Books etc

Is Millie a real pussycat?

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in questions

What are Bosonville and Fermioncity?

The article on elementary particles explains that there are two types of particles: bosons and fermions. Bosons are named after the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, and fermions after Enrico Fermi, one of the greatest Italian physicists. In Millie’s adventures, fermions live in Fermioncity, a...…

in questions

Diffraction

When waves move toward the shore, they usually go in a straight line. But what if there’s something in the way, like a big rock sticking out of the water or an opening in a wall like in the image above? Instead of just stopping, some of the waves go around the rock or though the opening and spread...…

in macroscopic concepts

$Diffraction$

Double-slit experiment

The double-slit experiment was invented in 1801 by Thomas Young to study the nature of light. Young was convinced that light behaved like a wave, while other scientists, such as Isaac Newton, preferred to think of it as composed of corpuscles (= light particles). Young decided to pass a beam o...…

in history

Measurement scales and vectors

We often talk about quantities and measurements. When we say Millie weighs 6 kilograms, her tail is 25 centimeters long, and today it’s 23 degrees, we are using numbers and units of measurement: kg, cm, and degrees Celsius. Each unit of measurement refers to a measurement scale. Here are some exampl...…

in macroscopic concepts

Wave or particle?

Thomas Young, a British scientist, was one of the first to explore this question. He invented the double-slit experiment to determine whether light behaves as a wave or as a collection of particles. The basic idea is to study a beam of objects whose nature is unknown and observe how they behave. T...…

in questions

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

In the article on wave-particle duality, we explained that the world of particles is filled with strange phenomena that differ significantly from our everyday experiences. For instance, in our daily lives, it's normal to measure the speed of a car while simultaneously knowing its precise position...…

in quantum concepts

Wave-particle duality

In the realm of particles, many phenomena are profoundly different from anything we experience in our everyday world. For instance, it seems obvious to us that a tennis ball and an ocean wave are two entirely different things. We’re also absolutely sure that ocean waves will never turn into tennis b...…

in quantum concepts