Overview of

Modern Physics
Summary of Important Equations to
understand for the HW:
1. c = λ · f
2. E = h · f
3. λ = h/mv
4. Δt' = Δt/√(1 - v2/c2)
5. E = m · c2
Three ways to transfer energy:
 With a Particle

 With a Wave

 With a Field
 Summary of Waves
 Properties:
 Wavelength (l): distance between two successive crests
 Frequency (f): number of wave crests passing per second
 Speed of wave: v=fl
 Amplitude (A): maximum displacement
 Energy: E  A2
 Interference
 Only waves experience
interference  this is
just adding up the parts
of a wave:
 Where two crests (or
troughs) meet, they add
 Where a crest and
trough meet, they
cancel
Introduction (Reference: The Feynman Lectures, Vol. 1, p. 37-3)

 Water waves, like all waves, experience interference when

diffracted by two slits
 Imagine a pond in which we start a water wave
ripple. The ripple starts out near the center and
spreads radially outward
 Very far away, the water wave ripple will look like a straight
line. Something interesting happens to these plane waves (in
this case, water waves) when they hit two slits.
 The water wave ripple will divide up into two new ripples
when it hits the slits and, if the slits
are spaced just right, the two new
water wave ripples will experience
interference
 We can represent it graphically by
plotting the big and small parts as
a graph:
 Light: Particles vs. Waves
 Light was originally thought to be a particle
 E.g.,look at sharp shadows, photoelectric effect, etc.
 also, Newton endorsed the view that light was
made up of particles
 Particles behave completely differently
when they encounter slits...
 E.g., suppose you fired bullets at one slit?
What does that look like? Just a simple curve...
 What if you fired bullets at two slits? Just two
separate curves
 So what happens when you fire light at it?
Interference like water waves!
Quantum Particle: Wave AND Particle
 Okay, so maybe light is a wave since it exhibits this wave behaviour.
 But we also know light is made up of particles (photons).
 So okay, light is nutty... light, like all matter, is actually a quantum
particle
 It exhibits both wave and particle aspects (wave-particle duality)
 But that's not all there is to the quantum strangeness... what happens
when you fire electron (quantum) particles?
 Same interference pattern even though you detect individual
electron "particles" at the other end!
 Well, then electrons are simple waves, right? No!
 Reduce flow to a single electron (or photon) at a time and you still
get the same pattern!
 And we definitely pick up particles at the other end (particle detectors)
 Each particle somehow knows where it should go...
 welcome to the quantum reality, welcome to the real nature of
existence itself, which we will now explore in detail...
 What Happens at the Slits?

-Top is what we get when

slit 1 is covered
-Bottom is what we get
when slit 2 is covered
-What do we get when both
are open?
 What Happens at the Slits?
• The blue curve is what we would get if
each electron made a random choice of
which slit to pass through
• The orange curve is what we actually get
• Conclusion?
• The electron passes through both slits at
the same time
• The electron behaves both as a wave
and as a particle
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

 Three problems at the turn of the

century were the first clues that all
was not how it seemed
 Ultra-Violet Catastrophe
 As the temperature of a BlackBody goes up, more
energy is emitted per second at each wavelength
and the peak wavelength shifts to smaller values
 Plot of UV catastrophe versus reality
 Why doesn't theory match reality (experiment)?
 The Photoelectric Effect
• When light hits certain metals, e- are ejected
• Hypothesis: brighter (higher intensity) light
should cause more e- to be ejected with higher
energies
• But, more light caused more e- to be ejected but
it didn't increase their energy
• Only the frequency (color) of the light affected
the energy of the ejected e-
• Higher frequency light ejected e- with higher
energy
• But even extremely dim light of the right
frequency caused e- to be emitted
 Why does the energy of the ejected e- depend
on the frequency of the light?
 Can We Explain This?

Predictions of the Wave Model:

-For high enough intensity, any wavelength of light should
produce the photoelectric effect. Not what we see.
-The maximum kinetic energy of the photoelectrons should
scale with light intensity. Not what we see.
-The maximum kinetic energy should be independent of the
frequency. Not what we see.
-The photoelectrons need a measurable amount of time to
gain enough energy to be ejected. Not what we see.
The Atomic Spectra
 Light from bulbs, stars, etc. show a
continuous spectrum when seen
through a prism
 A hot gas, however, has an
emission line spectrum made of a
few, discrete lines of colour
 Why don't hot gases show
Emission
continuous spectra?
Absorption
Quantum Hypothesis: Energy is quantized
 What is quantization? It only comes in discrete chunks instead of a
continuous range of energies
 If you assume the Energy of each atomic oscillator is quantized, you can
get the correct BlackBody curve
 Planck suggested Energy is quantized in units of h and was proportional
to the oscillators frequency: E = hf
 As is common in physics, he originally just came up with an equation
to fit the curve without knowing anything about the underlying
mechanism (he addressed the what but not the how)
 This quantization of energy arose as a necessary condition of the
equation Planck derived to fit the correct curve
 Although he developed a model (energy is quantized) he had no
idea why this should be so!

Continuous Discrete
Quantum Hypothesis: Light is quantized
 Einstein proposed that light is also quantized and its
energy is also determined by its frequency via E = hf
 Each individual packet of light energy is called a photon and
an EM wave is made of these individual "particles"
 Brighter light → more photons strike metal each second →
more e- ejected/sec (but it does not increase the energy of
each e-)
 Higher frequency light ejects e- with more energy because
each photon has more energy to give

E  hf
h  6.626 1034 J  s
Kmax  hf  
Quantum Hypothesis: Orbits are quantized
 Bohr suggested that the orbits of electrons are also quantized
 An electron can go from one level to another by absorbing or emitting a
photon of light
 If light energy is quantized and electron orbits are also quantized, that
would explain why atomic spectra are discrete (since atoms/electrons
only absorb or emit a single photon at a time)

The Bohr Model of the Hydrogen Atom

 Energy, Light, & Orbits are quantized!
 So all three problems at the turn of the century had the same solution:
quantization of the fundamental aspects of nature!
 This is why it's called quantum mechanics: everything is quantized
(comes in discrete chunks instead of a continuous range of values) --
matter (the Bohr "orbitals"), light, and even energy are ALL quantized!
 DeBroglie further hypothesized that since electrons also behave as
waves, they must also have a wavelength: λ = h/mv
 This was part of his doctoral thesis which won him a Nobel
prize
 He also came to physics late in life, contrary to the popular
notion of physics being a young man's game electron
wave
 E = mc = hf
2
c=velectron and f = v/λ
→ mv2 = hv/λ
→ λ = hv/mv2 = h/mv
Quantum Mechanics in a nutshell
 Matter, it seems, is nutty at the sub-microscopic level
 Quantum particles behave like both waves and particles; even energy
comes in packets or chunks!
 Look at them one way, they're particles;
another way, they're waves!
 If you pass light through slits, it's a wave;
if you aim it at metals, it behaves like a particle
 "They could but make the best of it, and went around with
woebegone faces sadly complaining that on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays they must look on light as a wave; on
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays as a particle. On Sundays,
they simply prayed." -- Banesh Hoffmann
 Electrons are the same way: they behave as both particles and waves
 All particles have a wave-aspect; higher the momentum, shorter the
wavelength
 But the incredibly tiny value of h ensures this is only a microscopic
effect
 Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
 Heisenberg proposed that the wave aspect of an electron
makes it impossible to know both the position and
momentum to arbitrary precision
 Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP):
Δx • Δ(mv) ≥ h/4π
 E.g., if you have a periodic wave (or a standing wave) you
can't really tell what its position is (it's spread out over the
whole string, e.g.). But you can tell exactly what its
wavelength is. Now if you send a wave pulse down the
string, you can't tell what its wavelength is (doesn't make
sense for a pulse) but you can tell exactly what its position
is. (With thanks to Prof. Griffiths)
 The Atomic Structure
 So we can't say where exactly the electron is (it's not like a billiard ball,
or like a wave, or like a puffy cloud, or like anything else we know from
ordinary experience)
 "Now we know how the electrons and light behave. But what can I call
it? If I say they behave like particles I give the wrong impression; also if
I say they behave like waves. They behave in their own inimitable way,
which technically could be called a quantum mechanical way. They
behave in a way that is like nothing that you have ever seen before.
Your experience with things that you have seen before is incomplete.
The behavior of things on a very tiny scale is simply different. An atom
does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring and oscillating. Nor
does it behave like a miniature representation of the solar system with
little planets going around in orbits. Nor does it appear to be somewhat
like a cloud or fog of some sort surrounding the nucleus. It behaves like
nothing you have ever seen before." -- Richard P. Feynman, The
Character of Physical Law
 Since we can't talk about its exact location, it's more useful to
concentrate on the electron's energy
 Predicted Energy Levels
 Instead of looking at orbits, we now look at energy
levels, which are the certain, allowed energy states
 Lowest energy level (corresponding to innermost
orbit in Bohr theory) is called the ground state and
higher energy states are excited states
 The structure of the atom is shown schematically on an
energy-level diagram labeled with a quantum number
n
 As quantum number ↑, Energy associated with that
state ↑
 Transition of the electron from one orbit to another is
now represented as the atom going from one energy
level to another
 Transition achieved by absorption or emission of a
photon with an energy corresponding to the difference
in energy between the two levels, or states
 When white light hits an atom, only photons with the
right energy are absorbed!
 Some Atomic Physics
 Atom can gain or lose energy by absorption or
emission of photons or by collisions
 Pauli Exclusion Principle: two electrons cannot occupy
the same quantum state at the same time
 Number of quantum states in a given energy level
given by 2n2
 If even one electron is in a higher energy level, the atom
is said to be in an excited state
 Properties of each element determined by the ground-
state configuration of its atoms (e.g., valence electrons,
etc.)
Four Known Forces
 Two familiar kinds of interactions:
gravity (masses attract one another) and
electromagnetism (same-sign charges repel,
opposite-sign charges attract)
 What causes radioactive decays of nuclei ?
 Must be a force weak enough to allow most atoms
to be stable.
 What binds protons together into nuclei ?
 Must be a force strong enough to overcome
repulsion due to protons’ electric charge
Previously, we peered inside the atom
 We recalled that electrons orbit
the atom’s massive nucleus and
determine an element’s chemical
behavior.
 We explored the proton and
neutron content of nuclei and the
phenomena of radioactivity,
fission, and fusion they make
possible.
 Today we’ll look inside the
nucleons themselves.
 Fundamental particles in the
Standard Model are:
 Leptons
 Quarks
 Intermediate Gauge Bosons
Anti-matter

 Each kind of elementary particle has a counterpart

with the same mass, but the opposite electric charge,
called its “anti-particle”.
 Electron: m= .0005 GeV, charge = +1, symbol e-
 Positron: m = .0005 GeV, charge = -1, symbol e+
 The anti-particle has a bar over its symbol:
 Anti-proton is written p , anti-neutrino is v
 Anti-matter is rare in the explored universe
 It’s created in cosmic rays and particle accelerators
and some radioactive decays.
When a particle and its anti-particle collide, they
“annihilate” one another in a flash of


energy.
 Stability diagram
Heavy elements can fission
into lighter elements.

Elements from helium to iron were

manufactured in the cores of stars by fusion.
Heavier elements are metastable and were
made during supernovae explosions.

Light elements can undergo

fusion into heavier elements.
 Chain reaction

For reaction to be self-sustaining, must have

CRITICAL MASS.
 Fusion
 Light nuclei are more stable when
combined
 Tremendous energy released
 Hydrogen bombs and Fusion
power?