Spacetime and the Quantum World

News:

On Thursday December 4, we'll discuss quantum cryptography. Have a look at Chapter 13 in Styer. We'll also get started on some review of special relativity. If you have suggestions for other topics, please send them along!

The first full draft of the optional paper is due this Friday, December 5.

Week 13, version 1.0, is now posted.

Week 11 solutions are now posted.

Course Info (pdf):

Guides (pdf):

Links:

These are identifed by topic: "SR" means special relativity and "QM" means quantum mechanics.

• QM: Here's the tale.
• QM: The video we saw in lecture November 29 of an interference experiment done at Hitachi by Tonomura et.al. Here's a link to a Hitachi website with an explanation of the experiment. The history of this experiment (one of the "top 10 beautiful experiments" as determined by readers of Physics World) is shows the complicated nature of determining "who is first".
• QM: A link to a dialog on electron interference, with another electron interference applet
• QM: The Phet quantum simulations! Download and enjoy.
• QM: Dan Styer maintains a website with extra notes on his book. Note that Lucien Hardy's experiment has been performed. Dan has a summary. Here's the link to the page with the new problem for chapter 10.
• QM: The original EPR paper.
• QM: Scroll down in this "Physical Tourist in Frankfurt" page on Backreaction for pictures of the building where Stern and Gerlach worked.
• SR: Real time Relativity - software for simulations of near light speed travel.
• SR: The midterm example (pdf)
• SR: A page in the Discovery of Fusion (hosted by AIP) that includes an audio clip (!) of Einstein's discussing E=mc^2. Explore these pages some more for quotes from Frisch, Bohr and many others.
• SR: The link to the E=mc^2 eReserves reading
• SR: Cosmic ray showers from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• SR: October 7 length contraction notes (pdf)
• SR: Beautiful animations of the apparent geometry of relativistic moving objects. The dice and the ride down Marktgasse in Tuebingen are particularly good. Note, however, that redshift is not accounted for.
• SR: Pictures of Berne's Clock Tower in early 1900's and 2005
• Simple animations on special relativity at NYU.
• SR: AIP has a page devoted to Michelson. The original paper is posted on the page.
• SR: Nova's homepage for "Einstein's Big Idea" or the relation E=mc^2
• SR: The homepage for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database (example spectrum and example 2)
• SR & QM: The "LHC" or Large Hadronic Collider started up for the first time on September 10. The NYT has an article by Dennis Overbye. Check out Kate McAlpine's video, the "Large Hadron Rap", explaining what folks hope it will accomplish.
• SR: The result of our measurement in class on Thursday, September 4 of the speed of light was 2.9 x 10^8 m/s.
• SR: A beautiful, but qualitative, simulation of the Michelson-Morley experiment.
• SR: It's not Grammy material but it is a video on the electromagnetic spectrum.
• SR: Here's the cell-pop-corn video. When did the first kernel pop?
• SR: On Wikipedia, a quote of the "Galileo's ship" passage from Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
• SR: A video highlighting the use reference frames in the Olympic coverage of the men's 200 meter event.
• SR: A translation of "Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", Einstein's original 1905 paper on special relativity. Here's a pdf (1.9 MB) of the original article in German pubished in Annalen der Physik.
• SR: An online exhibit on Einstein hosted by American Insitute of Physics

© S. Major 2008 Last modified 2 December 2008