All Questions

2k views

Meaning of an image on Feynman's shirt

Is there any physical meaning of the image on Feynman's T-shirt?
112 views

Is there a unitary, linear bijection between (1) Maximally Entangled and (2) Factorizable States?

Pretty much as the title says. I am interested in the two particle system, each particle having two dimensional quantum states; naturally if there is a generalisation I'd be interested in that too. ...
47 views

Possible Lack of Invariance in Two Inertial Reference Frame Scenarios

Two objects are connected together via a ideal spring which is compressed initially. Then the spring is released, the two balls are no longer connected and go their separate ways. Assume no other ...
119 views

Partial derivative of Helmholtz free energy from entropy and internal energy

I want to know how to derive pressure $p$ from a partial differential of Helmholtz free energy $F$. I want to start from $F(T, V, N) = U(S(T,V,N),V, N) - TS(T, V, N)$, where $U$ and $V$ are ...
101 views

Can anyone kindly help me with these sign conventions?

Since I have some confusions with the sign conventions , I have finally drawn up the following conclusions . Plz check if the following are correct .... ( I have taken all motions directed upwards as ...
127 views

Why does a non-contact voltage detector light up when you touch a plasma ball with the other hand?

I am doing a science experiment and we decided to try holding a non-contact voltage detector up to plasma ball. We were surprised that it would light up when it was 3 ft away from the plasma ball. I ...
151 views

How big would a solar sail need to be to be detected from the orbit of Pluto?

Suppose we made a solar sail out of a highly reflective material. How big would that solar sail have to be for the Hubble Space Telescope to detect it visually at the average distance of Pluto?
48 views

What's wrong with this derivation of pressure-temperature for an ideal gas?

The pressure temperature relationship for an ideal gas, known as Amontons law or Gay Lussac's law should be obtainable from Boyle's and Charles's laws. I did the following. For a given sample ...
51 views

High frequencies are used to eject electrons, because only electrons can really be affected at such a small wavelength scale. But could an electromagnetic wave have such a ridiculously low frequency ...
77 views

Probability wave intuition

Basically I am really new with this term. It all came before me when I was reading the Standard Double-Slit experiment. An excerpt from Principles of Physics (by Resnick,Halliday,Walker) : . . ...
11k views

Why do most formulas in physics have integer and rational exponents?

I mean, why is $F=ma$? Why not $m^{0.123}$, $a^{1.43}$ or some random non-integers or irrational? I hope you understand that my question isn't limited just to force, energy, velocity, etc.; it also ...
260 views

Problem on relative motion involving wind speed .Finding the real velocity of wind?

Here is the question For a person running west at 7km/hr wind appears to blow from north-west .But when he walks towards west at 3km/hr the wind appears to blow from the north. What is the true ...
891 views

How to experimentally reconstruct Maxwell's equations from scratch

What are the minimal experiments would one need to perform in order to reconstruct Maxwell's equations from scratch, assuming even the concepts of $\vec E$ and $\vec B$ are unknown? While I'm not ...
49 views

Rolling on a frictionless pond

I have a doubt about one of the questions in my textbook. Q- You are standing with your bag in your hands in the middle of a friction-less pond. How can you come out of the ice? There is of ...
89 views

Hawking radiation (black hole evaporation) [duplicate]

I understand that one of the simplified ways of looking at Hawking radiation is a pair of virtual particles close to the event horizon (but outside of it). The particle with negative energy falls into ...
81 views

If isospin is conserved under strong interactions why it is represented by SU(2)?

As far as I know from my readings SU(2) is a representation group of isospin symmetry which shows deep symmetry of the strong force which conserves flavor. Isospin symmetry is broken under weak ...
22 views

Why do circular “snowrafts” form on a lake during a blizzard?

I was just out walking along Lake Michigan during a snowstorm and I noticed that the snow was clumping into these interesting circular "snowrafts". They all seem to be about 6 to 10 feet across with a ...
252 views

Projection of wavefunction onto basis function

I am given to believe that one way that one would could represent a wavefunction is by the expansion $$\Psi(x) = \Sigma_n \Psi_n(x) = \Sigma_n f_n\phi_n(x) \tag{1}$$ where $\{\phi_n (x) \}$ is an ...
4k views

What physical evidence is there that subatomic particles pop in and out of existence?

What physical evidence shows that subatomic particles pop in and out of existence?
66 views

Outside of string theory, can exchange particles be understood as being one-dimensional?

I'm pretty new to quantum, without any formal education therein, so forgive my general layman ignorance when I ask how it is that point-like exchange particles can be modeled in Feynman diagrams as ...
73 views

Expectation value with plane waves [duplicate]

Hey guys Im a little confused with the concept of plane waves and how to perform an expectation value. Let me show you by an example. Suppose you have a wave function of the form ...
60 views

Quantizing field with anti-periodic boundary condition

This is a naive question about a possible toy model in QFT. In particular, I am trying to find a simple model where spin-statistics theorem holds. One can construct a 1+1 dimensional classical ...
65 views

Feynman diagrams with classical apparatus on the perturbative region

on QFT, one usually simplifies the interaction between fields and classical apparatus (sources, detectors, etc.) by assuming the classical devices only interact with the asymptotic on-shell states ...
81 views