While studying the particle in a box in this chapter, you come up with what you think is a brilliant idea. Suppose the electron in the hydrogen atom is modeled like a particle in a one-dimensional box! You look online and learn that the transition from the first excited state of hydrogen to the ground…

You are working as an expert witness for an attorney who is suing a shipping company. The company operates ships that carry crude oil across the oceans. One ship suffered an oil spill, in which the spilled oil spreads out into a slick, forming a thin film that floats on the ocean surface. The legal…

Your team is working in an optical research laboratory. Part of the apparatus you are working on involves polarized beams of light. Your supervisor wants to rotate the plane of polarization of one polarized beam by 45.0°. She can do that by inserting a single polarizer at 45.0° to the plane of polarization of the…

You are working for a new assistant professor in astronomy who is interested in exoplanets. One day, a scientific rumor begins circulating that there is a Jupiter-sized planet around Alpha Centauri, 4.28 light-years away. Your professor has access to viewing privileges for the Hubble Space Telescope (aperture diameter 2.4 m, 100 nm to 2 400…

Your team is working on the detection of gravitational waves. The first detection of gravitational waves occurred in September 2015 and was announced in February 2016. Data from the detection indicated that two black holes of 29 and 36 solar masses had combined to form a black hole of 62 solar masses. The final collapse…

. You have been hired as an expert witness for an attorney who is representing a speeding driver. The driver of the car was given a ticket for running a red light at an intersection. According to the driver, who has taken some courses in physics, when he was looking at the red light as…

You have been hired as an expert witness in the future by an attorney representing the driver of a spacecraft. The driver is accused of exceeding the galactic speed limit of 0.700c relative to the Earth while being chased by a galactic police spacecraft. The driver claims he is innocent, that his speed was well…

You are performing research on quantum fluctuations in empty space. In one type of fluctuation, an electron– positron pair (Section 44.2) appears in empty space. This process appears to violate the conservation of energy principle, since the rest energy of the particles has been created from nothing. According to Equation 39.24, however, this violation of…

In Problem 14, we find that the particle in a box is not a good model for the electron in a hydrogen atom. As it turns out, the particle in a box is a reasonable first approximation for a model for the protons in the nucleus. Work with your group to show this as follows.…

You are working as an expert witness in a civil case. You have been hired by the attorney for a company that manufactures compasses. The company is being sued by a novice hiker who used one of the company’s top-level compasses. The hiker claims that the compass was defective, sending him off in a different…