Table Of ContentS I M P L Y
QUANTUM PHYSICS
UUSS__000011__hhaallff__ttiittllee..iinndddd 11 1166//1100//22002200 1100::1177
CONTENTS
DK LONDON
Project Editor Miezan van Zyl THE QUANTUM
US Editor Karyn Gerhard
Art Editor Mik Gates
WORLD
Designer Clare Joyce
Managing Editor Angeles Gavira
Managing Art Editor Michael Duffy
Production Editor Gillian Reid 8 VANISHINGLY SMALL
Senior Production Controller Meskerem Berhane The subatomic scale
Jacket Design Development Manager
10 THREE TINY PIECES
Sophia M.T.T.
Jacket Designer Akiko Kato The structure of the atom
Associate Publishing Director Liz Wheeler 12 PARTICLE ZOO
Art Director Karen Self
Subatomic particles
Publishing Director Jonathan Metcalf
14 WHAT IS LIGHT?
First American Edition, 2021 Electromagnetic radiation
Published in the United States by DK Publishing
1450 Broadway, Suite 801, New York, NY 10018 15 QUANTUM CONSTANT
Planck’s constant
Copyright © 2021 Dorling Kindersley Limited
DK, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC 16 RIPPLES IN SPACE
21 22 23 24 25 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Waves
001–322079–Feb/2021
18 WAVE OR PARTICLE
All rights reserved. Particle-wave duality
Without limiting the rights under the copyright
20 HOLDING IT TOGETHER
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval The strong nuclear force
system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any
21 THE FORCE OF DECAY
means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
The weak nuclear force
recording, or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of the copyright owner. 22 OPPOSITES ATTRACT
Published in Great Britain by The electromagnetic force
Dorling Kindersley Limited
23 DRAWN TOGETHER
A catalog record for this book Gravity
is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-7440-2848-5
Printed and bound in China PRE-QUANTUM
For the curious
PUZZLES
www.dk.com
26 IDEAL BODIES
This book was made with Forest Black-body radiation
Stewardship Council ™ certified
paper—one small step in DK’s 27 UV CATASTROPHE
commitment to a sustainable future. The Rayleigh-Jeans law
For more information go to
www.dk.com/our-green-pledge 28 PACKETS OF ENERGY
Energy quantization
UUSS__000022--000055__FFrroonnttmmaatttteerr..iinndddd 22 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2277
30 ENERGETIC STATES 55 INFINITE REPETITION
Atomic energy states The cosmological interpretations
31 CLOUDS OF PROBABILITIES 56 UNSEEN INFLUENCE
Electron orbitals Hidden-variable interpretations
32 PHOTON ENERGY 58 A QUANTUM HANDSHAKE
The photoelectric effect The transactional interpretation
59 SPONTANEOUS COLLAPSE
Objective-collapse hypothesis
THE WAVE
60 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
FUNCTION Quantum Darwinism
61 THE OBSERVER’S BELIEF
Quantum Bayesianism
36 DESCRIBING A QUANTUM STATE
The wave function 62 THROUGH THE MAZE
Consistent histories
38 IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE
Superposition 63 DIFFERENT VIEWS
40 SQUARED WAVE The relational interpretation
The Born rule
41 WAVE TRANSFORMATIONS
QUANTUM
Fourier transforms
42 NOT ALL IS KNOWABLE PHENOMENA
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle
44 PREDICTING CHANGE
Schrödinger’s equation 66 “SPIN”
Intrinsic angular momentum
46 EVADING MEASUREMENT
The measurement problem 67 FIELDS OF ATTRACTION
Magnetic moments
48 INSTANT COLLAPSE
Collapsing the wave function 68 THE GREAT DIVIDE
Fermions and bosons
49 PARADOX IN A BOX
Schrödinger’s cat 69 NO ROOM FOR TWO
Pauli exclusion principle
70 WHAT BARRIER?
INTERPRETATIONS
Quantum tunnelling
OF QUANTUM 72 DISTANCE NO OBJECT
Quantum entanglement
PHYSICS 74 QUANTUM TELEPORTATION
Transferring quantum states
75 UNSTABLE ENVIRONMENT
52 UNDERSTANDING QUANTUM
Decoherence
PHYSICS
The Copenhagen interpretation 76 INSIDE SOLID OBJECTS
Solid-state physics
54 EVERYTHING CAN AND
DOES HAPPEN 78 ALTERED STATES
The many worlds interpretation Bose-Einstein condensates
UUSS__000022--000055__FFrroonnttmmaatttteerr..iinndddd 33 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2277
80 FLOWING WITHOUT QUANTUM
FRICTION
Superfluidity INFORMATION
81 ENDLESS CHARGE
Superconductivity
106 NOT JUST ZEROS AND ONES
82 STRANGE QUANTUM ATOMS Qubits
Cold atom physics
107 SUPERFAST
83 UNUSUAL ORBITS Quantum computing
Rydberg atoms 108 QUANTUM CODES
Quantum cryptography
QUANTUM 109 SIMULATORS
Quantum simulation
TECHNOLOGY
NUCLEAR
86 FIRING PHOTONS AT ATOMS PHYSICS
Stimulated emission
87 HIGHLY CONCENTRATED
112 SEEKING STABILITY
Lasers
Radioactivity
88 KEEPING TIME
114 SPLITTING ATOMS
Atomic clocks
Nuclear fission
90 SOLID STATES
116 COMBINING NUCLEI
Band theory of solids
Nuclear fusion
91 SILICON CHIPS
Transistors
PARTICLE
92 LIGHT RELEASE
Light-emitting diodes PHYSICS
93 CAPTURING PHOTONS
Charge-coupled devices
120 ON THE TRAIL OF ELUSIVE
94 LEVITATION
PARTICLES
Superconducting electromagnets
Particle detectors
95 TUNNELING PAIRS
121 SIMPLY SMASHING
Josephson junctions
Particle accelerators
96 SQUIDS
122 SMALLER THAN AN ATOM
Superconducting quantum Quarks
interference devices
123 NO STRONG INTERACTIONS
98 LOOKING INSIDE Leptons
Magnetic resonance imaging
124 THE QUANTUM WORLD
100 SEEING WITHOUT LIGHT EXPLAINED
Electron microscopes The Standard Model
102 ATOMIC PROBE 126 FORCE CARRIERS
Atomic force microscopy Gauge bosons
UUSS__000022--000055__FFrroonnttmmaatttteerr..iinndddd 44 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2277
127 WHY PARTICLES HAVE MASS 150 IT’S IN OUR DNA
The Higgs boson A quantum theory of
cell mutation
128 THE OPPOSITE OF MATTER
Antimatter 151 TUNNELING FOR A REACTION
Enzymes and quantum physics
130 NOT SO STANDARD
Beyond the Standard Model 152 MAGNETIC PERCEPTION
Quantum navigation
132 UNIVERSAL FIELDS
Quantum field theory 154 OUR SENSE OF SMELL
The quantum nose
134 THE JEWEL OF PHYSICS
Quantum electrodynamics 155 QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS?
The quantum mind
135 THREE-COLOR QUARK
Quantum chromodyamics
156 INDEX
QUANTUM
GRAVITY CONSULTANT EDITOR
Dr. Ben Still is a prizewinning science
communicator, particle physicist, and
138 COMBINED FORCES author. He teaches high school physics and
A theory of everything is also a visiting research fellow at Queen
Mary University of London. He is the
140 QUANTUM FOAM
author of a growing collection of popular
Planck length and time
science books and travels the world
142 TINY VIBRATING STRINGS
teaching particle physics using LEGO®.
String theories
143 TYING IT TOGETHER CONTRIBUTORS
M-theory Hilary Lamb is an award-winning
journalist and author, covering science
144 THE FABRIC OF SPACE
Loop quantum gravity and technology. She has written for
previous DK titles, including The Visual
Encyclopedia, How Technology Works, and
QUANTUM The Physics Book.
BIOLOGY Giles Sparrow is a popular-science author
specializing in physics and astronomy. He
has written and contributed to bestselling
148 PHOTONS AND FOLIAGE DK titles, including The Physics Book,
Photosynthesis Spaceflight, Universe, and Science.
UUSS__000022--000055__FFrroonnttmmaatttteerr..iinndddd 55 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2277
T H E
Q U A N T U M
W O R L D
UUSS__000066--000077__TThhee__QQuuaannttuumm__WWoorrlldd..iinndddd 66 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2222
T H E
Q U A N T U M
W O R L D
Quantum physics describes the way the universe behaves
on the very smallest scales. Far below the limits of even
the most powerful microscopes, it governs the behaviors
and interactions of atoms and the particles from which
they are made—the fundamental building blocks of matter.
Scientists only confirmed the existence of subatomic
particles with J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron
in 1897, but the possibility that these tiny particles can
sometimes behave like waves, which is key to the strange
behavior of the quantum world, was only suggested by
Louis Victor de Broglie in 1924.
UUSS__000066--000077__TThhee__QQuuaannttuumm__WWoorrlldd..iinndddd 77 1166//1100//22002200 1100::2222
M Atoms are about 100,000 M The nucleus of M Quarks are one
-100 times smaller than -150 hydrogen is a single -180 type of elementary
M 1 any object that can be S 1 subatomic proton K 1 particle and are
O resolved with the naked N particle with a R building blocks
AT eye. Most of the atom is EO diameter of 1.8 UA for matter.
“empty” space. CL million billionths Q
U
N of a meter.
At the center S M
thoef tnhuec laetuosm— ias UCLEU-15M–10
decnosen traeigniso nne tahralyt N-140
all of its mass. 1 VANISHINGLY
SMALL
M
-180
1
The electron particles ~
N
that orbit in the outer O
shells of atoms are R
T
elementary particles on a C
E
similar scale to quarks. EL
8 THE SUBATOMIC SCALE
UUSS__000088--000099__TThhee__ssuubbaattoommiicc__ssccaallee..iinndddd 88 1166//1100//22002200 1100::1177
