The Metamorphosis of the Electron: An excursion in the landscape of physics - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

In the beginning the electron was thought of as a small ball of electric charge. With the development of the theory of relativity physicists got into troubles with this simple picture. The electron was rotating, but the speed of rotation was much too high. Calculating the mass made problems. Quantum theory solved some of the difficulties, but only by losing an intuitive understanding. The location of the electron became uncertain; the ball turned into a diffuse cloud. Simple experiments with beams of electrons clearly demonstrated truly queer properties of electrons. The particle turned into a wave. The picture of the electron got more and more unclear, the shape was transformed to unclear terms and at the end it lost its identity. As we follow the metamorphosis of the electron some of its partners, the positron and the photon, appear and they also show odd features. We will see where the electron and its partners are involved: atomic model, quantum physics, theory of relativity, classical electrodynamics, quantum electrodynamics, gravitation and antimatter. Along the way the related physics is explained in an easy manner. The book is not a textbook for physicists, and in its one hundred pages it deals only with the most exciting aspects of physics. These aspects reveal far-reaching problems which physicists and also earlier philosophers pondered as they sought a basic understanding of our universe. The book is addressing the layman and also students of physics on a higher level who are more interested in the physics behind the mathematic equations.

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