- Introduction
- I. The Subatomic World
- 1. What is a quantum, anyway?
- 2. Where do the laws of quantum physics hold sway?
- 3. What is the correspondence principle?
- 4. How big is an atom?
- 5. What is inside an atom?
- 6. Why is solid matter solid if it is mostly empty space?
- 7. How big is an electron? Is there anything inside it?
- II. Digging Deeper
- 8. How big is a nucleus? What is inside it?
- 9. How big are protons and neutrons? What is inside them?
- 10. What is Planck’s constant and what is its significance?
- 11. What is a photon?
- 12. What is the photoelectric effect?
- 13. What particles are believed to be fundamental? What particles are composite?
- 14. What is the standard model?
- III. The Small and the Swift
- 15. What are some quantum scales of distance?
- 16. How far can one particle “reach out” to influence another one?
- 17. How fast do particles move?
- 18. What are some quantum scales of time?
- 19. What is the meaning of E = mc2?
- 20. What is electric charge?
- 21. What is spin?
- IV. Quantum Lumps and Quantum Jumps
- 22. What are some things that are lumpy (and some that are not)?
- 23. What is a “state of motion”?
- 24. Is a hydrogen atom in an excited state of motion the same atom in a different state or is it a different atom?
- 25. What are quantum numbers? What are the rules for combining them?
- 26. What is a quantum jump?
- 27. What is the role of probability in quantum physics?
- 28. Is there any certainty in the quantum world?
- V. Atoms and Nuclei
- 29. What is a line spectrum? What does it reveal about atoms?
- 30. Why is the chart of the elements periodic?
- 31. Why are heavy atoms nearly the same size as lightweight atoms?
- 32. How do protons and neutrons move within a nucleus?
- 33. What are atomic number and atomic mass?
- VI. And More about Nuclei
- 34. Why does the periodic table end?
- 35. What is radioactivity? What are its forms?
- 36. Why is the neutron stable within a nucleus but unstable when alone?
- 37. What is nuclear fission? Why does it release energy?
- 38. What about nuclear fusion?
- VII. Particles
- 39. What is a lepton? What are its flavors?
- 40. How many distinct neutrinos are there? How do we know?
- 41. Do neutrinos have mass? Why do they “oscillate”?
- 42. Are there really only three generations of particles?
- 43. How do we know that all electrons are identical?
- VIII. And More Particles
- 44. Names, names, names. What do they all mean?
- 45. What are the properties of quarks? How do they combine?
- 46. What are the composite particles? How many are there?
- 47. Does every particle have to be a fermion or a boson? What sets these two classes apart?
- 48. What is a Bose–Einstein condensate?
- 49. How did bosons and fermions get their names?
- IX. Interactions
- 50. What is a Feynman diagram?
- 51. What are the essential features of Feynman diagrams?
- 52. How do Feynman diagrams illustrate the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions?
- 53. Which particles are stable? Which are unstable? What does it mean to say that a particle decays?
- 54. What is scattering?
- 55. What is the same before and after a scattering or a decay?
- 56. What changes during a scattering or decay?
- X. Constancy during Change
- 57. What are the “big four” absolute conservation laws?
- 58. What additional absolute conservation laws operate in the quantum world?
- 59. What is the TCP theorem?
- 60. What conservation laws are only “partial”?
- 61. What symmetry principles are only “partial”?
- 62. What are laws of compulsion and of prohibition?
- 63. How are the concepts of symmetry, invariance, and conservation related?
- XI. Waves and Particles
- 64. What do waves and particles have in common? How do they differ?
- 65. What is the de Broglie equation? What is its significance?
- 66. How are waves related to quantum lumps?
- 67. How do waves relate to the size of atoms?
- 68. What is diffraction? What is interference?
- 69. What is the two-slit experiment? Why is it important?
- 70. What is tunneling?
- XII. Waves and Probability
- 71. What is a wave function? What is Schrödinger’s equation?
- 72. How do waves determine probabilities?
- 73. How do waves prevent particles from having fixed positions?
- 74. What is the uncertainty principle?
- 75. How does the uncertainty principle relate to the wave nature of matter?
- 76. What is superposition?
- 77. Are waves necessary?
- XIII. Quantum Physics and Technology
- 78. How are particles pushed close to the speed of light?
- 79. How are high–energy particles detected?
- 80. How does a laser work?
- 81. How do electrons behave in a metal?
- 82. What is a semiconductor?
- 83. What is a p–n junction? Why is it a diode?
- 84. What are some uses of diodes?
- 85. What is a transistor?
- XIV. Quantum Physics at Every Scale
- 86. Why do black holes evaporate?
- 87. How does quantum physics operate in the center of the Sun?
- 88. What is superconductivity?
- 89. What is superfluidity?
- 90. What is a Josephson junction?
- 91. What is a quantum dot?
- 92. What is a quark–gluon plasma?
- 93. What is the Planck length? What is quantum foam?
- XV. Frontiers and Puzzles
- 94. Why are physicists in love with the number 137?
- 95. What is entanglement?
- 96. What is Bell’s in equality?
- 97. What is a qubit? What is quantum computing?
- 98. What is the Higgs particle? Why is it important?
- 99. What is string theory?
- 100. What is the “measurement problem”?
- 101. How come the quantum?
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Acknowledgments
- Index
101 Quantum Questions
What You Need to Know About the World You Can't See
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Publication Date: 10/22/2012
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