Quantum, Relativity & Forces Explained | Pixelated Physics

26 articles

A blazing bluish-white white dwarf in cutaway, its interior packed with tightly crowded glowing electrons

What Is Degeneracy Pressure, and What Holds Up ...

A white dwarf has no fusion left to hold it up. What stops it collapsing is electron degeneracy pressure: the Pauli exclusion principle forces electrons into ever-higher momentum states as...

What Is Degeneracy Pressure, and What Holds Up ...

A white dwarf has no fusion left to hold it up. What stops it collapsing is electron degeneracy pressure: the Pauli exclusion principle forces electrons into ever-higher momentum states as...

Superposed orb jostled by environment particles as its two ghost images separate

What Is Decoherence, and Does It Solve the Meas...

Decoherence is what happens when a quantum system becomes entangled with its surroundings: interference between its alternatives becomes practically invisible. It explains why we never see a pointer in two...

What Is Decoherence, and Does It Solve the Meas...

Decoherence is what happens when a quantum system becomes entangled with its surroundings: interference between its alternatives becomes practically invisible. It explains why we never see a pointer in two...

Cold atom cloud merging into a single glowing wave in a laser trap

Bose and Einstein: What Is a Bose–Einstein Cond...

A Bose–Einstein condensate is a dilute gas of bosons cooled until a macroscopic number share the same quantum ground state. Bose’s 1924 photon statistics and Einstein’s extension set the idea;...

Bose and Einstein: What Is a Bose–Einstein Cond...

A Bose–Einstein condensate is a dilute gas of bosons cooled until a macroscopic number share the same quantum ground state. Bose’s 1924 photon statistics and Einstein’s extension set the idea;...

Fermions each alone in separate alcoves beside bosons piled together in one bright pool

What Is the Spin–Statistics Theorem?

The spin–statistics theorem ties a particle’s spin to the symmetry of its quantum state. Integer spin → bosons (symmetric); half-integer spin → fermions (antisymmetric). Fierz (1939) and Pauli (1940) made...

What Is the Spin–Statistics Theorem?

The spin–statistics theorem ties a particle’s spin to the symmetry of its quantum state. Integer spin → bosons (symmetric); half-integer spin → fermions (antisymmetric). Fierz (1939) and Pauli (1940) made...

A glowing atom with orbit rings above a study of old books, with packets of light flying out from a glowing ember

Who Started Quantum Mechanics? Planck, Bohr and...

Quantum theory did not begin with one paper. Planck quantized energy in 1900, Bohr quantized the atom in 1913, and Heisenberg’s 1925 matrix mechanics plus the 1927 uncertainty relation made...

Who Started Quantum Mechanics? Planck, Bohr and...

Quantum theory did not begin with one paper. Planck quantized energy in 1900, Bohr quantized the atom in 1913, and Heisenberg’s 1925 matrix mechanics plus the 1927 uncertainty relation made...

A glowing cyan electron spinning in deep space, wrapped in looping twisted ribbons of light

Why Do Electrons Have Spin ½? What Spin Is, and...

Electrons carry an intrinsic angular momentum of ½ in units of ħ. It splits beams of atoms in two, makes electrons need two full turns to come back to themselves,...

Why Do Electrons Have Spin ½? What Spin Is, and...

Electrons carry an intrinsic angular momentum of ½ in units of ħ. It splits beams of atoms in two, makes electrons need two full turns to come back to themselves,...