Hydrogen

The Essential Element

PAPERBACK

$31.00 • £26.95 • €28.95

ISBN 9780674012523

Publication Date: 11/30/2003

288 pages

5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches

23 halftones, 13 line illustrations, 2 tables

World

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Prologue
1. In the Beginning: Hydrogen and the Big Bang
2. Hydrogen and the Unity of Matter: The Prout Hypothesis
3. Hydrogen and the Spectra of the Chemical Elements: A Swiss High School Teacher Finds a Pattern
4. The Bohr Model of Hydrogen: A Paradigm for the Structure of Atoms
5. Relativity Meets the Quantum in the Hydrogen Atom
6. The Fine-Structure Constant: A Strange Number with Universal Significance
7. The Birth of Quantum Mechanics: The Hydrogen Atom Answers the "Crucial Question"
8. The Hydrogen Atom: Midwife to the Birth of Wave Mechanics
9. The Hydrogen Atom and Dirac’s Theory of the Electron
10. Hydrogen Guides Nuclear Physicists: The Discovery of Deuterium
11. Hubris Meets Hydrogen: The Magnetic Moment of the Proton
12. The Magnetic Resonance Method: The Origin of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
13. New Nuclear Forces Required: The Discovery of the Quadrupole Moment of the Deuteron
14. Magnetic Resonance in Bulk Matter (NMR)
15. Hydrogen’s Challenge to Dirac Theory: Quantum Electrodynamics as the Prototype Physical Theory
16. The Hydrogen Atom Portends an Anomaly with the Electron
17. Hydrogen Maps the Galaxy
18. The Hydrogen Maser: A High-Precision Clock
19. The Rydberg Constant: A Fundamental Constant
20. The Abundance of Deuterium: A Check on Big Bang Cosmology
21. Antihydrogen: The First Antiatom
22. The Bose-Einstein Condensate for Hydrogen
23. Exotic Hydrogen-like Atoms: From Theory to Technology
Notes
Acknowledgments
Credits
Index

The Essential Element