Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Around 1900 physicists had good reason to feel pleased with themselves. The nineteenth century had seen huge advances in mechanics optics thermodynamics fluid mechanics and electromagnetism. But the microscopic world of atoms remained at the boundaries of knowledge. The electron had just been discovered but the atomic nucleus was still unknown and the spectral lines emitted by atoms could not be properly explained. Many properties of materials had been measured and catalogued: copper for example was characterized by its colour hardness melting temperature electrical conductivity thermal conductivity and so on. But no-one knew why copper behaved differently from iron. A major spur in the creation of quantum mechanics was the need to understand the structure and properties of atoms molecules and solids. Today the ambitions of physics have changed utterly. Using only the fact that copper atoms have atomic number 29 together with quantum mechanics and powerful computers it is possible to give quantitative explanations of many of the measured properties of copper. Moreover quantum mechanics is often used to find an arrangement of atoms that has a desired set of properties. Quantum mechanics is taking the lead in the production of tailor-made materials such as semiconductors for transistors with huge economic implications. For example in 2002 it was estimated that the world produced about 1018 transistors each year mainly for use in computer memory; this was about 40 times greater than the annual production of grains of rice. This book will describe how quantum mechanics is used to explain the structure and properties of matter. Most of the discussion will be about atoms molecules and solids but we shall also mention some aspects of nuclear and sub-atomic physics. When we deal with real systems such as atoms or molecules we often run into a quagmire of mathematical complexity. Even a hydrogen atom is not as simple as it might seem; there are small influences such as those due to the finite size of the proton the spin of the electron and relativity that prevent us from obtaining exact solutions. The skill then lies in choosing a suitable model- one that captures the essence of the true situation but which is still mathematically tractable. We will find systematic ways of taking small effects into account not exactly but in an approximate way. Approximation is essential because a vast universe of systems and behaviour cry out for explanation but very few quantum-mechanical problems can be solved exactly. Systematic approximations allow quantum mechanics to be used in the real world that Nature provides.