Honors 225 - Winter 2020

Welcome to Honors 225!

Winter 2020

Max

Missing Pages/Corrections from Roots

  • Minor errata listed in the syllabus
    • (Some versions of book) pg 29 – The upper part of figure should be labeled "Figure 2.4a. Specular Reflection."
    • (All versions of the book that I've checked) pg 85 – Figures A3.2a and A.3.1b on this page should be switched. The captions and labels are correct as-is, but the images should be switched.
    • (All versions of book) pg 149-150 – The units of specific heat should be J/(kg×K), not J/K as is stated. Also, as a side note, normally a lower case c is used to indicate specific heat instead of an upper case C.
    • (All versions of book) pg 190 – Eq. 3 at the bottom of the page should have an “approximately equals” sign, ≈, instead of an actual equals sign, =.
    • (All versions of book) pg 283 – the last part of endnote 17 should have an “approximately equals” sign, ≈, instead of an actual equals sign, =. That is, e^(1/pi) ≈ 137/100. To be a bit more precise, one could say e^(1/pi) ≈ 137.4802/100
  • missing-pages.pdf - Some versions of book are missing most of the text/figures on pages 119, 154, and 186. Here are those pages.
  • Bell's function plots.pdf - current and corrected version of Fig 18.5

Handouts

Supplementary Material

  • Two interfering speaker animations: left, right, combined, combined2, all four, as shown in lecture
  • Video of single photon double-slit experiment: FromPhotonsToWaves.avi, downloaded from this website:  //www.sps.ch/en/articles/progresses/wave-particle-duality-of-light-for-the-classroom-13/
  • Images from the first double-slit experiments doing the experiments with individual electrons:  //physicsworld.com/a/the-double-slit-experiment/
  • Link to the photoelectric effect simulation from PHET
  • Link to the "Neon Lights & Other Discharge Lamps" simulation from PHET: //phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/discharge-lamps
  • Links to the two quantum simulations from PHET
  • //www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgoA_jmGIcA'> Heisenberg's Microscope - Sixty Symbols (9:11 long). This is the best video I could find about Heisenberg's thought experiment about a microscope, and I actually felt it expressed several things more clearly than Rootsdid... such as the difference between inherent uncertainty in position and momentum that comes from the wavefunction description of matter, and the inherent experimental uncertainty that comes when one tries to experimentally measure a small particle which could conceivably have a well defined position and momentum (which, I think Heisenberg's point was, turns out to exactly match the uncertainty that comes from the wavefunction, to within small numerical factors).
  • Quantum Computing - The Einstein-Bohr Debates - Extra History - #3 (10:51 long). This is the best video I could find about the 1927 and 1930 Solvay conferences. It's pretty good, but there are some flaws. Two in particular that I noticed are (1) with regards to Einstein's 1930 challenge, the video refers to the "mass" and the "weight" of a photon. That's incorrect. Photons have no mass nor weight. The way it's described in Roots on page 432 is better, which is that the energy of the departing photon creates a loss of measured mass of the box through Einstein's E = mc2 equation. (2) It says the Solvay conferences were held every year. That's not quite correct; the Wikipedia article linked to above gives the specific years the Solvay conference has been held (first conference in 1911, most recent in 2017). Also, with regards to the 1927 challenge there's a slight difference between Fig 16.4 and how the video depicts things; the video shows a third slit that precedes the double slit. In this case I suspect the video is correct and Rootsis simplifying things. It doesn't really affect the argument or rebuttal, though, so don't worry about it.
  • Polarisation - Sixty Symbols  (8:32 long). This is the best video I could find about polarization. It explains how a polarizer works, why crossed polarizers prevent light from going through, and why the insertion of a third polarizer in between the crossed polarizers allows light to go through again. Applying polarizers to microwaves, which are just light waves with much longer wavelengths than regular visible light, makes it more visually understandable. And the presenter also discusses the very important ideas of this becoming a probabilistic process when single photons are sent through, and of polarizations in some directions being superposition states of polarizations in other directions.