are usually reserved for the end of one's undergraduate career or even for graduate students in physics programs, but do not need to be. The Scenic Route is really created out of the joy of science; it is not designed to produce problem-solving ability but rather is designed to reveal some physics that is just plain nifty. Guided by an understanding that much of modern physics is available to almost everyone with a moderate mathematical vocabulary, we lead the student through a short, trenchant tour of quantum physics, relativity, modern particle physics and its history.
Author(s): Leo Bellantoni
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 204
City: Singapore
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Symmetry
2. Mathematical Symmetries and Newton
3. A Symmetry That Is Not
4. Groups
5. Generators
6. Noether’s Theorem
7. The Quantum Mechanical Robert Frost
8. The Central Procedure of Quantum Mechanics
9. Your First Quantum Calculation
10. Your First Quantum Experiment
11. What Heisenberg Didn’t Know
12. Gauge Invariance
13. Where Do the Quanta Come From?
14. The Quest for Meaning: Particles and Waves
15. The Logos
16. Mental Waves
17. Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen
18. About Spin
19. Bell’s Theorem: Setting up the Equipment
20. Bell’s Theorem: Taking the Data
21. I Do Not Like It
22. If You Do Not Know Who Minkowski Was, What are You Doing in His Space?
23. Rotational Symmetries and Matrices
24. The Sort-of Rotation
25. 299,792,548 Meters per Second — and No More!
26. Going Slower by Going Faster
27. The Twins
28. Momentum in Minkowski Space
29. Why E Is In Fact mc2
30. Antimatter
31. Your First Nuclear Physics Theory: Protons and Neutrons
32. Your First Nuclear Physics Theory: Symmetry
33. SU(2): A Matrix Group
34. Your First Nuclear Physics Theory: Pions
35. Your First Particle Physics Theory: The Λ
36. Your First Particle Physics Theory: Strange Mesons
37. The Eightfold Way and Quarks
38. Another Symmetry that Is Not
39. γ, W, Z, and H
40. Bra-Kets
41. Two Fermions in a Pod
42. The Back of the Book
Index
