Hydrogen: The Essential Element

289 Pages·2003·0.99 MB·English

by  John S. Rigden

hydrogen

h y d r o g e n
The Essential Element
john s. rigden
harvard university press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
Copyright © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2003
Third printing, 2003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rigden, John S.
Hydrogen : the essential element / John S.Rigden.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-00738-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-674-01252-6 (paper)
1. Hydrogen. 2. Science—Methodology. I. Title.
QD181.H1 R54 2002
546(cid:1).2—dc21 2001051708
Contents
Prologue 1
1 In the Beginning: Hydrogen and the Big Bang 6
2 Hydrogen and the Unity of Matter: TheProut 12
Hypothesis
WilliamProut, 1815
3 Hydrogen and the Spectra of the Chemical Elements: 19
A Swiss High School Teacher Finds a Pattern
Johann JakobBalmer, 1885
4 The Bohr Model of Hydrogen: A Paradigm for the 27
Structure of Atoms
NielsBohr, 1913
5 Relativity Meets the Quantum in the Hydrogen Atom 43
ArnoldSommerfeld, 1916
6 The Fine-Structure Constant: A Strange Number 52
with UniversalSignificance
ArnoldSommerfeld, 1916
7 The Birth of Quantum Mechanics: The Hydrogen 59
Atom Answers the “Crucial Question”
Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli, 1925–26 •
PaulDirac, 1925–26
vi Contents
8 The Hydrogen Atom: Midwife to the Birth of Wave 74
Mechanics
Erwin Schrödinger, 1926
9 The Hydrogen Atom and Dirac’s Theory of the 87
Electron
Paul Dirac, 1928
10 Hydrogen Guides Nuclear Physicists: The Discovery of 96
Deuterium
Harold Urey, 1932
11 Hubris Meets Hydrogen: The Magnetic Moment of 103
the Proton
Otto Stern, 1933
12 The Magnetic Resonance Method: The Origin of 113
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
I. I. Rabi, 1938
13 New Nuclear Forces Required: The Discovery of the 125
Quadrupole Moment of the Deuteron
Norman F. Ramsey and I. I. Rabi, 1939
14 Magnetic Resonance in Bulk Matter (NMR) 137
Edward M. Purcell and Felix Bloch, 1946
15 Hydrogen’s Challenge to Dirac Theory: Quantum 150
Electrodynamics as the Prototype Physical Theory
Willis Lamb, 1947
16 The Hydrogen Atom Portends an Anomaly with the 161
Electron
I. I. Rabi, John E. Nafe, and Edward B. Nelson, 1946
17 Hydrogen Maps the Galaxy 171
Edward M. Purcell and Harold Ewen, 1951
Contents vii
18 The Hydrogen Maser: A High-Precision Clock 183
Norman F. Ramsey and Daniel Kleppner, 1960
19 The Rydberg Constant: A Fundamental Constant 197
Johannes Robert Rydberg, 1890 •
Theodor W. Hänsch, 1992
20 The Abundance of Deuterium: A Check on Big Bang 211
Cosmology
David N. Schramm, 1945–1997
21 Antihydrogen: The First Antiatom 223
22 The Bose-Einstein Condensate for Hydrogen 234
Satyendranath Bose, 1924 • Albert Einstein, 1925 •
Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman, 1995 •
Daniel Kleppner and Tom Greytak, 1998
23 Exotic Hydrogen-like Atoms: From Theory to 242
Technology
Epilogue 253
Notes 257
Acknowledgments 271
Credits 273
Index 275

Prologue
Hydrogen is the most important constituent of the universe.
—Gerhard Herzberg
Theheroineofthisbookisnature’ssimplestatom,thehydrogen
atom. With one exception—the helium atom—hydrogen is the
mother of all atoms and molecules. The hydrogen atom consists
ofasingleelectronandasingleproton;theprotonisthenucleus
of the hydrogen atom and serves as the electron’s anchor. The
universeisteemingwithhydrogen:everycubiccentimeterofdark
interstellar space, essentially void of any other known matter,1
containsafewatomsofhydrogen.Attheotherextreme,everycu-
biccentimeteroftheplanetJupiter’sinteriorcontainsinexcessof
10millionbillionbillion(1025)atomsofhydrogen.Andeverystar,
throughoutitslonglife,illuminatesitscosmicneighborhoodwith
lightthatoriginateswiththeburningoftheatomthatdominates
its material composition—hydrogen.
Onemustnotdismissthischemicalelementbecauseofitssim-
plicity. In fact, it is the simplicity of the hydrogen atom that has
enabledscientiststounravelsomeofthemysteriesofnature.This
humble atom has consistently surprised the most distinguished
(andconfident)scientistsandcontributedtoourunderstandingof
the natural world.
This book, however, is more than a book about the hydrogen
atom.Itisadrama,writtenforthegeneralreader,inwhichthein-
triguing hydrogen atom plays a starring role. Each chapter un-