# All Questions

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### Electric and magnetic fields with synchrotrons

Can anyone describe to me one change to the electric field and one change to the magnetic field that MUST take place as particles gains energy in a synchrotron accelerator? This could also just be an ...
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### Do metals *really* conduct at zero temperature?

The questions is mostly in the title, but might expose another of my misunderstanding of the band structure of solids and how that leads to metals and insulators. If we have a solid, and the fermi ...
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### Evidence of possible tidal effects close to a gravitational wave emitting system

Currently we are attempting to detect gravitational wave emissions using the LIGO gravitational wave detection system (and similiar systems), by attempting to detect very weak gravitational waves ...
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### How can a photon “stop”? What does its world line look like? [duplicate]

Einstein famously made a thought experiment: what would he see if he sat on a beam of light? His answer was -- it's impossible. Owing to him being a body with mass, he can never ever reach light speed ...
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### Field theory where fields are differential forms, other than electromagnetism [closed]

I am looking for a few examples of field theories (classical or quantum) that can be formulated taking the fields to be differential forms at least of degree 1 (not counting 0-forms) excluiding ...
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### Landau levels in ferromagnets

Consider a spontaneously magnetised (uniformly) conducting ferromagnet. Now suppose that there is no external magnetic field. The question is as follows: will the motion of electrons be quantized via ...
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### Finding the distance travelled during change in velocity from $v_i$ to $v_f$ [closed]

A constant power is applied to a particle of mass m. The velocity of the particle increases from $v_i$ to $v_f$. We have to find the distance travelled by the particle during this interval.(neglect ...
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### Fundamentals for predicting the standard model? [closed]

. Now, the question(s). What must a theory include to be consistent with the standard model? What concepts/ fields must be predicted?(such as predicting a Higgs field, gauge groups, particles being ...
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### What techniques are used in the Analyzer part of an Ellipsometer?

Specifically, what technique is used where the analyzer does not involve mechanical rotation? I assume it is a device to electronically rotate the plane of polarization of incoming light. Faraday ...
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### Is there a heuristic explanation why the possible spin values in another direction are not equiprobable for a spin-1 particle?

Let's deal with spin $1/2$ systems and fix a value (e.g. $+1/2$) in a given direction (e.g. $z$). Following a measurement along an orthogonal direction (e.g. $x$), we obtain 50% probability for $+1/2$ ...
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### Measuring a rotating shaft's torque [closed]

My question is, there is a rotating shaft and I want to measure its torque. I don’t know its $r$ and $F$ but I connected a thread to the end of shaft to see how much weight it can lift and it is 2 ...
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### Pressure Calculation - Compressed Air Volume [closed]

I am trying to calculate the change in pressure in a closed pressure vessel that is being compressed. For the sake of simplicity we can consider this to be a syringe with a closed end that is being ...
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### Efficiency in a thermodynamic cycle

Question The area on a PV diagram within one thermodynamic cycle of a heat engine is 610J. THe total thermal energy transferred out of the gas in one cycle is 1300J. Determine the efficiency of ...
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### is full spectrum transparency possible?

Are there materials fully transparent throughout the spectrum? (transparent to all frequencies). And if there's no such substance exists, is it even physically possible to design/make one?
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### Measurement on a particle described by a quantum superposition of quark states

Some particles are described as a quantum superposition of quark states. For example, the pion meson: $$|\pi^0⟩=\frac{|u\bar u⟩−|d \bar d⟩}{\sqrt{2}}$$ Is it possible to design an experiment giving ...
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### Can the same isotope sometimes emit gamma rays alongside alpha (or beta) rays and sometimes emit just the alpha (or beta) rays?

Is it possible that sometimes all the energy goes to the alpha (or beta) particle so that no gamma rays are emitted and other times part of the energy is emitted as a gamma quant?
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### Why are eigenspaces of a Hermitian operator mutually orthogonal? [closed]

In Quantum Mechanics, from the properties of the solution of Schrodinger's Equation inside the infinite well, is that they are: Mutually orthogonal for different eigenvalues. Orthonormal. Complete. ...
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### $\pi$, $\sigma$ - atomic transitions with respect to the magnetic field axis

I am confused about the atomic transition with different polarized lights. I post the pictures as follows. There are four cases. In case 1, the right-handed circular polarized light ...
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### What is the difference between a quasar and an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN)?

In answering another Phys.SE question about quasars - Why no new quasars? - an issue arose about which object is the nearest quasar. That got me puzzled. To what is the label "quasar" attached, as ...
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### Seemingly a paradox on the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH)

In the research field of Many-body Localization (MBL), people are always talking about the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). ETH asserts that for a isolated quantum system, all many-body ...
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### Can spin polarisation restrict the possible types of LHC proton-proton collisions?

Despite the massive luminosity at the LHC, it's probably correct to say that no two collisions are ever identical, even up to symmetry. Not only are there all possible impact parameters, but the ...
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### What is the meaning of definite total energy of the wave function?

David J. Griffiths in Introduction to Quantum Mechanics asked: What's so great about separable solutions of time independent Schroedinger equation? His answer was They are states of ...
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### Why is this nuclear reaction $p\to n+e^++\nu$ forbidden for a free proton? [closed]

Why is this nuclear reaction forbiden for a free proton? $$p\to n+e^++\nu$$ Where $p$ is the proton, $n$ is a neutron, $e^+$ is a positron, and $\nu$ is a neutrino. What i´ve been thinking is because ...
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### Heat creation of computer electronics

The first thing I learnt in physics was that whenever anything happens heat is created. Irrespective of the process. With that in mind, electronics clearly create heat (ohmic heating I think?). But ...
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### Is there a bulk signature of topological nontriviality for a 3D free fermion band insulator?

Is there such thing as a 3D Chern invariant (or some other quantity) that I can use to test an insulating quasiparticle spectrum is a topologically trivial or non-trivial insulator? Does one exist ...
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### Is each succeeding dimension time? [closed]

I have been researching but I have found nothing on this topic (at least after basic google searching and some deeper searching on this site), I'm not sure if this is a common sense thing or it is ...
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### Why does the Palatini formalism of GR work? [duplicate]

We can get the Einstein field equations of GR from the Einstein-Hilbert action via two distinct methods: First, by taking the metric as the only degree of freedom, and imposing right away that the ...
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### Will a small magnet affect an insulated computer wire?

I'm designing something that involves a small magnet, probably about 0.5m in diameter, which will rest next to a computer wire carrying data, video, audio, etc. If the wire is insulated (think USB or ...
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### Outer Space & Universe Expansion: [duplicate]

Experts agree that the stuff within the universe is moving farther apart from all the other stuff in the universe--much like the dots marked on the outside of a balloon that is being inflated. We ...
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### When does angular position, or angular displacement, not obey the rules of vector addition?

The only examples I've found talk about rotating an object about one axis and then about another axis. When you reverse the order, the object ends up in a different position. However, as those ...
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### Emitting flash of light at relativistic speed

Let's say we have two observers, one stationary and the other moving at relativistic speeds. The observers agree to emit a flash of light when their clock reads 10 seconds. I think it should be ...
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### If entropy is positive, then why do stars form from nebulae?

Sorry if I have so many misconceptions with this questions, but I guess that's the point of asking questions. If entropy, the measure of disorder, is always positive, then how come a star could form ...
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### How does many possible futures not mean many possible pasts?

The following link implies that quantum mechanics only violates the "one future" aspect of information conservation: ...
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### Spontaneous symmetry breaking of anomalous global abelian symmetries and $U(1)$ of QCD

Let me restate the $U(1)$ problem of QCD: Let us forget about the $s$ quark, and consider the $u$ and $d$ massless. This is a good approximation since $m_{u,d} \ll \Lambda_{QCD}$. Then ...
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### Questions about the velocity of the center of gravity

I have a physics test coming up in a couple of days and I really need to have some things explained to me. It is about something that I think is called in english "the velocity of the center of ...
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### Heat Expansion of an Aluminium Ring with hole

I have a question of how aluminium will behave when heated ( I made a drawing below to explain the question) We have a ring of aluminium and a hole (green in drawing), if we heat the ring it will ...
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### Why do you feel air moving past you when you walk?

I know that when you walk through the air you form a wake vortex and turbulent air behind and the vortex grows the faster you walk. When I walk past people I almost feel wind that's behind them. So ...
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### How can we “exchange” particles, since they are “identical”?

Doubt 1: If two particles are identical, you can not distinguish between them. Then, I think, permutation operation is meaningless. Because you can not distinguish them, how can you tell if they are ...
Minkowski metric is found to be $$ds^2=-dt^2+dr^2+r^2d\Omega^2$$ where $d\Omega^2$ is the metric on a unit two-sphere. Why should we keep track of the $d\Omega^2$ so that spherical symmetry holds ...