All Questions

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Why are Silicon-Silicon bonds weak?

If carbon-carbon bonds are reasonably strong and silicon and carbon are both in the same column of the periodic table meaning the have the same amount of valence electrons, also seeing as its bonding ...
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Spontaneous breaking of a discrete non-Abelian symmetry

Can someone give me an example of an one dimensional local gapped quantum lattice model with a discrete non-Abelian global internal symmetry that is spontaneously broken in the ground state? In ...
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How do heated showers/faucets work?

I'm not sure if this question is for Physics SE, but I'd go ahead and ask. I was wondering how the heated showers work (the ones with the hot and cold knobs). I have always been curious and this may ...
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How do instantons cause vacuum decay?

From what I read about on instantons (Zee, QFT in a Nutshell, pg 309-310), an instanton is a vacuum solution that maps $S^3 \rightarrow S^3$ (the boundary of Euclideanized spacetime), which comes from ...
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Geodesics in Kerr

I'm interested in plotting the trajectories of null geodesics near an uncharged rotating black hole (described by the Kerr solution) which involves a system of first order differential equations. Kerr ...
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Could the universe have non-vanishing net colour charge?

I've heard that the strong force doesn't decrease in strength with increasing distance, and that's why quarks must be confined within hadrons. But could there be, say, a single quark out there, so ...
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Is wireless power viable? [on hold]

I had a quick read over the Wikipedia article for wireless power. It gives an overview of different methods of wireless power transmission, but doesn't elaborate as to its current usage or efficiency. ...
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Definition of causality relation

It seems to me that special relativity has a weird definition of the causality relation. In that theory, the only thing that matters is the space-time distance between events. But I don't think this ...
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Why do these papers show the wrong concavity to the conductivity near the percolation threshold?

I'm looking at two papers in particular: A. L. Efros and B. I. Shklovskii, Critical Behaviour of Conductivity and Dielectric Constant near the Metal-Non-Metal Transition Threshold, Phys. Status Solidi ...
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Given two events such that either one of them is 'on the light cone' of the other, do they constitute a 'null interval'?

One basic part of determining a metric (or applicable generalization) of a given set $\cal S$ of events (up to an arbitrary non-zero constant) is to determine to which pairs among those events, ...
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Redshift of Cosmic Microwave Background

Does the cosmic microwave background radiation have a red shift parameter z? If so what is the value for z?
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Is it possible to produce images of pair production in home-made cloud chamber?

There are some nice pictures on the web showing the counter-spiralling paths of an electron positron pair produced in a bubble chamber with a uniform magnetic field, for example:- Would it be ...
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Length contraction and simultaneous length measurements

I am just working through an argument from Halliday Resnick to derive the Lorentz contraction (see quote below). Some paragraphs before this, the authors note that: If the rod is moving, ...
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Moon's orbit period as seen from a spaceship traveling at 0.8c

I am studying special relativity and I am trying to figure out the following small problem which occurred to me: An observer, the pilot of a spaceship flying to or from earth at v = 0.8c, is ...
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Formula to find angle of projectile motion [on hold]

I want to be able to modify the angle at which the bullet follows projectile motion in order to hit the object which is moving horizontally (from right to left) and the projectile motion is starting ...
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What is the symmetry of the Penrose tiling? [migrated]

What is the symmetry of the Penrose tiling? Simply C5 or bigger? Any simple proof that the tiling is a complete cover of the plane?
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Noncommutative Field Quantization

I'm studying noncommutative (quantum) field theory, and I have confusion need to be clear. I'm reading Szabo's and Douglas's .pdf of noncommutative QFT. As I understand, in the book they just ...
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velocity of light [on hold]

We have assumed in the last 100 years or so, due to great minds and their diligent attitude, that nothing surpasses velocity of light. But nature knows no barriers. Exceeding that velocity transcends ...
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Ghosts in theories of gravity and holographic theories

I want to understand when a theory leads to ghosts in gravity. Is there any relation between ghosts and non-linear higher order theories? Ghost is a clasical or quantum field concept?
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Positive charges “move” from higher to lower potential [on hold]

It's my understanding that whenever an object gains or loses electric charge this actually corresponds to losing/gaining electrons (protons do not move). So how can a positive charge always move from ...
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Reluctance of torus shaped iron core with embedded wire loop

Imagine a circular wire loop (r = 50mm), the wire has an assumed diameter of zero, which is embedded in a torus shaped iron core with a circular cross-section of R = 10mm. A current in that loop ...
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What is the advantage of segmented particle traps?

I'm currently trying to familiarize myself with the physics of ion and particle traps, especially with linear Paul traps. Many scientific experiments I've come across use segmented electrodes (like in ...
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Compactification and off-diagonal terms of the metric tensor

In standard 3+1 dimensional spacetime, the metric tensor is of order 4 and had ten independent coefficients, hence there are 6 terms off the diagonal in the corresponding $4\times 4$ real symmetric ...
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Is static friction an impulsive force?

For example: let's consider a static sphere on an horizontal rough surface. I apply an impulse $J$ parallel to the ground and in the middle of the sphere. If, like my book says, the friction is not an ...
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Do randomness and indeterminacy in Quantum Physics mean the same?

I have been trying to learn about the randomness in Quantum Physics. But of the many sources I referred to, some say about "Randomness in Quantum physics" and some others say about "Quantum ...
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Thoughts on the ice cube from orbit problem

Let's say we have a really exquisite cocktail party somewhere in New Mexico, and we just ran out of ice cubes. To the rescue comes this new service provided by Orbital Glacier Inc. They provide ice ...
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The Eigenstate Existence Problem in Dirac's 'Principles of Quantum Mechanics'

In Chapter II of Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, Dirac explains that in general it is very difficult to know whether, for a given real linear operator, that any eigenvalues/eigenvectors exist ...
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Reference Request: Fluid dynamics/Elasticity via Lagrangians

Would there be a book that does what Landau does in Fluid Mechanics and Theory of Elasticity using Lagrangian's/Action-principles, analogous to the presentation in Landau's mechanics? I have only ...
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Traces in different representation

I am actually working with Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation mechanism in which I have came across a strange formula which relates trace in the adjoint representation (Tr) to trace in fundamental ...
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If space-time continuum exists in nature then where is mass? [on hold]

If space-time continuum exists in nature then what is its relation to mass? Does mass exist unaffected in S-T continuum, or , does the S-T exist without affecting the mass in any way. If gravity ...
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Why does the action have to be hermitian?

The hermiticity of operators of observables, e.g. the Hamiltonian, in QM is usually justified by saying that the eigenvalues must be real valued. I know that the Lagrangian is just a Legendre ...
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What is the analogy of $|x\rangle$ in quantum field theory?

Let me start from path integral formulation in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. In QM, we have $$U(x_b,x_a;T) = \langle x_b | U(T) |x_a \rangle= \int \mathcal{D}q e^{iS} \tag{1}$$ ...
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Which ball touches the ground first?

This is a very well known problem, but I can't find an answer in the specific case I'm looking for. Let's consider two balls : Ball 1 weighs 10 kg Ball 2 weighs 1 kg Balls have identical volumes ...
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CPT invariance of Dirac equation

We know that Dirac equation is $$( i \partial _\mu \gamma ^\mu - m ) \psi ~=~0.$$ How can we show that Dirac equation is invariant under CPT transformation?
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Aharonov-Bohm Effect electricity generation

This question is based on highly intuitive picture of the Aharonov-Bohm effect (perhaps a naive one). From what I have read, the current explanation of the AB effect is that although the electron ...
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Energy comparison, evaporate water vs compress air, same mass

I would like to compare the energy requirements of the 2 following tasks: Total energy to evaporate 1 litre of water at normal atmospheric pressure at normal temperature? Total energy to compress ...
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Viscous Burgers equation physical meaning

The viscous Burgers' equation: $$q_{t}+q\:q_{x}~=~\nu\:q_{xx}, \mbox{ where } \:\:\nu >0,$$ combines the nonlinear propagation of $q(x,t)$ and the diffusion. What is this equation for? (in ...
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Why does a Resistor cause a potential drop?

I need to know the underlying physics of what exactly happens different with the electric field in the resistor than in superconducting wires. Why is it that when I connect a resistor, potential ...
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Why is Entropy's Definition Useful?

I have somewhat of an understanding for other physical quantities, but as far as entropy goes I only know it to be "disorder". Why is the change in entropy formula an appropriate/useful definition, ...
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Does the geomagnetic field rotate?

The Earth rotates about it's own axis. Do the geomagnetic field lines rotate due to this rotation or not?
Just as circumference of circle will remain $\pi$ for unit diameter, no matter what standard unit we take, are the speeds of light and sound irrational or rational in nature ? I'm talking about ...