The quantum world

Kenneth W. Ford

270 pages, parution le 03/06/2004

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Résumé

What's that flying through the sky? It's a wave! It's a particle! It's both! That's a typical way to speak of the wave-particle duality. Saying that something is both a wave and a particle is, to be sure, a mind-bending idea, hard to accept and absorb. But if you keep in mind that the particle aspect is evident under certain conditions and the wave aspect under other conditions, the wave-particle duality becomes less dizzying. Think of a man who is Casper Milquetoast at the office and Mad Max behind the wheel of his car. You wouldn't say that he is both Casper and Max at the same time; rather, depending on circumstances, he can be one or the other. So it is with a quantum entity. It is a particle when it is created and annihilated (emitted and absorbed). It is a wave in the interval between those events. Still, adopting this point of view is not sufficient for overcoming our impression of quantum weirdness.

Sommaire

Beneath the Surface of Things
How Small Is Small? How Fast Is Fast?
Meet the Leptons
The Rest of the Extended Family
Quantum Lumps
Quantum Jumps
Social and Antisocial Particles
Clinging to Constancy
Waves and Particles
Pushing the Limits

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Harvard University Press
Auteur(s)	Kenneth W. Ford
Parution	03/06/2004
Nb. de pages	270
Format	16 x 22
Couverture	Relié
Poids	562g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780674013421