Table Of Content

S I M P L Y QUANTUM PHYSICS UUSS__000011__hhaallff__ttiittllee..iinndddd 11 1166//1100//22002200 1100::1177 CONTENTS DK LONDON Project Editor Miezan van Zyl THE QUANTUM US Editor Karyn Gerhard Art Editor Mik Gates WORLD Designer Clare Joyce Managing Editor Angeles Gavira Managing Art Editor Michael Duffy Production Editor Gillian Reid 8 VANISHINGLY SMALL Senior Production Controller Meskerem Berhane The subatomic scale Jacket Design Development Manager 10 THREE TINY PIECES Sophia M.T.T. Jacket Designer Akiko Kato The structure of the atom Associate Publishing Director Liz Wheeler 12 PARTICLE ZOO Art Director Karen Self Subatomic particles Publishing Director Jonathan Metcalf 14 WHAT IS LIGHT? First American Edition, 2021 Electromagnetic radiation Published in the United States by DK Publishing 1450 Broadway, Suite 801, New York, NY 10018 15 QUANTUM CONSTANT Planck’s constant Copyright © 2021 Dorling Kindersley Limited DK, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC 16 RIPPLES IN SPACE 21 22 23 24 25 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Waves 001–322079–Feb/2021 18 WAVE OR PARTICLE All rights reserved. Particle-wave duality Without limiting the rights under the copyright 20 HOLDING IT TOGETHER reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval The strong nuclear force system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any 21 THE FORCE OF DECAY means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, The weak nuclear force recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. 22 OPPOSITES ATTRACT Published in Great Britain by The electromagnetic force Dorling Kindersley Limited 23 DRAWN TOGETHER A catalog record for this book Gravity is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-7440-2848-5 Printed and bound in China PRE-QUANTUM For the curious PUZZLES www.dk.com 26 IDEAL BODIES This book was made with Forest Black-body radiation Stewardship Council ™ certified paper—one small step in DK’s 27 UV CATASTROPHE commitment to a sustainable future. The Rayleigh-Jeans law For more information go to www.dk.com/our-green-pledge 28 PACKETS OF ENERGY Energy quantization UUSS__000022--000055__FFrroonnttmmaatttteerr..iinndddd 22 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2277 30 ENERGETIC STATES 55 INFINITE REPETITION Atomic energy states The cosmological interpretations 31 CLOUDS OF PROBABILITIES 56 UNSEEN INFLUENCE Electron orbitals Hidden-variable interpretations 32 PHOTON ENERGY 58 A QUANTUM HANDSHAKE The photoelectric effect The transactional interpretation 59 SPONTANEOUS COLLAPSE Objective-collapse hypothesis THE WAVE 60 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST FUNCTION Quantum Darwinism 61 THE OBSERVER’S BELIEF Quantum Bayesianism 36 DESCRIBING A QUANTUM STATE The wave function 62 THROUGH THE MAZE Consistent histories 38 IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE Superposition 63 DIFFERENT VIEWS 40 SQUARED WAVE The relational interpretation The Born rule 41 WAVE TRANSFORMATIONS QUANTUM Fourier transforms 42 NOT ALL IS KNOWABLE PHENOMENA Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle 44 PREDICTING CHANGE Schrödinger’s equation 66 “SPIN” Intrinsic angular momentum 46 EVADING MEASUREMENT The measurement problem 67 FIELDS OF ATTRACTION Magnetic moments 48 INSTANT COLLAPSE Collapsing the wave function 68 THE GREAT DIVIDE Fermions and bosons 49 PARADOX IN A BOX Schrödinger’s cat 69 NO ROOM FOR TWO Pauli exclusion principle 70 WHAT BARRIER? INTERPRETATIONS Quantum tunnelling OF QUANTUM 72 DISTANCE NO OBJECT Quantum entanglement PHYSICS 74 QUANTUM TELEPORTATION Transferring quantum states 75 UNSTABLE ENVIRONMENT 52 UNDERSTANDING QUANTUM Decoherence PHYSICS The Copenhagen interpretation 76 INSIDE SOLID OBJECTS Solid-state physics 54 EVERYTHING CAN AND DOES HAPPEN 78 ALTERED STATES The many worlds interpretation Bose-Einstein condensates UUSS__000022--000055__FFrroonnttmmaatttteerr..iinndddd 33 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2277 80 FLOWING WITHOUT QUANTUM FRICTION Superfluidity INFORMATION 81 ENDLESS CHARGE Superconductivity 106 NOT JUST ZEROS AND ONES 82 STRANGE QUANTUM ATOMS Qubits Cold atom physics 107 SUPERFAST 83 UNUSUAL ORBITS Quantum computing Rydberg atoms 108 QUANTUM CODES Quantum cryptography QUANTUM 109 SIMULATORS Quantum simulation TECHNOLOGY NUCLEAR 86 FIRING PHOTONS AT ATOMS PHYSICS Stimulated emission 87 HIGHLY CONCENTRATED 112 SEEKING STABILITY Lasers Radioactivity 88 KEEPING TIME 114 SPLITTING ATOMS Atomic clocks Nuclear fission 90 SOLID STATES 116 COMBINING NUCLEI Band theory of solids Nuclear fusion 91 SILICON CHIPS Transistors PARTICLE 92 LIGHT RELEASE Light-emitting diodes PHYSICS 93 CAPTURING PHOTONS Charge-coupled devices 120 ON THE TRAIL OF ELUSIVE 94 LEVITATION PARTICLES Superconducting electromagnets Particle detectors 95 TUNNELING PAIRS 121 SIMPLY SMASHING Josephson junctions Particle accelerators 96 SQUIDS 122 SMALLER THAN AN ATOM Superconducting quantum Quarks interference devices 123 NO STRONG INTERACTIONS 98 LOOKING INSIDE Leptons Magnetic resonance imaging 124 THE QUANTUM WORLD 100 SEEING WITHOUT LIGHT EXPLAINED Electron microscopes The Standard Model 102 ATOMIC PROBE 126 FORCE CARRIERS Atomic force microscopy Gauge bosons UUSS__000022--000055__FFrroonnttmmaatttteerr..iinndddd 44 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2277 127 WHY PARTICLES HAVE MASS 150 IT’S IN OUR DNA The Higgs boson A quantum theory of cell mutation 128 THE OPPOSITE OF MATTER Antimatter 151 TUNNELING FOR A REACTION Enzymes and quantum physics 130 NOT SO STANDARD Beyond the Standard Model 152 MAGNETIC PERCEPTION Quantum navigation 132 UNIVERSAL FIELDS Quantum field theory 154 OUR SENSE OF SMELL The quantum nose 134 THE JEWEL OF PHYSICS Quantum electrodynamics 155 QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS? The quantum mind 135 THREE-COLOR QUARK Quantum chromodyamics 156 INDEX QUANTUM GRAVITY CONSULTANT EDITOR Dr. Ben Still is a prizewinning science communicator, particle physicist, and 138 COMBINED FORCES author. He teaches high school physics and A theory of everything is also a visiting research fellow at Queen Mary University of London. He is the 140 QUANTUM FOAM author of a growing collection of popular Planck length and time science books and travels the world 142 TINY VIBRATING STRINGS teaching particle physics using LEGO®. String theories 143 TYING IT TOGETHER CONTRIBUTORS M-theory Hilary Lamb is an award-winning journalist and author, covering science 144 THE FABRIC OF SPACE Loop quantum gravity and technology. She has written for previous DK titles, including The Visual Encyclopedia, How Technology Works, and QUANTUM The Physics Book. BIOLOGY Giles Sparrow is a popular-science author specializing in physics and astronomy. He has written and contributed to bestselling 148 PHOTONS AND FOLIAGE DK titles, including The Physics Book, Photosynthesis Spaceflight, Universe, and Science. UUSS__000022--000055__FFrroonnttmmaatttteerr..iinndddd 55 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2277 T H E Q U A N T U M W O R L D UUSS__000066--000077__TThhee__QQuuaannttuumm__WWoorrlldd..iinndddd 66 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2222 T H E Q U A N T U M W O R L D Quantum physics describes the way the universe behaves on the very smallest scales. Far below the limits of even the most powerful microscopes, it governs the behaviors and interactions of atoms and the particles from which they are made—the fundamental building blocks of matter. Scientists only confirmed the existence of subatomic particles with J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron in 1897, but the possibility that these tiny particles can sometimes behave like waves, which is key to the strange behavior of the quantum world, was only suggested by Louis Victor de Broglie in 1924. UUSS__000066--000077__TThhee__QQuuaannttuumm__WWoorrlldd..iinndddd 77 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2222 M Atoms are about 100,000 M The nucleus of M Quarks are one -100 times smaller than -150 hydrogen is a single -180 type of elementary M 1 any object that can be S 1 subatomic proton K 1 particle and are O resolved with the naked N particle with a R building blocks AT eye. Most of the atom is EO diameter of 1.8 UA for matter. “empty” space. CL million billionths Q U N of a meter. At the center S M thoef tnhuec laetuosm— ias UCLEU-15M–10 decnosen traeigniso nne tahralyt N-140 all of its mass. 1 VANISHINGLY SMALL M -180 1 The electron particles ~ N that orbit in the outer O shells of atoms are R T elementary particles on a C E similar scale to quarks. EL 8 THE SUBATOMIC SCALE UUSS__000088--000099__TThhee__ssuubbaattoommiicc__ssccaallee..iinndddd 88 1166//1100//22002200 1100::1177