All of Monday's and Wednesday's hw of this week is due on Wed. Mar 1 or you'll have to stay back to work on it (4-5pm). So get it done (ALLLL of it), no excuses! :P
Y'alls reading comprehension/vocabulary skills need work so for the next couple of homework assignments we will focus on reading material in great depth and understanding what we read. I could tell by discussing the reading on "Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You" that all of you were not making complete sense out of the ideas/experiments etc. described in the text.
This weekend, read the assignments very closely. Read them again a couple times if needed to make sure you completely understand. I'll be giving you a lot of questions to answer to test your comprehension.
**Updated**
PART 1
1) Read all pages of the documents "The Mighty Atom" which I sent to you by email. Take a minimum of 3 pages of notes.
Include in your notes at least 5 questions about the material - the questions can pertain to sentences you didn't understand, concepts you're not clear about, or other questions you have about the ideas discussed.
Remember to keep your notes concise and relevant. Don't repeat things that you already know - focus on writing down important ideas, examples etc.
2) Answer the following questions
1) As you read this chapter, keep a running list of phrases, sentences etc. where the author uses humor, sarcasm or wit. For example on p. 167, he says “however much you may wish it, you are not yet one with Elvis Presley.”
Your list should be at least 5 items long.
2) Keep a running list of vocabulary words you don’t know and look them up in the dictionary. Your list should be at least 5 items long.
3) There are 45 billion billion atoms in a cubic centimeter of air. Express that number in scientific notation. (p. 167)
4) What does the author mean when he says that atoms are “fantastically durable”? (p. 167)
5) In what sense are we all reincarnations (according to Bill Bryson)? (p. 167)
6) Martin Rees postulates that atoms probably survive for about 10^35 years. What do you think might happen to disintegrate or destroy atoms after their “lifetime”? (answer this question by thinking up some ideas – they don’t have to be right. You can also search on the internet to get some clues). (p. 168)
7) What does the author mean when he says “Half a million of them (atoms) lined up shoulder to shoulder could hide behind a human hair.”? (p. 168)
8) What does the author mean by a “scale of minuteness of another order”? (p. 168)
9) To which of the famous scientists of the last several hundered did the idea that all things are made up of atoms occur? (p. 168)
10) Why is John Dalton described as precocious? (p. 169)
11) What did John Dalton contribute to the idea of atoms above and beyond the Greeks’ conception of atoms?
12) During a proxy lecture, Deshal said that he had heard that atoms are more of a theoretical idea rather than a physical reality. He said that no one had ever seen an atom, nor protons, electrons and neutrons. Which famous scientist shared this idea? (p. 170)
13) Einstein provided the first incontrovertible evidence of atoms’ existence. What does incontrovertible evidence mean? (p. 170)
14) Give a few examples which exemplify physicists’ elitist attitudes. (p. 171)
15) Rutherford was described as being terrible at mathematics and not particularly clever at experimentation. Instead, he was known for his tenacity and open-mindedness. Despite his shortcomings, he won a Nobel Prize. How might being tenacious and open-minded help a scientist become successful? (p. 171)
16) What is an “untractable problem”? What are “unorthodox explanations”? (p. 171)
17) How can we all learn from Rutherford’s work ethic? Explain how you could apply the kind of tenacity Rutherford demonstrated to your own physics studies.
18) What does it mean to say that Rutherford was always at the “crest of a wave”?
19) In the plum pudding aka currant bun model, atoms were thought to be dense. Was that shown to be correct (based on your own knowledge and prior readings)? (p. 172)
20) Compare the sizes and weights of alpha particles and gold atoms (look this up on the internet).
21) The nucleus of an atom is one-millionth of a billionth of the full volume of an atom’s mass. Express that number in scientific notation. (p. 175)
22) What does it mean for galaxies to pass right through each other “unscathed”? (p. 175)
23) What does “your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy” mean? (p. 175)
24) What does it mean for Nagaoka’s conception of the atom to be “completely wrong but durable just the same”? (p. 175)
25) On p. 175, the author says that unlike the blades of a fan which only appear to be everywhere at once, electrons actually are everywhere at once. If we think about electrons being everywhere at once in an atom, then how can the atom be made of mostly empty space? Write some of your thoughts, ideas, questions. There are no right or wrong answers, but think about the question deeply and propose some ideas.
26) Feynman says that atomic behavior appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone including physicists themselves. This is an example of the unintuitive nature of physics. Give some examples of some of the concepts we’ve learned in class that were unintuitive to you when you first learned them. (There are no right or wrong answers, but reflect seriously on this question).
