Category: Quantum Vs Classical Physics

Now that we’ve given away the ending, let’s go back and explore the wave theory of light a bit further. First, we need to establish some basics about wave phenomena. Imagine sitting in a fishing boat on a perfectly calm and windless morning. Then, imagine that a speedboat whizzes suddenly past. Just after lamenting the… Continue reading Young’s Double-Slit Experiment

Sports fans of a certain age will recall marveling at the versatility of Bo Jackson. Not only was he a star baseball player for the Kansas City Royals, he was also a celebrated football player for the Los Angeles Raiders. While many youngsters dream of greatness in one sport, Mr. Jackson managed to be great… Continue reading Newton’s Light Corpuscles

Sports fans of a certain age will recall marveling at the versatility of Bo Jackson. Not only was he a star baseball player for the Kansas City Royals, he was also a celebrated football player for the Los Angeles Raiders. While many youngsters dream of greatness in one sport, Mr. Jackson managed to be great… Continue reading Newton’s Light Corpuscles

Now that we’re familiar with the first prominent branch of classical physics, we will briefly explore the second. Only then will we have the perspective needed to truly appreciate just how wacky—and wonderful—quantum physics really is. We will meet a bearded man of greatness who brought two seemingly irreconcilable halves into a whole in the… Continue reading Light and Matter

Newton showed us that the gravitational attractiveness of a body depends on its mass. We’ve also learned that a heavy object produces a stronger gravitational field than a lighter one. Our joke about midnight snacks notwithstanding, we’ve been treating mass as something that is constant and does not change. But surely, you must be saying,… Continue reading The Conservation Laws

Let’s return now to the notion that we can predict the position of the moon, and thus the status of the tides, at any time in the future. Surely this means you’ll be able to predict whether you could go crabbing at noon on your thousandth birthday, right? In theory, the answer is yes. In… Continue reading The Classical Certainty Principle

Newton’s work touched not only on math and physics, it also had philosophical ramifications. For any system of bodies interacting via the force of gravity, he showed that the present position and velocity (the present state) of each body actually determines what their positions and velocities will be at all times in the future (their future… Continue reading Causal and Predictive Determinism

One reason Newton’s discoveries were so remarkable is that they explained the underlying basis for many phenomena that hadn’t previously been understood. Before Newton, scientists could explain how the planets moved about the sun, but they could not explain “why.” Newton’s gravity provided the answer. Or did it? We can say Earth’s gravity holds the… Continue reading Force Fields and Potential Energy

After discovering his three laws of motion, Newton could have easily enjoyed a quiet, early retirement in the English countryside. Fortunately for us, he decided to make yet another groundbreaking contribution to physics. (In fact, he made several more revolutionary contributions to math and physics, which you can read about in other Idiot’s Guides.) One day,… Continue reading The Universal Law of Gravity

We will talk a lot about forces. By this we’re not referring to any special powers from a time long ago or a galaxy far, far away. Instead, we are referring to the ways that physical objects interact with each other. Even if you are quietly seated in your armchair, you are influenced by a… Continue reading How Forces Move Us