# All Questions

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### Density distribution of black hole while cycling energy? [on hold]

I have not yet taken a course on general relativity, but from what I understand: -Black holes condense their entire collective mass into a central point (or ring if the black hole is spinning), and ...
32 views

### Surviving collapsing buildings: Which floor maximizes your chances of survival? [on hold]

Although this is not a purely physical question, I think this is the best StackExchange place to ask it. When a building collapses, which floor should you go in order to maximize your chance of ...
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### Transmission lines…which one is high? potential or potential difference?

The electric potential at generating station is 11,000 V...why such high potential is generated there? From generating station it is transferred to local station...is there any electric potential at ...
3k views

### When a planet is heated through gravitational pull, where is the energy taken from?

Jupiters moon Io is heated through the gravitational pull of Jupiter, but when Io is heated because of this, where does that energy come from? How does conservation of energy work for this effect, ...
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### Proportionality and units

This might be very easy, but I'm not 100% sure how it's done. Lets say I have this equation: $$R = R_{0} \cdot \left[1 - \frac{P_{0}R_{0}}{GM_{0}\rho_{0}}\right]^{-1},$$ where I know $P_{0}$, ...
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### The reciprocal lattice of HCP lattice

There is a very similar question here Reciprocal Lattice of a non-bravais lattice, but I don't fully understand the answer, and the question is now obsolete so I feel that I should ask it again. How ...
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### What is the actual energy content of the Sun?

Beside the energy released by nuclear fusion in the core, the Sun is a hot plasma of hydrogen and helium ranging from thousands to million of degrees. So how does that translate into energy ? I have ...
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### Position operator in QFT

My Professor in QFT did a move which I cannot follow: Given the state $$\hat\phi|0\rangle = \int \frac{d^3p}{(2\pi)^3 2 E_p} a^\dagger_p e^{- i p_\mu x^\mu}|0\rangle,$$ he wanted to show that this ...
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### What's so special about velocity dispersion relations in astrophysics (M-sigma relation, Tully-Fisher, etc)?

I'm confused. Velocity dispersion of stars is measured by Doppler broadening, and through virial theorem that provides information about enclosed masses of galaxy bulges, galaxies, etc, as explained, ...
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### Electric field due to continuous volume charge distribution [duplicate]

Since the Electric field at point (0,0,z) is $$dE = \frac{\rho vdv}{4\pi\epsilon_0R^2}\hat{R}$$ $$\hat{R} = \cos\alpha \hat{z} + \sin\alpha \hat{\rho}$$ where $\hat{R}$ means unit vector $R$. ...
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### Inconsistency in the delta potential

I encountered an inconsistency in the one-dimensional delta potential. Suppose we have a one-dimensional infinitely deep square well from $-L$ to $+L$. We know the eigenstates are sine and cosine ...
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### How can we derive the gauge field Lagrangian?

I learned the gauge field Lagrangian is given in this form: $$\mathcal{L} = -\frac{1}{4} \mathrm{Tr}(F_{\mu \nu}F^{\mu \nu}).$$ But how one can derive this equation starting from defining the ...
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### how refraction takes place at atomic level? [duplicate]

when light beam is incidented at some angle on the surface of a medium some part of the light is reflected and some refracted. I want to know about refraction. As the photons interact with the atom ...
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### Is it possible to improve the efficacy of light bulbs with a semipermeable mirror? (The greenhouse bulb)

Let us imagine that there exists a material that reflects infrared radiation, but is transparent for visible light. Could we take an incandescent bulb and add this material to the inner surface of the ...
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### Can a liquid with angle of contact as 90 degrees with a solid surface definitely wet it?

Can we conclusively say something about wetting conditions at this boundary value of angle of contact ($90^o$)?
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### Kinetic energy of fluids in Venturi Injector

Since the cross sectional area is smaller in the middle the water flows faster and experiences a smaller hydrostatic pressure. Additional mass is sucked in from the middle tube and gets accelerated ...
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### Dalitz plot for $\pi \to \gamma (1) + e^+ (2) + e^- (3)$

I am studying the decay above and I need an exact form of Dalitz plot in coordinates $m^2_{12}, m^2_{23}$ to integrate over three-particle phase-volume. Please, tell where to read about it? I tried ...
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### Pattern on mesh office chair emulates thin film interference for curved surface. Possible to form an equation?

I saw a chair that looked like this at the dentists office yesterday, and the pattern caught my interest, as the light patterns emulated thin film interference fringes formed by an object that has a ...
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### Why can we say that $\bar{d}Q=TdS$?

When we introduce entropy we do this by saying that: $$\bar{d}Q=TdS.$$ Now I was wondering why this should be true? I know that by looking at a Carnot cycle, we do get this relation for reversible ...
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### Help needed to understand the dispersion curve of a 1D lattice with diatomic basis

I am trying to understand the dispersion curve (as shown below) of a 1D lattice with diatomic basis. Here are my questions: Can both optical and acoustic branch of phonon simultaneously exist in ...
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### What is the Quantum Transition Time for Photon Emission?

When an electron in an atom changes energy states to emit a photon, how long does the process take? Is this question even meaningful?
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### Few particle fermion system wavefuction

Suppose I have 3 fermions($\left|\psi_1\right\rangle$, $\left|\psi_2\right\rangle$, $\left|\psi_3\right\rangle$) and a system with 3 states ( $\left|1\right\rangle$, $\left|2\right\rangle$, ...
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### Length contraction

I am trying to work out the length contraction using the Lorentz transformations. Here is how I stated the problem: Suppose a bar (whose proper length is $L$) is moving at speed $u$ (to the right) ...
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### Group representations as vectors and isomorphism between weights and matrix generators

This might be something basic, but it is unclear to me. So I am used to work with representations of groups as matrices. These matrices represent the structure of the Lie algebra by satisfying the ...
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### Find the current/potential difference across each bulb [on hold]

I need help solving this problem: Two identical bulbs are connected in parallel to a different source, one with E = 8.0 V and internal resistance 0.8 ohm. Each light bulb has a resistance R = 2.0 ohm ...
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### Calculating the distance that a telescope can detect [on hold]

A typical 4-meter telescope is capable of detecting stars with apparent ￼magnitude of +24 with an exposure time of 5 minutes. Using this exposure time, ￼out to what distance (in pc) can this telescope ...
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### Compute convective heat transfer coefficient for a condensing steam

I have a question about convective heat transfer coefficients. I am trying to figure out how much steam I can condense in this specific heat exchanger. Steam at 9 MPa is condensed in a 1 shell pass, ...
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### Dynamics of modifing a Hamiltonian

I am working on quantum mechanics right now, and I am wondering if there is a qualitative way to think about off diagonal term of a Hamiltonian matrix? I know that we can diagonalize a matrix, then ...
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### Pedagogical introduction to vertex, domain wall, and kink

Recently, Majorana fermion becomes hot in condensed matter physics. The concepts: vertex, domain wall, and kink often appear in these articles about Majorana fermion. I have no idea about the ...
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### Electric Field Resulting from a Conductor

In preparation for an upcoming exam, I've been attempting to visualize the electric field produced by a conductor in a variety of situations. I asked myself the following question and attempted to ...
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### Where does the energy from a parachute go?

When a parachute slows the velocity of an object where does the energy go? If it's a falling object the acceleration from gravity is roughly constant. How does air drag "dissipate" the extra energy?
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### Local unitary transformation that maximizes overlap

Could anyone point me in the right direction (reference to papers would suffice) regarding the following: Given two quantum states $|\psi\rangle ,|\phi\rangle \in (\mathbb{C}^d)^{\otimes n}$, where ...
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### Normal Ordering the phi^4 interaction

I am trying to quantize the quartic potential $\frac{\lambda}{4!}\phi^{4}$ in a box of side length $L$, with periodic boundary conditions. I have expanded the field ...
890 views

### Is my interpretation of how a gravitational wave is formed correct?

I'm sure many here are familiar with the following image showing the 2D representation of how the fabric of spacetime is warped by the presence of mass:- Can this fabric be interpreted as an ...
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### Right Hand Rule for Proton Magnetic Field

I thought that right hand rule was for find the magnetic field generated by a current, where your thumb point in direction of the current. However, I was watching something that said we can curl our ...
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### How can we tell if a molecule is in thermodynamic equilibrium from scattering data?

We have a molecule that is emitting/absorbing photons. We know the Hamiltonian and that there are several levels. We count the emitted photons at different angles and frequencies. We can also do ...
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### What does “shortwave radiation” mean to a meteorologist?

I'm have an empirical model developed using surface observations of radiation (400-1100nm). I tend to think of this as visible, near infrared, and a little bit of shortwave infrared. I now need to ...
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### Charged particle singularity

Is it possible to manipulate magnetic/electric fields, similar to magnetic confinement technologies/penning traps, to compress charged particles into black holes?
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### How is anti-hydrogen captured?

Knowing that the overall charge is zero, what mechanisms/technologies are used to capture anti-hydrogen? Where is it stored until annihilation? I am aware of magnetic traps being used to edge the ...
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### Relativistic Doppler Effect and the Sagnac effect

What I think I know about the Sagnac effect can be found here. It occurs to me that the equations for calculating the time do not take the Doppler effect into account. I'm familiar with the very ...
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### How do we 'watch ' atomic interactions?

I'm relatively new to objective physics and it's measuring and imaging abilities.. Specifically I don't know if we can 'watch' inter/or intra molecular exchanges like the photonic and electronic. I ...
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### How to see the ground state degeneracy (GSD) from a $BF$ theory in $2+1$ $d$?

I have seen many times the $BF$ theory has non-trivial ground state degeneracy (typically on torus), but I can not see how the conclusion come out. Recently I found a paper by Hansson, Oganesyan and ...
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### Circuit Diagram [on hold]

Three resistor are put into play, two in parallel and another in series to them. One of the resistors in parallel is decreased. what will happen to the voltage and current.
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### How can light have the same speed for all observers? [duplicate]

I'm a little confused on this. If you're travelling at, say, 10% of the speed of light then light is travelling at 3x10^8 ms^(-1) relative to you. If you're moving at 80% of the speed of light and ...
When a charge motion is given (known), the electromagnetic field can be explicitly found (Retarded potentials, etc.). The interaction Lagrangian density is $j\cdot A$ or in the action it may look like ...