# All Questions

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### What would happen to a person that was inside the Large Hadron Collider when it is turned on? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: What would happen if you put your hand in front of the 7 TeV beam at LHC? Not a terribly scientific question, but one that I'm sure many people have thought about :)
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### Why does $H_2$ form on such a long time scale?

If we were trying to figure out the time scale for a gas-phase reaction between two hydrogen atoms in a molecular cloud (which has density $~10^4/$cm$^3$), apparently the reaction would happen on a ...
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### What is the relativistic particle in a box?

I know people try to solve Dirac equation in a box. Some claim it cannot be done. Some claim that they had found the solution, I have seen three and they are all different and bizarre. But my main ...
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### What is the characteristic length of a cylinder

I have a cold cylinder that is submerged in hot water and I need to find the convective heat transfer coefficient. I can do the whole process but I am stuck finding the characteristic length. I found ...
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### Simulating a proton

How much computing power would it take to simulate a single proton from the bottom up, without taking any shortcuts whatsoever? My current understanding is that: A proton is basically a seething ...
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### Are there any electro-optic crystals that are also pyroelectric but not birefringent?

As the title says, a crystal that is electr-optic and pyroelectric can it be non-birefrigent?
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### Photon Statistics of a Coherent Gaussian Beam [closed]

Assume that a 100 pW He-Ne single-mode last emits light at 633 nm in a TEM00 Gaussian beam. (a)What is the mean number of photons crossing a circle of radius equal to the waist radius of the beam ...
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### Thomas-Fermi approximation and the dielectric function (+ small bit on graphene)

1) With the dielectric function, which is a function of wavenumber and frequency,how is it possible to take the limit of either to zero without changing the other one? I thought that frequency and ...
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### Where did Karl Schwarzschild derived his solution?

Does anyone know more about circumstances of Karl Schwarzschild at the Russian front in 1915 where he allegedly derived his famous solution of the Einstein equations (describing a black hole)? Sources ...
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### Does the equivalence principle mean that the Earth is expanding?

Popular books suggest that for an observer in the Einstein lift the following situations are equivalent: 1, the lift hangs motionless (relative to the Earth) on a cable in the gravitational field of ...
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### (Earth's) magnetic field

Always when we want to represent the magnetic field of the earth we see a similar image: My question is, what exactly does this show? What are the blue and orange lines, what do they represent? Why ...
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### Poynting vector of a wire between capacitors

A capacitor made of two circular plates of radius $L$ separated by $d$, initially the plates carry $\pm$ Q charge. Then a wire of resistance R is placed between them, how do I go about deriving a ...
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### The Deflecting System in a Hot Cathode Ray Tube

In an HCR-Tube, the deflecting system used to deviate the electron beam is made of positively charged plates. How is this justified? If, due to some malfunction, the electron beam deflects from its ...
1k views

### What are Wightman fields/functions

Simple question: What are Wightman fields? What are Wightman functions? What are their uses? For example can I use them in operator product expansions? How about in scattering theory?
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### How to reconstruct information from a graph of an oscillation? [closed]

We are given a graph of the position of a wave (amplitude). How can we calculate the wavelength, frequency and the maximum speed of a particle attached to that wave? We have Speed = wave length ...
828 views

### Difference in velocity of light in change in medium [duplicate]

It is often seen that according to physics the light changes it's velocity according to the medium through which it is traveling. So can it be explained that why so happen?
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### Are a quantum mechanical system a chaotic (yet deterministic) system?

The title is slightly misleading. I really want to know if the randomness and probabilities observed in quantum mechanics is really just the result of a chaotic (yet deterministic) system. If it is ...
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### The role of representation theory in QM/QFT?

I need help understanding the role of representation theory in QM/QFT. My understanding of representation theory in this context is as follows: there are physical symmetries of the system we are ...
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### Takhatajan's mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics

So I began skimming L. Takhatajan's Quantum Mechanics For Mathematicians, and saw the mathematical formulation of QM that he uses (page 51). (The PDF file is available here.) I've only taken a basic ...
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### Bernoulli's equation and reference frames

So I was thinking about this while driving home the other day. I've never been quite clear on why when you drive with the windows down air rushes into your car. I thought this might be explained by ...
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### Definition of scattered particle?

Compare the number of scattered particles: $N_s=Fa\int\sigma(\theta)d\Omega$ With the total number of incident particles: $N_{in}=Fa$ Here, F is the flux of incoming beam, a the area. sigma the ...
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### If superposition is possible in QM, why do we often assume systems are already in their eigenstates?

My understanding is that an arbitrary quantum-mechanical wavefunction can be written as a linear combination of eigenfunctions of some Hermitian operator, most commonly the Hamiltonian; when a ...
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### The synthesis of $^{254}\text{No}$

How is $^{254}\text{No}$ synthesised? Could you explain the reaction where it is preceded by $^{208}\text{Pb}(^{48}\text{Ca}, 2\text{n})$? References to articles are well enough—I was somehow unable ...
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### SI units with more than one prefix in fractions

Is it (in the view of SI) correct to note units with more then one prefix? I discuss this since several months with friends, but we could not find a proper source for our statements yet. Examples for ...
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### Flat poster on a wall gaining curvature over time

Assuming you have a flat poster with no curvature, why is it that when you pin it to the wall (with thumbtacks) it gains curvature as seen in the picture below. When I put the poster up it was ...
659 views

### Find Inductance in a Coil

Question: An inductive coil has an internal resistance of 20 $\Omega$. When an AC Voltage source with a frequency of 100 Hz is connected to the coil, the current lags the voltage by 30 degrees. What ...
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### What is the weakest magnetic field that can practically be measured?

I would like to be able to measure magnetic fields that are generated by nerve impulses in extremities like in fingers. I know that they are very weak: about 100 mV electric potential would give us ...
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### What does the latest $B_s^0\rightarrow \mu^+\mu^-$ results mean for SUSY?

A paper from the LHCb collaboration just came out last week, stating basically that the $B_s^0\rightarrow\mu^+\mu^-$ decay matches standard model predictions, and people are already shouting that SUSY ...
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### QED: Would atoms without electrons be visible?

I have been reading a lot of QED books lately, and understand (as well as possible anyway) the interaction between electrons and photons. But I can't seem to get a clear indication of the interaction ...
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### Vacuum energy and perpetual motion

The part of the Einstein equations of general relativity referred to vacuum energy, introduce a repulsive term in gravity. This means that as the space become bigger and bigger, vacuum part become ...
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### Basic questions about voltage drop in DC circuit

I understand all the concepts of what voltage is using all the analogies but some things related to the drop of voltage across a circuit confuses me. If I had a short circuit and attached a ...
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### Dirichlet's work on gravity in non-Euclidean space?

In the book The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology by the late John North I have found the following statement (page 514): "The German mathematician Lejeune Dirichlet studied the law of ...
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### Getting a given wavelength radio signal given an antenna with real-world constraints

Supposing you are given a transmitting antenna of whatever type of metal is most commonly used these days, and supposing that you are applying an AC current with the intent of transmitting a 1 m ...
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### Why is Near Field Communication (NFC) range limited to about 20cm?

Near Field Communication (NFC) operates at 13.56 MHz. Near Field is the region situated at a distance r << λ λ = c/f ...
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### Show that purity = 1 in a pure state

How can you show that for any pure state, the purity = 1? Pure state: $\rho^2 = \rho$ and $Tr(\rho^2)=1$ Mixed state: $\rho^2 = \rho$ and $Tr(\rho^2)<1$