The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics

302 Pages·2016·3.48 MB·English

by  Kakalios

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
SECTION 1 - TALES TO ASTONISH
CHAPTER ONE - Quantum Mechanics in Three Easy Steps
CHAPTER TWO - Photons at the Beach
CHAPTER THREE - Fearful Symmetry
CHAPTER FOUR - It’s All Done with Magnets
SECTION 2 - CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN
CHAPTER FIVE - Wave Functions All the Way Down
CHAPTER SIX - The Equation That Made the Future!
CHAPTER SEVEN - The Uncertainty Principle Made Easy
CHAPTER EIGHT - Why So Blue, Dr. Manhattan?
SECTION 3 - TALES OF THE ATOMIC KNIGHTS
CHAPTER NINE - Our Friend, the Atom
CHAPTER TEN - Radioactive Man
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Man of the Atom
SECTION 4 - WEIRD SCIENCE STORIES
CHAPTER TWELVE - Every Man for Himself
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - All for One and One for All
SECTION 5 - MODERN MECHANICS AND
INVENTIONS
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Quantum Invisible “Ink”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Death Rays and DVDs
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - The One-Way Door
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Big Changes Come in Small Packages
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Spintronics
CHAPTER NINETEEN - A Window on Inner Space
SECTION 6 - THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
CHAPTER TWENTY - Coming Attractions
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Seriously, Where’s My Jet Pack?
AFTERWORD
Acknowledgements
NOTES
RECOMMENDED READING
INDEX
PHOTO CREDITS

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First printing, October 2010
Copyright © 2010 by James Kakalios
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LIEUTENANT GENERAL LESLIE R. GROVES
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FROM THE FOREWORD TO Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom
WRITTEN BY JOHN DUNNING AND LOUIS HEIL AND DRAWN BY JOE
MUSIAL
(KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, 1949)
INTRODUCTION
Quantum Physics? You’re Soaking in It!
Perhaps you share my frustration that, well into the twenty-first century, we
still await flying cars, jet packs, domed underwater cities, and robot personal
assistants. From the 1930s on, science fiction pulp magazines and comic books
promised us that by the year 2000 we would be living in a gleaming utopia
where the everyday drudgery of menial tasks and the tyranny of gravity would
be overcome. Comparing these predictions from more than fifty years ago to the
reality of today, one might conclude that, well, we’ve been lied to.
And yet . . . and yet. In 2010 we are able to communicate with those on the
other side of the globe, instantly and wirelessly. We have more computing power
in our laptops than in the room-size computers that were envisioned in the
science fiction pulps. We can peer inside a person, without the slice of a knife,
performing medical diagnoses using magnetic resonance imaging. Touch-
activated computer screens, from the local ATM to the iPhone, are everywhere.
And the number of automated devices we deal with in a given day is surprisingly
high—though none of them look like Robby the Robot.
What did the all those rosy predictions miss? Simply put, they expected a
revolution in energy, but what we got was a revolution in information. Implicit in
the promise of jet packs and death rays is the availability of lightweight power
supplies capable of storing large amounts of energy. But the ability of batteries to
act as reservoirs of electrical energy is limited by the chemical and electrical
properties of atoms. Scientists and engineers are extremely clever in developing
novel energy-storage systems, but ultimately we can’t change the nature of the
atoms. Information, however, requires only a medium to preserve ideas and
intelligence to interpret them.
Moreover, information can endure for thousands of years—consider the long-
term data storage accomplished by the Sumerians, whose cuneiform writing on
clay tablets enables us to learn about their accounting systems and read the epic
tale of Gilgamesh from four thousand years ago. These dried clay tablets,
currently held in modern-day Iraq, are fairly bulky, and to share information
from them the ancient Sumerians had to transport the actual tablets. But today
you don’t have to go to Iraq to read the Sumerian tablets—you can view them on
the Internet, or someone could send images of them to you instantly via a cell
phone camera.