Chapter 3 - The World of Atoms
Overview of the New Paradigm

Richard Feynman

Background Reading
  • L. J. Curtis, "Einstein's Contributions to Atomic Physics," Phys. Scr. 79, 058101 (2009).

    Introduction
  • Did you see the elephant?
  • The new paradigm (ppt)

    I. Configuration Space and "Spin" Space

  • Examples of Fermions & Bosons
  • Spin and rotation
  • Up-down as orthogonal coordinates
  • Philippine wine dance
  • continued
  • Port Lawrence and Vistula Meadows
  • Mixed basis vectors
  • Volumes and surfaces in N dimensions
  • Low order spin doctors

    II. Particulate Granularity

          Feynman's atomic quote
          Atoms observable to all
          Splashdown of a photon
          Birth, life, and death of ions

  • Attraction and repulsion of neutral atoms
  • Einstein & Brownian motion

    STM
  • Phenomenon of tunnelling
  • Examples
  • Waiting for the traffic to clear
  • Scanning Tunnelling Microscope
  • Animation

    III. The Principle of Least Action

  • Nature is symmetric in space and time
  • Finding extrema

    Least time in optics
  • Electromagnetic spectrum
  • Hindered march
  • Bending light
  • Least time
  • Fermat's principle applet
         By calculus

    Least action in dynamics
  • Maupertuis Dynamics
  • Explore all paths until measurement
  • Interactive Java applets
  • du Châtelet
  • French mathematicians

    Quantization
  • Beads of action in a libration
  • Beads of action in a rotation

         The Maslov index

  • Feynman and least action
         Exercise
         Plot
         A call to action

    • IV. Microscopic probabilities

  • Discrete outcomes
  • Molecules in a room
  • Coin tosses
  • Quantum coins
  • Shared birthdays
  • Number of pairs
  • Population dynamics
  • Dice casting
  • Quantum dice
  • Quantum statistics is simple compared to ...
  • A Bose ensemble
  • Coherence
  • Boson and Fermion modes of marching troops

    • V. The Dwell Time Formulation


         REU 21st
         Dwell time teaching proposal, 1986
         Bridge between classical and QM

  • Probabilities ppt
  • Planetary motion
  • r-powers of energy corrections
  • Average of powers of r
  • Multipole expansion
  • Planetary data
  • Multipole expansion
  • General relativity


    • VI. Fermion-Boson Connectivity

          Exchanged quantum model for forces
          It takes a whole universe

    Electrons and positrons and the direction of time

  • Electron-Positron events
  • Gamma rays on lead in a spark chamber
  • Bubble chamber tracks
  • e-p pair creation & annihilation
  • One universal electron travelling reversibly in time
  • Wheeler
  • Feynman's Nobel Address
  • Bombardier
  • Mach's Principle: every interaction involves the entire universe
  • Feynman diagrams

  • Positrons and the PET scan
  • PET sources

    The space-time continum and our 3-space world

  • 3D projections of a 4D object
  • A point particle with action & magnetism?
  • Foldy-Wouthuysen projection
  • Zitterbewegung
    Absorption and emission of virtual photons

    Time "passage"

  • Time rates
  • History of moving pictures
  • The Lumiere brothers
  • Stop action
  • Slow-motion photography
  • Time-lapse photography
  • Reverse-action photography
  • Moses
  • Time exposure: A landscape-timescape

    • Equal matter and antimatter

  • Sam Ting
  • Bill Moyers interview with Sam Ting
  • 1976 Nobel
  • Marty Perl at Blåhallen 1995
  • Blåhallen

    • The photon-dressed electron

  • The photon re-invents itself
  • SpongeBob clones himself   - Alternative site
  • Crossed optical polarizers
  • Pulling a perfect pint
  • Quantum entanglement
  • Surface reflection
  • Bosons and ants
  • Celeritas

    Relativistic distortions

  • Apparent length contraction
  • Animation
  • Einstein, Ann. Phys, Chim 17, 890-921 (1905).
  • English translation

    Relativity is magnetism, not rocket ships

  • Magnetism - retarded photon information
  • Woldemar Voigt's 1887 discovery
  • Voigt bio
  • Force between a moving charge and a current
  • Binomial expansion
  • Reverse direction
  • Summary

    Inert gases - closed magnetic coupling

  • Periodic table
  • Mendeleev
  • Periodic table
  • Electron configurations
  • continued
  • Rare earth permanent magnets

    Why is mercury metal a liquid, and why is gold yellow?

  • Core penetration by s-orbitals

    VII. The Limitations of Cause and Effect


          The fallacy of Laplacian Determinism
          Laplace: A life in exact science
          Kinetic theory and the social sciences
          Precise measurement of time?

  • Indeterminacy
  • Joint uncertainty in canonical quantities

  • Cometary orbit
  • Clyde Tombaugh

  • Changing the legal landscape
          Harvard Law Review

  • Economic Theory of Rational Expectations
  • Non-Nobel Prize money

    Mathematics - A purely intellectual endeavor becomes an experimental science

  • Urban legend
  • Continued
  • Mittag-Leffler

    • Chaos and fractal escapes

  • The exponential law
  • With immortality
  • The logistic equation
  • Population data
  • Predator-prey
  • Chaotic behavior

  • Malthusian limit
  • Haber process
  • Norman Borlaug
  • Clock

         Iteration example 1
         Radiation from a solid
         Iteration example 2

  • Iterating the logistic equation
  • Complex number iteration
  • Mandelbrot equation

  • Mandelbrot set
  • Mandelbrot diverse
  • Mandelbrot zoom
  • Källén Prize
  • Fractals
  • Mountains

  • Fall break

  • 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics

  • Gleick

  • Fractal fern
  • Experimental measurement
  • Fractal landscape
  • Terragen
  • Fractal compression
  • Examples

    Weather
  • Edward Lorenz
  • Poincaré

    The length of a coastline
  • The length of the yardstick

    The Stock Market
  • Mandelbrot on Wall Street
  • Gould: Punctuated Equilibrium
  • William Golding

    Planetary Motion
  • Chaotic orbits of Saturn's moons

    Theatre
  • Arcadia

    Quantum and classical chaos
  • Stone article
  • Quantum chaos

    Musings of Feynman

  • "I live with not knowing some things."
  • Feynman - like it or...

    General Relativity

  • The Triplets of Belleville
  • continued
  • Various answers

    Black holes

  • John Michell's prediction of the black hole
  • Laplace's prediction of the black hole
  • When was the Big Bang?
  • Ultimate limits: the Planck Length

    Geometry

  • Wente torii

    Moon crash

  • NASA site

  • Chapter 4

  • Overview(ppt)























    Intersecting connections
  • Källén Prize
  • 1987 AJP paper
  • Announcement
  • Wallenberg
  • Nane Lagergren
  • Photo

    • Intrinsic Action

  • Its many properties
  • Momentum
  • Examples: problems solved by action conservation