Quantum, Relativity & Forces Explained | Pixelated Physics

8 articles

Pixel-art glowing blue staircase of flat plateaus climbing into a violet night sky, the resistance steps of the quantum Hall effect

The Quantum Hall Effect Explained: Resistance i...

Cool a thin layer of electrons to a few degrees above absolute zero, add a strong magnetic field, and its Hall resistance stops changing smoothly and climbs in flat steps....

The Quantum Hall Effect Explained: Resistance i...

Cool a thin layer of electrons to a few degrees above absolute zero, add a strong magnetic field, and its Hall resistance stops changing smoothly and climbs in flat steps....

Pixel-art grid of cyan spin arrows swirling around a violet vortex and a white antivortex, captioned pairs bound, pairs free

The BKT Transition: Vortices, Topology and a No...

In two dimensions, ordinary order is impossible, yet thin superfluid films still have a sharp transition. The answer is vortices that pair up and then unbind. Here is the BKT...

The BKT Transition: Vortices, Topology and a No...

In two dimensions, ordinary order is impossible, yet thin superfluid films still have a sharp transition. The answer is vortices that pair up and then unbind. Here is the BKT...

Magnet levitating above a cold superconductor with field lines bending around it

What Is the Meissner Effect, and Why Do Superco...

Cool certain materials far enough and two things happen at once: electrical resistance vanishes, and magnetic field is pushed out of the interior. That expulsion, found by Meissner and Ochsenfeld...

What Is the Meissner Effect, and Why Do Superco...

Cool certain materials far enough and two things happen at once: electrical resistance vanishes, and magnetic field is pushed out of the interior. That expulsion, found by Meissner and Ochsenfeld...

A vast field of glowing up and down spin arrows, aligned on one side and breaking into domains of every size

The Ising Model Explained: How Tiny Arrows Expl...

The Ising model is the simplest picture of a magnet: a grid of arrows that can only point up or down, each wanting to match its neighbours. Heat scrambles them;...

The Ising Model Explained: How Tiny Arrows Expl...

The Ising model is the simplest picture of a magnet: a grid of arrows that can only point up or down, each wanting to match its neighbours. Heat scrambles them;...

Superfluid helium creeping over the rim of a glowing glass vessel while a fountain jet sprays inside

What Is a Superfluid, and Why Does Helium Climb...

Cool liquid helium below 2.17 kelvin and it turns into a superfluid: it pours through gaps too fine for ordinary liquids, creeps up the walls of its container and can...

What Is a Superfluid, and Why Does Helium Climb...

Cool liquid helium below 2.17 kelvin and it turns into a superfluid: it pours through gaps too fine for ordinary liquids, creeps up the walls of its container and can...

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;...