Physics: Concepts and Connections

Physics:
Concepts and Connections
Art Hobson
Fifth Edition

Hobson
5e
ISBN 978-1-29203-958-9

9 781292 039589
Pearson New International Edition

Physics:
Concepts and Connections
Art Hobson
Fifth Edition
Pearson Education Limited
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ISBN 10: 1-292-03958-2

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 P E A R S O N C U S T O M L I B R A R Y

Table of Contents

Glossary
Art Hobson 1
1. The Way of Science: Experience and Reason
Art Hobson 15
Problem Set (5/e): The Way of Science: Experience and Reason
Art Hobson 45
2. Atoms: The Nature of Things
Art Hobson 49
Problem Set (5/e): Atoms: The Nature of Things
Art Hobson 67
3. How Things Move: Galileo Asks the Right Questions
Art Hobson 71
Problem Set (5/e): How Things Move: Galileo Asks the Right Questions
Art Hobson 87
4. Why Things Move as They Do
Art Hobson 93
Problem Set (5/e): Why Things Move as They Do
Art Hobson 113
5. Newton’s Universe
Art Hobson 119
Problem Set (5/e): Newton’s Universe
Art Hobson 141
6. Conservation of Energy: You Can’t Get Ahead
Art Hobson 145
Problem Set (5/e): Conservation of Energy: You Can’t Get Ahead
Art Hobson 161

I
 7. Second Law of Thermodynamics
Art Hobson 167
Problem Set (5/e): Second Law of Thermodynamics
Art Hobson 193
8. Electromagnetism
Art Hobson 199
Problem Set (5/e): Electromagnetism
Art Hobson 221
9. Waves, Light, and Climate Change
Art Hobson 227
Problem Set (5/e): Waves, Light, and Climate Change
Art Hobson 261
10. The Special Theory of Relativity
Art Hobson 269
Problem Set (5/e): The Special Theory of Relativity
Art Hobson 293
11. Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology
Art Hobson 299
Problem Set (5/e): Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology
Art Hobson 321
12. The Quantum Idea
Art Hobson 325
Problem Set (5/e): The Quantum Idea
Art Hobson 343
13. The Quantum Universe
Art Hobson 347
Problem Set (5/e): The Quantum Universe
Art Hobson 375
14. The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force
Art Hobson 383
Problem Set (5/e): The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force
Art Hobson 405
15. The Energy Challenge
Art Hobson 411
Problem Set (5/e): The Energy Challenge
Art Hobson 441

II
16. Fusion and Fission—and a New Energy
Art Hobson 449
Problem Set (5/e): Fusion and Fission—and a New Energy
Art Hobson 473
17. Quantum Fields: Relativity Meets the Quantum
Art Hobson 477
Problem Set (5/e): Quantum Fields: Relativity Meets the Quantum
Art Hobson 505
18. Summing Up
Art Hobson 511
Periodic Table of the Elements
Art Hobson 515
Flow Chart of Topics
Art Hobson 517
Index 519

III
IV
GLOSSARY

A-bomb See fission bomb. Aristotle’s physics Plausible notions that have since been discarded
AC See alternating current. by both Newtonian and modern physics. Aristotle believed that there
accelerating universe Observations of distant supernova explo- were three kinds of motion: natural, violent, and celestial.
sions show rather conclusively that the universe is not only artificial radiation Ionizing radiation from artificial sources
expanding but is expanding at an ever-increasing speed. such as medical sources. See also natural radiation.
acceleration An accelerated object is one whose velocity is astrology The belief, rejected by science for over two centuries,
changing. Quantitatively, the acceleration is the change in veloc- that events on Earth are influenced by the positions and motions
ity during a time interval divided by the duration of that time of the planets.
interval. It can be measured in (km/hr)/s, or in (m>s)>s = m>s2. astronomy The scientific study of the stars and other objects
acceleration due to gravity The acceleration of any freely in space.
falling object. On Earth this is about 10 m>s2 or, more precisely, atom See chemical element.
9.8 m>s2. atomic bomb See fission bomb.
action-reaction cycle A mutually reinforcing cycle of increased atomic number The number of protons in an atom. Also the
armaments by two or more hostile nations. number of electrons in a neutral atom. An atom’s atomic number
active solar energy Energy provided by a solar-heated liquid or determines its chemical properties and the element to which it
gas that is pumped to a location where it can be used for space or belongs.
water heating. atomic theory of matter All matter is made of tiny particles, too
air A mixture of several chemical compounds: nitrogen (N2, small to be seen.
about 80%), oxygen (O2, about 20%), argon (Ar, about 1%), and atomism The notion that nature can be reduced to the motion of
a smattering of trace gases. tiny material particles.
air resistance The resistive force that air molecules exert on an average speed An object’s average speed is its distance traveled
object moving through the air. during a time interval divided by the duration of that time interval.
alpha decay One type of radioactive decay. The spontaneous Measured in meters per second. See also instantaneous speed.
emission, by a nucleus, of an alpha particle (a helium nucleus that
breaks off of a larger nucleus). beta decay The other main type of radioactive decay. The spon-
alpha particle See alpha decay. taneous emission, by a nucleus, of a beta particle (an electron
alpha rays, beta rays, gamma rays The streams of particles that created in the nucleus). See also alpha decay.
are emitted by a macroscopic sample of radioactive material. beta particle See beta decay.
alternating current An electric current that reverses its direc- beta rays See alpha rays.
tion of flow many times every second. big bang The event some 14 billion years ago that created time,
amp or ampere The measurement unit for electric current. One space, matter, and the different forms of energy, and started the
amp is defined as a flow of 1 coulomb per second. expansion of the universe.
amplitude The maximum disturbance in a wave; the maximum biofuel Biomass (organic substances) that has been processed
deviation from the undisturbed state of the medium. to make transportation or other fuels.
anthropic principle The idea that our universe must be organ- biology and the second law of thermodynamics The entropy of
ized in the way that it is because any other organization would a growing plant decreases at the expense of a far greater entropy
not allow intelligent beings to be here to ask the question in the increase in the absorbed and reradiated solar energy that passes
first place. through the plant. A similar situation exists for all biological
antielectron See positron. processes, including the evolution of species.
antimatter Made of antiprotons, antineutrons, and positrons. biomass energy The chemical energy of organic substances.
Today’s universe consists overwhelmingly of matter, not antimatter. bit See quantum computer.
antineutron Antiparticle of the neutron. See also antiparticle. black hole Any object whose matter (mass) has gravitationally
antiparticle The theory of special relativity requires that for collapsed into a single point. Nothing can escape from its vicin-
every existing type of particle, there is an antiparticle carrying ity. When very massive stars run out of fuel, they explode, and the
the opposite charge. Quantum uncertainties allow the creation remnant collapses to become a black hole. Giant black holes exist
and annihilation of particle–antiparticle pairs such as at the centers of most galaxies, including ours.
electron–positron pairs. breeder reactor A reactor that creates more than one 239Pu
antiproton Antiparticle of the proton. See also antiparticle. nucleus (from 238U) for each 235U nucleus it fissions and so cre-
Aristarchus’s hypothesis A sun-centered theory that was ates more fuel than it uses.
rejected because it seemed to conflict with everyday observations. Brownian motion The erratic motion of a microscopic dust or
Aristotelian physics, difficulties Contrary to Aristotelian pre- pollen grain immersed in a liquid or gas, caused by numerous
dictions, heavy and light objects often fall at the same accelera- moving atoms or molecules colliding with the grain every second.
tion, and horizontally moving objects would move forever if there bubble chamber See cloud chamber.
were no external forces. burning This chemical reaction creates warmth by combining
oxygen from air with a fuel such as carbon or hydrogen.

1
 GLOSSARY

C See coulomb. chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) Chemicals whose molecules are

Calorie The amount of work (or energy) needed to raise the made of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon. Manufactured as
temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1°C. coolants, spray propellants, foaming agents, and solvents. They
cap and trade See carbon cap and trade. destroy stratospheric ozone.
carbon cap and trade One suggested way to incorporate the climate model Computer calculations based on accepted princi-
cost of global warming into the cost of products and thus reduce ples of physics, chemistry, and other science that predict climatic
CO2 emissions. An overall limit (cap) would be placed on total conditions on Earth’s surface and throughout the atmosphere for
carbon emissions, and “tradable permits” to emit a certain many years into the future, at each point of a three-dimensional
amount of CO2 (adding up to the allowed cap) would be issued to grid of points separated by several hundred kilometers.
carbon-emitting companies. Companies could buy and sell per- closed universe See geometry of the universe.
mits among themselves, so that less efficient companies would be cloud chamber A device that shows the path of a charged parti-
able to buy additional permits from more efficient companies. cle as a trail of droplets in water vapor. Its successor, the bubble
carbon capture and storage The process of capturing CO2 from chamber, shows a particle’s path as a trail of bubbles in a liquid.
fossil-fuel-fired generating plants, compressing it, piping it to a cogeneration The simultaneous production of electricity and
storage facility, and permanently storing it underground. useful thermal energy.
carbon dating A radioactive dating method in which radioac- collapse of a wave packet The instantaneous reduction in the
tive 14C in a dead organism is measured as a fraction of the total size of a wave packet that occurs when a particle’s position is
carbon in order to determine how long the 14C has been decaying measured. See also wave packet.
and when the organism died. combined heat and power See cogeneration.
carbon tax One suggested way of incorporating the cost of compact fluorescent bulb See fluorescent bulb.
global warming into the cost of products and thus reducing CO2 conduction electrons The outermost one or two electrons in the
emissions. Companies would be taxed a certain amount for each atoms of any metal. These electrons move easily through the
tonne of CO2 they emit. metal when subjected to even a small electric force.
cellulosic biomass Biomass from non-edible organic materials conductor See electrical conductor.
such as grasses, paper products, wood, agricultural waste, and conservation of charge See law of conservation of charge.
municipal solid waste. conservation of energy See law of conservation of energy.
centimeter (cm) One-hundredth of a meter. conservation of matter The total amount of matter involved in
centrifuge separation One way, widely used today, to enrich any chemical reaction, or in any other physical process, is the
uranium. See also uranium enrichment. same after the reaction as it was before. Although it is a useful
CFC See chlorofluorocarbons. principle, experiments have proved that it is only a useful approx-
chain reaction A series of neutron-induced fission reactions imation in chemical reactions, and entirely wrong in many
that proceed from one nucleus to the next by means of the neu- other situations.
trons released during each fission reaction. conservation of momentum See law of conservation of
charge See electrically charged object. momentum.
chemical compound A pure substance that can be chemically constructive interference See interference.
decomposed. Its smallest particle is a molecule, two or more containment dome See nuclear power reactor.
atoms connected into a single unit. All of a compound’s mole- continuous spectrum A spectrum containing a continuous
cules are identical. range of frequencies. See also spectrum.
chemical decomposition Any process that changes a single control rods See nuclear power reactor.
substance into two or more other substances. coolant See nuclear power reactor.
chemical element One of the approximately 116 different sub- Copernican revolution The rejection of the idea that Earth is at
stances that cannot be chemically decomposed. An atom whose the center of, and therefore basically different from, the rest of
nucleus has a specific atomic number (number of protons), the universe.
regardless of how many neutrons it might have. The elements are Copernican viewpoint The view that Earth is not a unique place
listed in the periodic table. An atom is the smallest particle of in the universe, that the same principles of nature apply through-
an element. out the universe. For example, since intelligent life occurred here,
chemical energy Energy due to molecular structure. this view argues that it also should have occurred elsewhere.
chemical origin of life See hypothesis of a chemical origin of life. Copernicus’s theory A sun-centered theory, similar to
chemical reaction A rearrangement of the atoms in molecules Aristarchus’s. The planets, including Earth, circle the sun, and
into new molecular forms. For examples, see burning, Earth spins on its axis.
respiration, and photosynthesis. cosmic inflation A widely respected hypothesis of the details of
chemically inert Does not participate readily in chemical reactions. how the big bang occurred. According to this hypothesis, during a
chemistry The study of the properties and transformations of short period in the very early universe, the universe expanded
substances (chemical compounds). enormously at a speed greater than lightspeed. This “inflation”
Chernobyl Site of world’s worst nuclear power accident. The stretched the universe to many times the size it had before the
fuel melted down, the reactor suffered a “slow nuclear explo- inflationary process began, flattening the geometry of the uni-
sion,” and a large amount of radioactivity escaped. A few tens of verse and creating the mass and energy observed today.
people were killed from short-term effects, and about 4000 are
expected to die of long-term cancers. See also meltdown.

2
 GLOSSARY

cosmic microwave background The faint microwave remnant double-slit experiment with electrons When an electron beam
of the high-energy radiation from the big bang that still fills the passes through two narrow slits and strikes a viewing screen, an
universe. interference pattern is observed. This demonstrates that an elec-
cosmic rays High-energy particles that travel through outer tron beam is a wave. The same phenomenon occurs with a proton
space. beam, neutron beam, and other beams of matter.
cosmology The study of the origin, structure, and evolution of double-slit experiment with light When single-frequency light
the large-scale universe. from two synchronized sources such as two narrow slits strikes a
coulomb Abbreviated “C.” The metric measurement unit for viewing screen, an interference pattern is observed. This demon-
electric charge. It’s the amount of charge that causes an electric strates that light is a wave.
force of 9 * 109 N on an identical charge at a distance of 1 m. It doubling time See exponential growth.
turns out to be the charge on 6.25 * 1018 electrons. d-quark See strong force.
Coulomb’s law of the electric force Between any two small drift velocity The average forward speed of a typical electron
charged objects there is a force that is repulsive if both objects along a wire in an electric current, typically less than 1 mm/s.
have positive charge or if both have negative charge, and is attrac- dualism Descartes’ idea that there are two realities, physical
tive if one has positive and the other has negative charge. This and spiritual. In the physical realm, the real or primary qualities
force is proportional to the amount of charge on each object, and are objective, impersonal phenomena such as the motion of
proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance between atoms. Human sense impressions are considered to be secondary
them. In symbols it is F r q1q2>d2. If charge is measured in qualities, caused by the primary qualities.
coulombs and distance in meters, then the force in newtons is
given by F = 9 * 109 q1q2>d2. E = mc2 See principle of mass-energy equivalence.
creation and annihilation See antiparticle. efficiency See transportation efficiency, heat engine, and
creationism The belief that the Bible’s Old Testament can be energy efficiency.
read literally as scientific and historical truth and that Earth and elastic energy Energy due to the ability of a deformed system
the biological organisms, including humans, were created sepa- to snap back.
rately just a few thousand years ago. Scientists overwhelmingly electric circuit A closed loop around which electric current
reject creationism as pseudoscientific and false. can flow.
critical mass The minimum amount of fissionable material that electric charge See electrically charged object.
will sustain a chain reaction. electric current A flow or motion of electrically charged parti-
curved space See gravity and warped space. cles. Electric currents in wires are due to electrons moving along
the wire.
dark energy Observations show that the universe is filled with a electric discharge See excite.
nonmaterial form of energy that pushes outward on the fabric of electric (or electromagnetic) energy The energy that an
space, causing it to accelerate in its outward expansion. The proper- electrically charged object has due to its position in an electro-
ties and the cause of this energy are not understood. It comprises magnetic field.
73% of the energy (and therefore 73% of the mass) of the universe. electric field Exists wherever a charged object would feel an
dark matter Also known as “exotic dark matter,” this is matter electric force if such an object were present.
that does not interact with electromagnetic radiation and so does electric force The electric part of the electromagnetic force. See
not emit, absorb, or reflect light. It is made of entirely new and also electromagnetic force.
unknown forms of matter. Dark matter comprises 23% of the uni- electric force law Electrically charged objects exert forces on
verse’s mass (and therefore 23% of its energy), while other forms each other at a distance. Like charges repel each other, and unlike
of matter (stars, planets, gas, black holes, neutrinos) comprise 4%. charges attract each other.
daughter nucleus The nucleus that remains after a radioactive electric force law (field version) An electric field surrounds
decay has occurred. every charged object. Charged objects feel electric forces when-
DC See direct current. ever they are placed in an electric field.
decarbonization Replacement of high-carbon fossil fuels such electric generator See steam-electric power plant.
as coal with lower-carbon fuels such as natural gas, and with electric vehicle (EV) Vehicle powered by a storage battery that is
zero-carbon fuels such as solar energy, nuclear power, and hydro- recharged by plugging into a wall socket. Nonpolluting, provided
gen gas generated from nonfossil energy. that the electricity comes from an environmentally friendly source.
decay curve A graph of the amount of a radioactive material electrical conductor A material (usually a metal) through which
remaining, versus time. electric current can easily flow. The atoms of these materials have
degrees Celsius See temperature. one or two outermost electrons that are only loosely attached.
destructive interference See interference. electrical insulator A material that doesn’t permit the easy flow
difficulties with Aristotelian physics See Aristotelian physics, of electric current. The atoms of these materials have firmly
difficulties. attached outermost electrons.
direct current An electric current that maintains the same electrical resistance See resistance.
direction. electrically charged (in quantum electrodynamics) See
dirty bomb A bomb powered with conventional explosions that quantum electrodynamics.
does its damage primarily by the dispersal of radioactive materi- electrically charged object Any object that can exert or feel the
als. One of the possible forms of nuclear terrorism. electric force is said to “contain electric charge.” There are two

3
 GLOSSARY

types of charge, positive and negative. Any process that causes an energy flow diagram A diagram showing the energy transfor-
object to gain a net positive or negative charge is called charging. mations occurring during some process, with energy pictured as
electromagnetic energy See electric energy. though it were a liquid flowing through pipes.
electromagnetic field The effect that electrically charged energy fluctuations See vacuum.
objects have on the surrounding space. An electromagnetic field energy level The precise, predictable energy an atom has when
fills the space around every electrically charged object and exists it is in a particular quantum state.
everywhere that a charged object would feel an electromagnetic energy-level diagram A diagram showing the collection of pos-
force if such an object were present. Light is a wave in an electro- sible energy levels for an atom.
magnetic field. energy resource A natural resource containing useful energy.
electromagnetic force The total (electric and magnetic) force The major U.S. resources today are shown in Table 1. A resource
between charges. is renewable if it can be replaced within a human lifetime; other-
electromagnetic radiation Any electromagnetic wave. wise it is nonrenewable.
electromagnetic spectrum The complete range of electromag- enrichment See isotope separation.
netic waves. Divided into the radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, entropy A quantitative measure of a system’s microscopic dis-
X-ray, and gamma-ray regions. organization.
electromagnetic wave See electromagnetic wave theory of equivalence principle No experiment performed inside a closed
light. All of the following are electromagnetic waves: radio, room can tell you whether you are at rest in the presence of grav-
infrared, light, ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays. ity or accelerating in the absence of gravity.
electromagnetic wave theory of light Every vibrating charged ether See ether theory.
object creates a disturbance in its own electromagnetic field, ether theory The idea that a nonatomic, continuous, material
which spreads outward through the field at 300,000 km/s. Light is medium, the ether, fills the entire universe and that light waves
just such an electromagnetic wave. are waves traveling through this medium. This theory was
electromagnetism The combined effects of electric and mag- rejected after 1905 because it contradicted Einstein’s theory.
netic forces. Philosophically, this amounts to a rejection of the idea that every
electron One of the fundamental particles. A point particle (so physical thing is made of a material substance, because light
far as we know today) having negative charge, about 2000 times waves are physical but not made of matter.
less massive than a proton. exchange particle In quantum field theory, forces between two
electron field The quantized matter field for electrons and particles A and B are exerted by means of other particles, called
positrons. See also matter field. exchange particles, that pass back and forth between A and B.
electron microscope Uses electron matter waves to form For example, the electromagnetic force is exerted by exchanging
images of microscopic objects. See also wave theory of matter. photons.
electron–positron pair See antiparticle. excite We excite one or more atoms whenever we cause them to
electroweak force The combined EM and weak forces. The go into an excited state; this generally causes the atom(s) to emit
quanta (or exchange particles) of the electroweak force field are radiation. A gas can be excited by heating and by electric dis-
photons, W + , W - , and Z particles. The quanta of the electroweak charge—an electric current flowing through it. See also excited
matter field are electrons and electron-neutrinos. In addition, state and ground state.
there are two more electroweak matter fields corresponding to a excited state Any quantum state of an atom having an energy
second and third generation of particles: the muon and its neu- higher than the lowest possible energy. See also ground state.
trino and the tau and its neutrino. Only the first generation is sta- exhaust See heat engine.
ble and contributes to ordinary matter. The other two generations exhaust temperature See heat engine.
are unstable and transmute quickly into other particles. expansion of the universe The general theory of relativity pre-
electroweak force field See electroweak force. dicts that the universe’s three-dimensional space must either
electroweak matter field See electroweak force. expand or contract. Observations show that expansion is, in fact,
element See chemcial element. occurring, as evidenced by the fact that distant galaxies are all
EM field See electromagnetic field. moving away from us and from each other.
emission of radiation by an atom Atoms emit radiation when experiment See observation.
they quantum-jump to a lower energy level, creating and emitting exponential growth Growth by a fixed percentage in each unit
a photon whose energy equals the difference between the two of time. It has a fixed doubling time, related to its fixed percent-
energy levels. age growth rate by T L 70>P.
energy The capacity to do work. The energy of a system is the external combustion engine See steam-electric power plant.
amount of work the system can do. Units: joule (J), Calorie,
kilowatt-hour (a power of 1000 watts operating for 1 hour). See Faraday’s law When a wire loop is placed in the vicinity of a
also work. magnet, and when either the loop or the magnet is moved, an elec-
energy conservation Measures to reduce energy consumption, tric current is created within the loop for as long as the motion
including both efficiency measures to save energy while provid- continues. Stated in terms of fields, a changing magnetic field
ing the same services and switching to less energy-intensive creates an electric field.
lifestyles. See also energy efficiency. feedback Any effect that further influences the phenomenon
energy efficiency Useful energy output of a device divided by that caused it. Negative feedback diminishes its cause, and posi-
its total energy input. See also heat engine. tive feedback enhances its cause.
field A physical entity that is spread throughout a region of
space. See also force field and matter field.

4
 GLOSSARY

field view of reality The view that the universe is made of fuel cell See fuel cell vehicle.
fields, subject to the rules of relativity and quantum physics. fuel cell vehicle Vehicle powered by hydrogen (or a hydrocar-
fission bomb, or atomic bomb (A-bomb) A bomb that gets its bon fuel such as methane) that is continuously injected into a
energy from a fission chain reaction. The fuel can be either the “fuel cell,” a battery-like device that converts the chemical
uranium isotope 235U or plutonium. In the 235U bomb, the design energy of the hydrogen directly into electricity that then runs the
can be as simple as bringing two subcritical masses together to car. It is highly efficient and nonpolluting if the hydrogen is pro-
equal or exceed a critical mass. If the bomb contains Pu, a sub- duced in an environmentally friendly way.
critical mass is made critical by squeezing it to high density. fundamental forces See four fundamental forces.
fission fragment One of the two pieces that results from the fis- fusion bomb, or hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) A bomb that gets its
sioning of a nucleus. energy from the fusion of hydrogen, triggered by a fission bomb.
flat universe See geometry of the universe. fusion reactor A nuclear power reactor that obtains its thermal
fluorescent bulb In this device, an electric current flows energy from fusion rather than fission. Now under development,
through a gas that fills the bulb, exciting the gas to emit ultravio- it might be commercially viable by the middle of the century.
let radiation, which is then absorbed by a phosphor coating inside
the glass bulb causing the coating to emit light. New high- galaxy A large aggregation of stars. Most galaxies, such as our
frequency compact fluorescent bulbs, in which the current oscil- own Milky Way, have a disklike, pizza shape and revolve about
lates much more frequently than the normal 60 Hz, have recently their centers.
been developed for increased efficiency. Galilean relativity The intuitive theory of relativity, in which
force A body exerts a force on another body whenever the first time and space are absolute (in other words, different observers
body causes the second body to accelerate. A force is an action by measure the same time intervals and the same distances) and light
one body on another; it is not a thing or a property of a body. has different speeds relative to different reference frames. See
Every force is similar to a push or a pull. also reference frame.
force diagram A diagram that shows all of the individual forces Galileo’s law of falling Neglecting air resistance, any two
acting on an object. Each force is shown as an arrow pointing in objects dropped together will fall together, regardless of their
the direction of that force. weights or shapes or substances of which they are made.
force field The effect that the source of a force has on the sur- gamma ray See alpha rays, beta rays, gamma rays.
rounding space. Examples include gravitational fields and elec- gamma-ray photon High-energy photons coming from
tromagnetic fields, which exist everywhere an object would feel, nuclear and other processes. They often accompany alpha decay
respectively, a gravitational or electromagnetic force if such an and beta decay.
object were present. gas See three states of matter.
force of gravity The downward pull by Earth on objects in gas pressure The outward push caused by gas molecules hitting
Earth’s vicinity; the pull that every material (i.e., having mass) the walls of a container.
object exerts on every other material object. See also Newton’s gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle Vehicle powered by a small
law of gravity. gasoline engine that continuously runs an electric generator that
force pair The two forces that two bodies exert on each other. energizes a small storage battery. The battery then runs the car,
forms of energy See kinetic energy, gravitational energy, much as in an electric vehicle. It is highly efficient and thus cre-
elastic energy, thermal energy, electromagnetic energy, radiant ates little pollution.
energy, chemical energy, and nuclear energy. general theory of relativity Einstein’s theory based on the prin-
fossil fuels Combustible fuels, including coal, oil, and natural ciple of equivalence. In this theory, gravity is a consequence of
gas, that store the chemical energy created by millions of years of the warping of spacetime by masses. This theory applies to accel-
accumulating layers of energy-rich plant and animal remains. erated observers; the special theory of relativity applies only to
four fundamental forces The gravitational, electromagnetic, nonaccelerated observers.
strong, and weak forces. generation See electroweak force.
free fall Falling that is influenced only by gravity and not by air geological ages The major eras in Earth’s history, as deter-
resistance or other influences. For an object that starts from rest mined by the differing layers of rock characterizing those eras.
and then falls freely to Earth, speed is proportional to the time, Some approximate ages, determined by several radioactive and
and distance is proportional to the square of the time. These pro- other methods, are: Earth, 5 billion years; life, nearly 4 billion
portionalities are also correct for any motion that starts from rest years; humans, 6 million years.
and maintains an unchanging acceleration in a straight line. See geometry of the universe According to general relativity, the
also weightlessness. large-scale structure of the three-dimensional universe must
frequency The number of vibrations that any part of a medium have one of three possible shapes: A closed universe bends back
completes in each second as a wave passes through the medium. on itself to form a three-dimensional space that is analogous to
Also the number of complete wavelengths sent out by the wave the two-dimensional surface of a sphere; it has a finite total
source in each second. Higher-frequency waves have shorter volume. A flat universe has no overall large-scale curvature, and
wavelengths and (assuming equal amplitudes) higher energies. is analogous to a flat two-dimensional surface; it has infinite total
See also medium. volume. An open universe is analogous to a two-dimensional
friction The force that one surface exerts on another due to the saddle-shaped surface; it has an infinite total volume.
roughness of the surfaces. geothermal energy The thermal energy of hot underground
steam, water, or rock.

5
 GLOSSARY

global warming The additional greenhouse-effect warming of high-level nuclear waste Used reactor fuel rods containing
Earth that is caused by fossil-fuel use, deforestation, and other highly radioactive fission products.
human activities. highly enriched uranium Uranium that has been enriched to
gluon The exchange particle of the strong force. Gluons have about 90% 235U, which is suitable for nuclear weapons use. See
zero mass and travel at lightspeed. See also exchange particle. also isotope separation.
grand unified theory A quantum field theory that would unify the Hiroshima and Nagasaki The Japanese cities that were fission-
standard model’s electroweak and strong forces into a single force, bombed near the end of World War II.
much as the EM force and weak force were unified into a single hybrid vehicle See gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle.
electroweak force. Although the parallels between the theories of hydroelectric energy The gravitational energy of raised water.
the electroweak and strong forces suggest that such a theory should hydrogen bomb See fusion bomb.
exist, there is as yet no agreed-on grand unified theory. hypothesis An educated suggestion or guess, a tentative theory.
gravitational collapse Dispersed matter drawing itself together Hz See hertz.
because of gravity.
gravitational energy Energy due to gravitational forces: Industrial Revolution The onset of the fossil-fueled industrial
GravE = weight * height. age, around 1750.
gravitational field The force field that surrounds every particle inertia A body’s ability to stay at rest or to maintain an
having mass and that is felt by every particle having mass. unchanging speed and direction of motion whenever no force is
gravitational force See force of gravity. exerted on it. Quantitatively, a body’s inertia is its degree of
graviton The quantum of the quantized gravitational field, pre- resistance to acceleration when a force is exerted on it.
dicted but not yet observed. It is predicted to move at lightspeed infrared radiation Created by the thermal motion of molecules.
and have zero mass. Not visible to the human eye.
gravity See force of gravity. input temperature See heat engine.
gravity and warped space Gravity bends light beams, so gravity instantaneous speed (speed) The average speed during a time
must warp, or curve, spacetime. In the general theory of relativ- interval that is so short that the speed hardly changes.
ity, gravity is the warping of spacetime caused by masses. Speedometers measure this. Measured in meters per second. See
Greek atom See models of the atom. also average speed.
Greek model of the atom This model pictures the atom as a insulator See electrical insulator.
tiny indestructible object, like a small and rigid pea. intelligent design The view that life is too complex in certain
greenhouse effect The warming created by Earth’s surrounding regards, such as complex cellular structures, to have evolved by
blanket of atmospheric gases. Darwinian processes and that they must have therefore been cre-
greenhouse gas The atmospheric gases, mostly water vapor ated by an “intelligent designer.” Its key idea is that complex
and carbon dioxide, that cause the greenhouse effect. structures could not evolve through intermediate nonfunctional
ground state The quantum state of the atom having the lowest steps. Scientists overwhelmingly reject intelligent design as pseu-
possible energy. See also excited state. doscientific and false.
growth rate See exponential growth. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Thousands
of cooperating international scientists who, on the basis of their
half-life The time during which half of a macroscopic amount study of the scientific literature, reported their conclusions regard-
of a radioactive isotope will decay. ing the causes and implications of global warming. Their reports,
H-bomb See fusion bomb. regarded as the scientific consensus on this topic, were issued in
heat engine Any cyclic device that uses thermal energy to do 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007.
work. Its energy efficiency, the fraction of its input thermal internal combustion engine A heat engine in which burning
energy that is converted to work, will be higher if the input tem- occurs within the hot gases that push directly on mechanical
perature is higher and the exhaust temperature is lower. The por- parts, such as a piston, to provide useful work.
tion of the input energy that is not converted to work is called the ion Any atom having an excess or deficiency of electrons.
exhaust. ionizing radiation Radiations (including electromagnetic radia-
heating The spontaneous flow of thermal energy from a higher- tion but also material radiations from radioactive materials) hav-
temperature object to a lower-temperature object. ing sufficient energy to ionize biological molecules. Includes
Heisenberg uncertainty principle See uncertainty principle. higher alpha rays, beta rays, gamma rays, X-rays, and higher-
hertz (Hz) The unit of frequency: 1 Hz = 1 vibration>second. energy ultraviolet rays. The biological damage is measured in a
See also frequency. unit called the sievert. A millisievert (mSv) is one-thousandth of a
Higgs field The standard model requires this field because sievert. The main types of damage are radiation sickness, muta-
without it all the particles of the standard model would need to tion, and cancer.
have zero mass. However, there is as yet no direct evidence for IPCC See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
this field. Its quanta, called Higgs particles, are currently irreversibility The second law implies that most processes are
sought in high-energy accelerators. The Higgs field is predicted irreversible, for example, that physical systems proceed sponta-
to pervade the universe, interacting even with isolated particles. neously toward states of higher entropy and will not proceed
This interaction acts on accelerated particles in such a way as to spontaneously in the reverse direction. This principle is responsi-
resist their acceleration. Thus the Higgs field could be the rea- ble for the difference between forward and backward in time.
son that some of the fundamental particles have mass. isotope A particular type of nucleus, having a particular num-
ber of protons and of neutrons. Isotopes are specified by their

6
 GLOSSARY

atomic number (number of protons) and mass number (total pro- lightspeed 300,000 km/s, or 3 * 108 m>s.
tons and neutrons). A symbol like 146C represents an isotope with light-year The distance that light travels in one year.
atomic number 6 and mass number 14. limitations of Newtonian physics Newtonian physics gives
isotope separation, or enrichment, of uranium Any process incorrect predictions for fast-moving objects (near lightspeed),
that increases the percentage of 235U relative to 238U. One method strong gravitational forces or large distances (intergalactic), and
is by use of spinning centrifuges. Weapons-grade uranium is small objects (atomic dimensions). Special relativity, general rel-
highly enriched to about 90% 235U. ativity, and quantum physics, respectively, do give correct predic-
tions for each of these three classes of phenomena.
joule (J) The metric unit of energy. See also work. line spectrum A spectrum that contains only separated precise
frequencies. See also spectrum.
Kepler’s theory The theory that the planets orbit the sun in linear growth Straight-line growth; it increases by the same
ellipses with the sun at one focus. This theory agrees with Brahe’s amount (rather than the same percentage) in each unit of time.
observations. liquid See three states of matter.
kg See kilogram.
kilo- (k) Prefix meaning one thousand. macroscopic Big enough to be visible to the naked eye. See also
kilogram (kg) A unit of mass. The mass (or inertia) of the object microscopic.
known as a standard kilogram. Any object that has the same iner- magnetic field Exists everywhere a moving charged object
tia as the standard kilogram has a mass of 1 kilogram. would feel an electric force if such an object were present.
kilometer (km) One thousand meters. magnetic force See magnetic force law.
kiloton The amount of energy that would be released in the magnetic force law Charged objects that are moving exert and
explosion of one thousand tons of TNT. feel an additional force, called the magnetic force, in addition to
kilowatt-hour See energy.
kinetic energy Energy due to motion: KinE = A 2 B mv2.
1
the electric force that exists when they are at rest.
magnetic force law (field version) A magnetic field surrounds
every moving charged object. Moving charged objects feel mag-
Lamb shift A small change in the energy levels of the hydrogen netic forces whenever they are placed in a magnetic field.
atom that is caused by vacuum energy fluctuations in the space magnetic poles The ends of a permanent magnet. There are two
surrounding the atom. types, north and south; like poles repel, and unlike poles attract.
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Currently the world’s largest parti- Manhattan Project The U.S. project during World War II to
cle accelerator. It accelerates two narrow beams of protons in dif- build fission bombs.
ferent directions around a circular ring 27 km long lying 100 m mass A body’s mass is its amount of inertia and also (for bodies
underground near Geneva, Switzerland. The beams collide to at rest) its quantity of matter. We find a body’s mass in kilograms
create many kinds of particles and phenomena. Each collision has by comparing its inertia with the inertia of a standard kilogram
an energy of 14 trillion electron-volts. placed at rest. See also inertia.
law See theory. mass and weight See weight and mass.
law of conservation of charge Although charge can be moved mass number The mass number of a nucleus is the number of
around and although charged particles can be created or destroyed, particles (protons plus neutrons) it contains. See also atomic
no net charge (positive minus negative) can be created or number.
destroyed. materialism The philosophy that only matter is real and that
law of conservation of energy The total energy of the partici- everything is determined by its impersonal workings. The early
pants in any process must remain unchanged throughout that Greek atomists were atomic materialists. Newtonian physics is
process. There are no known exceptions. compatible with this philosophy.
law of conservation of momentum The total momentum of any matter Material substances such as wood, soil, ice, water,
system remains unchanged, regardless of interactions among the steam, air, and gold. Matter has nonzero rest-mass and moves at
system’s parts, so long as no part of the system is acted upon by less than lightspeed, in contrast to radiation, which has zero rest-
forces external to that system. mass and moves at lightspeed.
law of entropy See second law of thermodynamics. matter–antimatter annihilation The transformation of matter
law of force pairs Forces always come in pairs: Whenever one into high-energy radiation that occurs when a subatomic particle
body exerts a force on a second body, the second exerts a force on such as an electron is brought close to its antiparticle (such as
the first. The two forces are equal in strength but opposite in a positron).
direction. matter field A new type of field that was discovered during
law of heat engines See second law of thermodynamics. the 1920s. It is quantized, and its quanta are called “electrons,”
law of heating See second law of thermodynamics. “protons,” “neutrons,” etc. This field is seen, for example, in the
law of inertia A body that is subject to no external forces main- double slit experiment with electrons. Also called “psi,” “wave
tains an unchanging velocity (or remains at rest). function,” and “electron field.” See also quantized field.
length contraction See relativity of space. matter wave A wave in a matter field. See wave theory of
LHC See Large Hadron Collider. matter and matter field.
light clock A clock whose timekeeping is based on the motion measurement See observation and measurement (in quantum
of a light beam. physics).

7
 GLOSSARY

measurement (in quantum physics) Any situation in which a Nagasaki See Hiroshima.
microscopic particle interacts with a macroscopic device such as natural motion Unassisted motion. Aristotelian physics says
a viewing screen in such a way as to create a macroscopically that falling is one form of natural motion, and horizontal motion
observable mark such as a flash. A human observer need not is always unnatural, or violent. According to Newtonian (and cur-
be present. rent) physics, motion at an unchanging speed in a straight line is
mechanical universe The philosophical view, accompanying natural motion, and falling is not natural motion.
Newtonian physics, that the clocklike workings of atoms pre- natural radiation Ionizing radiation from natural sources such
cisely and predictably determine everything else, including the as radon gas, cosmic rays, the ground, and internal consumption.
entire future of the universe. See also artificial radiation.
medium The material or nonmaterial substance through which a negative charge See electrically charged object.
wave travels. Examples: The medium for water waves is water. The negative feedback See feedback.
medium for electromagnetic waves is the electromagnetic field. net force The total, overall force on an object. The net force due
mega- (M) Prefix meaning one million. to two forces acting in the same direction is the sum of the two.
megaton The amount of energy that would be released in the The net force due to two forces acting in opposite directions is the
explosion of one million tons of TNT. difference between the two and acts in the direction of the
meltdown The melting together of nuclear reactor fuel into a stronger force.
solid radioactive mass during a nuclear power accident. neutrino A uncharged particle that experiences only the weak
metabolic rate The rate, usually measured in Cal/s, at which an and gravitational forces and hence penetrates easily through mat-
animal transforms its bodily chemical energy into other forms ter. At least two of the three types of neutrinos are now known to
of energy. have a tiny, but nonzero, mass.
meter (m) The basic metric unit of distance, about 39 inches. neutrino transformation The spontaneous change of a neutrino’s
metric system The system of measurements based on the meter, identity among the three types of neutrinos (electron-, muon-, and
second, and kilogram. Used by all nations except the United States. tau-neutrino). See also neutrino.
metric ton (tonne) 1000 kilograms, which is about neutron One of the fundamental particles. A composite particle
2200 pounds. made of three quarks.
micro- Prefix meaning millionth. neutron star A compact star a few kilometers in diameter,
microscopic Too small to be seen with the unaided eye, as resembling a giant nucleus made of neutrons. It spins rapidly,
opposed to macroscopic, or visible to the unaided eye. sending out radio beeps and light flashes. When massive stars
microscopic disorganization and the second law The second (precollapse masses of 10 to 20 solar masses) run out of fusion
law of thermodynamics results from the fact that microscopic fuel, they explode, and the remaining remnant collapses to
disorganization is overwhelmingly likely to increase rather become a neutron star.
than decrease. newton (N) A unit of force. The amount of force that can give a
microscopic interpretation of warmth Temperature is associ- 1 kg mass an acceleration of 1 m>s2.
ated with disorganized, or random, microscopic motions that are Newton’s theroy of gravity Between any two objects is an
not visible macroscopically. Higher temperature means greater attractive force proportional to the product of the two objects’
microscopic kinetic energy. masses and proportional to the inverse of the square of the dis-
Milky Way See galaxy. tance between them.
milli- (m) Prefix meaning one-thousandth. Newton’s law of motion An object’s acceleration is propor-
millimeter (mm) One-thousandth of a meter. tional to the net force exerted on it by its surroundings and is pro-
millisievert See ionizing radiation. portional to the inverse of its mass. The direction of the
model See theory. acceleration is the same as the direction of the net force. In the
models of the atom The Greek atom is a tiny indestructible appropriate units (m>s2, newtons, kilograms) it is a = F>m.
object, like a small and rigid pea. The planetary atom is made of Newtonian physics The ideas about motion, force, and gravity
parts, including a tiny central nucleus containing protons and developed by Isaac Newton and others around 1700.
neutrons and one or more electrons orbiting far outside the Newtonian physics, limitations See limitations of Newtonian
nucleus. The quantum theory of the atom is based on the post- physics.
Newtonian quantum theory. Newtonian physics and democracy All humans are fundamen-
molecule See chemical compound. tally equal, because all are ultimately governed by the same univer-
momentum The momentum of an object is its mass times its sal natural laws. Newtonian attitudes toward natural law pervade
velocity; its direction is the same as the direction of the velocity. the democratic developments of the past several centuries.
The total momentum of a system is the sum of the individual Newtonian worldview The philosophical notions associated
momenta of all the objects in the system, added together as “vec- with Newtonian physics, especially the mechanical universe and
tors” (added like arrows placed tip-to-tail). the democratic ideals implied by universal natural laws. Key fea-
mSv Abbreviation for “millisievert.” See ionizing radiation. tures: Tiny indestructible particles form the fundamental reality;
muon, tau These two particles are identical to the electron the future is precisely predictable from the past; nature can be
except for the facts that they are heavier and are unstable (they understood by analyzing it into simple individual components.
have short lifetimes). Like the electron, they are point particles See also quantum worldview.
(so far as we know). newton-meter The unit of work and of energy. Also called
mutation See ionizing radiation. the joule.
nonlocality See quantum nonlocality.

8
 GLOSSARY

nonlocality principle Entangled particles cooperate in a way ohm The measurement unit for electrical resistance.
that can be explained only by the existence of real, nonlocal con- Ohm’s law The current in a circuit element (such as a lightbulb
nections between the particles, so that a measurement of one par- or toaster) is proportional to the voltage across that element.
ticle causes a real physical instantaneous change in the other. Ohm’s law is usually written V = IR, where the proportionality
Entanglement of this sort is predicted by quantum theory and has constant R is called the circuit element’s “resistance.”
been confirmed by experiments. open universe See geometry of the universe.
nonrenewable resource A natural resource that can be used up. outer space The universe outside Earth and its atmosphere and
Its use begins exponentially, levels off, and declines. outside other astronomical bodies.
normal force The force, perpendicular to a solid surface, that is ozone The O3 molecule. A dilute layer of ozone fills the strato-
exerted by any solid surface on any object touching it. sphere, 10 to 50 km overhead. Ozone absorbs and shields biolog-
nuclear energy The energy resulting from the structure of a ical life from most ultraviolet radiation.
material’s nuclei. It is energy due to nuclear structure. Ozone Treaty Treaty that called for a nearly total phaseout by
nuclear energy curve A graph showing the energies of the dif- 2000 CE of CFCs and most other ozone-destroying chemicals.
ferent nuclei versus their mass number. The graph shows a lowest
point at mass number 56 (iron), indicating that nuclear energy can particle accelerator A device to accelerate microscopic parti-
be released by the fusion of nuclei lighter than iron and by the cles to high energies.
fission of nuclei heavier than iron. passive solar energy Energy obtained from solar radiation, nat-
nuclear fission A nuclear reaction in which a large, single ural air flows, and energy storage to provide direct solar heating.
nucleus splits into two roughly equal smaller nuclei. Nuclear peak production See production peak.
energy is released whenever a heavy nucleus is fissioned into two per In each.
nuclei that are both heavier than iron. periodic table See chemical element.
nuclear fusion A nuclear reaction in which two nuclei combine photoelectric effect Light and other radiation shining onto a
to form a single, larger nucleus. Nuclear energy is released when- metal surface can dislodge electrons from their parent atoms.
ever two light nuclei are fused to create a nucleus that is lighter This effect provides evidence that light is quantized and is the
than iron. basis for photovoltaic electricity.
nuclear power A way to get large-scale energy from the photon When an EM field deposits a quantum of energy in an
nucleus. This energy is obtainable from uranium using the world’s object such as a viewing screen, it does so all at once and at a spe-
present uranium-fueled nuclear reactors, from plutonium using cific point on the screen. The resulting tiny impact is called a
future plutonium-fueled reactors and breeder reactors, or from photon. A photon can be considered to be a particle, but of a very
hydrogen using yet-to-be-developed fusion reactors. non-Newtonian sort since it really only exists at the time of
nuclear power plant sabotage One of the four possible forms impact. Considered as a particle, each photon moves at speed c,
of nuclear terrorism. has zero rest-mass, and carries one quantum of energy. See also
nuclear power reactor A device in which chain-reacting nuclei quantum theory of radiation.
transform nuclear energy into thermal energy for electric power. photon exchange According to quantum field theory, charged
Its main components are fuel to provide energy, neutron-absorbing particles exert the electromagnetic force on each other by means
control rods to control the reaction, and a coolant to transfer ther- of exchanging photons.
mal energy from the fuel. Most reactors are enclosed in a thick, photosynthesis This chemical reaction in plants combines
concrete containment dome to prevent the escape of radioactivity atmospheric carbon dioxide with water to form carbon-based
into the environment. molecules such as glucose, along with oxygen.
nuclear reaction A change in nuclear structure. The major types photovoltaic cell A device made of semiconducting material
of nuclear reactions are radioactive decay, fusion, and fission. such as silicone, designed to use the photoelectric effect to con-
nuclear reactor A device that controllably transforms nuclear vert solar radiation (photons from the sun) directly into usable
energy into other energy forms. electricity. It’s usually disk-shaped, a few inches across, and con-
nuclear terrorism Terrorism using nuclear materials. See also nected to other cells in a flat array.
seizing a bomb, seizing bomb material, nuclear power plant photovoltaic electricity Electricity generated from solar radia-
sabotage, and dirty bomb. tion using the photoelectric effect. Sunlight causes electrons to
nuclear waste See high-level nuclear waste. flow across two thin layers of semiconducting materials—
nuclear weapon An explosive device fueled by nuclear fusion materials having properties lying midway between conductors
or nuclear fission. See also fusion bomb and fission bomb. and insulators—and then around an electric circuit. See also
nuclear weapons proliferation The spread of nuclear weapons photoelectric effect.
to additional nations and to terrorists. physics The branch of science that studies the most general
nucleus The tiny center of an atom, made of protons and principles underlying the natural world.
neutrons. piston The part of an internal combustion engine that is pushed
on by expanding gases in order to do work.
objectivity An experiment is objective if its outcome is not Planck energy See Planck scale.
influenced by humans. The Newtonian worldview assumes that Planck length See Planck scale.
perfect objectivity is possible, at least in principle. Planck mass See Planck scale.
observation The fact-gathering process. A measurement is a Planck scale The range or scale at which physicists expect typi-
quantitative observation, and an experiment is a controlled cal quantum-gravitational events to occur. Specifically, such
observation. events are expected to occur within regions about as big as the

9
 GLOSSARY

Planck length, with a duration of about the Planck time, and an proportional One quantity is proportional to a second quantity
energy about equal to the Planck energy. The Planck mass is the if, whenever the second is multiplied by some number, the first
mass of this much energy. is multiplied by the same number. One quantity is proportional
Planck time See Planck scale. to the square of a second quantity if, whenever the second is
Planck’s constant See quantum theory of radiation. multiplied by some number, the first is multiplied by the same
planet To the Greeks, these were objects that looked like stars number squared.
but that wandered, out of step with the stars. Today, we view plan- proportional to the inverse A quantity is proportional to the
ets as objects that orbit the sun in nearly circular orbits. inverse of another quantity if the first is proportional to (equal to
planetary atom See models of the atom. some number times) 1 divided by the second quantity.
planetary model of the atom The atomic model in which proportional to the square See proportional.
tiny electrons, conceived of as Newtonian particles, move in proton One of the fundamental particles. It is a composite par-
planetlike orbits around a tiny nucleus. This model cannot ticle made of three quarks.
explain line spectra and predicts that atoms will lose energy pseudoscience Claims presented so that they appear scientific
until they collapse. even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility.
plug-in hybrid car A gasoline-electric hybrid car (with a small Ptolemy’s theory An Earth-centered theory in which the planets
gasoline engine that generates electricity for a battery that runs move in circles within circles, or loop-the-loops. It was a good
the car electrically) in which the battery is a large storage battery theory that survived for 1500 years.
that can be plugged in and recharged for all-electric power for
trips up to a few tens of kilometers but that must then be quanta Discrete bundles of energy associated with the interac-
recharged by running the small engine. Its average gasoline con- tion of any quantized field (such as a quantized EM field) with
sumption is even lower than a “standard” hybrid car. any other system (such as a viewing screen). Examples: Photons
point particle A particle whose force field is centered on a sin- are quanta of the EM field, and electrons are quanta of the matter
gle point and that itself takes up no volume. All of the fundamen- field for electrons.
tal particles described by quantum field theory appear to be point quantitative risk estimatation The quantitative evaluation of
particles. See also standard model. human-made and natural risks, especially for the purpose of com-
pole See magnetic poles. paring different risks.
positive charge See electrically charged object. quantization of charge Electric charge comes in discrete
positive feedback See feedback. amounts rather than any arbitrary amount. When you charge an
positron The electron’s antiparticle. Identical to the electron object, it always gains or loses some whole number multiple of
except that it carries a positive charge. the charge on one electron.
power The rate of doing work. Units: joule/second, Watt quantized EM field An EM field that is allowed to have only
(= joule>second), horsepower; power = work>time. certain specific amounts of total energy.
power of 10 10 raised to some positive or negative power. quantized field A continuous, space-filling field that is subject
Powers of 10 are used to express huge or tiny numbers. to the laws of quantum physics. A quantized field’s range of pos-
primary qualities See dualism. sible energies is “digitized,” with only certain specific energy val-
principle See theory. ues allowed. Examples: quantized electromagnetic field,
principle of the constancy of lightspeed Light (and other quantized matter field.
electromagnetic radiation) has the same speed for all nonaccel- quantized matter field See quantized field.
erated observers, regardless of the motion of the light source or quantum See quantum theory of radiation.
of the observer. quantum computer A possible future device that would exploit
principle of mass–energy equivalence All mass has energy, and the quantum uncertainty and quantum entanglement of individual
all energy has mass. A system with m units of mass has mc2 units microscopic systems (such as ions trapped in EM fields) called
of energy. A system with E units of energy has E>c2 units of mass. qubits to make powerful calculations. The power of qubits comes
principle of relativity Every nonaccelerated observer observes from the fact that microscopic systems can be in two different
the same laws of nature, regardless of their reference frame. quantum states at the same time, in contrast to the macroscopic
“Unless you look outside, you can’t tell how fast you’re moving.” devices (such as switches) called bits used in ordinary computers.
probability An event’s fractional number of occurrences in a quantum electrodynamics The quantum field theory of elec-
long series of trials. Probabilities apply to both Newtonian situa- trons and photons (i.e., of the electron matter field and the EM
tions such as a coin flip where the outcome is predetermined and field). According to this theory, when we say that a particle is
could in principle be predicted, and to quantum situations such as electrically charged, we mean that it has the ability to emit and
radioactive decay where the outcome is not predetermined and absorb photons. Particles exert electric forces on each other in
cannot be predicted even in principle. tiny quantized increments, by photon exchanges in which one
production peak The maximum annual production of a nonre- particle emits a photon that is then absorbed by the other particle.
newable resource. Production typically follows a bell-shaped quantum of energy The smallest amount of energy that a
curve, rising at first, then reaching a production peak, then quantized field can gain or lose; the energy difference between
falling. Once the production peak is reached, prices rise and con- adjoining energy levels in a quantized field. When a quantized
tinue rising as demand increases while production levels off and field interacts with an object such as a viewing screen, energy
then declines, causing economic dislocation and hardship. is deposited in particle-like quanta, each carrying one quantum
proliferation See nuclear weapons proliferation. of energy.

10
 GLOSSARY

quantum entanglement Two particles are said to be entangled radiant energy Energy carried by an electromagnetic wave.
when their matter fields form a single, inseparable matter field, radiation Radiation has zero rest-mass and moves at lightspeed,
so that any alteration of the matter field of one particle instantly in contrast to matter, which has nonzero rest-mass and moves at
alters the matter field of the other. See also quantum nonlocality. less than lightspeed.
quantum field theory Everything is made of quantized fields radiation emitted by an atom See emission of radiation by
that obey special relativity and quantum theory. All the particles an atom.
of nature are field quanta. A field’s intensity represents the prob- radiation sickness See ionizing radiation.
ability of finding the particles that are the quanta of that field. radio waves Created by humans in such forms as AM and FM
quantum jump An instantaneous change of an atom’s matter radio, TV, radar, and microwaves.
field from one quantum state to a different quantum state, during radioactive dating Determining the ages of old objects by using
which the atom’s energy also quantum-jumps from one energy radioactive methods.
level to another. radioactive decay See radioactive nucleus.
quantum model of the atom The atomic model in which an radioactive fallout Dust that falls to the ground carrying
atom’s electrons are standing matter waves surrounding the radioactive isotopes from a nuclear explosion or nuclear accident.
nucleus. This model agrees with all experiments so far. radioactive isotope An isotope that is radioactive. See also
quantum nonlocality When a quantized field (EM field or mat- isotope and radioactive nucleus.
ter field) interacts with an object such as a viewing screen, the radioactive nucleus A nucleus that is not stable and thus will
entire spread-out field instantaneously shifts to a new quantum eventually change its structure even if left undisturbed. Such a
state, even though some parts of the field might be at a great dis- spontaneous change in structure is called radioactive decay.
tance from the point at which the interaction occurred. See also radon gas A radioactive gas that can seep into buildings from
quantum entanglement. underground. See also natural radiation.
quantum physics The physical theory of the microscopic range of possibilities The range of possible positions and
behavior of matter and radiation. velocities that a microscopic particle can have at any particular
quantum states of the hydrogen atom The various possible time, as determined by the particle’s matter field. This range can-
configurations of the matter field for a hydrogen atom’s electron. not be smaller than is permitted by the uncertainty principle. See
Each quantum state is a standing-wave pattern that obeys also uncertainty principle.
Schroedinger’s equation. reactor See nuclear power reactor.
quantum theory of the atom See models of the atom. redshift The stretching of the wavelength of radiation caused by
quantum theory of fields See quantum field theory. the stretching of space that results from the expansion of the uni-
quantum theory of matter Like EM fields, matter fields are verse. As radiation travels through expanding space, its wave-
quantized. For example, the matter field for electrons is allowed length lengthens, or shifts, toward the red end of the spectrum.
to possess enough energy for either zero electrons, one electron, reference frame The laboratory or other surroundings within
two electrons, and so on. Thus, electrons are the quanta of matter which an observer makes measurements. Measurements made in
fields. This is why there are electrons and other material particles. a particular reference frame are said to be relative to that frame.
See also matter field. relative motion Two objects are in relative motion whenever
quantum theory of radiation All EM fields are quantized. Their they have different velocities.
allowed total energies are 0, hf, 2hf, 3hf, and so on, where f is the relativity of mass An object’s inertia (in other words, its
frequency of the radiation carried by the field and mass) increases with its speed, so its mass is different for
h = 6.6 * 10 - 34 J>Hz (or J-s), called Planck’s constant. The different observers.
smallest allowed energy increment, hf, is called a quantum relativity of space Moving objects are contracted along their
of energy. direction of motion, so an object’s length is different for different
quantum uncertainty In the microscopic world, identical condi- observers. Also called length contraction.
tions often produce different outcomes. The different outcomes relativity of time The elapsed time (the number of seconds)
are unpredictable, or uncertain, although the overall statistics— between two particular events, such as two ticks on a particular
the likelihood of each of the various possible outcomes—is pre- clock or the birth and death of a person, is different for two
dictable. This uncertainty is inherent in the microscopic world observers who are in relative motion. The duration of one clock
and has no known cause. tick is longer for observers who are moving relative to the clock
quantum worldview In contrast to the Newtonian worldview, than it is for observers for whom the clock is at rest. Thus, mov-
quantum physics asserts that the universe is made of malleable ing clocks run slowly. See also time dilation.
(capable of being changed), nonmaterial fields, the nature of micro- release of nuclear energy Any transformation of nuclear
scopic systems depends on the presence of macroscopic detectors, energy into other forms of energy.
the future is inherently nonpredictable, and nature is deeply inter- renewable resource A natural resource, such as solar energy,
connected and indivisible. See also Newtonian worldview. that is continually replaced by natural processes. Its use begins
quark Fundamental particle, thought to be a point particle. exponentially, then levels off at some sustainable level (provided
Protons and neutrons are each made of three quarks of two differ- it is not overconsumed).
ent types, known as “up” and “down.” reprocessing Extraction of the plutonium from used nuclear
qubit See quantum computer. reactor fuel rods in order to make fuel for a reactor or for a bomb.

11
 GLOSSARY

resistance The tendency of any circuit element (such as a light- solid See three states of matter.
bulb or toaster) to cause a reduction in electric current around the space See outer space.
circuit. Quantitatively, it’s defined as the “R” (measured in units spacetime Space and time together, thought of as a single
called “ohms”) in Ohm’s law, V = IR, where V is the voltage entity instead of two different entities.
across the element and I is the current through the element. special theory of relativity Einstein’s theory based on the prin-
resistive force Any force that acts on a moving body in a direc- ciple of relativity and the principle of the constancy of lightspeed.
tion opposite to the body’s motion. In this theory, time and space are not absolute, and light has the
resource See nonrenewable resource and renewable resource. same speed in all nonaccelerated reference frames. This theory
respiration This chemical reaction in animals combines oxygen applies only to nonaccelerated observers, whereas the general
with carbon-based molecules such as glucose to generate useful theory of relativity applies also to accelerated observers.
energy, along with carbon dioxide and water. spectroscope A device that measures the spectrum, or set of
rest-mass The mass of an object when it is at rest. Rest-mass frequencies, emitted by a radiation source.
represents quantity of matter. spectrum The set of frequencies emitted by a radiation source.
retrograde motion A temporary change in the direction that a speed See instantaneous speed.
planet moves relative to the stars, as seen from Earth. stable nucleus A nucleus that, if left undisturbed, will remain
rocket propulsion When material is ejected from a vehicle, it unchanged forever.
exerts a reaction force back on the vehicle because of the law of standard kilogram See kilogram.
force pairs. This force accelerates the vehicle, which is then said standard model The theory of the electroweak and strong
to be “rocket propelled.” See also law of force pairs. forces. See also electroweak force and strong force.
rolling resistance The resistive force by a surface on a standing wave A wave in which the medium vibrates in a wave
rolling object. pattern but the pattern does not move.
star birth Stars form from collapsing gas clouds. Gravitational
satellite A body in orbit around a larger astronomical body. collapse heats the gas, which initiates nuclear fusion in the center,
Inertia keeps satellites moving, and the gravitational force which stops the collapse.
exerted by the central body holds satellites in their orbits. steam–electric power plant Use of thermal energy from an
Schroedinger’s equation An equation that predicts the matter external source such as burning coal to turn water into steam that
wave for material particles in a wide variety of situations. pushes on a steam turbine that provides work to generate electric-
science The observation and theoretical understanding of the ity. The device that converts the rotational motion of the turbine
natural world. See also scientific process. into electricity is called an electric generator. Since the steam is
scientific process The dynamic interplay between experience heated by fuel that burns outside of the boiler, the plant is an
(experiments and observations) and ideas (theories and hypothe- external combustion engine.
ses). See also science. steam turbine See steam–electric power plant.
second law of thermodynamics Describes the tendency of non- stratosphere The upper atmosphere, 10 to 50 km overhead.
thermal energy to end up as thermal energy. This law can be string See string hypothesis.
stated in three logically equivalent forms: The law of heating string hypothesis A promising hypothesis that unifies general
states that thermal energy flows spontaneously from higher to relativity with quantum theory but that has as yet no direct exper-
lower temperatures. The law of heat engines states that any cyclic imental verification. Its key idea is that a fundamental particle
process that uses thermal energy to do work must have a thermal such as an electron is not concentrated at one infinitely small
energy exhaust. The law of entropy states that the total entropy of point but is instead a tiny loop called a string. This spreading out
all the participants in any physical process must either increase or of the point-particle model smoothes its effects on the space
remain unchanged. See also biology and the second law. around it enough so that strings can fit into general relativity.
secondary qualities See dualism. Strings are comparable in size to the Planck distance. One odd
seizing a bomb One of the four possible ways that nuclear ter- thing about strings is that they exist in 10 spatial dimensions, 7 of
rorism could occur. which are “rolled up” so that we do not observe them in the
seizing bomb fuel One of the four possible ways that nuclear macroscopic world. Although all strings are identical, they can
terrorism could occur. vibrate in a variety of ways, and each different mode of vibration
semiconducting materials Materials having properties lying is a different elementary particle.
midway between conductors and insulators. strong force One of nature’s fundamental forces. It holds the
short circuit An electrical circuit in which a low-resistance cir- nucleus together, acts between nuclear particles (protons and neu-
cuit element (such as a piece of metal wire) is placed across a bat- trons), and is strongly attractive at separations of around 10 - 15 and
tery or wall socket, resulting in a huge current in the circuit. negligible at larger distances. The quanta (or exchange particles) of
sievert See ionizing radiation. the strong force field are gluons. The quanta of the strong matter
solar heating Using sunlight for warmth. field are the up quark (u) and the down quark (d). In addition, there
solar radiation Electromagnetic radiation from the sun. It is are two more strong matter fields corresponding to a second and
concentrated mainly in the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet. third generation of particles: the c-quark and s-quark, and the
solar system The sun and the objects that orbit the sun, includ- t-quark and b-quark. Only the first generation is stable and con-
ing the nine planets and their moons. tributes to ordinary matter: Protons are made of u-u-d, and neutrons
solar-thermal electricity Energy generated from thermal energy are made of u-d-d. The other two generations are unstable and
created by the sun. transmute quickly into other particles. Quarks are not found in iso-
lation because any attempt to isolate them creates more quarks.

12
 GLOSSARY

strong force field See strong force. transportation efficiency Useful output (such as distance trav-
strong matter field See strong force. eled, passengers moved, freight moved, or mass moved) per unit
supernova explosion The explosion of a giant star. Supernovae of fuel input.
spread the chemical elements into space and so are the source of Tycho Brahe’s observations Highly accurate data on planetary
the elements heavier than helium in our solar system. positions that disproved both Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’s theories.
sustainability A practice or policy is sustainable if it meets the
needs of people today without endangering the prospects of UFO Unidentified object in the sky. See also UFO beliefs.
future generations. UFO beliefs Two popular beliefs about unidentified flying
objects are that (1) UFOs are visitations by aliens today and (2)
tau See muon. aliens visited Earth within the past few thousand years. There is
technological imperative The tendency to build whatever tech- no evidence to support either belief; scientists overwhelmingly
nology is possible. reject them as pseudoscientific and false.
technological momentum The tendency to continue a techno- ultraviolet radiation Radiation created by higher-energy
logical project once it is started. motions of electrons in atoms that have sufficient energy to dam-
temperature A quantitative measure of warmth. The units nor- age biological matter, can cause mutations and cancers, and is not
mally used to measure temperature are called degrees Celsius. visible to the human eye. Higher-energy ultraviolet is one type of
Any device that measures temperature is called a thermometer. ionizing radiation.
theory A well-confirmed idea or group of ideas that explains uncertainty See quantum uncertainty.
or unifies a range of observations. A model is a theory that can uncertainty principle Every material particle has an inherent
be visualized. A principle or law is a single idea, often within a uncertainty in position, ¢x, and in velocity. Although either ¢x
larger theory. or ¢y can take on any value, the two are related through the fact
theory of relativity Any theory that provides answers to ques- that their product must approximately equal h/m. See also
tions about observers in relative motion. See also relative motion. quantum uncertainty.
thermal energy Energy due to temperature. Equivalently, ther- uniform circular motion Motion in a circle at an unchanging or
mal energy is microscopic energy, the kinetic (and other) energy uniform speed.
of molecules that cannot be directly observed macroscopically. unit A standard, relative to which a quantity such as the length
This microscopic motion is called thermal motion. of a table or the weight of a rock, is measured. For example, you
thermal motion The disorganized microscopic motion of mole- might measure length in inches, feet, or miles, or in the metric
cules that is associated with temperature. system in centimeters, meters, or kilometers.
thermodynamics The study of the general properties of energy. u-quark See strong force.
Thermal energy plays a central role in understanding these uranium enrichment The process of increasing the proportion
235
properties. U of to 238U in natural uranium.
thermometer See temperature.
thermonuclear reaction A self-sustaining fusion reaction that vacuum A region that contains no matter (no material parti-
creates the thermal energy needed to sustain itself. cles). According to quantum field theory, fields exist even in vac-
Three Mile Island Site of the most significant U.S. nuclear uum. Since these fields are quantized, there is some probability
power plant accident. Little radioactivity escaped even though the that field quanta—photons, or particle-antiparticle pairs—will
fuel suffered a meltdown—the fuel melted together into a solid pop into and out of existence, even in vacuum. Furthermore,
radioactive mass that slumped downward inside the reactor. quantum uncertainties allow the energy present at any point in
three states of matter Nearly every substance can exist in any vacuum to undergo random energy fluctuations around its long-
of the three states. The molecules of a solid are locked closely term average value.
together in a regular pattern, the molecules of a liquid are close velocity The combined instantaneous speed and direction of
together but not fixed in position, and gas molecules are far apart motion.
and move around rapidly. visible light Detectable by the human eye. Created by lower-
time Time is defined by clocks, in other words, by the opera- energy motions of electrons in atoms. Colors are due to different
tions we perform to measure time. The light clock, based on the wavelengths, ranging from red (longest) to violet (shortest).
motion of light beams, is a simple instrument to define time. volt The measurement unit for voltage.
time dilation See relativity of time. voltage A battery’s voltage is a measure of the amount of elec-
time travel An observer who accelerates to a high speed and trical energy the battery gives to each electron as the electron
then returns to the initial reference frame experiences a shorter passes through the battery. Measured in units called “volts.”
elapsed time than does an observer who remains in the initial
frame. So objects in the initial reference frame have aged more W + and W - particles See electroweak force.
than the traveler has. This effect makes it possible to travel to warmth, microscopic interpretation of See microscopic inter-
stars that are many light-years distant in only a few years’ travel pretation of warmth.
time. It also makes one-way travel to the future possible, by going warped space See gravity and warped space.
on a fast trip and returning. watt See power.
tonne See metric ton. wave A disturbance that travels through a medium and that
trace gases Gases that form only a minute fraction of the transfers energy without transferring matter.
atmosphere. Examples: ozone, carbon dioxide, and water vapor.

13
 GLOSSARY

wave interference The effects that occur when two waves of the is the same everywhere. For example, a kilogram has a mass of
same type are present at the same time and place. Interference can 1 kilogram regardless of whether it is on Earth or on the moon,
be either constructive or destructive, depending on whether the but its weight is about 10 N (or 2.2 pounds) on Earth and only 1.6 N
two waves reinforce or cancel each other. (or 0.36 pounds) on the moon.
wave packet A matter field for a single material particle, moving weightlessness Bodies are (nearly) weightless only when they
through space and spread out over only a limited distance, ¢x. are far from all other bodies. Bodies in orbit around Earth are not
wave theory of matter Every type of material particle, such as weightless, but they seem weightless because they are falling
electrons or protons, has a wave associated with it. It’s wave- freely (i.e., gravity is the only force acting on them) around Earth.
length is h/mv, where m and v are the mass and velocity of the white dwarf An Earth-sized, compact star. When stars having
particle. These waves are called matter waves. See also quantum about the sun’s mass run out of fuel, they flare up and then col-
theory of matter. lapse to become white dwarfs.
wavelength The distance from any point to the next similar wind energy The kinetic energy of moving air. Wind turbines
point along a continuous wave. capture this energy and convert it to electricity.
wavespeed The speed at which a disturbance (a wave) moves wind turbine Device for capturing wind energy and converting
through a medium. it to electricity.
weak force One of the four fundamental forces; a nuclear force work Object A does work on object B if A exerts a force on B
that plays a role in radioactive beta decay. while B moves in the direction of that force. Unit: newton-meter
weapons of mass destruction Nuclear, chemical, or biological (N # m) = joule (J).
weapons. work–energy principle Work is an energy transfer.
weight The weight of an object is the net gravitational force
exerted on it by all other objects. X-rays Created by the highest-energy motions of electrons in
weight versus mass An object’s weight is the force on it due to atoms. X-rays are one type of ionizing radiation.
gravity, whereas its mass is its quantity of inertia. Weight is meas-
ured in newtons (or pounds); mass is measured in kilograms. An Z particle See electroweak force.
object’s weight depends on its environment, but an object’s mass

14
The Way of Science
Experience and Reason

From Chapter 1 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

15
 The Way of Science
Experience and Reason

I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc., are
figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science.... This
loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has
given us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root
cause of all evil in the world.
Max Born, Physicist

1 STARDUST: AN INVITATION TO SCIENCE

W
e came from the stars. We are made of atoms created and blown into space
by ancient stars, a fact that’s only one strand in a network connecting us
with the rest of the universe. Science—observing and understanding the
natural world—is a path toward embracing that network.
An expanding awareness of nature is discernible in the long history of life on
Earth. There is good reason to believe that our planet formed about 5 billion years
ago and that the earliest simple living organisms formed nearly 4 billion years ago.
Since then, organisms have evolved biologically to interact with their environment
in increasingly complex ways. Looked at from the human perspective (an amoeba
might look at it differently), humankind is the latest in a sequence of increasingly
aware biological organisms.
We could even say that through biological evolution, the universe has become
more aware of itself. Education and science can be viewed as an extension of this
process. And you, as you learn about the universe, are part of that process of
expanding awareness.
Albert Einstein spoke of this widening circle of awareness when he wrote:
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time
and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated
from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind
of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons
nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our cir-
cle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in
itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
I hope that Physics: Concepts & Connections will help you discover many
links between you and the universe. In writing this text, my constant criterion has
been “Is this material relevant to readers who want to participate fully in our

16
 The Way of Science

science-based culture but who won’t necessarily use science in their professional
lives?” I’ve tried to use language that’s meaningful to literate nonscientists. There
are no extraneous technical terms and no extraneous mathematics—in particular,
no algebra. The text does, however, make wide use of numbers, proportionalities,
graphs, and numerical estimates because quantitative tools are essential to mean-
ingful communication today. Literate people must also be numerate.
I’ve discussed one reason for learning science: expanded awareness. A second For any man to abdicate an inter-
reason is to develop social values appropriate to the scientific age. Take a moment est in science is to walk with
to list a dozen problems that are important to the nation or the world. A typical open eyes toward slavery.
Jacob Bronowski, Philosopher-Scientist
list might include population growth, poverty, crime, species destruction, illiter-
acy, global warming, urban decay, drugs, war, air pollution, AIDS, and famine. Scientific activity is one of the
Every one of these problems has a science component. Now try listing solutions main features of the contempo-
to these problems. A typical list might include birth control, economic growth, rary world and, perhaps more
education, sustainable farming, democracy, international law, environmental pro- than any other, distinguishes our
tection, disease control, better government, rational use of energy, more under- times from earlier centuries.
Science for all Americans, A Report to
standing among people, and concern for the environment. All of these have a the American Association for the
science component. Advancement of Science
The problems and the solutions of our times are bound up with science and its
close relative, technology.1 That’s why we call this the scientific age. To solve these
problems, the world needs your help. We dare not simply entrust these critical
issues entirely to experts or governments.
In his book Of a Fire on the Moon, about humankind’s first venture to the moon,
novelist and journalist Norman Mailer wrote pessimistically:
The [twentieth] century would create death, devastation and pollution as never before.
Yet the century was now attached to the idea that man must take his conception of life
out to the stars.... A century devoted to the rationality of technique was also a century
so irrational as to open in every mind the real possibility of global destruction.... So it
was a century which moved with the most magnificent display of power into directions
it could not comprehend. The itch was to accelerate—the metaphysical direction
unknown.
If we are to resolve today’s problems, we must find our metaphysical direction in The dangers that face the world
this scientific age. can, every one of them, be traced
back to science. The salvations
You use the power of science daily when you switch on a light, a television set,
that may save the world will,
an automobile, or a computer. Such devices have powerful effects on the world, every one of them, be traced back
both good (light to read by) and bad (pollution from electric-generating plants). to science.
The classic moral dilemma of the scientific age—a dilemma symbolized, for Isaac Asimov, Scientist and Writer
example, in Mary Shelley’s nineteenth-century novel Frankenstein—is the prob-
lem of understanding and dealing responsibly with these powerful technologies. To
accept technology’s power without also accepting the responsibility to use that
power wisely is to invite death, devastation, and pollution—the monster’s retalia-
tion against its maker.
I will focus on that part of science called physics, along with its human con- We need people who can see
nections. You have heard of most of the major sciences: biology, geology, straight ahead and deep into the
chemistry, astronomy, physics, and others. When people ask me “What is problems. Those are the experts.
But we also need peripheral
physics?” I like to pick up something and drop it. Most things fall when you vision and experts are generally
not very good at providing periph-
eral vision.
Alvin Toffler, Writer and Futurist
1
Technology is the application of science to achieve useful human goals. This text often uses the single
word science to refer to science and technology.

17
 The Way of Science

drop them.2 You can drop a rock, a frog, a cabbage, or a king and they all fall.
Physics is the study of phenomena that, like falling, are universal. Geologists
study rocks and Earth’s structure, biologists study frogs and other living organ-
isms, while physicists study the general principles obeyed by rocks and frogs and
everything else.
How does science operate? This is the crucial question for us to answer if we are
to understand and cope with our scientific age. In most of the remainder of this
chapter, I’ll answer this question by means of a significant case study: the early his-
tory of astronomy. This begins in Section 2 with commonsense conclusions about
the night sky. The next three sections present three theories about the way the heav-
ens are organized: the ancient Earth-centered theory, Copernicus’s sun-centered
theory, and Kepler’s sun-focused theory. Section 6 discusses what this history
teaches us about science, and Section 7 looks at the cultural implications of all of
this. Finally, Section 8 studies fake science or “pseudoscience,” focusing on three
important examples.

2 OBSERVING THE NIGHT SKY

Teach me your mood, O It’s hard to see a forest when you’re standing in the middle of the trees. In the same
patient stars! way, it’s hard to fit science and technology into perspective because our culture is so
Who climb each night the immersed in them. This text’s most important theme is the study of the nature of
ancient sky,
science itself.3 How does it operate? What are its values? How valid are its conclu-
Leaving no space, no shade,
no scars, sions? You will see that science is more a path, a way of learning, than it is a body
No trace of age, no fear to die. of knowledge.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poet The “scientific method” or, as I will call it, the scientific process, is often
described as several activities that scientists sometimes practice: observing, hypothe-
sizing, testing, and so forth. But such a cookbook prescription doesn’t capture how
science works in real life. In fact, you use aspects of the scientific process whenever
you use your own experience to reason through a problem. Science is simply a careful
application of experience (often called observation and experimentation) and reason
(often called hypothesis, theory, principle, and scientific law) to answer questions.
For perspective on how science really operates, we’ll study a historical example: the
early history of astronomy. Astronomy, the scientific study of the stars and other
objects in space, has usually been closely associated with physics.
The starry sky seems a more perfect place than our daily world. Life is full of clat-
ter, the stars are serene: life is brief, the stars are forever. It is not surprising that
ancient priests looked to the stars. Here was timeless knowledge. And so for at least as
long as there have been records to tell the story, we have looked to the sky for the time
to plant and to reap, for omens of war and peace, for life’s meaning, and for our gods
(Figure 1). Although astrology, the belief that the positions of the stars significantly
influence human affairs, has been a discredited superstition for two centuries, human
fascination with the stars may be greater today than ever (Figure 2).
In these high-technology times, we sometimes fail to see the stars. On some clear
night, get away from city lights and take an hour or two to track the stars across the sky.
If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, find the moon, the Big Dipper, the North Star,
any group of stars on the eastern horizon, and a group of stars on the western horizon

2
There are exceptions: helium balloons, for example.
3
Besides this theme, three others reappear throughout the text: modern physics and its significance, the
social impacts of physics, and energy.

18
 The Way of Science

UPI/Corbis-Bettmann
Figure 1
Four thousand-year-old testimony to our reverence for the stars: the remains of Stonehenge, in England. Humans hauled the huge
stones for more than 200 miles to make these monuments. These stones are the remains of a much larger structure used for reli-
gious purposes and to predict astronomical events, particularly solstices (longest and shortest days) and equinoxes (equal-length
days and nights). Stonehenge perhaps also predicted eclipses of the moon, an impressive feat for people who did not use writing.
Eclipses occur in an irregular and apparently random pattern that repeats itself only over a 56-year cycle. Even to have been aware
that a repeated pattern exists required enormous dedication and attention to detail.

(Figure 3). Observe all of these every 15 minutes for one or more hours. What happens?
You should be able to see that the moon and stars move westward, that stars rise in the
North Star
east and set in the west, that different stars maintain their positions relative to one
another while moving as a group across the sky, that the North Star remains fixed, and
that stars near the North Star move in circles around the North Star (Figure 4).
There are several small and unusually bright starlike objects that do not keep
Little Dipper
pace with the stars. If you observe them for a week or more, you’ll see that they
slowly shift their positions relative to the stars. These objects are called planets
(wanderers in Greek). Five planets are visible without a telescope. The moon and
the sun also move at a different pace from the stars.
From such observations, most people would conclude that the stars, sun, moon,
and planets travel in circles around Earth, with their axis of rotation fixed in the
direction of the North Star. Figure 4 is rather convincing evidence of this notion.
Big Dipper
This is the conclusion most observers drew centuries ago, and it’s surely the conclu-
sion that observers draw today unless they learn differently in school. Such obser-
vations and conclusions are typical of science’s two main processes: observation Figure 3
and rational thought. Science is not really different from a lot of other human Look for these two constellations
endeavors. Whenever you observe your surroundings and develop ideas based on and the North Star in the northern
what you observe, you are acting scientifically. night sky.

19
 The Way of Science

Figure 2
Our fascination with the stars
seems greater than ever.
(a) The Hubble Space Telescope,
launched into space in 1990. For
some of its astonishing photo-
graphs, see Figure 24.

NASA/Johnson Space Center

(b) The European Southern

Observatory’s four-telescope array,
known as the “Very Large
European Southern Observatory

Telescope,” in Chile. Each tele-

scope contains a near-perfect mir-
ror eight meters in diameter. The
telescopes are connected by “light
pipes” that allow them to coordi-
nate their four different views of
a single object and use wave-
interference effects to greatly
improve the resolution of the
image. The array saw “first light”
in 1998.
(b)

20
 The Way of Science

Figure 2 (continued)
(c) Many telescopes receive nonop-
tical signals from space. This large
radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto
Rico, receives radio signals emitted
by objects that pass overhead as
Earth rotates.

NASA Headquarters
(d) The Super-Kamiokande under-
ground neutrino detector, or neutrino
telescope, being filled up with water.
Thousands of photomultiplier tubes
surround the inside of this tank of
pure water, ready to record light
when neutrinos from the sun or from
distant exploding stars interact with
atoms in the water. Neutrinos are
subatomic particles that travel
through space and also travel nearly
uninhibited through objects such as
Earth at nearly the speed of light.
Neutrinos can enter the detector and
be recorded from any direction: top,
ICRR Institute for Cosmic Ray Research

bottom (after coming through the

entire Earth), or sides.

(d)

21
 The Way of Science

National Optical Astronomy Observatories

Figure 4
Time-exposed photograph showing the “star trails” near the North Star. Observations such as
this appear to provide convincing evidence that the stars move in circles around Earth.

3 ANCIENT GREEK THEORIES: AN EARTH-CENTERED

UNIVERSE
At least as early as 3000 BCE, people were aware of the differing motions of the
stars, sun, moon, and the five planets then known. Beginning around 500 BCE, a few
Greeks sought a new kind of understanding of these motions. They desired to go
beyond the observed facts, to grasp how the system worked.
All things are numbers. Figure 5 indicates the early Greek concept of the cosmic architecture. In agree-
Pythagoras, Sixth Century BCE ment with the observations described above, the figure shows the heavenly objects
circling a motionless Earth. Because the stars all keep pace with one another, the
Greeks supposed that they all were attached to the inside surface of a single trans-
parent (invisible) spherical shell centered at Earth’s center and rotating around
Earth once a day, carrying the stars with it. The Greeks imagined that each of the
other seven objects—sun, moon, and five visible planets—was attached to this
transparent spherical shell centered on Earth, one sphere for each object. Each of
the seven spheres rotated at an unchanging, or uniform, rate around Earth roughly
once each day. These spheres rotated at slightly different rates about the same axis
through Earth’s center.
A philosophical–mathematical–religious group led by Pythagoras developed this
tentative theory or hypothesis. These Pythagoreans formed a secretive cult that
believed passionately in the importance of abstract ideas. An idea is, in a sense,
eternal. A real table, for example, eventually rots and turns to dust, but the idea of

22
 The Way of Science

Sphere of the stars Figure 5

The earliest Greek conception,
around 500 BCE, of the layout of
the universe.

Jupiter Mars

Moon
Earth

Mercury Venus

Sun

Saturn

“table” or “tableness” seems eternal. Pythagoras believed that the most perfect
ideas were mathematical because they could be stated so precisely yet abstractly.
The idea of a table is rather imprecise—a flat rock might be considered a table, or it
might be just a rock. But mathematical ideas like a straight line, a circle, or the
number 5 were precise, pure. For example, a circle is all of the points on a flat sur-
face that are at the same distance from some fixed point on the surface.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 To check your understanding of the preceding definition

of a circle, try answering this multiple-choice question: The “fixed point” and the
“distance” referred to in the definition are known, respectively, as the (a) center and
diameter; (b) axis and radius; (c) sine and cosine; (d) center and radius; (e) center
and hypotenuse.

Although this definition is precise, if you draw a circle that follows this defini-
tion (Figure 6), there will always be imperfections. Indeed, the Pythagoreans

Figure 6
If you try to draw a circle, there
will always be imperfections.

23
 The Way of Science

believed that it was the idea of a circle, rather than any particular representation of
it, that was pure and eternal.
These mathematical mystics discovered how to describe many features of the natural
world by mathematical ideas. The famous “Pythagorean theorem” is one example, and
the simple numerical relationships between tones in the common musical intervals is
another.4 They believed that the universe is based on mathematical principles or “har-
monies” analogous to the numerical relationships between the common musical inter-
vals, and that when one studies mathematics one studies the mind of God. It isn’t
surprising, then, that the Pythagoreans sought a beautiful geometric scheme for the
heavens. And what geometrical forms could be more fitting for the stars than the sphere
and the circle? After all, the sphere is the only perfectly symmetric (the same from all
vantage points) shape in space, and the circle is the only perfectly symmetric shape on a
flat surface. And as befits the timeless stars, circular paths have no beginning or end.
Let no one without geometry Other Greeks regarded all of this suspiciously. The Pythagoreans were perse-
enter here. cuted and eventually banished. But their thinking had a deep influence on subse-
Inscription over the Entrance to Plato’s quent Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, and on Western civilization.
Academy, Fourth Century BCE
In line with their picture of a universe made of eight transparent Earth-centered
spheres within spheres, these early Greeks had the startling notion that Earth itself
was a sphere residing motionless at the center of the transparent spheres. The
Pythagorean concept of a spherical Earth, although not their idea of a motionless
Earth, survives to this day.

How do we know that Earth is round? Science is based on observable evidence. So

scientists are always skeptical, always asking, “How do we know?” I will frequently ask this
question.
How do we know that Earth is spherical rather than flat? The evidence is fairly direct
today (Figure 7), but what evidence might the ancient Greeks have had? Take a minute,
to think about this.
(This is a minute, for thinking.)
The Greek philosopher Aristotle, living two centuries after Pythagoras, stressed the
importance of evidence. He gave many good observational reasons to believe that Earth
is spherical rather than flat. For one thing, ships sink little by little below the horizon as
they go out to sea (Figure 8). For a second thing, Greek travelers reported that in north-
ern lands the noontime sun is lower in the sky. For a third, the shadow cast by Earth on
the moon, as observed during an eclipse of the moon, is the shape that would be
expected if both Earth and the moon were spherical.

But there was a problem. Because the spheres rotated uniformly, the transparent
spheres hypothesis predicted that each planet moved at a uniform rate around Earth.
But careful observation showed that they do not. Instead, their rate of rotation, as seen
from Earth, changes. Figure 9 diagrams this effect for a single planet such as Mars. The
diagram is drawn relative to the background stars, so it does not show the nightly rota-
tion of Mars and the stars. Relative to the stars, Mars generally moves from west to
east, but at a variable rate. Occasionally, Mars even changes directions and moves east
to west relative to the stars, a phenomenon known as retrograde motion.

4
The Pythagorean theorem states that in any triangle having a 90-degree or right angle, if you draw three
squares, each one based on one of the triangle’s three sides, the sum of the areas of the two smaller squares
will equal the area of the larger square. As an example of the relationships between musical tones, if you
create a musical tone by plucking a string and then precisely halve the string’s length and pluck it again,
the two notes you create will be exactly one octave apart. Other simple string ratios, such as 3 to 2 or 4
to 3, produce the other musical intervals that sound harmonious.

24
 The Way of Science

Figure 7
A whole-world view showing
Africa and Saudi Arabia taken
7 December 1972 as Apollo 17
left Earth’s orbit for the moon. The
cultural impact of photos like this,
showing Earth as a single, freely
moving ball in space, may be
among the space program’s most
important benefits.

NASA Headquarters
Horizon

The Greek philosopher Plato, convinced that an elegant mathematical reality lay
behind the heavenly motions, challenged his students with the problem of finding a
geometric scheme that would explain the observed motions. They constructed a Earth
hypothesis similar to Pythagoras’s but far more elaborate, involving multiple trans-
parent spheres for each planet. Figure 8
One Greek thinker, Aristarchus, proposed that the sun and not Earth was at rest Evidence that Earth’s surface is
at the center of the universe, that Earth and the five planets circled the sun, and that spherical. As a ship sails out to sea,
an observer on shore sees it sink
Earth spun on its axis. It was a radical hypothesis, and few astronomers took it seri-
little by little below the horizon.
ously because it seemed absurd for several reasons: Earth seems nothing like the
heavens, so how could Earth be a planet like the heavenly planets? It seems absurd
to believe that Earth moves. It’s too big! What immense force could be pushing it to
keep it moving? If it does move, it seems that objects such as birds and clouds that
are not attached to the ground should be left behind. If Earth spins on its axis,
objects should be hurled off, just as a stone is hurled from a rotating sling. These
things were not observed, and so for reasons that made sense at the time, Greeks
rejected Aristarchus’s hypothesis. It would be 2000 years before a sun-centered
hypothesis would again be considered.
Another problem arose. The Greeks noticed that during a planet’s retrograde
motion it appeared brighter than at other times, as though it were closer to Earth
Figure 9
during this time. Yet Plato’s hypothesis, with each planet on an Earth-centered
The motion of a planet such as
sphere, implied that each planet maintained a fixed distance from Earth.
Mars, relative to the background
stars. Relative to the stars, Mars
*
usually moves from west to east. In
* *
* * this illustration, Mars moves more
* *
Jan slowly during July–August than it
Jul Jun does during June–July. It slows to a
Aug
Sep stop by October and then reverses
Oct Dec *
* direction during October–December
Feb Nov * * *
* * and regains its normal direction
East West during December–February.

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 The Way of Science

For its subtlety, flexibility, To explain the varying brightness of the planets, the Greeks tried something
complexity, and power the rather different. Instead of moving on multiple spheres, each planet now moved
epicycle–deferent technique... around Earth in a circle within a circle. As shown in Figure 10, a planet such as Mars
has no parallel in the history of
moved uniformly around a circle whose center was on another circle that was cen-
science until quite recent times.
In its most developed form the tered on Earth. The small outer circle was called the planet’s “epicycle,” and the
system of compounded circles inner circle centered on Earth was called the planet’s “deferent.” The center of the
was an astounding achievement. epicycle moved uniformly along the deferent, so that Mars moved in two circles at
Thomas Kuhn, Historian and the same time. This produced a loop-the-loop orbit for each planet (Figure 10). In
Philosopher of Science
agreement with observation, the theory predicted that there would be occasional
periods of retrograde motion (on the inside of the loops) and that the planet would
be closest to Earth during retrograde motion and so should appear brightest. It was
a satisfying picture, and it explained the observations. It was a good theory. You’ve
probably noticed that I’m using the word theory here rather than hypothesis.
Whereas a hypothesis is a tentative scientific idea without a lot of evidence, a the-
ory is a scientific idea that is well-confirmed by evidence.
Figure 11 pictures this theory greatly simplified. This theory was finally
refined and summarized around 100 CE by Ptolemy, antiquity’s greatest
astronomer (Figure 12). In order to agree with the known observations, Ptolemy
introduced two new ideas: the displacement or “eccentricity” of the centers and
the “equant point” from which the motion appears uniform.5 The details of these
are not crucial here. To agree with the observations, each planet needed lots of
epicycles—more than 80. Thirteenth-century Spanish king Alfonso X commented
that “if the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the creation,
I should have recommended something simpler.”

Path followed by Mars

Earth

Deferent
Epicycle

Mars

Figure 10
The orbit of Mars around Earth, according to the epicycle theory.

5
None of these ideas were original with Ptolemy, but he was the first to put them all together in a consistent
and quantitatively correct theory.

26
 The Way of Science

Figure 11
Sphere of the stars Ptolemy’s Earth-centered epicycle
theory (around 100 CE) of the lay-
out of the universe, according to
which the five visible planets move
on epicycles around Earth. The
epicycles of the two innermost
planets, Mercury and Venus, are
centered on the line joining Earth
to the sun.

Saturn
Mars

Sun

Jupiter
Venus
Mercury

Moon

Earth

How did we know planetary positions before there were telescopes? Ptolemy
checked this elaborate theory with many quantitative (numerical) measurements of the
heavens. Telescopes hadn’t been invented yet, so the measuring devices were long
sighting rods with a scale to measure the angular position of a planet. The sighting
devices were accurate to within about 0.2 degrees (recall that there are 360 angular
degrees in a complete circle). To within this accuracy, Ptolemy’s theory agreed with all
observations of the stars, sun, moon, and five known planets. It survived, with modifica-
tions, for 15 centuries and was used by navigators, astronomers, and mystics such as
astrologers. Not bad.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 The ancient Greeks believed that the stars and other

Library of Congress
astronomical objects shine by means of their own light. Can they have believed this
of every astronomical object that can be seen with the naked eye? (a) Yes.
(b) No.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 Venus often appears as the morning star (the last-seen
“star” near the rising sun) or the evening star. Ptolemy’s explanation for this obser-
vation would be that (a) Venus’s orbit around the sun lies close to the sun; (b) the
Figure 12
center of Venus’s epicycle lies on the line between Earth and the sun; (c) Venus and
The ancient astronomer Ptolemy,
Mercury orbit the sun while the other planets orbit Earth; (d) Venus is attracted to 85–165 CE. Using epicycles and
the sun’s manly appearance. (Hint: See Figure 11.) many other theoretical devices, he
perfected the Earth-centered the-
ory of the layout of the universe.

27
 The Way of Science

4 COPERNICUS’S THEORY: A SUN-CENTERED UNIVERSE

The birth year of modern science is often taken as 1543 CE. In that year, an old man
in Poland, on his deathbed, signed the first printed copy of his life’s work, On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Nicolaus Copernicus (Figure 13)—
astronomer, mathematician, linguist, physician, lawyer, politician, economist, and
canon in a Catholic cathedral—had kept the manuscript locked up for 30 years,
fearing the criticism it would unleash.
With this book, the sun was setting on the medieval world. During the Middle
Ages (about 500 to 1500 CE in Europe), philosophers such as St. Augustine and
Thomas Aquinas had linked Greek thought, including Ptolemy’s astronomy, to
Christian theology. But in 1543 the times were changing. During the past century
the intellectual and artistic flowering known as the Renaissance had germinated
American Institute of Physics/ in Italy and spread to all of Europe. Martin Luther had led a frontal assault
Emilio Segre Visual Archives on the Catholic church’s authority. Christopher Columbus had made a memo-
rable voyage.
Figure 13 These trends had a liberating effect on thoughtful minds. Copernicus and others
Polish astronomer Nicolaus were enthused by the new art, new religious thought, and new explorations. As a
Copernicus, 1473–1543. Finding
result, Copernicus was uncomfortable with Ptolemy’s theory. Not that Copernicus
Ptolemy’s system to be “neither
was a revolutionary. Quite the contrary: Copernicus objected to Ptolemy’s theory on
sufficiently absolute nor sufficiently
pleasing to the mind,” he devised a the grounds that with its many epicycles, eccentrics, and equants, Ptolemy had
simpler theory. Copernicus’s theory strayed far from ancient Pythagorean ideals. Ptolemy’s system lacked the simple
placed the sun at the center of the elegance that scientists have always sought. Here’s how Copernicus put it:
universe, with Earth moving around The planetary theories of Ptolemy and most other astronomers, although consistent
it. The odd idea that Earth moved with the data, seemed to present no small difficulty. For these theories were not ade-
and was a planet like the other quate unless certain equants were also conceived; it then appeared that a planet moved
planets met with much resistance with uniform motion neither on its deferent nor about the center of its epicycle. Hence
because it conflicted with the a system of this sort seemed neither sufficiently absolute nor sufficiently pleasing to
intuitive notion that Earth is at rest the mind. Having become aware of these defects, I often considered whether there
at the center of things and with could perhaps be found a more reasonable arrangement of circles, from which every
prevailing philosophies. apparent inequality would be derived and in which everything would move uniformly
about its proper center, as the rule of absolute motion requires.
In the centre of everything rules
the sun; for who in this most Note that like all thinkers since Pythagoras, Copernicus believed that the heavenly
beautiful temple could place this motions were circular and uniform. He stated adamantly that “it would be unworthy
luminary at another or better to suppose such a thing [as noncircular motion] in a Creation constituted in the best
place whence it can light up the possible way.”
whole at once?... In this arrange- As a Renaissance man. Copernicus adopted a broad outlook. Just as Renaissance
ment we thus find an admirable
artists looked beyond Christian art and as Columbus looked beyond Europe,
harmony of the world, and a con-
stant harmonious connection Copernicus looked beyond Earth itself to imagine it as an object in space, an object
between the motion and the size that he believed to be similar to other objects in space. To Copernicus, and to sci-
of the orbits as could not be ence since Copernicus, the ancient idea that the universe is centered on Earth
found otherwise. seemed narrow-minded, provincial.
Copernicus So Copernicus asked a broader question than had been asked before: What is the
most elegant geometric scheme for the motion of the stars, sun, moon, five
We live on a great round wonder
rolling through space. observed planets, and Earth that will fit the known measurements of the heavens?
Walt Whitman, American Poet Given this change of focus, Copernicus soon discovered “a more reasonable
arrangement of circles” in which the planets and Earth move in uniform circular
motion around the sun and only the moon circles Earth. Figure 14 shows
Copernicus’s theory. Copernicus obtained the east-to-west daily motion of the

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 The Way of Science

Sphere of the stars Figure 14

Copernicus’s sun-centered theory of
the layout of the universe, 1543 CE.
The diagram is simplified; the
planets all move on epicycles,
similar to those in Ptolemy’s theory,
but here there are far fewer
epicycles, and no equants.
Jupiter
Mars

Venus Mercury

Sun

Moon

Earth

Saturn

stars, sun, moon, and planets by allowing Earth to spin from west to east, rather
than by allowing the sphere of the stars to rotate from east to west.

How do we know that Earth and the other planets go around the sun? There
were still no telescopes in Copernicus’s day, and data were gathered with star-sighting
devices. With properly chosen radii, rotation rates, and eccentrics for the planetary orbits,
Copernicus obtained quantitative agreement with the data. His theory explained many
things, such as retrograde motion (Figure 15 and Concept Check 5). But as Copernicus
admitted, Ptolemy’s theory was also “consistent with the data.” Both theories agreed with
the data.
There were good objections to the new theory, like those that had earlier confronted
Aristarchus’s hypothesis. Being so large, how can Earth move? What keeps it moving?
Why aren’t birds and clouds left behind? Why aren’t objects hurled off Earth? Copernicus
didn’t have an answer. Instead, he pointed out that such problems loomed even larger
for Ptolemy’s great spinning sphere of stars than for Copernicus’s smaller spinning Earth.
In making this argument, Copernicus was assuming that the stars were subject to natural
laws like those operating on Earth. Nobody had looked at it in this way before. The objec-
tions to Copernicus’s theory were not answered for more than a century, when Isaac
Newton and others devised a radically new view of motion. In fact, Newton’s physics
arose partly because of these questions.

29
 The Way of Science

Figure 15
The Copernican theory’s explana-
tion of retrograde motion. As Earth
passes another planet, such as
Mars, the other planet appears to
move backward as seen against the
background stars, because of the
rotation of the Earth-based 6 5 4
observer’s line of sight. Using this 7 3
figure, you can demonstrate this by 8 2
following the instructions in 5 1
9 6 4
Concept Check 5. A similar effect 7 3
Mars
occurs when you pass a car moving 8 2
down a straight highway. Viewed
1
against distant background trees 9 Earth
and houses, the slower car appears
for a few seconds to move back-
ward, because of the rotation of
your line of sight. A decisive blow against Ptolemy’s theory and for a sun-centered theory did not
come until Galileo introduced the telescope into astronomy, some 70 years after
Copernicus’s death.6 Among other things, Galileo observed that Venus goes through
phases similar to the moon’s phases (new moon, quarter moon, full moon, and the
like). This means that Venus shines not by its own light but by light reflected from the
sun. In Ptolemy’s theory, the center of Venus’s epicycle must be fixed on the line join-
ing Earth to the sun (Figure 11), in order to explain the fact that Venus is never seen far
from the sun. As shown in Figure 16, this means that we should never see a “full
Venus” phase from Earth. On the other hand, the sun-centered theory predicts that we
should see a full Venus whenever Earth and Venus are on opposite sides of the sun.
Galileo observed that the phases of Venus included a full Venus.

There is perhaps no other example CONCEPT CHECK 4 When you say that “the sun rises in the east,” you really
in the history of thought of such mean (from the Copernican point of view) that (a) due to the sun circling around
dogged, obsessional persistence in Earth, the sun begins to appear above the eastern horizon; (b) due to Earth circling
error, as the circular fallacy which
around the sun, the sun begins to appear above the eastern horizon; (c) due to the
bedeviled astronomy for two
millennia.
sun rotating (or spinning) on its axis, the sun rotates into view above the eastern
Arthur Koestler, Twentieth-Century
horizon; (d) Earth rotates eastward around its axis to bring the sun into view;
Writer and Historian of Science (e) Earth rotates westward around its axis to bring the sun into view.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 Figure 15 shows the positions (numbered from 1 to 9) of

Earth and Mars at nine different times. As you can see, Earth is passing Mars dur-
ing this time. Draw lines of sight from Earth through Mars to the background stars
at each of these nine times. Based on this drawing, Mars is in retrograde motion
during (a) times 4 to 6; (b) times 3 to 5; (c) times 1 to 5; (d) times 4 to 7;
(e) none of the time; (f) lunchtime.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 Following up on the preceding question, if Mars were

viewed from the sun it would appear to move in (a) retrograde motion during times
4 to 6; (b) retrograde motion during times 1 to 5; (c) retrograde motion during
times 5 to 9; (d) retrograde motion the entire time; (e) normal (forward) motion the
entire time.

6
Although Galileo did not invent the telescope, he was the first to make significant scientific use of it and
the first to use it to study the heavens.

30
 The Way of Science

Figure 16
Sun
Ptolemy’s theory predicted that an
Earth-based observer would never
see a “full” phase of Venus because
Venus’s epicycle lay between Earth
Sun's and the sun. Copernicus’s theory
orbit
predicted that a nearly full Venus
could be seen whenever Venus was
on the far side of the sun in its
orbit around the sun, as it is in
Figure 14. Galileo observed that
the phases of Venus included a full
Venus, thereby disproving
Ptolemy’s theory.
Venus, in
Venus's different
epicycle phases
Earth

5 KEPLER’S THEORY: A SUN-FOCUSED UNIVERSE

Tycho Brahe (Figure 17), born three years after the death of Copernicus, loved the
night sky. A skillful fund-raiser, he obtained financing from the king of Denmark to
build a large astronomical observatory.

How do we know more accurate planetary positions? Brahe’s elegant sighting

Library of Congress
devices (Figure 18) were so accurate that his data are sometimes used today. Before
Brahe, the best measurements had inaccuracies (possible errors) of at least 10 arc-
minutes (an arc-minute is 1/60th of 1 degree). Brahe’s measurements had inaccuracies
of only 2 arc-minutes.
When Brahe began his project, there were two competing theories of the universe:
Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’s. Despite their great dissimilarity, both theories agreed with
the data known at that time. Would Brahe’s measurements be able to distinguish
between them and so determine which one was correct? For the next 20 years, Brahe
cataloged accurate data on the positions of the sun, moon, and planets. Figure 17
It soon became obvious that both theories disagreed with Brahe’s observations by Tycho Brahe, 1546–1601. By mak-
several arc-minutes! ing measurements of the planetary
positions that were five times more
accurate than were previous meas-
Just 18 months before Brahe died, the 29-year-old Johannes Kepler (Figure 19) urements, he overthrew two theo-
managed to gain employment with the famous astronomer. Kepler was born to a ries of the architecture of the
ne’er-do-well father who abandoned his family and to a mother who was later tried heavens.
for being a witch. Furthermore, “The boy was precocious above all in illness, being
beset by small pox, headaches, boils, rashes, worms, piles, the mange, and worst of
all for an aspiring astronomer, defective eyesight. His visual problems included
double vision in one eye and myopia in both eyes.”7 The hardships of his youth
seem to have toughened Kepler for the challenges to come. A philosopher, mathe-
matician, astronomer, and astrologer, Kepler was devoted to the Pythagorean notion

7
Michael J. Crowe, Theories of the World from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution (New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1990).

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 The Way of Science

American Institute of Physics/Emilio

Segre Visual Archives
Figure 18 Figure 19
An instrument that Brahe used for measuring Johannes Kepler, 1571–1630. He contem-
the angular altitudes of the planets. The two plated the Copernican theory with “incredible
wooden arms are joined together. The lower and ravishing delight,” although the scientific
arm is placed horizontally, as determined by facts compiled by Brahe forced him to alter
the string and weight hanging vertically from that theory in ways that would have displeased
the upper end of the scale. The upper arm is Copernicus. This scientist/mystic has been
raised until the arm points toward the planet. described by philosopher and novelist Arthur
The planet’s angular position above the hori- Koestler as the watershed between medieval
zontal is then read from the graduated scale. science and modern science.

of elegant mathematical order, and he harbored another devotion that could only be
described as sun worship. Regarding mathematical order, Kepler proclaimed:
Why waste words? Geometry existed before the Creation, is coeternal with the mind of
God, is God Himself; geometry provided God with a model for the Creation.
Regarding the sun:
The sun in the middle of the moving stars, himself at rest and yet the source of motion,
carries the image of God the Father and Creator. He distributes his motive force
through a medium which contains the moving bodies even as the Father creates through
the Holy Ghost.
Given these beliefs, it’s not surprising that Kepler was the first astronomer to
openly support the Copernican system, a theory whose beauty he contemplated
with “incredible and ravishing delight.” Kepler’s words and thoughts convey the sci-
entist’s passion to understand the universe.
Although he was a convinced Copernican, Kepler found that Brahe’s data for
Mars were impossible to fit to Copernicus’s theory, even though Kepler tried rein-
troducing the equant device that Copernicus had so despised. The calculations were
tedious. Kepler spent four years on this project, filling 900 notebook pages with
finely handwritten calculations. But the Copernican orbit coming closest to Brahe’s
data for Mars was still off by 8 arc-minutes. Before Brahe, this could have been
ascribed to observational error. But Kepler, toughened by the confrontation with his
master’s hard-won data, knew that neither observational error nor further tinkering

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 The Way of Science

would make uniform circular motion agree with the observed facts. Kepler rejected
the Copernican theory.
A less passionate person would have given up. Worse yet, a less tough-minded
person would have found a way to fudge the data to get them to agree with the
Copernican preconceptions that Kepler had believed most of his life. But the ever-
fervent Kepler, writing “on this 8-minute discrepancy, I will yet build a theory of
the universe,” began anew. He began studying planetary motions that, for the first
time in history, were not based on combinations of uniform circular motions.
Copernicus, and all previous astronomers, would have been horrified.
Sixteen years later, Kepler finally had his answer: The planets don’t move in cir-
cles. They move, instead, in ellipses. He was able to fit an ellipse to Brahe’s data
and thus resolve the 8-minute discrepancy that had plagued him for so long. And
the data for all the planets fit into elliptical patterns.
Kepler’s theory states that rather than moving in sun-centered circles, each
planet moves in a sun-focused ellipse: an ellipse having the sun at one of its two
“foci.” There is nothing at the other focus. Figure 20 shows how to draw an ellipse.8
You could describe it as a squashed circle. The planetary orbits are only slightly
elliptical, which is why sun-centered circles come so close to fitting the observa-
tions. The ellipse has just the kind of elegance Kepler had sought. He was elated:
What sixteen years ago I urged as a thing to be sought, that for which I joined Tycho
Brahe... at last I have brought to light and recognize its truth beyond my fondest expec- Figure 20
tations.... The die is cast, the book is written, to be read either now or by posterity, I You can draw an ellipse with the
care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand help of a loop of string and two
years for an observer. thumbtacks. The thumbtacks repre-
sent the two foci.

CONCEPT CHECK 7 You could use the tack-and-string construction of Figure 20

to construct a circle (a) by moving the two thumbtacks far apart; (b) by adding a third
thumbtack, midway between the two thumbtacks shown; (c) by placing the two
thumbtacks together.

6 SCIENCE: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN NATURE AND MIND

Let’s draw some conclusions from all this history. The most important conclusion is
that science is based on direct experience—observation and experiment—and on
rational thought to organize and understand this experience. Science’s foundation in
experience and reason distinguishes it from other forms of knowledge based on
belief, intuition, personal authority, or authoritative books.
Although observation is the beginning of the scientific process, a catalog of I measured the skies,
observed facts does not add up to an understanding of nature, any more than a tele- now the shadows I measure.
phone book adds up to an understanding of a city. To understand—literally, to “stand Skybound was the mind,
earth-bound the body rests.
beneath”—means to perceive a framework. A framework of scientific ideas is called
Kepler’s Epitaph, Composed by Kepler
a theory. In the development of astronomy, observations stimulated speculations that
led to theories, and these theories in turn suggested new observations to check the
theories and suggest new speculations. This interplay between observations and the-
ories is the essence of science. Figure 21 illustrates this dialogue with nature.

8
Here is the exact definition: An ellipse is all the points on a flat surface for which the sum of the distances
of each point on the ellipse from two fixed points (the two “foci”) is constant. The construction shown in
Figure 20 follows this definition.

33
 The Way of Science

Figure 21 A Summary of the Early History of Astronomy

How we began to learn where we
are in the universe. The figure Observations Typical Dates Theories
illustrates the dynamic interplay
Stars, sun, moon, and planets are 3000 BCE
between observations and theory
that is the essence of science. moving overhead.

500 Pythagorean hypothesis: Earth-

In science it often happens that centered transparent spheres.
scientists say, “You know that’s a
really good argument; my posi- Each planet moves at a varying
rate; retrograde motion.
tion was mistaken,” and then they Plato’s hypothesis: multiple
would actually change their 400
transparent spheres.
minds and you never hear that
old view from them again. They
really do it. It doesn’t happen as Aristarchus’s hypothesis:
often as it should, because scien- 300 sun-centered circles.
Heaven and Earth seem
tists are human and change is
different; Earth seems motionless,
sometimes painful. But it hap- apparently contradicting
pens every day. I cannot recall the Aristarchus’s hypothesis.
last time something like that hap- 200
pened in politics or religion.
Carl Sagan, Astronomer and Planets are brighter during
Science Writer
retrograde motion.
100 Hypothesis of Earth-centered
epicycles.
Physical theory without experi-
ment is empty. Experiment with- Detailed quantitative measure-
ments show need for small
out theory is blind. 0
corrections.
Heinz Pagels, Physicist Ptolemy’s theory: Earth-
centered epicycles, equants.
100 CE
1500
The whole of science is nothing
more than a refinement of every- Copernicus’s theory: sun-
centered circles.
day thinking.... The scientific way
Brahe’s accurate measurements
of forming concepts differs from disprove Ptolemy’s and
that which we use in our daily Copernicus’s theories.
life, not basically, but merely in
Kepler’s theory: sun-focused
the more precise definition of 1600 ellipses.
concepts and conclusions, more Galileo’s telescopic observations
painstaking and systematic choice disprove Earth-centered theories.
of experimental material, and
greater logical economy.
Albert Einstein
Observation refers to the data-gathering process. A measurement is a quantita-
tive observation, and an experiment is an observation that is designed and con-
trolled by humans, perhaps in a laboratory.
A scientific theory is a well-confirmed framework of ideas that explains what
we observe. A model is a theory that can be visualized, and a principle or law is
one idea within a more general theory. The word law can be misleading because it
sounds so certain. As you will see, scientific ideas are never absolutely certain.
Note that a theory is a well-confirmed framework of ideas. It’s a misconception
to think that a scientific theory is mere guesswork, as nonscientists occasionally do
when they refer to some scientific idea as “only a theory.” Theories—well-
confirmed explanations for what we observe—are what science is all about and are
as certain as any idea can be in science.
The correct word for a reasonable but unconfirmed scientific suggestion (or
guess) is hypothesis. For example, Kepler’s first unconfirmed suggestion that the

34
 The Way of Science

planets might move in elliptical orbits was a hypothesis. Once the data of Brahe and
others confirmed Kepler’s suggestion, elliptical orbits took on the status of theory
rather than mere hypothesis. Figure 22 shows the general form of Kepler’s theory of
the solar system (the sun and its planets), extended to include all eight planets
known today. This theory explains all of Brahe’s data and all preceding observations
and unifies these data into a few principles such as the principle of elliptical orbits.
As you can see, a theory represents an enormous simplification or reduction of The great intellectual division of
many observations into a few simple ideas. mankind is not along geographi-
But Kepler’s theory does more than describe known data. It also predicts new cal or racial lines, but between
observations. For example, when the new planets Uranus and Neptune were discov- those who understand and prac-
ered, Kepler’s theory predicted, correctly, that they too would move in elliptical tice the experimental method and
those who do not understand
orbits. A theory having no predictive value, which needs to be patched up to account
and do not practice it.
for every new observation, isn’t worth much. For example, Ptolemy’s theory could George Sarton, Historian of Science
doubtlessly be amended with enough new epicycles to make it agree with all of
Brahe’s data, but the result would be a confusing mess with little predictive ability.
The aim of science is not to open
Most importantly, Kepler’s theory suggested further developments. Isaac Newton, the door to everlasting wisdom, but
born a few years after Kepler’s death, built on Kepler’s theory in developing his own to set a limit on everlasting error.
theories of motion and gravity. Bertolt Brecht, Playwright, in The Life of
Another misconception about theories, especially if they happen to be called Galileo

“laws,” is that they are absolutely certain and hence that scientific knowledge is
absolute. Let’s look at history. Ptolemy’s theory correctly predicted the planetary
observations, and so did Copernicus’s theory. Both were, and are, good theories for
many purposes. But new, more accurate observations by Brahe contradicted both
theories, opening the way for Kepler’s theory. Did Kepler, then, discover the true
motion of the planets? Not necessarily. In the future, astronomers might discover
that the planets have begun severely deviating from their elliptical paths, as could
happen if, for example, another star passed close to our sun. It is always possible
that new data will contradict any general theory. Good science is always provi-
sional, nondogmatic. All theories dangle by the slender thread of evidence.

Figure 22
The arrangement of the solar sys-
tem as it is now known. Uranus
and Neptune are visible only with
a telescope. The orbits are ellipti-
cal, although their ellipticity is too
small to be visible in this diagram.
Saturn
Sun

Uranus

Mars
Earth
Venus
Mercury

Jupiter Neptune

35
 The Way of Science

In fact, today’s highly accurate observations show that the planets move along
orbits that actually do deviate slightly from precise ellipses. According to Isaac
Newton’s theories, Kepler’s elliptical orbits are caused by gravity acting between
the sun and each planet. The main cause of the deviations from elliptical motion is
gravity acting between the different planets. Interplanetary dust and many other
things also cause small deviations. Nevertheless, scientists have retained Kepler’s
theory because it’s a good and useful approximation. Perhaps we should describe
theories as good or useful rather than true.
The fact that theories are never absolutely certain is a strength, not a weakness,
of science. Absolute certainty can foster dogmatism and a rigid inability to change
what needs changing. Theories can be good, useful, fruitful, or compelling, but they
are never certain.
If a theory cannot be tested against observations, then it tells us nothing about the
observable universe and is not a scientific theory at all. Scientific theories must be
testable by observations that could conceivably contradict the theory. For example, a
notion such as “undetectable alien creatures are living among us” is not a scientific
statement, not because this notion seems odd (most scientific theories are odd), but
because the creatures are said to be undetectable. Scientifically, this statement is not
true and it’s not even false. Being untestable, it is outside science. Nonscientific ideas
can, of course, have their own validity. “Beethoven’s music is sublime,” or “May God
bless this home,” can be meaningful statements, but they lie outside science.
The elegant tools of Brahe and the inspired theories of Pythagoras and Kepler
show that science thrives on creativity. It is one of nature’s mysteries that these
beautiful inventions actually turn out to produce a consistent picture of the uni-
verse. Scientists generally believe in the Pythagorean ideal of a universe based on
simple and elegant principles. Copernicus adopted a sun-centered theory over the
[The scientific process is]
hallowed Earth-centered theory because it was “pleasing to the mind.” Scientists
designed to counter human self-
deception. People always think
such as Kepler strove passionately to perceive such an elegant framework. When
they’re right, and powerful people creating his theories, Einstein used to ask himself how he would have constructed
will tend to use their authority to the universe if he were God.
bolster their prestige and sup- The scientific process of observing and theorizing is not very different from our
press inconvenient opposition. ways of coping with daily life. In science, as in life, we learn from experience and
You try to set up the game of sci- by thinking carefully. It’s a very human activity. To summarize:
ence so that the truth will out
despite this ugly side of human
nature. The Scientific Process
Steven Pinker, Harvard, Cognitive
Psychologist, Author of The Modern Science is a process, a way of learning, rather than a set of conclusions. It is the
Denial of Human Nature
process of using evidence (experiments and observations) and reason (hypotheses
and theories that correlate the evidence) to develop testable knowledge about the
natural world. This basis in evidence and reason distinguishes science from other forms
of knowledge based on belief, intuition, personal authority, or authoritative books.

I will return frequently to the theme of the scientific process.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 The idea that proved fruitful (or useful) for Kepler as he
developed his own ideas was (a) Copernicus’s theory; (b) Aristarchus’s hypothesis;
(c) Ptolemy’s theory; (d) Plato’s hypothesis; (e) Newton’s theory.
Science is built up with facts, as a
house is with stones. But a collec- CONCEPT CHECK 9 William is absolutely certain of a particular scientific
tion of facts is no more a science
than a heap of stones is a house.
principle. You can conclude from this that (a) this principle is correct; (b) this prin-
Jules Henri Poincaré, Scientist and
ciple is wrong; (c) this principle is irrelevant; (d) William is being scientific;
Mathematician, 1854–1912 (e) William is being unscientific; (f) William is a blithering idiot.

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 The Way of Science

7 THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION: DAWN OF THE

MODERN AGE
The scientific age has its roots in two historical developments. One is the
Pythagorean belief in natural harmonies, an idea that captivated Greek philosophers
and then spread to Europe and the world. Its central premise is that the universe is
organized in a framework of principles that can be uncovered by observation. The
second is the rejection of the “geocentric illusion” that Earth is at the center of, and
therefore fundamentally different from, the rest of the universe. Copernicus started
this development, which is justly called the Copernican revolution. Its thrust is
that, just as Earth is a planet similar to the other planets, the natural world is funda-
mentally the same everywhere, differing in details at different places and times but
always following the same general principles.
When stated in this form, you can see a kind of symmetry in the Copernican
viewpoint. Symmetry is an important theme throughout science. An object is
commonly said to have symmetry when it can be viewed from several perspec-
tives and still look the same. For instance, a square can be viewed from four
directions and still look the same. The thrust of the Copernican viewpoint is that,
no matter where you are in the universe, the fundamental operating principles are
the same there as they are here on Earth.
Others began thinking along these lines. It became apparent that the sun—consid-
ered by Copernicus and Kepler to be central to the universe—was a star like the
other stars. We now know that the visible stars belong to a vast revolving aggregation
of some 400 billion stars spread out in the shape of a giant pizza. Our sun, one of the
stars in the outreaches of this aggregation, circles the center every 200 million years.
But the center of this aggregation is not at the center of the universe, either. Instead,
there are hundreds of billions of other similar aggregations of stars throughout the
observable universe. And according to current theories, none of these aggregations is
at the center, because the universe has no center—an odd idea that is the ultimate
extension of Copernican astronomy.
Each of these aggregations is called a galaxy. Ours is the Milky Way galaxy.
Figure 23 shows a typical galaxy, one much like our own. The cloudlike glow in
the night sky that is called the Milky Way is our galaxy seen from our position
Figure 23
The Andromeda galaxy, photo-
graphed through a telescope. This
is the nearest large galaxy outside
of our own Milky Way galaxy. Like
our galaxy, Andromeda is made of
billions of stars, each one some-
what similar to our sun, whirling
around a bright star-filled center.
Andromeda is nearly invisible to
the unaided eye and lies far beyond
the visible stars of our own galaxy.
Since light takes about 2.5 million
NASA Headquarters

years to reach here from there, you

are looking at 2.5-million-year-old
history.

37
 The Way of Science

within it—it’s like standing in the middle of a giant pizza and looking into the
dough. The glow comes from the stars in only a small, local portion of our entire
galaxy. The center of our galaxy lies far beyond the visible Milky Way, in the direc-
tion of the constellation (group of stars) known as Sagittarius.
There are lots of galaxies out there. Figure 24 is a photograph of the very distant
galaxies in a typical narrow speck of sky containing hundreds of galaxies. In the entire
observable universe—that part of the universe from which we can receive light—there
are something like 100 billion galaxies. There are about as many galaxies in the
observable universe as there are stars in our Milky Way galaxy! It’s a big place.
Copernicus sowed the seeds of many revolutions. Once Copernicus announced that
Earth is a planet, Isaac Newton could unify the heavens and Earth in a new physics
based on principles that were uniform throughout the universe. And just as Copernicus
Humanity has perhaps never unified Earth with the other planets, Charles Darwin conceived an evolutionary biol-
faced a greater challenge; for by ogy that unified all life and included humankind as one species among many. The
[Copernicus’s] admission [that Copernican/Newtonian conception of natural laws that apply democratically every-
humanity is not the center of the where and to all people helped to propel the political transition from medieval author-
universe], how much else did not ity to constitutional law and democracy. The U.S. Declaration of Independence, for
collapse in dust and smoke: a example, refers to the “Laws of Nature” that entitle the people to assume a separate
second paradise, a world of inno-
and equal station with their former rulers. This notion that natural law applies equally
cence, poetry and piety, the wit-
ness of the senses, the conviction to all people stems partly from the universality of Newtonian physics.
of a religious and poetic faith...; Copernican astronomy was correctly perceived as revolutionary by religious and
no wonder that men had no philosophical authorities. Ptolemy’s system had been developed in parallel with
stomach for all this, that they Earth-centered Aristotelian physics, and Aristotle’s thinking was a foundation of
ranged themselves in every way Catholic theology. The perfection of heaven, the imperfection of Earth, and
against such a doctrine. humankind’s centrality to God’s plan for the universe were threatened by the loss of
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe,
Nineteenth-Century German Poet
the Ptolemaic system.
and Dramatist Seventy years after Copernicus’s death, the Catholic church pronounced his the-
ory “false and erroneous,” “altogether opposed to Holy Scripture,” and “heretical.”
Science historians believe that during this period, science and religion fell out into
two noncommunicating camps that still, today, feel they are at odds with each other.

Figure 24
This view of distant galaxies was
taken with the Hubble Space
Telescope. Nearly every object in
the photograph is an entire galaxy,
most of them so far away that the
light we see from them started on
its journey about 13 billion years
ago. This is around the time we
believe the galaxies were formed,
and only about 1 billion years after
the origin of the universe. The
NASA Headquarters

view covers only a narrow speck of

sky one-thirtieth the diameter of
the full moon, and reaches deeper
into space than any previously
visible image. Although this view
shows a very small sample of sky,
it is considered a typical represen-
tative of the distribution of galax-
ies in space because the universe,
statistically, looks the same in
all directions.

38
 The Way of Science

This situation is a far cry from the Pythagoreans, who considered science and reli-
gion to be the same thing. Champions of the Copernican theory were denounced
and persecuted by religious authorities.9
Leaders of the Protestant Reformation were even more extreme in denouncing the
new astronomy. The main Protestant objection was that the new theory ran counter to
a “literal” reading of the Bible. The Bible frequently mentions a moving sun and a
fixed Earth, contrary to the Copernican theory. Even before publication of the new
theory, Protestant leader Martin Luther heard about Copernicus’s ideas and con-
demned them for contradicting the Bible. In Luther’s opinion, “The fool [Copernicus]
will turn the whole science of astronomy upside down. But, as the Holy Writ declares,
it was the sun and not the Earth which Joshua commanded to stand still.”
It is not surprising that Copernicus, prudent by nature, withheld publication of
his planetary theory until his dying day.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 Which of the following represent a continuation of the

basic thrust of the Copernican revolution? (a) The universe was made for humans.
(b) The moon is probably made of material that split off of Earth. (c) Our sun is just
one star among billions of similar stars. (d) Our Milky Way galaxy is at the center
of the universe. (e) The human species is not very different biologically from the
other species. (f) Our galaxy is just one among billions of similar galaxies.

CONCEPT CHECK 11 The most characteristic feature of science is (a) the use
of precise mathematical relations; (b) precise quantitative observations; (c) the
absolute truth of the scientific laws; (d) the mutually supporting relationship
between theory and observation.

8 PSEUDOSCIENCE
As part of understanding what science is, we need to understand what it’s not. Early in 1926 [the magician]
Because science is so widely accepted today, it has become common for all manner Houdini made a pilgrimage to
Washington to enlist the aid of
of charlatans to hawk their wares by alleging some scientific basis for them. Thus
President Coolidge in his cam-
we’ve been treated, during the past century or so, to a proliferation of paign “to abolish the criminal
pseudoscientific claims—claims presented so as to appear scientific even though practice of spirit mediums and
they lack supporting evidence and plausibility and therefore aren’t scientific. other charlatans who rob and
Typically, pseudoscientists reverse the scientific process by assuming their desired cheat grief-stricken people with
conclusion at the outset and then searching for evidence that supports that conclu- alleged messages.”
sion while ignoring evidence and arguments to the contrary. Using such a biased From Houdini, by B. R. Sugar

and backwards approach, it’s possible to “prove” (in the eyes of the convinced
believer) anything, including some of the most absurd nonsense imaginable.
Pseudoscience comes in many guises (Table 1). Although some of the supposed
phenomena in Table 1 are not entirely ruled out by the evidence, there is no real sci-
entific evidence that actually supports any of them. Although they might have other,
non-scientific virtues, these beliefs lie outside of science because they have not
received support from the scientific process. Every science that is a science has
It’s a significant issue. Pseudoscientific views are alarmingly popular: 52% of hundreds of hard results; but
American adults believe astrological “predictions,” 46% believe in extrasensory search fails to turn up a single
perception, 42% believe that people can communicate with the dead, and 35% actu- one in “parapsychology.”
ally believe in ghosts. One-and-a-half centuries after Darwin’s The Origin of John A. Wheeler, Physicist

9
In 1984, the Vatican stated that church officials had erred in condemning Galileo and called for increased dia-
logue between science and religion. Then in 1992, the pope announced that the church had wrongly accused
Galileo, laying the blame on seventeenth-century church authorities who interpreted the Bible too literally.

39
 The Way of Science

Table 1
A few of the better-known pseudosciences
ancient astronauts extrasensory perception orgone boxes
astrological birth control Falun Gong parapsychology
astrology flying saucers perpetual motion machines
Bermuda Triangle fortune-telling phrenology
Big Foot ghosts psychic surgery
channeling holocaust denial psychokinesis
creationism homeopathy pyramid power
crop circles intelligent design quantum mysticism
crystal healing Kirlian aura remote viewing
crystal power levitation séances
dianetics lost continent of Atlantis spoon bending
dowsing Noah’s flood Velikovsky’s colliding worlds
emotions in plants occult chemistry witches
extraterrestrial visitations

Species, 46% believe that human beings did not develop from earlier animals. And
43% believe it likely that some of the reported unidentified flying objects are really
space vehicles from other civilizations. More fundamentally, pseudoscience is a
kind of mind pollution. By pretending to be what it’s not (namely science), pseudo-
science weakens one’s ability to think honestly and rationally.
Let’s look at three typical pseudoscientific beliefs: extraterrestrial visitations,
astrology, and creationism.
UFOs are unidentified objects in the sky, or “unidentified flying objects.” Two
UFO beliefs have gained a following in the popular media. The first is that some
UFOs are visitations by contemporary aliens; the second is that aliens visited Earth
in the past. The problem with these ideas is not that UFO beliefs themselves are
inherently antiscientific. The problem, instead, is in the nonscientific way these
beliefs are supported. Let’s examine the evidence.
To the best of my knowledge There have been thousands of reports of sightings of strange lights, strange air-
there are no instances out of the crafts, and people being captured by aliens. Upon investigation, these reports fall into
hundreds of thousands of UFO
three categories. Most have normal explanations: automobile headlights reflected off
reports filed since 1947—not a
single one—in which many people
high-altitude clouds, a flight of luminescent insects, unconventional atmospheric
independently and reliably report effects, unconventional aircrafts, aircrafts using searchlights for meteorological
a close encounter with what is observations, aerial refueling operations, orbiting satellites, sunlight reflecting from
clearly an alien spacecraft. objects that are dropped from aircrafts, or the setting planet Venus distorted by the
Carl Sagan, Astronomer, Physicist, atmosphere. Although these are honest reports, “seeing what you want to believe” is
Educator, and Author
common. For example, the U.S. Air Force collected 30 UFO reports in 1968 when a
satellite reentered the atmosphere and broke into burning pieces in the night sky. Of
these, 57% reported that the objects were flying in formation, implying intelligent
control, and 17% claimed that the glowing objects were attached to a black “cigar-
shaped” or “rocket-shaped” object, sometimes with glowing windows.
Other reports are hoaxes, often for profit. For example, a 1968 University of
Colorado study, headed by physicist Edward Condon, established that many of the clas-
sic UFO photos are either fakes or photos of known natural phenomena. Nevertheless,
these photos continue to reappear in new UFO publications. Great Britain’s widely pub-
licized “crop circle” phenomenon reported around 1990 was caused by pranksters.

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 The Way of Science

Finally, a few UFO reports cannot be explained. In any investigation of unusual In the prehistoric period, the
phenomena, there will always be cases that remain unexplained because of lack of human civilization sometimes
data, false reporting, self-deception, and so forth. The unexplained UFO reports lasted long, sometimes short.
Some human civilization lasted
offer no positive evidence, such as unambiguous photographs or unambiguous
very long. Mankind in every cycle
sightings by many observers or an artifact (a tool or piece of material) left behind takes a different way in the devel-
by aliens. Such a residue of unexplained cases, with no positive evidence, is not opment of science. In fact, the
surprising and offers no support for UFO beliefs. In fact, the evidence points the moon was made by the prehistoric
other way. The only real evidence we have is negative: Extraterrestrials have not human beings. It is hollow inside.
come right out and revealed themselves to us. So if they exist, they prefer to conceal From Zhuan Falun, Volume II, Literature
of the Chinese Cult Known as Falun
themselves. Any extraterrestrial civilization able to mount a journey to Earth would Gong, by Falun Gong Leader Li
surely be able to conceal themselves from us if they wanted to and would not make Hongzhi, 1998.

simple mistakes like flying around in visually observable vehicles. So reports of

UFO sightings are inherently implausible. Furthermore, it’s surprising that such
beings would want to conceal themselves. It seems more reasonable that they would
want to contact and investigate us. At least, this is what human explorers have done
when they discovered new cultures.
A common fallacy of many UFO reports is that far from being overly fantastic,
they are not nearly fantastic enough to be believable. The reported technologies are
always just a little in advance of, or even behind, the current technology on Earth.
The aliens are reported to have curiously humanlike features. But there is little rea-
son to expect that alien technologies, or alien body features, would resemble ours.
These are some of the reasons that scientists who have thought about this matter
overwhelmingly reject the hypothesis that we are being visited.
The second UFO belief, that we have been visited in the past, has even less sup-
porting evidence. Ancient legends of superior beings mean little: Most cultures have
had such legends, based on either real humans or stories promoted by the priesthood.
An ancient legend containing “futuristic” information, such as instructions for an
electronic circuit, might be convincing. Also convincing would be an ancient artifact
that could not have been made by the ancient civilization, like an electronic
microchip or an advanced metallic alloy. But such evidence hasn’t been found.
Popular UFO mythology illustrates several common features of pseudoscience:
mistaken observations attributed to exotic causes when simpler explanations suf-
fice, deliberate fraud, using a small number of unexplained cases as proof of an
exotic hypothesis, and self-deception caused by a desire to believe. It is for pre-
cisely such reasons that scientists ask, How do we know? What is the evidence?
Astrology, the belief that events on Earth are influenced by the positions of the
planets, began in ancient Babylonia. It seemed reasonable in an era that believed
the planets existed for human purposes. Its central belief is that the configuration
of the sun, moon, and planets at the moment of a person’s birth affects his or her
personality or fortune. A simplified form of astrology, based only on the position
of the sun, is the mainstay of newspaper astrology columns.
Today, astrology is scientifically implausible, to say the least. The only known phys-
ical influences exerted on Earth by the planets are gravitational effects and electromag-
netic radiation. It is hard to imagine how these effects at birth could influence our lives.
For example, the gravitational effects10 exerted on a baby by the doctor and nurse and
furniture in the delivery room far exceed the effects of the planets, the walls of the
delivery room shield us from many radiations, and the variations in the sun’s radiation
output (variations that are unrelated to a person’s astrological sign) are far larger than
the total radiation received from the moon and all the planets added together.
10
The effects referred to here are “tidal effects,” by which the moon and sun cause tides in bodies of water
on Earth. Tidal effects cause similar, but smaller, distortions in all objects on Earth.

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 The Way of Science

How do we know astrology is not credible? Despite its scientific implausibility, can
we find any evidence that astrological predictions are correct? A number of researchers
have studied this question, some of them using astrological predictions based on horo-
scopes (charts showing the orientation of the planets at the moment of birth) for thou-
sands of people, and found no evidence that astrology has any power to predict
personalities or lives. If astrology were valid, such evidence should be easy to find.
Virtually every major move... the For example, University of California educator and physicist Shawn Carlson conducted
Reagans made was cleared in a rigorously controlled investigation of astrology that was published in the 5 December
advance with a woman in San 1985 issue of the journal Nature. He studied 30 astrologers considered by their peers to
Francisco who drew up horo- be among the best practitioners of their art. Carlson asked the astrologers to interpret
scopes to make certain that the birth charts for 116 real-life but unseen “clients.” With each client’s chart, astrologers were
planets were in a favorable align- provided three personality profiles, one from the client and two others chosen at random,
ment for the enterprise. Nancy and asked to choose the one that best matched the birth chart. Contrary to the
Reagan seemed to have absolute astrologers own predictions that they would spot the correct chart significantly more often
faith in... this woman.... At one than the “guessing” frequency of one-third, Carlson found that they could correctly match
point, I kept a color-coded calen- only one of every three charts—the proportion predicted by chance. Even when
dar—highlighted in green for
astrologers expressed strong confidence in a particular match, they were no more likely
“good” days, red for “bad” days,
to be correct. Carlson comments that astrologers may be successful because they draw
yellow for “iffy” days—as an aid to
clues about their clients from body language and verbal responses, but not because
remembering when it was propi-
tious to move the President from
astrology itself has any scientific validity.
one place to another, or schedule
him to speak in public, or com- Even though astrology is incredible theoretically and disproved observationally,
mence [foreign] negotiations. half of American adults say they believe in it; newspapers continue their daily astro-
Donald Regan, Chief of Staff to Former logical predictions; there are many times more professional astrologers than
President Ronald Reagan
astronomers; and former president Ronald Reagan’s scheduled activities were
determined partly by astrological horoscopes (see marginal quotation). Will
Science is the great antidote to
the poison of ... superstition.
humankind outgrow its most harmful instincts and develop a mature culture able to
Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations
control its own technology? Facts such as these give little cause for optimism.
Creationism is the belief that the Bible’s Old Testament can be read literally, as
For us, not to believe in inerrancy scientific and historical truth, and that Earth and the main biological organisms,
is not to believe in God.... [T]he including humans, all were created separately and at roughly the same time, just a
Bible is literally without error in few thousand years ago. Creationism, including its variations such as “intelligent
all respects—in history and sci- design” (see below), is perhaps the most harmful pseudoscience in the United
ence as well as religion.... Adam States because it is believed by so many people, it is fervently championed by many
and Eve were real people. The powerful religious organizations, and it tries to cast doubt on science education,
historical narratives of the Bible
especially biology education. For example, in 1999, creationists in Kansas removed
are accurate. Miracles of the Bible
were supernatural events. The from the state science standards all mention of the big bang, radioactive dating,
authors stated by all the books continental drift, the age of Earth, global warming, and biological evolution.
were the authors of the book. Like astrology, creationism was credible until a few centuries ago, and many sci-
Rev. M. H. Chapman, President of entists believed it. But today it conflicts with the observations and principles of
the Nation’s 14.9 Million Southern
Baptists, 1990
astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, biology, paleontology, and archaeology.
There is a broad scientific consensus, supported by a consistent network of evi-
dence from many sciences, that Earth is billions of years old, that humankind is mil-
lions of years old, and that humans are related through biological evolution to all
other living creatures. Although scientific ideas are never certain, and honest
doubts about established theories should never be arbitrarily dismissed, creationist
arguments have found essentially no scientific support.
Creationist beliefs are in direct conflict with physics on several counts.
According to one creationist argument, biological evolution conflicts with the sec-
ond law of thermodynamics, because evolution describes an increasingly organized
biological realm while the second law says that things become more disorganized.
But the same question arises in the growth of a leaf, which creates organization out

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 The Way of Science

of disorganized water and carbon dioxide. The answer to this apparent dilemma is It is our conclusion that creation-
that the leaf is not an isolated system but instead gets crucial assistance from the ism ... is not science. It subordi-
sun’s radiation, whereas the second law applies only to isolated systems. The same is nates evidence to statements
based on authority and revela-
true of the evolution of all life. The biological realm could not exist without the sun’s
tion.... Its central hypothesis is not
radiation to both energize and organize all life on Earth. Evolution does not violate subject to change in light of new
the second law. This creationist argument, based on the second law, is an excellent data or demonstration of error.
example of pseudoscience because it sounds scientific but is in fact a misleading Moreover, when the evidence for
distortion of science. creationism has been subjected
Other points of conflict between creationism and physics include the big bang to the tests of the scientific
and the conclusions of radioactive dating and other methods of determining the method, it has been found
invalid.
ages of objects. Four independent lines of evidence point to the big bang creation of
National Academy of Sciences,
the universe about 14 billion years ago. There is an enormous and consistent body Committee on Science and
of radioactive and nonradioactive evidence showing that Earth is billions of years Creationism, 1984

old and dating the geological ages in a manner that confirms evolution but dis-
proves creationism.
One creationist view, known as intelligent design, put forth recently is that life
is too complex in certain regards, such as complex cellular structures, to have Nothing in biology makes sense
evolved by Darwinian processes. Intelligent design’s key idea, that complex struc- except in the light of evolution.
tures could not evolve through intermediate nonfunctional steps, is a new version of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Geneticist

the old “argument from design” first proposed 200 years ago and discredited long
ago by biologists. The intelligent design view argues (unconvincingly, in the view
of the vast majority of biologists) against evolutionary explanations of complexity,
but without putting anything in its place. If complex structures did not originate
through the evolutionary process, then how did they originate? Arguing that an
“intelligent designer” (in other words, God) did it explains nothing, tends to stifle
further scientific research, and is beside the point because it doesn’t tell us how a
complex structure came to be complex.
It’s important to note that science is compatible with a belief in God and with
many other religious beliefs. Many scientists are Christians, and many more believe
in God. Science has nothing to say about the existence or nonexistence of God,
because science studies only natural processes, not supernatural processes. Many
scientists harbor a deep conviction that both science and religion are part of a single
larger truth.
In 2005, the American Association of Physics Teachers adopted a statement on
the teaching of evolution and cosmology that demonstrates an admirable under-
standing of the scientific process. It says, in part:
No scientific theory, no matter how strongly supported by available evidence, is final
and unchallengeable; any good theory is always exposed to the possibility of being
modified or even overthrown by new evidence. That is at the very heart of the process
of science. However, biological and cosmological evolution are theories as strongly
supported and interwoven into the fabric of science as any other essential underpin-
nings of modern science and technology. To deny children exposure to the evidence in
support of biological and cosmological evolution is akin to allowing them to believe
that atoms do not exist or that the Sun goes around the Earth.
We believe in teaching that science is a process that examines all of the evidence
relevant to an issue and tests alternative hypotheses. For this reason, we do not endorse
teaching the “evidence against evolution,” because currently no such scientific evi-
dence exists. Nor can we condone teaching “scientific creationism,” “intelligent
design,” or other non-scientific viewpoints as valid scientific theories. These beliefs
ignore the important connections among empirical data and fail to provide testable
hypotheses. They should not be a part of the science curriculum.

43
 The Way of Science

School boards, teachers, parents, and lawmakers have a responsibility to ensure that
all children receive a good education in science. The American Association of Physics
Teachers opposes all efforts to require or promote teaching creationism or any other
non-scientific viewpoint in a science course.

CONCEPT CHECK 12 Creationists sometimes argue that all the evidence that
Earth is billions of years old was actually created just a few thousand years ago in
order to make Earth appear old without really being old. Is this argument scientific?
(a) Yes, even though it is not especially credible. (b) Yes, even though it is impossi-
ble to prove. (c) Yes, even though it is impossible to disprove. (d) No, because it is
impossible to prove. (e) No, because it is impossible to disprove.

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

44
The Way of Science
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 18. According to Kepler’s theory, what geometric shape fits the
planetary orbits?

OBSERVING THE NIGHT SKY THE SCIENTIFIC AND COPERNICAN REVOLUTIONS

1. What two reasons does this chapter give for studying 19. What is the most characteristic and significant feature of
science? science?
2. What is physics? 20. Describe several characteristics of a good scientific theory.
3. Distinguish astronomy from astrology. 21. Can a scientific theory be proved (can we show that the the-
4. What astronomical objects can you normally see in the night ory is certainly true)? Can it be disproved? Explain.
sky? Describe their motion as seen from Earth. 22. Strictly speaking, Kepler’s theory has been disproved. What
has been found wrong with it? Why, then, do we still use it?
ANCIENT GREEK THEORIES 23. How does a hypothesis differ from a theory?
24. Distinguish between the Copernican theory and the
5. What did the Pythagoreans believe, and how did these beliefs Copernican revolution.
influence the development of science? 25. In what sense can evolutionary biology be said to be
6. According to the earliest Greek hypothesis, the planets orbit “Copernican”?
Earth in uniform circular motion. In what way does this
hypothesis disagree with simple observations made without
PSEUDOSCIENCE
telescopes?
7. Give two observational reasons for believing that Earth is 26. What is pseudoscience? List several examples.
curved rather than flat. 27. What are the two popular UFO beliefs? What is the scientific
8. How does Ptolemy’s theory explain the retrograde motion of consensus about them, and why?
the planets and the fact that planets are brighter during retro- 28. What is astrology? What is creationism?
grade motion? 29. Why do scientists consider UFO beliefs to be pseudoscien-
9. Did Ptolemy’s theory agree with the quantitative observations tific? Answer the same question for astrology and for
known in Ptolemy’s time? How were these observations made? creationism.

COPERNICUS’S THEORY
10. “Copernicus rejected Ptolemy’s theory because it disagreed
Conceptual Exercises
with the data, and he proposed a new sun-centered theory
that did agree with the data.” True or false? Explain. OBSERVING THE NIGHT SKY
11. Use Copernicus’s theory to explain the retrograde motion of 1. How can you tell, from naked-eye observation alone, whether
the planets and the fact that they are brighter during retro- a particular object in the sky is a planet?
grade motion. 2. Draw a diagram showing the positions of Earth, the moon,
12. Why did Copernicus propose his theory? and the sun at new moon, crescent moon, nearly full moon,
13. State at least one plausible argument against the notion that and full moon.
Earth moves around the sun. 3. Are the stars in Figure 4 circling clockwise or counterclock-
14. How did new telescopic evidence decisively disprove wise? A time-lapse photograph made in the Southern
Ptolemy’s theory? Hemisphere, looking toward the South Pole, would also show
the stars moving in a circle around a fixed point in the south-
KEPLER’S THEORY ern sky. Would the stars in the southern view be circling
15. “Kepler was attracted to Copernicus’s theory because the clockwise or counterclockwise?
known data supported that theory.” True or false? Explain.
16. Describe Brahe’s work and its effect on the theories of
Copernicus and Ptolemy.
17. What aspect of Kepler’s theory would have horrified all pre-
vious astronomers?

From Chapter 1 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

45
 The Way of Science: Problem Set

ANCIENT GREEK THEORIES 10. Use Copernicus’s theory to explain why Venus often appears
4. Describe a naked-eye observation you could make to dis- as the morning star or the evening star.
prove the theory that the planets orbit Earth in a simple,
uniform, circular motion. KEPLER’S THEORY
5. Describe a naked-eye observation you could make to dis- 11. Which aspects of Kepler’s theory would Copernicus have
prove the theory that the planets orbit Earth attached to trans- liked? Disliked?
parent spheres that rotate in a complicated fashion but that 12. Would Kepler’s theory have agreed with the data available in
are always centered on Earth. Ptolemy’s time? In Copernicus’s time?
6. In seeking an explanation of retrograde motion, why didn’t 13. Did Brahe’s data prove that planets move in ellipses? Explain.
the Greeks just allow the planets to change their speed and 14. Is there anything in Kepler’s theory that resembles the dis-
direction of motion as the planets moved along circular paths placed centers of Ptolemy and Copernicus?
around Earth, instead of resorting to circles within circles? 15. Who is the “observer” mentioned by Kepler?
16. Kepler says that God has waited 6000 years. Why 6000?
COPERNICUS’S THEORY 17. Explain how to get a highly elliptical (elongated) orbit from
7. Is it possible that on some evenings the planet Mars is the the tack-and-string construction of Figure 20.
evening star? Is this very likely? (see figure below)
8. Use Copernicus’s theory to predict whether Mars goes
through moonlike phases. Do we ever see a “full Mars”? A
“new Mars”?
9. It is possible, but difficult, to see the planet Mercury with the
unaided eye. How, then, would you go about finding it?

Sphere of the stars Figure 14

Copernicus’s sun-centered theory of
the layout of the universe, 1543 CE.
The diagram is simplified; the
planets all move on epicycles,
similar to those in Ptolemy’s theory,
but here there are far fewer
epicycles, and no equants.
Jupiter
Mars

Venus Mercury

Sun

Moon

Earth

Saturn

46
 The Way of Science: Problem Set

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 32. The astronomical object known as the Crab Nebula is the
18. Because Darwinian evolution is only a theory, we need not remnant of an exploded star. The explosion was seen, by the
take it seriously. Comment on this statement. Chinese, in 1054 CE. However, the Crab Nebula is about
19. What is the most important and characteristic feature of science? 3500 LY (preceding exercise) distant from Earth. In what
20. Can two different theories both be true in the sense that at Earth year did the star actually explode?
some particular time in history, they correctly predicted the
known data? Defend your answer with a historical example. PSEUDOSCIENCE
21. “If Earth is curved, it must have a spherical shape, because a 33. Jeane Dixon, who also claims to have forecast John F.
sphere is the most perfect curved solid form.” Does an aes- Kennedy’s assassination, once claimed that an incredible
thetic argument like this have any place in science? vision informed her that aliens from another planet in our
22. A sensationalist tabloid “news”paper carries this headline solar system would visit Earth the following August and
“SCIENTISTS PREDICT THAT THE UNIVERSE AND announce their arrival to the entire Earth. She claimed that
EVERYTHING IN IT WILL DOUBLE IN SIZE AT THE this other planet lies directly on the other side of the sun,
BEGINNING OF THE NEXT NEW YEAR!” Is this a which is why we have never seen it. Give one good scientific
testable hypothesis? If so, how could you test it, and if not, argument against the existence of any such planet.
why not? Is this good science, bad science, or neither? 34. Continuing Exercise 33: One answer is that any such planet
23. What is the scientific attitude toward beliefs such as astrol- should have a gravitational effect on the other planets and
ogy, dianetics, extrasensory perception (ESP), visitations by that this effect has not been observed. Suppose that Jeane
extraterrestrials, a 6000-year-old Earth, the Bermuda Dixon then replied, “But these aliens are so advanced that
Triangle, and pyramid power? they have been able to completely mask the effects of their
24. Aristotle, a careful observer of living organisms, wondered planet’s gravity, as well as all other observable effects of their
where the material that contributes to the growth of a plant planet.” What is your response to this explanation? Does this
comes from. He hypothesized that all of it comes from the supposed planet fall within the realm of science?
soil. Based on your knowledge of biology, do you consider 35. Continuing Exercise 34: Jeane Dixon’s forecast was pub-
this hypothesis to be correct? Propose an experiment to test lished on the front page of the National Enquirer on
this hypothesis. September 14, 1976. Have you heard of any reports, the fol-
25. Some people believe that plants will grow better if they are lowing August, that her forecast was correct? Do you sup-
talked to. Is this a testable hypothesis? If so, propose an pose that the National Enquirer then printed a front-page
experiment to test it. story reporting that her forecast was wrong? Can you recall
26. “Certain people are gifted with extrasensory perception any instance when such forecasts were later reported as false
(ESP), such as the ability to move material objects with their when they turned out to be false?
own minds. However, ESP is so delicate that every attempt to 36. Some supporters of ESP (extrasensory perception—for
verify it always destroys it.” Is this a scientific hypothesis? example, mind reading, causing objects such as spoons to
27. Isaac Newton predicted that because of its spinning motion, move by means of mental concentration, and the like) claim
Earth would bulge out near the equator and be flattened near that ESP really exists but that it cannot be checked scientifi-
the poles. In 1735 the French Academy of Sciences sent an cally because scientific experiments always cause the ESP
expedition to the Arctic to measure the exact shape of Earth. effect to vanish. What is your response to this argument?
When they returned, reporting the predicted results, the
philosopher Voltaire mocked them with the following couplet:
To distant and dangerous places you roam Answers to Concept Checks
To discover what Newton knew staying at home.
1. No looking until you’ve formed your own answer! The
Was Voltaire’s sarcasm justified? Why or why not?
answer is (d).
28. Consider the flat Earth hypothesis. Give evidence for this
2. The moon’s phases (new, crescent, quarter, and so on) show
hypothesis. Give evidence against it.
that it shines by means of reflected light from the sun, (b).
3. Ptolemy’s theory, Figure 11, places the centers of the orbits
THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION of Mercury’s and Venus’s epicycles on the line joining Earth
29. Since there are some 100 billion stars in a typical galaxy, and with the sun, (b).
since there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the known parts 4. (d)
of the universe, how many stars are there in the known uni- 5. (a)
verse? Write this number out. 6. (e)
30. An astronomical unit (AU) is the distance from Earth to the 7. (c) Note that this shows that a circle is a particular kind
sun. The radius of the approximately circular orbit of Mars is of ellipse.
about 1.5 AU. As Earth and Mars orbit the sun, what is their 8. (a)
greatest and least distances apart, measured in AU? 9. A scientific idea is never absolutely certain, because the next
31. A light-year (LY) is the distance light travels in one year. Our observation could disprove it, (e).
nearest neighboring star is 4 LY away. Using the fact that 10. Answers (c), (e), and (f) are correct, because each one says
light gets here from the sun in 8 minutes, how many AU (pre- that our particular place in the universe is not unique.
ceding exercise) is it to our nearest neighboring star? 11. (d)
12. (e)

47
 The Way of Science: Problem Set

Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual 19. The interplay between theory and observation.
21. Yes, in fact the theories of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler
Exercises and Problems were partly based on aesthetic considerations.
23. Scientifically, the best attitude is “let’s look at the evidence.”
Conceptual Exercises Does the “theory” make clear-cut observational predictions?
1. Follow its position in the sky for a few weeks. If its position
Can they be checked? What are the results? From the purely
relative to the surrounding stars changes, it is a planet. theoretical standpoint, one should also ask whether the “the-
3. We are looking northward, and stars rise in the east (right-
ory” is clear and logically consistent.
25. This is testable. To test it, ask a neutral person (one who
hand side of photo) and set in the west (left-hand side), so the
stars in the photo are circling counterclockwise. If we were could care less about talking to plants—so as not to bias the
looking southward, toward the South Pole, the stars would be experiment) to raise two identical plants in identical sur-
circling clockwise around a point in the southern sky. roundings, with the sole significant difference that one plant
5. Follow a planet every night until it noticeably brightens or
is talked to and the other is not. To draw any firm conclu-
dims—an indication that it is closer to or further from Earth. sion, this experiment should be repeated several times. Do
7. This is possible, if Mars happens to lie a little to the east of
the talked-to plants actually grow significantly better, on the
the sun in the sky (in other words, close to a line joining average?
27. Voltaire’s sarcasm was not justified. New scientific predic-
Earth to sun in Figure 14) and if Venus is below the horizon.
However, this combination of events isn’t very likely. tions must be verified by observation, even though they are
9. Look near the rising or setting sun, just before it rises and
sometimes first predicted by theory.
29. 100 billion times 100 billion =
just after it sets. If the sun is visible above the horizon, the
dim light from Mercury will be obliterated by the light from 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (a one followed by 22 zeros).
31. Divide 4 years by 8 minutes. First, we must express 4 years
the sun.
11. Aspects Copernicus would have liked: Earth is a planet;
in minutes: 4 yrs * 365 days>year * 24 hrs>day *
Earth goes around the sun; Kepler’s theory is fairly simple 60 min>hr = 374,400 min. Then 374,400>8 = 46,800. Thus
and straightforward (compared to Ptolemy’s theory). What the distance is 46,800 AU.
33. Any such planet should have a gravitational effect on the
Copernicus would not have liked: In Kepler’s theory the
planets do not move in circles or in combinations of circles. other planets, and this effect has not been observed.
35. There were no such reports. There were no stories reporting
13. Specific data can never prove a general theory, so Brahe’s
data could not prove that planets move in ellipses. this fact. Generally, when far-fetched predictions such as this
15. The observer is Brahe.
are made, there is little or no attempt to follow up on them.
17. Move the thumbtacks far apart.

48
Atoms
The Nature of Things

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one
sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would
contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is Á that all things are
made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each
other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling each other upon being
squeezed into one another. In that one sentence Á there is an enormous amount of
information about the world.
Richard Feynman, Physicist

L
et’s turn now from stars to atoms.

One of science’s key principles is that everything is made of imperceptibly small

particles. As Richard Feynman points out above, this explains an extraordinary range
of observations. We’ll learn that science profoundly changed its view of atoms during
the twentieth century, a development crucial to one of this text’s four themes:1 modern
physics and its significance.
Section 1 presents the 2500-year-old idea that everything is made of small parti-
cles. Section 2 discusses the atom as chemists have understood it for 200 years and
distinguishes atoms from molecules. Section 3 explores the wide-ranging explanatory
power of the atomic idea. In order to discuss atoms quantitatively, Section 4 takes a
brief excursion into “powers of 10” and metric units. Section 5 ponders the incredible
tininess of atoms. Section 6 looks at the philosophical implications of the atomic idea.
Section 7 compares this chapter’s model of the atom with two other models. Finally,
Section 8 explores some significant examples of “chemical reactions”—combining
and recombining atoms.

1 THE GREEK ATOM: THE SMALLEST PIECES

The ancient Greeks produced an astonishing number of original thinkers. They
wanted to think their way to the bottom of everything. Because of their prointellec-
tual attitude, this small group of people, during just two centuries centering on the

1 The three other themes are the scientific process, the social context of physics, and energy.

From Chapter 2 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

49
 Atoms

fifth century BCE, laid the foundations for most of the Western world’s great ideas.
One thing they thought about was the nature of matter: material substances such as
wood, cotton, sausage, ice, water, soil, and gold. They speculated about the underly-
ing unity that they believed lay behind the different substances. What do sausage
and gold have in common? What is matter?
One Greek, Democritus, sharpened his focus on this question with a “thought
experiment,” an imagined experiment that seemed possible in principle but difficult
in practice. Suppose, he argued, you cut a piece of gold in half, and then cut one of
the halves in half, and so forth. How far could you continue making such divisions?
Either the divisions could go on forever, or there would be a limit at which no fur-
ther divisions would be possible. That is, matter is either continuous—divisible
without limit—or it is made of particles that cannot be divided. The first alternative
seemed absurd to him. Matter, he concluded, is made of imperceptibly small,
“a-tomic” (Greek for “not divisible”) particles. He called these smallest particles
“atoms.”2

CONCEPT CHECK 1 Today, this idea should be classified as (a) a scientific

fact; (b) an experimental observation; (c) a hypothesis; (d) a scientific theory;
(e) scientifically false; (f) gibberish.

I’ll call this idea

The Atomic Theory of Matter

All matter is made of tiny particles, too small to be seen.

This is a good example of a scientific principle or law or theory: a well-confirmed

idea that explains a broad range of observations. In Democritus’s time, the atomic
idea had not yet been confirmed by observations; rather, it was an educated guess or
hypothesis. When observations confirmed it during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, it then became an established theory. A general idea like this cannot, how-
ever, be called a fact, no matter how often observations may have confirmed it,
because we cannot observe every possible material object to prove for certain that
everything really is made of atoms. Theories are never certain.
What do your thumbnail, beer, an acorn, Saturn, the Amazon River, and the
period at the end of this paragraph have in common? Each is made of atoms. This is
the kind of underlying unity that the Greeks loved and that scientists seek.

2 “Atom” is used in a slightly different sense today. Today, the “atom” or “chemical atom” is the smallest
particle of a chemical element. This chemical atom is actually made of smaller, subatomic parts: electrons,
protons, and neutrons. In fact, the protons and neutrons are themselves made of quarks. As far as we know,
electrons and quarks are the smallest particles, of which the others are made. These smallest parts are what
the Greeks meant by an atom.

50
 Atoms

How do we know that things are made of atoms? Science’s power comes from its
“show-me” attitude, its insistence on evidence. So I will frequently ask, “How do we know?”
The ancient Greeks had no direct microscopic evidence for atoms, but Democritus
had some ingenious indirect evidence. He argued that since we can smell a loaf of bread
from a distance, small bread particles must break off and drift into our noses. This is still
an acceptable explanation of odors today (Section 4).
John Dalton discovered the first specific evidence for atoms around 1800. He found
that whenever certain substances combine chemically to form other substances, they
combine in simple ratios by weight. For example, when hydrogen and oxygen combine to
form water, the ratio of the weights of the two substances is always 1 to 8. Such ratios are
difficult to understand if matter is infinitely divisible, but there is a simple explanation if
matter is made of atoms. If, for example, one atom of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen
have a simple weight ratio, and if these atoms always combine in simple ratios to create
water, the weight ratios of hydrogen and oxygen in water will be simple numbers also.
Today we know that individual atoms of hydrogen and oxygen have a weight ratio of 1 to
16 and that it always takes two hydrogen atoms for every one oxygen atom to form a
water molecule. So you can see, today, why the weight ratio should be 1 to 8.
So the atomic theory explains Dalton’s simple ratios. But does this prove the theory?
The answer is no! It’s possible that atoms don’t exist and that there is some other expla-
nation for the simple ratios. Observations cannot prove a general theory, but they can
make it more plausible.
A few decades after Dalton, botanist Robert Brown, using a microscope, observed that
tiny pollen grains suspended in liquid move around erratically (Figure 1), even though the
liquid itself had no observable motion. His first hypothesis was that the grains were alive.
But lifeless dust grains suspended in liquid executed the same erratic dance, disproving the
hypothesis. Hypotheses and theories cannot be proved but they can be disproved.
It was suggested that submicroscopic motions of atoms (or “molecules,” as we’ll see
later) caused this Brownian motion. The idea was that atoms moved around constantly
and Brownian motion resulted from numerous atoms colliding with each pollen or dust
grain every second. This hypothesis got strong support in 1905 from an unknown young
physicist, Albert Einstein. He used an already established theory to calculate how particles
such as dust grains are jostled when bombarded randomly by moving atoms. He made Figure 1
several quantitative (numerical) predictions, such as the rate at which a collection of Brownian motion. This erratic path
grains should spread out in a liquid. Such predictions could be checked by measure- is typical of a small particle such as
ments, and the measurements agreed with Einstein’s predictions. It was difficult to dis- a single dust grain, suspended in
pute this evidence. Either unseen atoms really did cause Brownian motion, or Einstein’s water, observed under a micro-
calculations were fabulously lucky in giving all the right numbers. Since Einstein’s work, scope. The atomic theory explains
scientists have not questioned the atomic theory. this behavior by the ceaseless,
rapid, random motion of water
CONCEPT CHECK 2 A sulfur atom has twice the weight of an oxygen atom.
molecules. Although the molecules
When sulfur and oxygen combine to form sulfur dioxide, one sulfur atom is are far too small to be seen even
required for every two oxygen atoms. In the formation of sulfur dioxide, the weight under a microscope, the effect of
ratio of sulfur to oxygen is (a) 4 to 1; (b) 2 to 1; (c) 1 to 1; (d) 1 to 2; (e) 1 to 4. numerous molecules impacting a
dust grain every second can be seen
CONCEPT CHECK 3 Following up on the preceding question: In the formation in the erratic motion of the grain.
of sulfur trioxide, the weight ratio of sulfur to oxygen is (a) 6 to 1; (b) 3 to 1; (c) 3
to 2; (d) 2 to 3; (e) 1 to 3; (f) 1 to 6.

2 ATOMS AND MOLECULES

Think of all the different material substances around you: this paper, your shirt,
your hair, and so forth. You could list hundreds. Nineteenth-century chemists found
that they could transform most substances into a much smaller number of simpler

51
 Atoms

substances but that they could not further transform this small number. Any
process3 that changes a single substance into other simpler substances is called a
chemical decomposition of the original substance.
An example: By passing electricity through it, water can be decomposed into
two distinct substances, called hydrogen and oxygen, neither of which are anything
like water. But hydrogen and oxygen turn out to be among that small (fewer than
100) group of substances that nineteenth-century chemists could not decompose.
No matter how they tried to decompose hydrogen, it remained hydrogen, and the
same was true for oxygen. Apparently, these roughly 100 substances that cannot be
chemically decomposed are particularly fundamental. They are called chemical
elements, or simply elements.
By studying the weight ratios just discussed, Dalton and others soon recognized
that each element was made of only one kind of atom and that elements differed
because their atoms differed. So an atom is the smallest particle of a chemical ele-
ment. But water is compounded of two kinds of atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, which
is why you can decompose water but not oxygen or hydrogen.
Today, 117 elements are known—117 different kinds of atoms. Eighty-eight of
these occur naturally on Earth, while the remaining 29 are created in laboratories.
The most recently discovered, but yet unnamed, element is number 118, created in
2006 when a total of just three atoms of it were produced in the lab during a
1080-hour high-energy physics experiment. Each atom existed for only about
0.89 milliseconds (0.00089 seconds). Element number 117 is predicted but not
yet observed. Each number, known as the element’s atomic number, represents
a particular kind of atom. Higher atomic numbers correspond to heavier atoms.
Scientists found that certain groups of elements have similar properties. For
example, elements 2, 10, and 18 (helium, neon, and argon) are “inert gases,” mean-
ing that they are gases that will not combine chemically with other elements. For
another example, elements 3, 11, and 19 (lithium, sodium, and potassium) are soft,
silver-white metals melting at moderate temperatures. If we list these groups having
similar properties vertically and also list the elements in order of increasing atomic
number, the result is the periodic table. This table is a nice example of the regular-
ities that scientists find in natural phenomena. Scientists use it as a predictive
device, by noting the table’s unfilled gaps and searching for elements with proper-
ties that just fit those gaps.
What about all the other substances, those made of more than one element? A
pure substance, such as pure water (with no impurities like salt or dirt), that is made
of more than one element is called a chemical compound. Imagine dividing a cup
of water into smaller and smaller amounts. If the water is pure, you will always get
just water—not something else such as salt or dirt. Working downward in size, you
will eventually arrive at the smallest particle of water. In pure water, every one of
these smallest particles must be a particle of water, and so they should be identical.
And every particle must contain atoms of both hydrogen and oxygen, because we
know that water can be chemically decomposed into these elements.
This reasoning shows that every pure chemical compound must be made of tiny
particles that are identical and that are themselves made of two or more atoms

3 More precisely, any low-energy (lower than nuclear energies) physical process.

52
 Atoms

attached together into a single identifiable unit. Such a particle, the smallest parti-
cle of a compound that still has the characteristics of that compound, is called a
molecule. Chemists can deduce a compound’s molecular structure by decomposi-
tion and by combining it with other compounds. Such experiments show, for exam-
ple, that the water molecule is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom
(Figure 2).
Some elements are made of two-atom molecules. For example, a molecule of
hydrogen gas is made of two hydrogen atoms (Figure 3).4 Helium gas, on the other
hand, is made of individual helium atoms (Figure 4). The common forms of oxygen
gas and nitrogen gas are made of two-atom molecules. Air (Figure 5) is made prima- Figure 2
rily of these two kinds of molecules. A simplified drawing of liquid
We represent compounds and elements by abbreviated formulas. For example, water, magnified 50 million times.
water is represented by H 2O, where the subscript 2 belongs to the symbol preceding In a liquid the molecules are in
it and indicates the number of atoms of that type in each molecule. Hydrogen gas is close contact and slide past one
another. Each water molecule is
represented by H 2, oxygen gas by O2, and helium by He.
made of one oxygen atom (blue)
Molecules can get pretty complicated, especially the molecules of life, such as and two hydrogen atoms (black).
your protein and DNA. Biological molecules are among the most varied and compli- This and other microscopic draw-
cated known. Hemoglobin, the protein responsible for the red color of blood, has the ings in this chapter view only a
formula C3023H 4816O872N780S8Fe 4. DNA molecules contain millions of atoms and tiny region within a much larger
vary from one individual to the next. They carry the instructions that make you you. container.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 Which of the following elements are chemically similar to

chlorine? (a) Iodine. (b) Sulfur. (c) Xenon. (d) Bromine. (e) Krypton. (f) Fluorine.

Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5

A simplified drawing of hydrogen A simplified drawing of helium A simplified drawing of air, mag-
gas. Each molecule of hydrogen is gas. Each molecule of helium is nified 50 million times. Air is a
made of two hydrogen atoms. Each simply an unattached atom of mixture mostly of nitrogen (gray)
molecule moves rapidly in a nearly helium. and oxygen (green) molecules,
straight line, changing direction both two-atom molecules.
only when it collides with another
molecule or with the container wall.

4 However, outside Earth’s atmosphere nearly all the universe’s hydrogen is in the “atomic” (single-atom)
form rather than the “molecular” (two-atom) form, because the universe began with atomic hydrogen and
these atoms are separated so widely in space that they never combined into molecules. These “primordial”
hydrogen atoms have not been altered in 14 billion years (the age of the universe)!

53
 Atoms

CONCEPT CHECK 5 What elements, and how many atoms of each, does
the simple sugar C6H 12O6 (“glucose”) contain? (a) 6 chlorine, 12 helium, 6 ozone.
(b) 6 carbon, 12 hydrogen, 6 oxygen. (c) 1 chlorine, 1 hydrogen, 1 oxygen.
(d) 1 carbon, 1 hydrogen, 1 oxygen. (e) 1 carbon, 2 hydrogen, 1 oxygen.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 The chemical formula for carbon dioxide is (a) CaO;
(b) Ca2O; (c) CO; (d) CD; (e) C2O; (f) CO2.

3 THE ATOM’S EXPLANATORY POWER: THE ODOR OF

VIOLETS5
The power of the atomic theory, and the virtues of careful observation, are both
illustrated by the question “What are smells?” Have you ever thought about this?
Please stop reading and think about it for a moment....
Observation shows that you are surrounded by an invisible substance, air. You
know it’s there because you can feel the wind. The atomic theory tells us every
material substance, anything you can pick up or touch, is made of atoms. It’s rea-
sonable to suppose that air is a material substance, too, because you can feel it blow
on you. A careful measurement would show that air has weight, further confirming
our hypothesis. We conclude, from the atomic theory, that air is made of atoms. As
you know from the Brownian motion experiment, the atoms in a liquid move all the
time, even when the liquid appears to be motionless. So it’s reasonable to suppose
that air molecules are in constant motion, too, even in still air.
Consider the odor of violets. Among a violet’s various molecules, there must be
some that make it smell the way it does. Chemists have learned how the violet’s
odor molecule is strung together (Figure 6). Scientifically, at least, that’s what the
smell of violets is—those molecules. In order for a violet’s smell to spread out,
odor molecules must break loose from the violet. Once in the air, moving air mol-
ecules knock odor molecules around, causing odor molecules to spread out in all
directions. Eventually, they reach your nose. Think about that the next time you
smell something.
The atomic theory links human-scale or macroscopic phenomena that you can
see to phenomena at the unseen microscopic level. The microscopic perspective is
especially helpful in understanding the states of matter. Water, for example, comes
in three states: ice, liquid, and vapor (or steam). We call these the solid state, liquid
state, and gas state of water. Nearly every substance can exist in any one of these
three states.6 At the macroscopic level, the three states of matter are distinguished
by the shapes they assume when placed in a container. In a closed container, a solid
maintains its shape; a liquid spreads out over the bottom; and a gas fills the volume.
How do they differ at the microscopic level? A little thought, guided by the atomic
theory and by some simple macroscopic observations, can answer this. As I hope

Figure 6
5 This section is partly based on Richard Feynman’s Lectures on Physics (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA,
The odor of violets, in air. The
funny-looking thing is the odor- 1963), Vol. I, Chapter 1, where the odor of violets example was first presented.
6 Although these three are the normal states of matter on Earth, many other states are common throughout
of-violets molecule, made of
most of the universe. Such “exotic” states of matter include plasma (electrically charged gas, common in
carbon (horizontal stripes), stars), three kinds of superdense matter (found in white dwarf stars, neutron stars, and black holes), and
hydrogen (black), and a single supercold states in which substances display large-scale “quantum” behavior (superfluids, superconductors,
oxygen atom (green). and Bose-Einstein condensates).

54
 Atoms

you’ll discover throughout this text, it’s amazing what careful thought guided by
simple observations can accomplish!
Because solids maintain a fixed shape, their molecules must be locked into a
fixed arrangement. Because solids are difficult to compress into a smaller volume,
their molecules must be crowded against one another. The precise arrangement is
determined by the ways in which the substance’s molecules push and pull on one
another when they get close together. If you have ever seen a large number of balls
tossed one by one into a big box, or gunshot (BBs) filling a small container, you
can guess that molecules tend to lock into an orderly pattern that repeats itself
throughout the solid.7 Orderly molecular patterns are responsible for the regular
surfaces and beautiful symmetries seen in macroscopic crystals such as diamonds.
Figure 7 shows the microscopic six-sided crystal pattern of ice, and Figure 8 shows
the macroscopic snowflake crystals that are formed from it (note the hexagonal, or
six-sided, symmetry).
Because liquids have no fixed shape, their molecules must not be rigidly
attached to one another. But liquids are about as difficult to compress into a smaller Figure 7
volume as are solids, so we expect that a liquid’s molecules are crowded together Ice. Compare this diagram of solid
about as closely as possible. This reasoning leads us to a microscopic picture of a water with that of liquid water in
liquid that is similar to a jumbled bowlful of marbles that assume different shapes Figure 2. In the solid state, atoms
depending on the shape of the bowl. The molecules in a liquid are free to migrate vibrate around their average posi-
throughout the liquid by sliding past one another. Most liquids take up slightly tion in the crystal pattern but they
more volume than do the solids of the same substance, but water is an exception to do not migrate throughout the mate-
rial as they do in the liquid state.
this rule; because of its open crystal structure (Figure 7), ice takes up slightly more
volume than does liquid water.
Because gases can be compressed into a much smaller volume, their molecules
must be widely separated. Gas molecules dart back and forth, bouncing off the con-
tainer’s walls and colliding and rebounding from one another. From this micro-
scopic picture we would expect that, because of the continual torrent of gas
molecules hitting the surrounding surfaces, a gas should press outward against its
container. This outward press is called gas pressure. It’s as though hundreds of
baseballs were thrown at a wall, pressing the wall backward. You can see the effect
of gas pressure when you blow up a balloon; the elastic material is pressed outward
by trillions of gas molecules hitting the inner surface every second.
Figure 9 shows the differences between solids, liquids, and gases.
A complete absence of air and all other forms of matter is called a vacuum. A
perfect vacuum is impossible to achieve in any ordinary macroscopic volume on
Earth, but it is not difficult to achieve a partial vacuum in which the container holds
far less air than it would if filled with air at its normal density. A good vacuum in a
laboratory still contains a trillion molecules in every cubic centimeter! But in space National Oceanic and Atmospheric
the large regions between galaxies are nearly perfect vacuums—neighboring mole- Administration/Seattle
cules are some 2 meters apart! Figure 8
When you warm a substance, what happens to its molecules? With our under- The hexagonal symmetry we see
standing of solids, liquids, and gases, we’re in a position to answer this important in snowflakes mirrors their under-
question. Consider an air-filled balloon tied shut so that no air enters or leaves. lying microscopic symmetry
What happens if you heat or cool it? Try it! First put the balloon in the freezer for a (compare Figure 7).
few minutes. Then hold it over boiling water. What happens? The balloon expands
as the air warms inside it. Returning to our microscopic picture of a gas, you can

7 However, some solid materials, including plastics and glasses, have an irregular arrangement at the micro-
scopic level.

55
 Atoms

see that as the air in the balloon warms, the molecules inside must bounce harder
off the inner walls in order to cause the expansion. This means that, as the air
warms, the molecules move faster.
Experiments amply confirm this hypothesis. It’s true not only in gases such as
air but also in liquids and solids. That is, molecules are always in random (or dis-
organized) motion, whether in a solid, liquid, or gas, and those motions get faster
as the solid, liquid, or gas gets warmer. Warmth is measured quantitatively by
devices called thermometers. In a simple household thermometer the liquid inside
responds to warmth by changing its volume in a measurable way when placed into
a solid, liquid, or gas. The resulting reading is called the temperature of the solid,
(a) liquid, or gas.
This connection between warmth and molecular motion is so close that scientists
consider warmth (or temperature) and molecular motion to be, respectively, the
macroscopic and microscopic aspects of the same phenomenon. Because of this
connection, this molecular motion is called thermal motion. Summarizing this
important idea:

(b)
The Microscopic Interpretation of Warmth
At the microscopic level, warmth (temperature) is the random, or disorganized,
motion of a substance’s molecules. This thermal motion cannot be directly observed
macroscopically but is observed instead as temperature or warmth.

The atomic theory explains and unifies the odor of violets, the three states of mat-
ter, chemical compounds, gas pressure, warmth, and much more. It’s a good theory.

CONCEPT CHECK 7 Which of the following observations confirm that you are
surrounded by air? (a) Trees bending in the wind. (b) Your ability to observe light.
(c) Air that you can feel entering your nose as you breathe. (d) A breeze brushing
(c) against your cheek. (e) An air-filled balloon. (f) A rock falling when you drop it.

Figure 9
Microscopic views of the (a) solid, 4 METRIC DISTANCES AND POWERS OF 10
(b) liquid, and (c) gas states of
matter. Before discussing atoms quantitatively in Section 5, we need to take a brief excur-
sion into metric units and powers of 10.
When you measure a quantity such as the length of a table or the weight of a
rock, that measurement is made relative to a particular standard or unit. For exam-
ple, you might measure length in inches, feet, or miles, or in the metric system in
centimeters, meters, or kilometers. If you wanted to tell someone the distance to the
next town, you wouldn’t say “53.” You must give the unit, for example 53 kilome-
ters or 53 miles.
One curious feature of American life is its use of the “English” system of meas-
urements, based on feet and pounds and so forth. Since only Liberia, Burma, and
the United States use it officially anymore (it’s still used unofficially in the United
Kingdom and Ireland), I’ll henceforth call it the U.S. system of units. We’ll shun
this confusing traditional system (inches, feet, yards, miles, horsepower, pounds,
ounces, pints, quarts, gallons, degrees Fahrenheit, etc.), a modern patchwork codi-
fication of medieval trade units. This quaint system can be costly: During NASA’s

56
 Atoms

Mars Climate Orbiter space probe in 1999, one engineering group used U.S. units Benefits to U.S. industry if it
for navigation while another assumed the numbers were metric. This caused prob- converts to metric usage Á can
lems. The $125-million spacecraft veered off course while approaching Mars, lost be summed up in one word:
survival. Overseas countries
contact with Earth, and crashed. Not good. For further excellent reasons why the
already are refusing entry to
United States should convert to all-metric units, see Concept Check 10 and the mar- some U.S. inch–pound goods, Á
ginal quotation by Valerie Antoine. our industries will lose the
The basic metric distance unit is the meter (abbreviated m). It’s about 39 inches, buying power of 320 million
a little over a yard. Table 1 lists other metric distances and relates them to the meter. people in the European
The most important are the kilometer (km), centimeter (cm), and millimeter Community (EC) if we don’t
(mm). Table 2 lists six common prefixes that can be attached to any metric unit. For wake up and begin producing to
the EC metric standards Á U.S.
example, the kilowatt is 1000 watts, and the megawatt is 1 million watts (later, we’ll
industry must convert to metric
see what’s a watt). production if it wants to survive.
For handling large and small numbers, a technique known as powers of 10 is Valerie Antoine, Executive Director of
invaluable. A power of 10 means 10 raised to some power. So 102 means 10 * 10, the U.S. Metric Association
which equals 100, and 105 means 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 = 100,000. For
example, the solar system’s diameter (distance across) is 12,000,000,000,000 m.
You can write this as 1.2 * 10,000,000,000,000 m or 1.2 * 1013 m. Each multipli-
cation by 10 moves the decimal point one place to the right, so to write out
1.2 * 1013, you begin with 1.2 and move the decimal point 13 places to the right.
The number in front (the 1.2) is usually written as a number between 1 and 10. If
there is no number in front, you can think of a 1 in front; for instance, 105 is the
same as 1 * 105.
Negative powers are used for small numbers. For instance, 10-2 means 1/102,
which equals 1/100, or 0.01, and 10-5 means 1/105 = 0.000 01. The minus sign
indicates that the power of 10 is to be divided into 1. For example, the diameter of
an atom is about 0.000 000 000 11 m, which can be written as 1.1 * 10-10 m. Since
each division by 10 moves the decimal point one place to the left, to write
1.1 * 10-10, you begin with 1.1 and move the decimal point 10 places to the left.
Thousand 11032, million 11062, billion 11092, and trillion 110122 all represent
various powers of 10. Similarly, thousandth 110-32, millionth 110-62, and so forth
represent negative powers of 10.
To multiply two powers of 10, just add their powers. For instance, 102 * 105 =
10 2+5
= 107, and 102 * 10-5 = 102 + 1-52 = 10-3. The numbers in front of the
power of 10 can be grouped together first, before multiplying. For example,
11.5 * 1022 * 13 * 1052 = 11.5 * 32 * 1102 * 1052 = 4.5 * 107
To divide two powers of 10, subtract the denominator’s power from the numera-
tor’s power. For instance, 102/105 = 102 - 5 = 10-3, and 102/10-5 = 102 - 1-52 = 107.
Table 1 Table 2
Metric distances Metric prefixes
Name of unit Distance Conversion to U.S. units Giga (G) one billion, 109
Kilometer (km) 3 1 km = 0.62 mi, 1 mi = 1.6 km
1000 m = 10 m Mega (M) one million, 106
Meter (m) 1 m = 3.3 ft = 39 in., 1 ft = 0.30 m Kilo (k) one thousand, 103
Centimeter (cm) 0.01 m = 10-2 m 1 cm = 0.39 in., 1 in. = 2.5 cm Milli (m) one-thousandth, 10-3
Millimeter (mm) 0.001 m = 10-3 m Micro 1m2 one-millionth, 10-6
Micrometer 1mm2 0.000 001 m = 10 -6
m Nano (n) one-billionth, 10-9
Nanometer (nm) 0.000 000 001 m = 10 -9
m

57
 Atoms

Numbers in front of the powers of 10 can be grouped together first, before dividing
them. For example,
11.5 * 1022/13 * 1052 = 11.5/32 * 1102/1052 = 0.5 * 10-3 = 5 * 10-4
Using powers of 10, you can calculate all sorts of fabulous things. For example,
the solar system’s diameter divided by an atom’s diameter (the ratio of the two
diameters) is
1.2 * 1013 m/1.1 * 10-10 m = 11.2/1.12 * 11013/10-102 = 1.1 * 1013 - 1-102
= 1.1 * 1023
This number, 110,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, is the number of atoms you would
have to line up side by side in order for them to stretch across the solar system. Is
that fabulous or what?

CONCEPT CHECK 8 The universe is only seconds old, a million trillion sec-
onds old, in fact. In powers of 10, this is (a) 1014 s; (b) 1015 s; (c) 1016 s; (d) 1017 s;
(e) 1018 s.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 The diameter of an atomic nucleus is about a hundredth

of a trillionth of a meter. In powers of 10, this is (a) 10-10 m; (b) 10-12 m;
(c) 10-14 m; (d) 10-15 m; (e) 10-16 m; (f) 10-18 m.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 Answer either one of the following two questions, without
using a calculator. For those of you who prefer U.S. units: How many inches are there
in 6 miles? For those who prefer metric units: How many centimeters are there in
6 kilometers? Answers (U.S. system): (a) 463,173 in. (b) 380,160 in. (c) 263,150 in.
Answers (metric system): (a) 6,000,000 cm; (b) 600,000 cm; (c) 60,000 cm.

Did you choose to answer Concept Check 10 in U.S. units? Do I make my point
clear?

5 THE INCREDIBLE SMALLNESS OF ATOMS

The most convincing evidence for atoms is to see one. But it’s impossible to see
atoms with ordinary light, even with the best optical microscopes. The reason lies
in the nature of light. Light is a wave, similar in some ways to water waves on the
surface of a pond. The wavelength of light, the distance from one crest to the next,
is very small—10 to 100 times smaller than the smallest visible dust particle. That’s
small, but a single atom is 5000 times smaller still. To visualize this, imagine that
light has a wavelength of 5 meters. On this scale, an atom would be a speck just
1 millimeter across! So light waves are too big to respond to tiny individual atoms.

How do we know that atoms exist? Before 1970, Brownian motion was probably
the closest we had come to seeing atoms. In 1970, scientists developed a more direct
way: the scanning electron microscope. It shoots a steady stream, or beam, of tiny mate-
rial particles called electrons at the object to be detected. Similarly, your television set
sprays an electron beam across the inside of the screen’s face to make each picture. An
electron beam is fundamentally different from a light beam because electrons are made
of matter—material substance having weight—whereas light is not made of matter. During

58
 Atoms

the 1920s, physicists discovered that every particle of matter, such as an electron, has a
certain kind of wave, called a “matter wave,” associated with it. Matter waves are terrific
for detecting individual atoms, because they have wavelengths thousands of times
smaller than the wavelength of light. As an electron microscope’s electron beam sweeps
over, or “scans,” atoms, the beam’s matter wave is disturbed. The disturbed matter wave
is monitored by devices that collect and record the patterns made by the electrons.
An even more precise device called the scanning tunneling microscope was developed
in 1983. It employs a tiny probe, shaped like a sharp pencil tip a few atoms wide, that
scans a surface from just above the surface. In order to sense the microscopic structure of
the surface, electrons move across the narrow gap between the surface and the probe in a
uniquely quantum process called “tunneling.” Figure 10 shows a typical image. Because the
tip of the probe can pick up individual atoms and drag them from place to place, scanning
tunneling microscopes can perform the thought experiment that Democritus could only
imagine 2500 years ago. In 1990, scientists picked up 35 individual atoms of xenon gas
and rearranged them to spell out the name of their laboratory (Figure 11).8 They had
divided xenon gas into its individual atoms, just as Democritus had imagined.

Although atoms are small, the nucleus at the atom’s center (see Section 7) National Institute for Materials
is smaller still (Figure 12). The electron, also found within the atom, is known to be Science, Japan
smaller than the smallest distance yet measured, which makes it at least 100,000 times
Figure 10
smaller than the nucleus. Since it might in fact have zero size, the electron does not
Scanning tunneling microscope
appear in Figure 12. At the other end of the scale, galaxies are among the largest
(STM) image of a horizontal layer
objects known. Larger still are clusters of galaxies, forming thin “sheets” of galax- of silicon “dimers” (pairs of
ies that can individually stretch across as much as 1% of the known universe. The silicon atoms) with a single tung-
largest structures ever detected are the ripples in the faint afterglow of the big bang sten atom that the STM has
origin of the universe, stretching across two-thirds of the known universe. deposited onto the surface. Note
Humankind stands roughly in the middle, somewhere between the atoms and the the nanometer (nm) distance scale.
stars (Figure 12).
Atoms and molecules are pretty small. If you put a million atoms side by side,
the lineup would be no longer than the period at the end of this sentence. The head
of a pin contains more than 1018 atoms. One breath of air, about 1 liter (1000 cm3,
about a quart), contains more than 1022 molecules.
Now, 1022 also happens to be about the number of liters of air in Earth’s atmos- IBM Corporation
phere, which leads to an interesting conclusion. Any particular parcel of air, such as
the liter of air you will exhale in your next breath, mixes throughout Earth’s atmos- Figure 11
phere within a few years. This means that of the air you exhaled a few years ago in Thirty-five individual xenon atoms
any particular breath, about one atom is now in every liter of air on Earth and inside have been manipulated into posi-
the lungs of every person on Earth! And about one atom that was breathed out by tion by the tip of a scanning tun-
every person on Earth, in any particular breath, is in your lungs now. One from neling microscope. The distance
between atoms in the pattern is
George Washington’s first breath, one from his dying breath, and one from every
about 10-9 m—one-billionth of a
other breath that dear George ever took are in your lungs right now, along with meter, or 10 times the width of a
atoms from each of the breaths of all the other people who have ever lived. You are single atom.
a walking museum of history.
Atoms are forever. Earth’s atoms have been here since Earth formed 5 billion
years ago, and very few have changed during that time.9 It is only the connections

8 Xenon atoms do not combine easily with other atoms, making them easy to manipulate.
9 Only those relatively few atoms that have been involved in radioactive decay, fission, or fusion have
changed into different types of atoms.

59
 Atoms

between atoms that have changed. A particular oxygen atom might be part of a
Meters
Size of known universe
nerve cell in your brain today, part of an atmospheric water molecule a century
Ripples in cosmic from now, and part of a tree a century after that. “Your” atoms, the ones you are car-
1025 background radiation rying around right now, have just been borrowed from the air, from Earth, to be
Clusters and sheets of
galaxies given back perhaps soon, perhaps later, to be given back entirely when you die.
Milky Way galaxy
1020
MAKI NG ESTI MATES Of all the molecules you have ever exhaled, about how
Distances to nearby
stars many will your class instructor inhale during his or her next breath?
1015
This sounds hard. However, it’s surprisingly easy to make a rough estimate. In esti-
Solar system
mating very large numbers, an estimate to the nearest power of 10 is usually good
1010 enough: Is the answer closer to 10, or 100, or 1000, and so on? Such estimates are
Sun called “order-of-magnitude estimates.” We will make such estimates of all sorts of
Earth things throughout this text, but don’t expect a single correct answer. Different people
105 will make different estimates, but all should be in the same ballpark.
Tall mountain Suppose you exhale 12 times per minute (measure it!). Note how per is used—it
Tall building
Human
always means “in each.” Multiplying by 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, and
1
365 days per year, you’ll get your number of exhales per year. Since we want only a
rough estimate, round off these numbers for easy multiplication: 10 * 60 *
10⫺5 Fine dust particle 25 * 400 = 6 * 106 exhales per year. If you are 20 years old, you have exhaled
Wavelength of light 20 * 6 * 106 or about 100 million times.
How many of these exhaled molecules will your instructor inhale in one breath?
10⫺10 Typical atom As discussed above, he or she will inhale about one molecule from every one of your
exhaled breaths. So the answer is 100 million! And in that same breath, he or she will
also inhale some 100 million molecules from the exhaled breaths of each person liv-
10⫺15 Smallest nucleus
ing on Earth and from each person who has ever lived on Earth. And all of this will
only be a tiny fraction of the total number of molecules your instructor will inhale in
10⫺20 that breath. It’s something to consider when you take a breath.
Smallest distance yet
measured
MAKI NG ESTI MATES About how many millimeters thick is one sheet of paper?
10⫺25
(Hint: Roughly how thick is a 500-sheet package of typing paper?) My solution is at
the bottom of the page.
Figure 12
The range of sizes in the universe.
MAKI NG ESTI MATES The U.S. national debt is about $12 trillion. If you stacked
this up in new $100 bills, about how many kilometers high would the stack be? (Hint:
Assume that they stack like typing paper and see the preceding question.)

6 ATOMIC MATERIALISM: ATOMS AND EMPTY SPACE

Every time you drink a glass of From 1550 to 1700, the revolutionary ideas of Copernicus and others became wide-
water, you are probably imbibing
spread, and educated people no longer viewed Earth as the central focus of the uni-
at least one atom that passed
through the bladder of Aristotle. A
verse. Humans became passengers on one planet among many, inhabitants of a less
tantalizingly surprising result, but
it follows [from the simple] obser- SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES A 500-sheet package of typing paper is about 4 to 6 cm (a few
vation that there are many more inches) thick, say 5 cm. So the thickness of one sheet is about 5 cm/500 = 0.01 cm = 0.1 mm.
molecules in a glass of water
than there are glasses of water in SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES The number of $100 bills needed is 12 * 1012/100 = 1.2 * 1011.
the sea. We saw in the preceding question that the thickness of one bill is 0.01 cm = 10-2 cm = 10-4 m. The height
Richard Dawkins, Zoologist, Oxford of the stack is 1.2 * 1011 * 10-4 m = 1.2 * 107 m = 12,000 km, which is more than twice the distance
University across the United States.

60
 Atoms

personal universe (Figure 13). The new view stimulated an advancing scientific tide
whose high point was Newtonian physics, the remarkably effective ideas about
motion, force, and gravity developed by Isaac Newton (1642–1727) and others.
During 1700 to 1900, its cultural influence spread far beyond science, affecting the
way people thought about themselves, their society, and their place in the universe.
Today, the Newtonian worldview still dominates our culture.
In summing up his scientific career, Isaac Newton once stated, “If I have seen All these things being considered,
farther than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Two such giants, it seems probable to me that
René Descartes (1596–1650) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), helped establish the God in the Beginning formed
Matter in solid, massy, hard,
philosophy behind Newton’s physics. Descartes, Galileo, and Newton were the
impenetrable, movable Particles,
leading founders of science as we know it today. of such Sizes and figures, and
Although in Newton’s time there was very little evidence for atoms, the atomic with such other Properties, and
idea underlies much of Newtonian physics. It was an idea that went pretty deep, a in such Proportion to space, as
philosophical idea. As Democritus put it: most conduced to the end for
which he formed them.
By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, and color is color. Isaac Newton, 1704
But in reality there are only atoms and empty space. That is, the objects of sense are
supposed to be real, and it is customary to regard them as such, but in truth they are
not. Only the atoms and empty space are real.
This goes far beyond the atomic theory. Democritus is saying that not only mat-
ter but everything is made of atoms and that atoms are all there is. So when you say

Corbis/Bettmann

Figure 13
When medieval beliefs gave way to the new science of Copernicus and Newton, the cozy
pre-Newtonian universe was replaced by a vast impersonal mechanical universe. This
woodcut was made during the nineteenth century, long after the transition had taken place.

61
 Atoms

“the water is hot” or “the shirt is red,” you really mean that the atoms in the water
and shirt are moving in a certain way. There really is no such thing as hot or red—
there are only atoms.
According to Descartes, sense impressions such as hot and red are merely “sec-
ondary qualities” that exist only in our minds. The real universe, the universe out-
side our minds, contains only the atoms and their physical properties, such as
weight and size. Descartes calls these the “primary qualities.” For Descartes, sci-
ence’s task is to study the primary realm and explain it by means of atoms.
Because such views about what is real go beyond what can be observed, they lie
outside of science. They are philosophical, rather than scientific, views. These
views are one version of materialism, the philosophy that matter is the only reality
and that everything is determined by its mechanical motions. Not that Descartes,
Galileo, or Newton were materialists themselves. They all subscribed to nonmateri-
alistic religious beliefs such as a belief in God. But the new scientific philosophy
provided little room for the God of the Middle Ages, a God who is continually and
intimately involved in the world. Instead, the founders of modern science believed
in a God who created the universe and established the physical laws all at once, and
who then merely maintained those laws.
Newtonian physics is a remarkable achievement that is incredibly effective in
explaining countless observed phenomena. Are its materialistic philosophical
underpinnings then necessarily correct? Is it true that atoms are all there is?
One reassuring thing about philosophy is that, for most good philosophical
ideas, there are also good arguments to refute those ideas. As physicist Niels Bohr
put it, “The hallmark of a profound idea is that its converse is also profound.” And
so it is with atomic materialism. The respectable arguments on the other side
include the following:
1. Science always starts from evidence, which comes ultimately from sense
impressions. Materialism, which says that atoms are primary and sense impres-
sions only secondary, has the cart before the horse. Theoretical ideas such as
atoms are secondary to sensory evidence, rather than the other way ’round.
2. Although materialism is rooted in science, science is only one way of viewing
reality. Other views—religious, aesthetic, intuitive—have equal claim to being
“real.” Scientists themselves cover the gamut of religious views, from devout to
atheistic.
3. All scientific ideas are only tentative, including atomic materialism.
4. Since 1900 scientists have found that Newtonian physics is only approximately
correct over only a limited range of phenomena. Outside that limited range it is
not even approximately correct. For example, we’ll find that some things (such as
light) are nonmaterial and not made of atoms and that matter itself is made of
nonmaterial “fields.” Whereas Newtonian physics is congenial to materialism,
recent theories are more neutral or even uncongenial to materialism.

62
 Atoms

7 THREE ATOMIC MODELS: GREEK, PLANETARY, AND

QUANTUM
Science’s way of working back and forth between observations and theories comes
with a kind of guarantee of success. If an observation agrees with a theory, that’s
fine for that theory. And if an observation disagrees with a theory, that’s too bad for
that theory, but it’s fine for science because science makes its greatest progress by
repairing, or replacing, disproved theories.
The atomic theory of matter is a good example. Science’s notion of the nature of
atoms has changed several times. In the original Greek model of the atom, an
atom was an unchangeable, single object like a small rigid pea. The Greek atom was
also Newton’s way of looking at the atom, and it got support from the nineteenth-
century discoveries of elements, compounds, and Brownian motion.
Around 1900, experiments with electricity showed that an “atom,” as that word
was understood in 1900, was more complex than the Greek model of the atom.
Electricity had been studied throughout the nineteenth century. Nobody suspected
that an entirely new model of the atom would be needed to explain these experiments
Helium
until, in 1897, scientists discovered a new, very lightweight, “electrified” particle. It
was the first discovery of a particle that weighed less than an atom. It was, appar-
ently, one part of the so-called atom (remember, the word means “indivisible”). This
particle was the electron. A few years later, in 1911, physicists discovered that an
atom is itself nearly entirely empty space and that nearly all of an atom’s material
substance resides in a tiny central core, or nucleus. Experiments indicated that each
atom also contained electrons moving through the large empty regions outside the
nucleus. Scientists developed the theory that electrons orbit the nucleus much as
planets orbit the sun. Later, scientists learned that the nucleus itself is made of two
kinds of subnuclear particles, protons and neutrons. Figure 14 shows an atom of the
element helium and an atom of the element carbon according to this planetary
model of the atom. Carbon
During the 1920s, new experiments involving electrons contradicted the plane- Figure 14
tary model and even contradicted the principles of Newtonian physics itself. An An atom of helium and an atom of
entirely new theory of matter called ”quantum theory” was needed to explain the carbon, according to the planetary
new results. To date, no disagreements have been found between experiments and model of the atom. The small black
the new quantum theory of the atom. dots are electrons in orbit around
So our understanding of the atom has evolved through at least three different the- the nucleus, and the blue circles and
ories. At each stage, new experiments disproved the old theory, and scientists white circles represent protons and
invented a broader theory that explained both the old and the new observations. But neutrons in the atom’s nucleus. This
scientists did not discard the Greek and planetary models, despite their shortcom- is not drawn to scale! The nucleus
ings, because these models are useful within their proper range. For instance, we should be 100,000 times smaller
than the electron orbits, and elec-
can use the Greek atom to explain many common observations like air pressure. We
trons might have no size at all.
need not resort to the planetary atom or the quantum atom to explain these things,
because the atom’s internal structure and its quantum nature are irrelevant to these
phenomena. Restricted to its proper range, the Greek atom is just fine. Once again,
theories are best described as useful rather than true.

CONCEPT CHECK 11 The quantum theory of the atom agrees with every exper-
iment to date. (a) Thus it can now be called an accepted fact rather than merely a the-
ory. (b) Thus it can now be called a scientific hypothesis. (c) Thus it is now known to
be certainly true, although we still refer to it as a “theory.” (d) Nevertheless, it remains

63
 Atoms

only a theory and thus is basically just a guess. (e) Thus it is properly called a scien-
tific theory although, like all theories, it is somewhat tentative. (f) Nevertheless, it
could still be disproved by future experiments.

8 CHEMISTRY AND LIFE: WHAT DID ATOMS EVER DO FOR

YOU?
You can get atoms to do fantastic things by connecting them in sufficiently subtle
ways. It’s possible, for example, for a pile of atoms to acquire additional atoms from
its environment, to move itself from one place to another, to respond to external
events such as the presence of particular molecules, and to create copies of itself.
We would call such a pile of atoms alive. Indeed, you are just such a pile of atoms.
The pile of atoms that is you has an especially surprising property: It is aware of
itself, and in this scientific age it is even aware that it is a pile of atoms. It’s some-
thing to think about.
The chemical element that gives life its powerful abilities is carbon, which is
plentiful on Earth and connects readily to a variety of other plentiful elements.
Other elements that are abundant in biological molecules are oxygen, hydrogen,
and nitrogen (remember “COHN”).
Any rearrangement of molecules into new molecular forms is called a chemical
reaction. As examples, this section looks at three chemical reactions that are
important in your life: burning, respiration, and photosynthesis.
It was once believed that fire was one of the substances of which things are made
and that a burning object was releasing the fire that it already contained. The pre-
vailing theory said that this intangible and nonmaterial substance—fire—had
weight and carried its weight away when any object burned. Around 1780, Antoine
Lavoisier studied burning more closely. He accurately weighed all the materials
involved when an object burned, including the gases consumed and given off.
Although the prevailing theory predicted that the weight should decrease, Lavoisier
found that there was no net change in weight. This disproved the prevailing theory
and initiated the modern science of chemistry—the study of the properties and
transformations of substances (chemical compounds).
The key to this new science was the principle that chemical reactions are
rearrangements of atoms that are themselves changeless and indestructible. It fol-
lowed that the total amount of matter involved in any chemical reaction is the same
before and after the reaction. This idea is known as conservation of matter. We
now know that, although it’s a useful theory that is very nearly correct in chemical
reactions, experiments have proved it entirely wrong in other situations.
Most burnable substances are derived from biological materials that contain car-
bon or hydrogen. As you can demonstrate by placing an inverted jar over a burning
candle, burning requires air. Air is not a pure substance but is a mixture of many
different substances. Nitrogen and oxygen dominate: Nearly 80% of air’s molecules
are nitrogen 1N22, about 20% are oxygen 1O22, and 1% are single argon atoms (Ar).
All the other gases added together total far less than 1%. These “trace gases”
include all sorts of compounds. Some, such as water vapor 1H 2O2 and helium (He),
are natural. Others, such as carbon dioxide 1CO22 and ozone 1O32, come from both

64
 Atoms

natural and industrial sources. And still others, such as carbon monoxide (CO),
come almost entirely from industry.
For burning,10 the crucial component needed from air is oxygen. Carbon from
the burning substance combines with oxygen from the air to form carbon dioxide.
We abbreviate the preceding sentence symbolically as

C + O2 ¡ CO2

The plus sign means “combined with,” and the arrow means “changes into.” If
the fuel contains hydrogen, it too combines with oxygen to form water vapor. For
example, methane gas, CH 4, is the simplest of the hydrocarbon (hydrogen and car-
bon) fuels. It is the main component of natural gas. It burns in air to form carbon
dioxide and water vapor:11

CH 4 + O2 ¡ CO2 + H 2O

An important feature of any chemical reaction is its energy balance. For now,
I’ll use the important word energy to mean either of two things: the ability to move
things around, and heat or, as I’ll call it, “thermal energy.” Thermal energy is
related to, but not the same thing as, warmth. As you know, warmth—perhaps from
friction or a burning match—is needed to start a substance burning. Once it starts,
the burning reaction itself creates more than enough thermal energy to maintain
itself, so excess thermal energy is given off. Including thermal energy, the reaction
formula for burning a typical fuel such as methane is

CH4 + O2 ¡ CO2 + H2O + excess thermal energy

Turning to biology, animals get their bodily material and their energy from the
food they eat and the air they breathe. Your blood absorbs carbon-based molecules
from food and oxygen from air and ferries them all over your body. When they
arrive at, say, your thumb, they enter a biological cell there. In a reaction known as
respiration, the cell uses these substances to create biologically useful energy. In a
typical case, a simple sugar called glucose reacts with oxygen to create carbon
dioxide and water:

C6H12O6 + O2 ¡ CO2 + H2O + useful energy

As you can see, this is similar to burning. Animal life is a slow burn. In respira-
tion, part of the useful energy goes into making a high-energy molecule known as
ATP, and the rest appears as thermal energy. ATP is the energy carrier in animals; it
can remain in storage, or it can move from place to place within the cell. It can be
used for all sorts of things, like bending your thumb. As you can see from the reac-
tion formula, respiration generates water and carbon dioxide as wastes that are
excreted in your sweat, urine, and exhaled breath.
Plants and animals have different energy strategies. Whereas animals gather
energy by eating plants and other animals, plants use energy directly from the sun.
Plants gather carbon dioxide and water from their surroundings and put them

10 Burning is one form of combustion, which means any chemical reaction that generates warmth and light.
11 This formula is not quantitatively “balanced.” For example, there are four Hs on the left, but only two on the
right. The balanced formula is CH 4 + 2O2 ¡ CO2 + 2H 2O. Since we are not interested here in how
much of each compound enters into a reaction, we omit these numbers.

65
 Atoms

together to form high-energy carbohydrates (carbon compounded with water) such

as glucose. From the formula for respiration, you can see that this process in plants
is exactly the reverse of respiration in animals! Since respiration generates useful
energy, the reverse reaction in plants must require an input of energy. Plants have
worked out a complicated process that gets this needed energy from the sun. Since
animals consume oxygen, we also expect that plants must generate oxygen. So a
typical reaction is

CO2 + H2O + solar energy ¡ C6H12O6 + O2

It’s called photosynthesis (putting together by light).

Animals depend on plants not only for food and fuel but also for oxygen, the cru-
cial component of the air we breathe. Nearly all of Earth’s oxygen comes from pho-
tosynthesis and did not exist in large, breathable amounts until after the rise of
photosynthesizing bacteria some 2.7 billion years ago. Without plants, animals
would soon be out of food, fuel, breath, and luck.

CONCEPT CHECK 12 Some people have suggested that another substance,

other than carbon, might conceivably be the key element in forming living organ-
isms elsewhere in the universe. Which of these is the most plausible choice? (a) sil-
icon. (b) oxygen. (c) chlorine. (d) argon. (e) neon. (f) peanut butter. (Hint: See the
periodic table. Note: Scientists have rejected this suggestion as unrealistic.)

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

66
Atoms
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions CHEMISTRY AND LIFE

21. What is meant by a chemical reaction?
22. Name three different chemical reactions.
THE GREEK ATOM 23. Is air a single substance (a single compound)? Describe its
1. What macroscopic evidence is there for atoms? chemical composition.
2. What light-based microscope evidence is there for atoms? 24. Describe an experiment involving burning that supports the
3. What experiment did the ancient Greek atomists imagine notion of conservation of matter.
doing, and what did they believe the result would be? 25. In what types of experiments is the conservation of matter
4. An experiment such as the Greeks (previous question) imag- correct to a very good approximation?
ined was actually carried out recently. Describe it. 26. Describe the following reactions: burning, respiration, and
5. Which is bigger, an atom or the wavelength of light? A little photosynthesis.
bigger or a lot?

ATOMS AND MOLECULES Conceptual Exercises

6. From the microscopic point of view, what is the difference
between an element and a compound? THE GREEK ATOM
7. From a macroscopic point of view, what is the difference 1. Is the atomic theory known, for certain, to be true?
between an element and a compound? 2. Carbon atoms are about 25% lighter than oxygen atoms (the
8. What is the difference between an atom and a molecule? ratio of their weights is 3 to 4). What is the weight ratio of
9. Why is the periodic table arranged in the way that it is? the carbon and oxygen that go into the formation of carbon
10. If you chemically decompose water, will you get anything monoxide? Answer the same question for carbon dioxide.
like water? What will you get? 3. A carbon atom is 12 times heavier than a hydrogen atom. If
methane 1CH 42 is chemically decomposed, what will be the
THE ATOM’S EXPLANATORY POWER ratio of the weights of the resulting carbon and hydrogen?
11. Describe the microscopic process by which a flower gives off 4. A carbon atom is 12 times heavier than a hydrogen atom, and
an odor that you can smell some distance away. an oxygen atom is 16 times heavier than a hydrogen atom. If
12. How do solids, liquids, and gases differ macroscopically? glucose 1C6H 12O62 is chemically decomposed, what will be
Microscopically? the ratio of the weights of the resulting elements?
13. Which is easiest to compress: solids, liquids, or gases? Why?
14. Is a perfect vacuum ever attained on Earth, over a volume as ATOMS AND MOLECULES
large as 1 cubic centimeter? Elsewhere? 5. How many atoms are in a molecule of H 2SO4 (sulfuric acid)?
15. What is the microscopic difference between hot water and 6. How many atoms are in the alcohol molecule C2H 5OH?
cold water? 7. Which of these is a pure compound, which is an element, and
which is neither: helium gas, carbon dioxide, polluted water,
ATOMIC MATERIALISM AND ATOMIC MODELS C6H 12O6, gold, steam?
16. Name several things that people ordinarily regard as real but 8. Which of these is a pure compound, which is an element, and
that, according to atomic materialism, are not real. which is neither: pure water, oxygen gas, liquid mercury,
17. Describe the philosophy of materialism. H 2SO4, U, air?
18. Give arguments for the materialist philosophy. 9. Suppose you obtained the smallest single particle of each of
19. Give arguments against the materialist philosophy. the following substances. In which cases would this particle
20. Name three different models of the atom. Describe two be a molecule made of more than one atom, and in which
of them. cases would it be a single unattached atom: pure water, oxy-

From Chapter 2 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

67
 Atoms: Problem Set

gen gas in the form found in Earth’s atmosphere, H 2SO4, U,

He, carbon dioxide, H 2, H?
10. Helium is an inert gas, meaning that it does not readily enter
into chemical reactions with other substances. List five other
substances that you would expect to also be inert gases.
11. Chlorine has a strong tendency to combine with a single
hydrogen atom to form HCl. Look in the periodic table and
list at least three other elements that you would expect to
combine with hydrogen the way that chlorine does.
12. Consider a pure chemical substance A. Suppose that it can be
chemically decomposed into two other pure substances B and
C. Can we then conclude that B and C must be elements?
That B and C must be chemical compounds? That A must be
a chemical compound?
13. What is the chemical formula for methane (carbon and four
hydrogens)?
14. What is the chemical formula for sulfur dioxide?
15. What is the chemical formula for carbon tetrachloride (tetra
means “four”)?
16. On the simplifying approximation that oxygen and carbon
atoms have the same weight, how many tons of carbon
dioxide gas are formed when 1 ton of coal burns (coal is
nearly pure carbon)?
17. In a typical large coal-fed electrical generating plant, a ton of
coal is burned every 10 seconds. About how many tons of
carbon dioxide enter the atmosphere every hour from such
a plant?

THE ATOM’S EXPLANATORY POWER

Figure 6
18. Why can’t you observe Brownian motion in easily visible
The odor of violets, in air. The
objects such bits of paper floating in water?
19. What is the chemical formula for the odor of violets (see funny-looking thing is the odor-
Figure 6)? of-violets molecule, made of
20. A dog follows an escaped convict’s trail by putting its nose to carbon (horizontal stripes),
the ground. Explain this from a microscopic point of view. hydrogen (black), and a single
21. If air is put into a sealed container that is then compressed oxygen atom (green).
(reduced in volume), what do you predict will happen to the
air pressure on the container walls? Explain this from a
microscopic point of view.
22. If air is put into a sealed container and warmed, what do you
predict will happen to the air pressure on the container walls? tive motion be observed macroscopically? What would we
Explain this from a microscopic point of view. call it?
23. If a balloon is partially filled with air (so that it isn’t fully
expanded), sealed, and then warmed, what do you predict will METRIC DISTANCES AND POWERS OF 10
happen to the balloon? Explain this from a microscopic point 29. Write as ordinary numbers: 109; 1026; 3.6 * 1013;
of view. What if the balloon is cooled instead? 5.9 * 10-8.
24. Why is it so difficult to remove the lid from a vacuum- 30. Write in powers of 10 notation: 3 trillion; five-thousandths;
sealed jar? 730,000,000,000,000; 0.000 000 000 082.
25. Suppose that you observe the Brownian motion of tiny pollen 31. The distance to the moon is 384,000 km. Express this using
grains floating in still air enclosed in a glass bottle. What powers of 10. How far is this in meters? In millimeters?
would happen if you increased the amount of air? What 32. Our Milky Way galaxy contains perhaps 400 billion stars.
would happen if you warmed the air? Suppose that 0.05% (i.e., 0.000 5) of these stars have plane-
26. Why does the air pressure in a tire increase as you add air? tary systems containing at least one Earthlike planet (one that
Why does the air pressure in a tire increase as you warm could conceivably support Earthlike life). Express these two
the tire? numbers using powers of 10, and then multiply them together
27. Suggest an experiment that would show that air has weight. to find how many Earthlike planets there are in our galaxy.
28. What if, in addition to its random molecular motion, all the Express this number in words (thousands or millions, etc.).
air molecules in some volume of air had an overall collective 33. The universe is a million trillion seconds old. Write this num-
motion, all of them moving, say, eastward. Could this collec- ber in ordinary (not powers of 10) notation.

68
 Atoms: Problem Set

THE SMALLNESS OF ATOMS 7. (a), (c), (d), and (e). Note that we can observe the light
34. Put these in order from lightest to heaviest: water molecule, from stars [answer (b)], despite the absence of air in outer
oxygen atom, raindrop, hydrogen atom, glucose molecule, space. And a rock would still fall [answer (f )] even if there
electron, DNA molecule. were no air.
35. Put these in order from lightest to heaviest: H 2 molecule, 8. 106 * 1012 = 1018, (e)
methane molecule, fine dust particle, hemoglobin molecule, 9. 10 - 2 * 10 - 12 = 10 - 14, (c)
proton, glucose molecule. 10. (b)
36. How old are a baby’s atoms? Are they older than an old per- 11. (e) and (f). Note that answer (d) is wrong: A hypothesis is an
son’s atoms? What about a baby’s DNA molecules? educated guess, but a theory is far more than that.
37. MAKING ESTIMATES One sheet of paper is about 0.1 mm 12. Silicon, (a), in the same column with carbon in the
thick. An atom is about 10-10 m across. About how many periodic table.
atoms thick is one sheet of paper?
38. MAKING ESTIMATES The average weight, per atom, of the
atoms in your body is about 10-26 kg 12 * 10-26 pounds2. Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual
About how many atoms are there in your body?
39. MAKING ESTIMATES The smallest dust particle visible to the
Exercises and Problems
unaided eye measures about 0.05 mm across. About how
Conceptual Exercises
many atoms across is this? In other words, if we line up
1. No. General scientific principles are never certain.
atoms side by side, about how many would it take to make a
3. 12 to 4, in other words 3 to 1.
line of atoms 0.05 mm long?
5. 2 + 1 + 4 = 7.
40. MAKING ESTIMATES Referring to the preceding exercise:
7. Helium is an element, carbon dioxide is a pure compound,
Assume the small dust particle is shaped like a cube. About
polluted water is neither (it is a mixture), C6H12O6 is a pure
how many atoms does it contain?
compound, gold is an element, and pure unpolluted steam is
a pure compound (H2O).
CHEMISTRY AND LIFE 9. Molecule made of two or more atoms: pure water (H2O),
41. What is the chemical reaction formula for burning hydrogen atmospheric oxygen (O2), H2SO4, carbon dioxide (CO2), H2.
gas in air? What substance is created by this reaction? Single unattached atom: U, He, H.
42. For safety, gas-filled balloons are filled with helium instead 11. The elements lying in the same column with chlorine in the
of hydrogen. What does this tell you about the behavior of periodic table are fluorine, bromine, iodine, astatine.
helium in the atmosphere? 13. CH4.
43. Gasoline is a hydrocarbon fuel. What are the two main com- 15. CCl4.
pounds created when gasoline burns in a car engine? 17. Since 1 ton of coal is burned every 10 seconds, about 3 tons of
44. NOX (nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide) is one pollutant CO2 enters the atmosphere every 10 seconds. In 1 hour there
from automobiles. What elements must combine to form are 3600 seconds, or 3600>10 = 360 of these 10-second
NOX? intervals. So the number of tons of CO2 entering the atmos-
45. Gasoline contains neither oxygen nor nitrogen. So where phere in 1 hour is roughly 3 * 360 = 1080 tons.
must these elements come from when NOX is formed in car 19. Figure 6 shows that the molecule is made of 14 carbon atoms
engines? (C), 22 hydrogen atoms (H), and 1 oxygen atom (O), so the
46. Are there any molecules in your body that you could claim chemical formula is C14H22O.
are “your” molecules, unique to your body and probably 21. When the container’s volume is reduced, an individual air
unlike any other molecules in the universe? molecule hits the inner walls of the container more often
because it has less space in which to move around. So the
walls will be struck more often by moving air molecules. In
Answers to Concept Checks other words, the pressure will increase.
23. When the air is heated, the balloon will expand a little
1. [Are you reading this before forming your own answer? If because the molecules are moving faster and hit the walls
so, do you exercise by watching somebody else jog? harder, pushing the walls further apart (since the balloon is
Exercise your mind by providing your own input to the not fully expanded to begin with). When the air is cooled, the
Concept Checks!] In Democritus’s time, this was a hypothe- balloon will shrink a little.
sis, but today it is an established scientific theory, (d). It is 25. Since there are now more air molecules, the pollen grains
incorrect to call a general idea, such as this one, a fact or will be hit more often, and they will not travel as far between
observation. hits (changes in velocity). If we heat the air, the air mole-
2. The weight of one sulfur atom is the same as the weight of cules will be moving faster, the pollen grains will be hit
two oxygen atoms, so the ratio is 1 to 1, (c). harder, and the pollen grains will gain greater speeds.
3. Now the ratio is 1 to 1.5, which is the same as 2 to 3, (d). 27. Weigh two identical rigid containers, one containing air and
4. (a), (d), and (f) one that has had some of its air removed. If air has weight,
5. (b) the container with more air should weigh a little more.
6. (f)

69
 Atoms: Problem Set

29. 109 = 1,000,000,000 5 * 10 - 5 + 10 = 5 * 105 atoms, or 500,000 atoms (half a

10 - 6 = 0.000 001 million).
3.6 * 1013 = 36,000,000,000,000 41. Hydrogen and oxygen come in the two-atom form, H2 and
5.9 * 10 - 8 = 0.000 000 059 O2. They combine to give water: H2 + O2 : H2O.
31. 3.84 * 105 km, 3.84 * 108 m, 3.84 * 1011 mm. 43. Hydrocarbons are made of hydrogen (H) and carbon (C).
33. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 seconds. When these burn in air containing O2, the H should combine
35. Proton, H2, methane (CH4), glucose molecule (C6H12O6), with O2 to create H2O, and the C should combine with O2 to
hemoglobin molecule, dust particle. create CO2.
37. How many times does 10 - 10 m go into 0.1 mm? Since 45. From the atmosphere, which contains an abundance of N2
0.1 mm = 10 - 4 m, the answer is 10 >10 and O2. These elements don’t combine at normal atmos-
-4 - 10
=
10 - 4 + 10 = 106 atoms, or one million atoms thick. pheric temperatures, but at the high temperatures prevailing
39. An atom is about 10 - 10 m across (Section 3). Since in automobile engines they do combine.
0.05 mm = 5 * 10 - 5 m, the number of atoms needed to
stretch across a dust particle is 5 * 10 >10
-5 - 10
=

70
How Things Move

From Chapter 3 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

71
 How Things Move
Galileo Asks the Right Questions

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason,
and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo

W
hen you look around, your eye falls on a book, a flower, your foot. What are
these things made of? The ancient Greeks answered that things are made of
atoms. You notice that the book falls, the flower sways, your foot taps. Why,
and how, do things move? Again, the ancient Greeks asked such questions (and so did
others, such as Chinese naturalists of that same time).
The Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (Figure 1) developed the earliest theory
of motion. His theory was intuitively plausible and had some observational support, but
later scientists such as Galileo and Newton discarded Aristotelian physics in favor of
powerful new ideas that then dominated science for three centuries. Beginning in 1900,
science again changed its view of motion, when the relativity and quantum theories
altered most of Newtonian physics.
Although we now know that these ideas are inaccurate outside of the situations
encountered in everyday life on Earth, Newtonian physics continues to be useful for
understanding the way the macroscopic world around us works and forms the basis
for many of the technologies we rely on every day. Perhaps more importantly,
Newtonian views have retained their powerful cultural influence.
After a look at Aristotelian physics (Section 1), this chapter discusses Galileo’s ideas
about motion. Section 2 presents Galileo’s objections to Aristotelian physics and the
experimental background for the law of inertia, the foundation of Newtonian physics.
Section 3 examines this law. Sections 4 and 5 explore speed, velocity, and acceleration,
ideas needed to describe motion. Section 6 applies all of this to a familiar phenomenon,
falling.

1 ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS: A COMMONSENSE VIEW

Aristotle’s physics agrees with most people’s common sense. But these plausible
notions are precisely the ones that Newtonian physics discarded. Because Aristotelian
physics is so ingrained in our intuitions, we had best see where it went wrong.

72
 How Things Move

Aristotle noticed that some motions maintain themselves without assistance, and
he called these natural motions. For example, a rock pushed off a ledge falls toward
the ground with no obvious assistance, so he considered the fall of a solid object to
be a form of natural motion. In his view, solid objects fall because they are made of

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y.

the Aristotelian element “earth” and thus seek to get as close as possible to their nat-
ural resting place, which is the center of the solid Earth. In addition to solid
objects falling, Aristotle perceived three other sorts of natural motion on Earth:
water falling or running downhill, air rising, and flames leaping upward.
All these natural motions are downward or upward. Horizontal motions seem
different. When you pull a cart along a road, throw a stone horizontally, or push a
box along the floor, your activity maintains the motion: Pushes and pulls are needed
to keep the cart, the ball, and the box moving. Aristotle believed these pushes and
pulls were needed because objects must be forced to behave contrary to their own
natural motion. Aristotle classified such motion as “violent motion,” meaning that
an external push or pull was needed to maintain it.
He believed that all motion on Earth was either natural or violent, but he per- Figure 1
ceived in the heavens an entirely different kind of motion. He believed that the The Greek philosopher and scientist
moon, sun, planets, and stars were made of a substance called ether (from the Greek Aristotle, 384–322 BCE. He
word for “blaze”), which was not found on Earth. Ether had no weight and was developed the earliest theory of
incorruptible (unchangeable, eternal). Perfect in every way, ether’s natural place was motion. His theory, which agreed
in the heavens, and it naturally moved in perfect circles around Earth. This third kind with our common intuitive notions,
of motion was called “celestial motion.” was replaced by the far less intu-
itive theory of Newton.
Aristotle’s theory explained lots of observations. It gained wide acceptance,
partly because of its plausibility. It does seem to us that a rock falls all by itself, that
a push is needed to maintain horizontal motion, and that motion in the heavens
really is different from motion on Earth. But as you will see, Newtonian physics
contradicts all three of these notions.

2 HOW DO WE KNOW? DIFFICULTIES WITH ARISTOTELIAN

PHYSICS
Aristotelian physics had its weaknesses. You can demonstrate some of these for
yourself. Drop a piece of notebook paper to the ground. Now crumple it into a tight
ball and drop it again. Does it fall faster?1 Aristotelian physics has a hard time
explaining this result. After all, the crumpled paper is still the same paper, so it
should “seek” Earth’s center equally as strongly as the flat sheet, and should fall no
faster than the flat sheet.
Now try dropping two objects that have the same shape but very different
weights, such as a rock and a tightly crumpled piece of newspaper of about the
same size (Figure 2). What do you find?
According to Aristotelian physics, the heavier object, containing more of the element Figure 2
“earth,” should seek out Earth’s center more strongly, and so should fall noticeably faster. Hold a rock and a wadded-up piece
But it does not. If you do this experiment carefully and from a high place such as a of paper above the ground and
second-story window, you might detect that the heavier object actually does fall a little drop them simultaneously. What
faster, but not a lot faster as is predicted by Aristotle’s physics. Today’s theories predict does Aristotelian physics predict?
that for two objects of the same shape, the lighter one will fall a little slower because of What do you observe?

1
Please do these simple experiments when they are suggested, to reinforce your learning. There’s nothing
like observing the real thing!

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 How Things Move

air resistance—the resistance to the motion of an object through the air due to the
object’s collisions with numerous air molecules. According to today’s theories, air resist-
ance also explains why a flat sheet of paper falls slowly.
One can test the hypothesis that these small differences in falling are due to air
resistance by letting two objects fall in a vacuum, perhaps inside a container from
which the air has been removed. One then finds that the light and heavy objects fall
at precisely the same speed. A feather dropped in a vacuum falls as fast as a rock, in
clear contradiction of Aristotelian predictions (Figure 3)!
Since Galileo Galilei was one of the first scientists to challenge Aristotle on this
point, I’ll summarize these conclusions as:

Galileo’s Law of Falling

If air resistance is negligible, then any two objects that are dropped together will fall
together, regardless of their weights and their shapes, and regardless of the sub-
stances of which they are made.

This is an amazingly general statement. It applies to any two objects. Each object
Figure 3
A feather dropped in vacuum falls
could be anything: cannon ball, frog, feather, helium-filled balloon, even an indi-
as fast as a rock. vidual atom,2 just as long as air resistance is negligible.
Aristotle’s concept of violent motion also has problems. If you shoot an arrow, it
can travel a great distance horizontally while hardly slowing down. A brief strong
push from the bowstring starts it, but what external assistance keeps it moving once
it is released from the bow? Aristotle himself had difficulty reconciling this sort of
Editorial Photocolor/Art Resource, N.Y.

example with his own theory, and later scientists had similar difficulties.
Galileo (Figure 4) was a brilliant, cocky Italian who supported Copernican
astronomy, issued sarcastic opinions about Aristotelian physics, and generally
annoyed the authorities. His writings eventually earned him a visit by the Catholic
Inquisition, which “persuaded” the now elderly man to “confess” and then confined
him to house arrest for his remaining 10 years of life. Even under house arrest, the
irrepressible Galileo pursued his experiments and wrote a large physics book.
To focus his thinking, Galileo imagined the following experiment: Let a ball roll
down an incline. Its speed will increase. Now give the ball a starting push and let it
roll up an incline. It slows down (then stops and rolls back down). Suppose we make
the inclines nearly horizontal (Figure 5). If you have ever let a ball roll down a very
slight incline, you know that it’s likely to slow down and come to rest, even though
it’s going downhill. Galileo understood that this slowing is due to the roughness of
Figure 4 the incline and ball. Today it’s called friction. Galileo’s crucial step was to idealize
Galileo Galilei, 1564–1642. He the experiment by neglecting, at least in his mind, the effect of friction. He saw that
helped overthrow Aristotelian if there were no friction, the ball would speed up on any downward incline, no mat-
physics, helped formulate the law of
ter how slight, and would slow down on any upward incline. Then he took another
inertia, made astronomical discover-
brilliant step: He imagined the “limiting case” of slight inclines, namely, a perfectly
ies that supported the Copernican
view of the universe, and much horizontal surface. On a frictionless horizontal surface, the ball could neither speed
more. But his most important contri-
bution might have been his develop-
2
ment of the scientific process: the In 1999, researchers were for the first time able to compare the motion of freely falling individual atoms with
the fall of a macroscopic object such as a rock. It was not an easy experiment because, in order to observe
notion that we learn not from author-
only their falling, the atoms’ thermal motion had to be removed by cooling them to within two-millionths of a
ity but rather from experience and degree of “absolute zero” (the lowest temperature allowed by the laws of physics). The atoms fell just
rational thought. like rocks.

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 How Things Move

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 5
A smooth ball on a smooth incline always (a) speeds up going down and (b) slows down
going up, even for a very slight incline. In the limiting case (c) of a perfectly smooth and
level surface, the ball should keep going forever.

up nor slow down because the surface was intermediate between downhill and
uphill. Galileo concluded that in absence of friction, a ball that once started rolling
on a horizontal surface would roll forever. This radically contradicted Aristotle’s the-
ory, which stated that continued pushing or pulling was needed to maintain violent
(that is, horizontal) motion, and led directly to the law of inertia (next section), the
foundation of post-Aristotelian physics.
Galileo’s methods have been crucial to science ever since. They included The Holy Spirit intended to teach
the following: us in the Bible how to go to
heaven, not how the heavens go.
• Experiments, designed to test specific hypotheses. Galileo
• Idealizations of real-world conditions, to eliminate (at least in one’s mind) any
side effects that might obscure the main effects.
• Limiting the scope of the inquiry by considering only one question at a time. For
example, Galileo separated horizontal from vertical motion, studying only one
of them at a time.
• Quantitative methods. Galileo went to great lengths to measure the motion of bod-
ies. He understood that a theory capable of making quantitative predictions was
more powerful than one that could make only descriptive predictions, because
quantitative predictions were more specific and could be experimentally tested in
greater detail.
Galileo was one of the first people to practice what we recognize today as the A grain of sand falls as rapidly as
scientific process: the dynamic interplay between experience (in the form of exper- a grindstone.
iments and observations) and thought (in the form of creatively constructed theo- Galileo

ries and hypotheses). This notion that scientists learn not from authority or from
inherited beliefs but rather from experience and rational thought is what makes
Galileo’s work, and science itself, powerful and enduring.

3 THE LAW OF INERTIA: THE FOUNDATION OF

NEWTONIAN PHYSICS
Galileo and other scientists eventually arrived at a profound non-Aristotelian
insight. It involved an extreme idealization: Suppose you could get away from the
effects of friction and air resistance and also gravity. It isn’t easy to imagine such a

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 How Things Move

thing, because gravity is so omnipresent that you scarcely notice it. French philoso-
pher and scientist René Descartes was the first to imagine the absence of gravity
and understand its consequences.
What if you could turn off gravity? This question would have been meaningless to
Aristotle, because for him there was no such thing as gravity. Objects just fell, by
themselves, because that was their nature. But Descartes realized that, if you released
a stone in midair and there were no gravity or friction or air resistance, the stone
would not fall. It would hang, motionless, in midair. And if you flicked that motion-
less stone with your finger, it would coast in a straight line with no change in speed,
forever!
Descartes is saying that without gravity or friction or air resistance, an object
that was moving to begin with would keep moving without external assistance. And
an object that was at rest to begin with would stay at rest; it would hang in midair,
for instance. This is strange, counterintuitive. Because gravity, friction, and air
resistance are all around us, our intuition tells us that objects can keep moving only
if they are pushed or pulled, and objects can hang in midair only if something holds
them up.
As a way of holding on to our intuitive notion that something must assist an object
if it is to keep moving, scientists give a word to an object’s tendency to keep moving
Oh, my dear Kepler, how I wish or to remain at rest: “inertia.” In other words, an object’s inertia is its tendency to
that we could have one hearty maintain its state of motion, whether moving or remaining at rest. This word inertia
laugh together! Here at Padua is doesn’t really explain anything; it is simply a word that stands for the unexplainable
the principal professor of philoso- fact that unassisted objects do keep moving. I’ll summarize all of this as:
phy, whom I have repeatedly and
urgently requested to look at the
moon and planets through my Law of Inertia3
glass, which he perniciously
refuses to do. Why are you not A body that is subject to no external influences (also called external forces) will stay
here? What shouts of laughter we at rest if it was at rest to begin with and will keep moving if it was moving to begin
should have at this glorious folly! with; in the latter case, its motion will be in a straight line at an unchanging speed.
And to hear the professor of phi- In other words, all bodies have inertia.
losophy at Pisa labouring before
the Grand Duke with logical argu-
ments, as if with magical incanta- You see the law of inertia in action in any motion that is horizontal (to eliminate
tions, to charm the new planets the effect of gravity) and nearly frictionless, such as a bowling ball rolling slowly
out of the sky.
down a bowling alley, or an object coasting on a cushion of air. Figure 6a is a mul-
Galileo, in a Letter to Kepler,
Commenting on Libri, Teacher of tiple-flash photograph of such an air-coaster (see Figure 6b), made in a completely
Philosophy at Padua, Who Refused Even dark room with a camera whose shutter remained open, using a rapidly flashing
to Look into Galileo’s Telescope in Order
to View the Newly Discovered Moons of light to illuminate the coaster only briefly at several equally spaced times. As you
Jupiter can see by checking the meter stick next to the coaster, the coaster is moving in a
straight line at an unchanging speed: It moves the same distance (so far as it is pos-
Libri did not choose to see my sible to measure this in the photo) in each time interval. Although careful measure-
celestial trifles while he was on ment would show that air resistance slows the coaster slightly, this example is close
Earth; perhaps he will do so now enough to Galileo’s ideal case that if you view it in a lab, it will give you an intuitive
he has gone to Heaven. feel for the law of inertia.
Galileo’s Further Comment on Libri, Outer space furnishes lots of nice examples. Outer space refers to those regions of
Who Died Soon After the Telescope
Incident the universe outside Earth and outside other astronomical objects, where “Earth”

3
This is often called Newton’s first law, even though Descartes invented it, because Newton listed it first
among his three basic principles of motion. I will refer to these three principles as the law of inertia,
Newton’s law of motion, and the law of force pairs, rather than by their more common but less accurate,
less descriptive, and more boring titles: Newton’s first law, Newton’s second law, and Newton’s third law.

76
 How Things Move

Uri Haber-Schaim
(a)

Uri Haber-Schaim
Figure 6
(a) Multiple-flash photo of the
motion of an air coaster on a
smooth horizontal surface, viewed
(b) from above. (b) The coaster at rest.

includes the atmosphere. The atmosphere thins out at higher altitudes, becoming so
thin above 100 km that the drag (air resistance) on satellites is nearly negligible.
Beyond about this altitude lies outer space. Figure 7 puts this altitude into perspective.
Let me clarify some common misconceptions about the word space. Space is all
around you. There is space between you and objects on the far side of the room you
are in. The space within a few miles of Earth’s surface is filled with air—but not
completely filled because the empty spaces between the air’s molecules are far
larger than the molecules themselves. There’s nothing dramatically different about
this near-Earth space and the outer space that lies above Earth’s atmosphere. The
major difference is simply that there’s far less air up there than down here; that is,
outer space is closer to being empty space than is the space in your room. But the
same laws of physics, such as the law of inertia and the law of gravity, that operate
down here also operate up there.
When astronauts traveled to the moon, their spacecraft’s rocket engines first
boosted (pushed) them up and into orbit around Earth. Then they fired their rocket
engines for a few minutes to leave Earth’s orbit and start toward the moon. Then
they shut down their engines and coasted, for three days, to the moon. The space-
craft became a long-distance coaster and a great example of the law of inertia.
But this coasting was not entirely free of external influences. Although there is
no significant air resistance in outer space, there is still significant gravity unless
the spacecraft is extremely far from all large bodies such as Earth, the sun, and the
moon. Gravity has a very long-range effect. For example, at one-sixth of the dis-
tance to the moon, gravity is still 1% as strong as it is on Earth’s surface—a much-
reduced effect but still not negligible. The spacecraft to the moon slowed during the
first part of its journey because of the pull of Earth’s gravity and then sped up dur-
ing the last part because of the moon’s pull.

77
 How Things Move

Layer of very thin

atmosphere, too thin
for breathing, about
90 km high
Black line represents A typical low-orbit satellite,
the thin layer of greatly enlarged.
breathable air, 10 km
high. This is the height
of Mount Everest.

Radius of
solid Earth,
6000 km
Outer space begins here, at about
100 km above Earth’s solid surface.

Figure 7
The solid Earth, Earth’s atmosphere, and outer space. The drawing is roughly to scale, except
that the artificial satellite is far too large. A real orbiting satellite, several meters in size,
would be a microscopic dot on this diagram.

A big difficulty for the sun-centered astronomy proposed by Copernicus around

1550 was the problem of how Earth could keep moving with nothing to push it. This
problem perplexed Copernicus, and it gave his opponents powerful ammunition.
The answer came a century too late to help Copernicus. Earth is a coaster in space!
Like astronauts coasting to the moon, Earth coasts around the sun. It keeps going
because there’s nothing to stop it. But why, you might ask, does it move in a circle
rather than in a straight line at unchanging speed? And what started it moving in the
first place? The answers are that the sun’s gravity bends Earth’s path into a circle,
and Earth started moving because the gas and dust from which it was formed were
already moving.
Another difficulty for a moving-Earth theory of astronomy is that it seems as
though birds and other objects not attached to the ground should be left behind as
Earth moves through outer space. The answer is that birds have inertia too. A bird
standing on the ground is participating in Earth’s 30-kilometer-per-second coaster

78
 How Things Move

ride around the sun, so when the bird takes to the air, it is already moving at this
speed around the sun, and the law of inertia says that there’s no reason for it to stop.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 According to Aristotelian physics, which outside influ-

ences act on a stone while it falls? (a) Air resistance (b) Inertia (c) Gravity (d) The
tooth fairy (e) There are no outside influences.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 According to Newtonian physics, which outside influences

act on a stone while it falls to the ground? (a) Air resistance (b) Inertia (c) Gravity
(d) There are no outside influences.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 Suppose that, because of unknown causes, the sun suddenly
appeared to “stand still” in the sky. From the viewpoint of Copernican astronomy,
this would mean that (a) Earth stopped spinning around its own center; (b) Earth
stopped moving in its orbit around the sun; (c) the sun stopped moving in its orbit
around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy; (d) the sun stopped moving from east to
west; (e) the sun stopped moving from west to east.

4 MEASURING MOTION: SPEED AND VELOCITY

Sometimes quantitative methods are needed to get at nature’s deeper secrets. At
other times, quantitative details are superfluous and qualitative descriptions are
preferable. For a clear understanding of motion and related topics like force and
energy, you need to think both qualitatively and quantitatively. And quantities
(numbers) are needed to understand important practical matters such as world
energy problems.
Scientists like to specify their measurements in terms of just a few basics. To describe
motion, only two are needed: distance and time. For example, suppose you want to
describe quantitatively the motion flash-photographed in Figure 6 using only the meter
stick shown and a clock. Suppose the flasher flashes steadily at 0.40-second intervals and
that you start the clock at the first flash, when the coaster is at the 10-centimeter (cm)
mark. Then successive flashes occur at 0.40 seconds (s), 0.80 s, 1.20 s, 1.60 s, 2.00 s,
and 2.40 s. Table 1 tabulates these data, with distances estimated to the nearest millime-
ter (0.1 cm) from Figure 6.
How can you use these data to describe how fast the coaster is moving? In other
Table 1
words, how can these data tell you what a speedometer attached to the coaster
Positions and times for air coaster
would read? A speedometer tells you the distance traveled per (in each) unit of time,
of Figure 6
such as the number of kilometers per hour or the number of centimeters per second.
So if you were to walk 6 kilometers (km) in 2 hours, the number of kilometers in Clock time (s) Position (cm)
each hour would be 6 divided by 2, or 3 km per hour. From this, you can see that 0.00 10.0
speed is distance divided by time. Returning to Table 1, during each 0.40-s time 0.40 24.1
interval the coaster travels 14.1 cm. So a speedometer attached to the coaster should
0.80 38.2
register 14.1 cm divided by 0.40 s, or 35.2 centimeters per second. I’ll call this the
coaster’s speed. I’ll abbreviate it as 35.2 cm/s, where the divide sign (/) is to be read 1.20 52.3
“per” or “in each.” 1.60 66.4
But there’s a catch. Suppose you ride your bicycle 24 km in 3 hours. According 2.00 80.5
to this definition, your speed would be 8 km/hr. But surely you did not maintain
2.40 94.6
exactly this speed during every minute of the 3-hour trip. Rather, the 8 km/hr is an

79
 How Things Move

overall speed, actually the speed you would have had to maintain in order to make
the 3-hour trip at an unchanging speed. I’ll call this the average speed for the trip.
But a car’s speedometer gives a value at every instant of time. What does a
speedometer read? A speedometer is based on wheel rotation rates. If you look
closely at the way it operates, you will find that it actually reads only an average
speed during some time interval, but that this time interval is very short—so short
that the speed is practically unchanging during this time interval. This average
speed during a time interval so short that the speed hardly changes is called the
instantaneous speed. It’s defined just like the average speed, but with the under-
standing that the time interval is short. It’s what a speedometer reads. I will use the
unmodified word speed to mean “instantaneous speed,” and I’ll use average speed
when that's what I mean.
Quantitative statements, such as our definition of average speed, are often easier
to grasp if written as an abbreviated formula:
distance traveled
average speed =
traveling time
This can be further abbreviated using symbols. We can choose the symbols to
suit ourselves. I will use s to represent instantaneous speed, s for average speed, d
for distance traveled, and t for traveling time. Then the formula is
d
s =
t
Please don’t be intimidated by formulas like this. A formula is just an abbrevia-
tion for words. It’s the idea, not the formula, that’s essential. And many of the most
important principles, such as the law of inertia, are best stated without formulas. In
fact, if you do use a formula, be sure you can first state it carefully in words,
because otherwise you could fool yourself into thinking you understand the idea
when all you’ve done is memorize some symbols. For example, the t in the speed
formula’s denominator is not just any arbitrary time—it means something very spe-
cific: the duration of the time interval during which the object traveled the distance
indicated in the numerator.
When you travel, it makes a difference which direction you move. Jogging at
10 km/hr northward will get you to a different place than will jogging at 10 km/hr
westward. Speed and direction of motion occur together so frequently in physics
that it’s useful to have a separate word for the combination. I will use the word
velocity to mean speed and direction. The words speed and velocity are inter-
changeable in everyday language, but in physics they are not.
Test your understanding of speed and velocity by trying these questions:

CONCEPT CHECK 4 A car travels 12 km in half an hour, while a bicyclist

“sprints” for 1 minute at a steady 30 km/hr. The one with the higher average speed
is (a) the car; (b) the bicyclist.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 In which of the following cases is the car’s speed increas-
ing? (a) A car covers longer and longer distances in equal time intervals. (b) A car
takes longer and longer time intervals to cover equal distances. (c) A car covers
equal distances in equal time intervals. (d) A car covers equal distances in shorter
and shorter time intervals. (e) A car takes equal time intervals to cover equal dis-
tances. (f) In equal time intervals, a car covers shorter and shorter distances.

80
 How Things Move

CONCEPT CHECK 6 Two bicyclists, both moving at 10 km/hr, pass each other
on a straight road, one moving north and the other moving south. These bicyclists
have (a) the same speeds and the same velocities; (b) different speeds and different
velocities; (c) different speeds but the same velocities; (d) the same speeds but dif-
ferent velocities.

5 MEASURING MOTION: ACCELERATION

The law of inertia says that a body that feels no external forces must either move at
unchanging speed in a straight line or remain at rest if it were at rest to begin with.
But remaining at rest is just a special case of an unchanging speed (the speed
remains zero), so we can state the law of inertia as simply “a body that feels no
external forces must move at unchanging speed in a straight line.” But motion in a
straight line at an unchanging speed is motion at an unchanging velocity, and the
condition of remaining at rest is also a condition of unchanging velocity. So we can
state the law of inertia more concisely:

Law of Inertia (more concise form)

A body that is subject to no external forces must maintain an unchanging velocity.

Now suppose that there are external forces (external influences). How will they
affect an object’s motion? It’s not too difficult to guess the answer once you under-
stand the law of inertia: External forces must cause changes in velocity. Any object
whose velocity is changing is said to be accelerated. Concept Check 7 will exercise
your thinking about this idea. Remember: An object is accelerated only if its velocity
is changing, and velocity refers to the combined instantaneous speed and direction.

CONCEPT CHECK 7 During a trip, a car executes several kinds of motion. In

which of the following cases is the car accelerated? (a) Moving along a straight,
level road at a steady 70 km/hr. (b) Moving along a straight, level road while slow-
ing down from 70 km/hr to 50 km/hr. (c) Rounding a curve at a steady 50 km/hr.
(d) Moving uphill along a straight incline at a steady 50 km/hr (Figure 8).
(e) Rounding the top of a hill at a steady 50 km/hr (Figure 9). (f) Starting up from
rest along a straight, level road.

You have seen how to describe velocity in terms of measured quantities. What Figure 8
about acceleration? To answer this, imagine a car moving north along a straight, Illustration for Concept Check 7.
level highway. Suppose it speeds up, say from 60 km/hr to 72 km/hr. Its change in
speed is then 12 km/hr. Imagine how this would feel to you if you were in the car. It
would make a difference to you how fast this change took place. If it took place
over an entire hour, you would hardly notice it, but if it occurred during one-tenth of
a second, you could wind up with a whip-lashed neck! So the rate at which the
speed changes—the amount of speed change per second—is important. Suppose
that the time interval is 8 s. Then the amount of speed change per second is Figure 9
Illustration for Concept Check 7.
12 km>hr
8s

81
 How Things Move

or 1.5 “kilometers per hour per second.” These units tell us that in every second, the
speed changes by 1.5 km/hr. We’ll write this as 1.5 (km/hr)/s.
This useful quantity, which measures the rate of speeding up, is called the “accel-
eration” of the car. But remember that an object is said to be accelerated whenever
its velocity changes and that the velocity changes not only when the object speeds up
but also when it slows down or changes direction. This means that an object’s
acceleration is its change in velocity (and not simply the change in speed) divided
by the time to make the change. Written as a formula,
change in velocity
acceleration =
time to make the change
Please note that this physicists’ definition is a little different from the popular
definition. The scientific meaning includes not just speeding up (the common
meaning of acceleration) but also slowing down (commonly called deceleration)
and changing direction. Definitions of words like acceleration are arbitrary, in the
sense that nature does not tell us that we must define these words in any particular
way. Physicists define their words for maximum convenience. The distinction
between velocity and acceleration is important and often misunderstood. “Velocity”
refers to motion itself—an object has a velocity whenever it is moving. But “accel-
eration” refers only to changes in velocity.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 Which of these have a high velocity and low acceleration?
(a) A speeding bullet moving through air. (b) A race car just as it begins to “dig out”
from rest. (c) A fast train as it moves around a long and gentle curve. (d) A fast car
as it collides with a brick wall. (e) A golf ball at the instant it is struck by a fast-
moving golf club.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 In the preceding question, which ones have a low velocity
and high acceleration?

6 FALLING
Galileo’s law of falling tells us that, because all objects fall in the same way, we can
learn about the fall of any object by studying the fall of just one particular object—
a book, for example.

How do we know objects speed up as they fall? Hold a book, flat, above the floor,
and let it go.
——— This is a pause, for dropping your book.
What is the numerical value of the book’s speed at the instant you release it?
——— Another pause, to think about that.
While you are holding it, the book’s speed is zero, so its speed at the instant of release
must also be zero. But does its speed remain zero? Obviously not. At the beginning of the
motion, the speed increases from zero to something bigger than zero. So the book must
accelerate, at least at the beginning.
But does your book accelerate all the way down—does its speed keep on changing? To
answer this, drop your book from about half a meter above the floor. Pick it up and drop it
again from about 2 m above the floor. Listen as it hits the floor. Did it hit noticeably harder

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 How Things Move

the second time? If so, the book must have been moving faster at the end of the second
drop. Apparently, objects keep on moving faster and faster as they fall farther. So falling
objects accelerate all the way down.
The preceding paragraph demonstrates the power of careful observation. As the
Yankee catcher and famous sage Yogi Berra put it, “You can learn a lot just by looking.”

The multiple-flash photo in Figure 10 shows how to measure falling. A billiard

ball falls past a 2-m stick while being photographed at several equally spaced times.
The time interval between photos is 1/30 s. You can see the ball’s acceleration: The
images get farther and farther apart.
Figure 11 is an idealized drawing of a ball falling through a larger distance,
neglecting air resistance. A real object falling farther than about 20 m is strongly
affected by air resistance because air resistance becomes stronger as an object
moves faster. We will, however, imagine that there is no air resistance, in order to
focus on the effects due to gravity alone. An object like this whose falling is influ-
enced by gravity alone is said to be in free fall.
Suppose you measure distances downward from the release point and that a
speedometer attached to the ball measures the ball’s speed as it falls. At the instant
of release, you start a clock that tells you the time elapsed since the ball was
dropped. Figure 11 gives some of the data you would get in this idealized experi-
ment. In order to highlight the pattern, the actual experimental data are rounded.4
You can see, in three different ways, that the ball accelerates: First, you can see
directly from the drawing that the distances fallen during each successive second
(0 to 1 s, 1 to 2 s, and so on) get larger and larger. Second, the speed is greater at the
end of each successive second, so the ball is moving faster and faster. Third, if you
look closely at the distance data, you’ll see that the distances covered during each
successive time interval grow larger and larger. For instance, the distance covered
during 0 to 1 s is 5 m, and the distance covered during 1 to 2 s is 15 m.
How big is this acceleration? Recall that the acceleration is the change in veloc-
ity divided by the duration of the time interval. Now look at each successive 1-s
time interval. All the changes in speed are precisely the same! During 0 to 1 s, the
speed change is 10 m/s. During 1 to 2 s, the speed changes by 10 m/s. And so forth.
So, calculating the acceleration for any one of these time intervals,
change in speed 10 m>s
acceleration = =
time interval 1s
which is 10 (m/s)/s, abbreviated as 10 m/s2. This means that the speed changes by
10 m/s in every second. So the acceleration is the same, 10 m/s2, all the way down.
And Galileo’s principle of falling tells us that it must be the same for every freely
falling object. The numerical value of this acceleration due to gravity is, more
accurately, 9.8 m/s2.
There is a pattern in the speed data. At times of 0 s, 1 s, 2 s, 3 s, 4 s, and 5 s, the
speed (in m/s) is 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and so on. Just by looking at this string of

Figure 10
4 Multiple-flash photo of a falling
The rounding process introduces a 2% error. More precise distances are 4.9 m, 19.6 m, 44.1 m, 78.4 m,
and 122.5 m. More precise speeds are 9.8 m/s, 19.6 m/s, 29.4 m/s, 39.2 m/s, and 49 m/s. Using these more billiard ball. The position scale is
accurate numbers, the calculated acceleration is (9.8 m>s)>(1 s) = 9.8 m>s2. in centimeters, and the bulb
flashed every 1/30 s.

83
 How Things Move

Time Approx- Approx- numbers, you can guess what should come next: 60. The reason this can be
imate imate guessed is that there is a recognizable pattern here. Patterns are what scientists
distance speed
0s 0m 0 m/s
look for in nature! Your expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow is also based
1s 5m 10 m/s on a pattern in nature.
One way to describe this pattern is with proportionalities. One quantity is
2s 20 m 20 m/s proportional to a second quantity if doubling the first means you must double the
second, tripling the first means you must triple the second, and so forth. In general,
whatever you multiply the first quantity by, you must also multiply the second
quantity by. Looking at the speed data, doubling the time (from 1 to 2 s, say) results
3s 45 m 30 m/s in doubling the speed (from 10 to 20 m/s), and similar proportionalities hold
throughout the data. So, for free fall,
speed is proportional to time; s r t
4s 80 m 40 m/s The symbol r means “is proportional to.” Note that a proportionality such as
s r t is not the same thing as an equation. Distance cannot equal time, for the
same reason that apples cannot equal oranges.
Similarly, speed is proportional to the time for any object that starts from rest
and moves in a straight line with unchanging acceleration. For example, an object
dropped onto the surface of the moon falls freely (there’s no air resistance on the
5s 125 m 50 m/s moon, because there’s no air) with an unchanging acceleration of 1.6 m/s2. So a
falling object reaches a speed of 1.6 m/s at the end of 1 s of falling, 3.2 m/s at the
end of 2 s, 4.8 m/s at the end of 3 s, and so forth. As on Earth, speed is proportional
to time.
The pattern in the position data of Figure 11 is not as easy to recognize. To make
Figure 11 it easier to find, let’s express the position data in multiples of the position at 1 s, in
A freely falling ball dropped from
other words, in 5-m units. The data tell us that at 2 s, the position (the total distance
the top of a tall building. The
fallen) is 20 m, or 4 of these units; it is 9 units at 3 s, 16 units at 4 s,
effect of air resistance is neglected
in this illustration. 25 units at 5 s. So the positions, measured in 5-m units, are 0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25. What’s
the next number in this sequence? Have you got it? Each of the numbers is a perfect
square: 02, 12, 22, 32, 42, 52. Next comes 62, or 36 of our 5-m units! To get the dis-
tance in meters, multiply this by 5, getting 180 m.
This pattern can also be described quantitatively with proportionalities. The dis-
tances, in meters, are proportional to the square of the time. This means that dou-
bling the time multiplies the distance by 4, tripling the time multiplies the distance
by 9, and so forth. In general, whatever number you multiply the time by, you must
square this number and then multiply it by the distance. For instance, if you multi-
ply the time by 3 (from 1 to 3 s, say), then you must multiply the distance by 32, or
9. So for free fall:
distance fallen is proportional to the square of the time; d r t2
Again, this is a proportionality that is valid for any case of unchanging accelera-
tion. For instance, distance is proportional to the square of the time for an object
falling freely onto the moon.5

5
With further analysis, we could arrive at two equations for the speed and position of any object that starts
from rest and moves in a straight line with unchanging acceleration

d = a b at2
1
s = at,
2

where a represents the acceleration. For freely falling objects on Earth, a = 9.8 m>s2.

84
 How Things Move

CONCEPT CHECK 10 In four times as much time, a freely falling object

dropped from rest falls (a) twice as far; (b) 4 times farther; (c) 8 times farther;
(d) 12 times farther; (e) 16 times farther; (f) into your soup.

CONCEPT CHECK 11 Would the answer to the preceding question be altered if

the object were falling freely onto the surface of Mars? (a) Yes. (b) No.

CONCEPT CHECK 12 In four times as much time, a freely falling object gets
going (a) twice as fast; (b) 4 times faster; (c) 8 times faster; (d) 12 times faster;
(e) 16 times faster.

CONCEPT CHECK 13 For a freely falling object, (a) the total distance covered
(distance fallen) keeps increasing; (b) the distance covered during each second
keeps increasing; (c) the speed keeps increasing; (d) the change in speed during
each second keeps increasing; (e) the acceleration keeps increasing.

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

85
86
How Things Move
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions ACCELERATION

17. A car speeds up along a straight line. Describe how you
could use clocks and meter sticks to measure its acceleration.
ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS 18. How is acceleration related to velocity?
1. Describe the four kinds of motion that Aristotle considered to 19. If an object s position is changing, can we be certain that it
be natural on Earth. has a nonzero velocity? Can we be certain that it has a
2. Give two examples that Aristotle considered to be nonzero acceleration?
violent motions. 20. If an object is moving in a circle at an unchanging speed, is
3. According to ancient Greek thought, in what fundamental it accelerated?
way does Earth differ from the heavens? 21. If an object is slowing down, is it accelerated?
4. Give an example of a motion that contradicts Aristotelian
physics. FALLING
5. According to Aristotelian physics, why does a stone fall 22. An object is released above the ground and falls freely. At
when it is released above the ground? According to which of the following places during the fall is its velocity
Newtonian physics? greatest: the top, the midpoint, or a point near the bottom? At
6. Describe at least one principle of Aristotelian physics that which position is its acceleration greatest?
seems intuitively plausible but that Newtonian physics rejects. 23. What is the meaning of the phrase acceleration due to grav-
ity ? What is its approximate value on Earth?
THE LAW OF INERTIA 24. What does speed is proportional to time mean?
7. What does it mean to say that an object has inertia? 25. In twice the time, does a freely falling object fall (from rest)
8. What does the law of inertia say about the velocity of a body twice as far? Does it gain twice as much speed?
that is subject to no external influences? What does this law
say about such a body s acceleration?
9. Which of the following describes how high you must go Conceptual Exercises
before you will first reach outer space : anywhere above the
ground, about 100 m, about 1 km, about 100 km, beyond the
moon, beyond the solar system? ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS
10. Is there air in outer space? 1. You roll a ball. It soon rolls to a stop. How would Aristotle
11. Give at least one example that demonstrates, at least approxi- interpret this? How would Galileo interpret it?
mately, the law of inertia in others words, an example of
unassisted motion at constant, or nearly constant, velocity.
THE LAW OF INERTIA
SPEED AND VELOCITY 2. Most meteoroids pebble-sized to boulder-sized rocks in
12. Describe how you could use a clock and a meter stick to outer space have been moving for billions of years. What,
measure a moving object s speed. if anything, keeps them moving?
13. When we say 5 centimeters per second, what does the 3. If you ride on a smooth, fast train at an unchanging speed and
per mean? throw a baseball upward inside the train, will the baseball then get
14. What is the difference between speed and average speed? In left behind and come down toward the rear of the car? Explain.
what circumstances are they the same? 4. If a ball is moving at 20 m/s and no forces ever act on it, what
15. Can you give an example in which the speed is unchanging will its speed be after 5 s? After 5 years?
but the velocity changes? If so, give one. 5. Do you suppose that the photo of Earth shown in Figure 7a
16. Can you give an example in which the velocity is unchanging was taken from a low-orbit satellite (see Figure 7b on next
but the speed changes? If so, give one. page)?

From Chapter 3 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ' 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

87
 How Things Move: Problem Set

Figure 7a
A whole-world view showing
Africa and Saudi Arabia taken
7 December 1972 as Apollo 17
left Earth s orbit for the moon. The
cultural impact of photos like this,
showing Earth as a single, freely
moving ball in space, may be
among the space program s most
important benefits.

NASA Headquarters
Layer of very thin
atmosphere, too thin
for breathing, about
90 km high
Black line represents A typical low-orbit satellite,
the thin layer of greatly enlarged.
breathable air, 10 km
high. This is the height
of Mount Everest.

Radius of
solid Earth,
6000 km
Outer space begins here, at about
100 km above Earth’s solid surface.

Figure 7b
The solid Earth, Earth s atmosphere, and outer space. The drawing is roughly to scale, except
that the artificial satellite is far too large. A real orbiting satellite, several meters in size,
would be a microscopic dot on this diagram.

88
 How Things Move: Problem Set

6. In order to experimentally verify the law of inertia, would 17. Is the motion sickness that some people get in a car actu-
you need to be able to measure time? Weight? Distance? ally due to motion per se or to something else? Describe one
7. When a moving bus comes rapidly to a stop, why do the rid- form of motion that would not make people sick.
ers who are standing lurch toward the front of the bus? 18. When you drive a car, might you depress the accelerator
pedal without actually accelerating? Could you accelerate
without having your foot on the accelerator? Explain.
SPEED AND VELOCITY 19. One car goes from 0 to 30 km/hr. Later another car goes from
8. Can you drive your car around the block at a constant velocity? 0 to 60 km/hr. Can you say which car had the greater acceler-
9. Mary passes Mike from behind while bicycling. As she passes ation? Explain.
him, do the two have the same velocity? The same speed? 20. Figure 14 represents a multiple-flash photo of two balls.
10. Mary is bicycling straight north at 15 km/hr, and Mike is Describe each ball s motion. Does either ball pass the other?
bicycling straight south at 15 km/hr. As they pass each other, When? Do they ever have the same speed? When?
do they have the same velocity? The same speed?
11. Figure 12 represents a multiple-flash photo of two balls mov-
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
ing to the right. The figure shows both balls at several num-
bered times. The flash times are equally spaced. Which ball
has the greater acceleration? The greater speed? The greater
velocity? Does either ball pass the other, and if so, when? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Figure 14

21. In each of the following cases, is the motion accelerated or not

1 2 3 4 5 6 accelerated? (a) A rock falling freely for 2 m. (b) A meteoroid
(a rock in outer space) that is so far from all planets and stars
Figure 12 that gravity is negligible. (c) An artificial satellite orbiting Earth
at a steady 30,000 km/hr. (d) The moon. (e) An ice-skater coast-
ing on smooth ice, neglecting friction and air resistance.
12. The automobile beltway around many cities is approximately 22. Can a slow-moving object have a large acceleration? Can a
circular. Suppose that you start driving at point A on the east fast-moving object have a small acceleration?
side of the beltway and drive counterclockwise at an 23. Which devices in a car are designed to cause acceleration?
unchanging 90 km/hr (Figure 13). As you pass point B on the 24. For an unassisted (unforced, or isolated) moving object, which
north side, what is your speed? Your velocity? of the following quantities change, and how do they change:
distance (from the starting point), speed, velocity, acceleration?
25. An automobile moves along a straight highway at an
B unchanging 80 km/hr. During the motion, which of the fol-
lowing quantities change, and how do they change: distance
(from the starting point), speed, velocity, acceleration?
26. A ball rolls down a straight ramp. During the motion, which
of the following quantities change, and how do they change:
City distance (from the starting point), speed, velocity?
C A
27. A bicyclist increases her speed along a straight road from
3 m/s to 4.5 m/s, in 5 s. Find her acceleration.
28. A car accelerates from 0 to 100 km/hr in 10 s. Find its accel-
eration. Drag racers can get to 400 km/hr from rest in 5 s.
How big is this acceleration?
29. Find the acceleration of a car as it speeds up from 70 to
Figure 13 82 km/hr in 4 s. From 70 to 82 km/hr in 16 s. From 70 to
94 km/hr in 8 s. From 70 to 76 km/hr in 8 s.
13. Referring to the preceding exercise, as you pass point C on
the west side, what is your speed? Your velocity? FALLING
14. In Figure 12, suppose the large divisions on the measuring 30. Multiple choice: Two metal balls are dropped from a third-
rod are centimeters and that the time intervals each have a story window at the same time. They are the same size, but
duration of 0.20 s. Find the speed of each ball. one weighs twice as much as the other. The time to reach
15. Find the average speed of a jogger who jogs 3 km in 15 min. the ground will be (a) about twice as long for the heavy
Give your answer in km/hr. ball; (b) about twice as long for the light ball; (c) about the
same for both; (d) considerably longer for the heavy ball,
ACCELERATION but not necessarily twice as long; (e) considerably longer
16. A French TGV train cruises on straight tracks at a steady for the light ball, but not necessarily twice as long.
290 km/hr (180 mi/hr). What is its acceleration?

89
 How Things Move: Problem Set

31. A falling object has a speed of 10 m/s at t = 1 s. So it seems

that it should move 10 m in 1 s. Yet the data say that the Problems
object moves only 5 m in 1 s. What is wrong here?
32. Figure 15 represents a multiple-flash photo of a falling ball. VELOCITY
Neglect air resistance. At which point, A or B, is the ball s
acceleration larger? At which point is its velocity larger? 1. Worldwide sea levels are predicted to rise at a rate of at least
5 mm per year during the next century, due to global warm-
ing. At this rate, how long will it be before sea levels have
risen by 0.5 m?
2. It takes light about 8 minutes to travel here from the sun.
Given that the speed of light is 300,000 km/s, how far is it to
the sun?
3. It is 3.8 * 108 m to the moon. How long does it take a radar
A beam, traveling at the speed of light (300,000 km/s), to get
from Earth to the moon and back?
4. You wish to travel from downtown New York City (NYC) to
downtown Washington DC (DC), a distance of 330 km. You
consider two options: train and plane. The high-speed train
takes 1.5 hr, plus 30 min in stations. The airplane flies the
330 km (airport to airport) in just 30 min, but the drive to
the NYC airport takes 30 min, you must arrive 2 hr before
departure time, the plane waits 15 min for takeoff, and it
takes 45 min to get your luggage and drive into DC. Find the
train s track speed, the plane s flying speed, the total travel
B time for each option, and the overall average speed for
each option.
5. You drive from New York City to Washington DC by car. You
Figure 15 drive in traffic for the first hour at an average of 50 km/hr.
You cover the next 250 km in 3.0 hr, and then drive the
remaining 30 km into Washington in 30 min. Find your total
33. By how much does a freely falling object s speed increase time and average speed.
during its third second of fall (from t = 2 s to t = 3 s after
release)? During its fourth second of fall? ACCELERATION1
34. For an object that is freely falling to Earth, which of the fol- 6. A car starts from rest and maintains an acceleration of
lowing quantities increase during the fall: distance (from the 4.5 (km/hr)/s for 5 s. How fast is it going at the end of the 5 s?
starting point), speed, velocity, acceleration? 7. A car is moving at 30 km/hr. The driver then presses harder
35. As an object falls freely, what will be its speed at the end of on the accelerator, causing an acceleration of 2.25 (km/hr)/s,
the first second? Second second? Third second? which she maintains for 4 s. How fast is the car going at the
36. As an object falls freely, what will be its acceleration at the end of the 4 s?
end of the first second? Second second? Third second?
37. An astronaut on another planet, one that has no atmosphere, FALLING
drops a rock off a cliff. How much faster is the rock moving
at the end of 3 s as compared with 1 s? How much farther 8. You drop a rock off a cliff and note that it hits the ground
(measured from the release point) does the rock fall in 3 s as below in 6 s. How high is the cliff, assuming that the air is so
compared with the distance it falls in 1 s? thin that air resistance can be ignored during the entire fall?
38. Neglecting air resistance, would the answers to the preceding Unless the air is extremely thin, air resistance will not be
exercise be different if the rock is dropped on Earth? negligible. What does this tell you about your calculation of
Neglecting air resistance, would the distance fallen in 3 s on the cliff s height: Is the cliff actually higher, or is it lower,
Earth be likely to be the same as the distance fallen in 3 s on than your calculated answer?
the other planet? 9. In the preceding problem, how fast is the rock moving when
it hits the ground, still assuming negligible air resistance?

1
With further analysis, we could arrive at two equations for the speed and position of any object that starts from rest and moves in a straight line with
unchanging acceleration

d = a bat2
1
s = at,
2

where a represents the acceleration. For freely falling objects on Earth, a = 9.8 m>s2.

90
 How Things Move: Problem Set

10. You drop a rock down a well and hear a splash 3 s later. As
Charlie Brown would say, the well is 3 seconds deep. But Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual
how many meters deep is it, assuming that air resistance is
negligible and that the time for sound to travel back up the
Exercises and Problems
well is also negligible?
Conceptual Exercises
11. In the preceding problem, how fast is the rock moving when
1. Aristotle: This is the ball s natural motion. Galileo: Friction
it hits the water?
slowed it to a stop.
12. You drop an apple out of a third-story window. When does it
3. The baseball keeps up with the train and comes back down
pass the second-story window 4 m below?
in your hand, just as though you were standing still on
13. When does the apple in the preceding question hit the ground
Earth s surface. Explanation: Because of the law of inertia,
8 m below?
the ball keeps moving in the forward direction with no
14. A car speeds up from rest, along a straight highway. Its accel-
change in its forward speed, even though you have released
eration is unchanging. How much farther (measured from the
the ball. Your throw simply gives the ball an upward (and
starting point) does it get in 10 s, as compared with 1 s?
then downward) motion, on top of the forward motion that
15. In the preceding problem, how much faster is it moving in
the ball had before you threw it.
10 s, as compared with 1 s?
5. Judging from Figure 7b, an observer in low orbit would see
16. On the planet Mars, a free-falling object released from rest
only a small portion of Earth. Thus Figure 7a must have been
falls 4 m in 1 s and is moving at 8 m/s at that time. How fast
taken from a much greater distance.
would such an object be moving after 2 s? 3 s?
7. They lurch forward because of their own inertia their bod-
17. In the preceding problem, how far would such an object fall
ies have a tendency to keep on moving.
in 2 s? 3 s?
9. They must have different speeds, because she is passing him.
Since their speeds are different, their velocities are different,
Answers to Concept Checks because velocity means speed and (not or) direction; that is,
both the speeds and the directions of motion must be the
same before we can say that the velocities are the same.
1. Artistotle believed that it was part of the nature of stones and 11. Neither ball has any acceleration. The lower ball has the
other heavy objects to fall, so no outside influence was larger speed and the larger velocity. It starts out behind
required, (e). the upper ball, catches up at time 2, and then passes the
2. (a) (if the stone is falling through air) and (c). upper ball.
3. (a) It s interesting to note that, because of Earth s daily spin, 13. Speed 90 km/hr, velocity 90 km/hr toward the south.
a typical point on Earth s surface moves around Earth s cen- 15. Speed = 3 km>0.25 hr = 12 km>hr.
ter at about 1600 km/hr (1000 mi/hr). So the law of inertia 17. It is due to bouncing, or shaking back and forth. These are
tells us that, if Earth suddenly stopped spinning, people and accelerations. Nonaccelerated motion would not make peo-
houses would find themselves sliding across Earth s surface ple sick.
at a speed of 1600 km/hr. Eventually, friction would bring 19. No, you cannot say, because you don t know how long each
them to rest. Most objects would slide for a few minutes acceleration took.
across a distance of about 25 km (15 miles) and their sur- 21. (a) Accelerated. (b) Not accelerated. (c) Accelerated, since it
faces would be heated by friction to nearly the boiling point is moving in a circle. (d) Accelerated, since it is moving in a
of water. circle. (e) Not accelerated.
4. The car s average speed is 24 km/hr, which is less than the 23. Accelerator pedal, brake, steering wheel.
bicycle s 30 km/hr, (b). 25. The object moves with an unchanging velocity. Thus, dis-
5. (a) and (d) tance changes; it gets larger and larger, at a steady rate.
6. (d) Speed does not change. Velocity does not change.
7. The car is accelerated when its velocity is changing that is, Acceleration remains zero, so it does not change.
whenever either the speed or the direction of motion is
changing. Answers: (b) (speed is decreasing), (c) (direction 27. accel = change in speed>time
of motion is changing), (e) (direction of motion is chang-
ing), (f) (speed is increasing). Note that there is no accelera- (4.5 m>s - 3 m>s)
=
tion in (d), because neither the speed nor the direction is 5s
changing at the instant shown. 1.5 m>s
8. (a) and (c) = = 0.3 (m>s)>s
5s
9. (b) and (e) 12 km>hr
10. (e) 29. = 3(km>hr)>s
4s
11. (b) 12 km>hr
12. (b) = 0.75(km>hr)>s
13. (a), (b), and (c) 16 s
24 km>hr
= 3(km>hr)>s
8s
6 km>hr
= 0.75(km>hr)>s
8s

91
 How Things Move: Problem Set

31. The object begins with a speed of 0 m/s and speeds up to a 5. total time = 1.0 hr + 3.0 hr + 0.5 hr = 4.5 hr.
speed of 10 m/s by the end of the first second, so its total distance = 50 km (during first hr) + 250 km +
average speed during the entire first second (from 0 to 1 s) 30 km = 330 km.
is only 5 m/s. average speed = 330 km>4.5 hr = 73 km>hr.
33. By 10 m/s. By 10 m/s. 7. The change in speed is at = 2.25(km>hr)>s * 4 s =
35. 1st second: about 10 m/s. 2nd second: about 20 m/s. 3rd sec- 9 km>hr. This must be added to the initial speed of 30 km/hr.
ond: about 30 m/s. Thus the final speed is 30 km>hr + 9 km>hr = 39 km>hr.
37. Three times as fast, because speed is proportional to time; 9. s = at = (9.8 m>s2) * (6 s) = 59 m>s.
nine times as far, because distance is proportional to the 11. s = at = (9.8 m>s2) * (3 s) = 29 m>s.
square of the time. 13. d = (1>2)at2. Solving for t,
Problems t = 2(2d>a) = 2(2 * 8>9.8) = 1.28 s.
1. 0.5 m = 500 mm. Solving v = d>t for t gives t = d>v. So 15. Speed is proportional to time, so the car is moving 10 times
the number of years until the level has risen 500 mm is faster after 10 s than after 1 s.
500 mm>(5 mm>y) = 100 y. 17. Distance is proportional to the square of the time, so it has
3. The distance to the moon and back is 7.6 * 108 m. The moved four times as far, or 16 m, after 2 s. It has moved nine
speed is 300,000 km>s = 3 * 105 km>s = 3 * 108 m>s. times as far, or 36 m, after 3 s.
Solving d = st for t, we get t = d>s = (7.6 * 108)>
(3 * 108 m) = 2.5 s.

92
Why Things Move
as They Do
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said, “Let Newton be,” and all was light.
Alexander Pope, Eighteenth-Century British Poet

T
he world changed in 1687. In that year, Isaac Newton (Figure 1) published his
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. To take just one example, by
making Descartes’s and Galileo’s law of inertia the foundation of his work,
Newton undermined our intuitive view of how things move, a view accepted by all
educated people for 2000 years. The Newtonian world is surprisingly simple. Using
only a few key principles, Newton was able to give quantitative explanations for all
manner of things: planets, moons, comets, falling objects, weight, ocean tides,
Earth’s equatorial bulge, stresses on a bridge, and more. It was an unparalleled
expansion and unification of our understanding of nature.
Newton’s influence ranged far beyond physics and astronomy. Not only the sci-
ences but also history, the arts, economics, government, theology, and philosophy
were shaped by the general patterns of Newtonian physics. For example, the ideals of
inalienable human rights that inspired the American and French revolutions stemmed
largely from a populace steeped in a Newtonian culture of universal natural law that
applied equally to all people, to commoners and kings alike.
Newtonian physics worked almost too well. Unchallenged for over two centuries,
it was eventually regarded as absolute truth. The very word understand came to mean
“to explain in terms of Newtonian physics.” Most importantly, people eventually took
for granted many subtle Newtonian habits of mind that had profound but unstated and
unexamined implications having to do with determinism, cause and effect, the
mechanical nature of the universe, and other philosophical conclusions.1 Eventually,
everyone from the laborer to the scholar assumed that Newton had laid the framework
for all human knowledge.
During the twentieth century, relativity and quantum physics superseded Newtonian
physics. But Newtonian cultural habits remain, partly because there is no agreed-upon
philosophical framework for the new physics and partly due to the failure of science edu-
cators to teach the new physics to all people. Thus, our culture remains largely
Newtonian while our science is post-Newtonian...not a healthy situation. In order that

1
Two classic historical studies of physical science from the early Greeks through Newton examine the tran-
sition to the new worldview. The very title of Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers (New York: Universal
Library and The Macmillan Company, 1963) refers to the philosophically naive manner in which the
Newtonian view developed. E. A. Burtt’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (originally
published in 1932; reissued by Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1980) is a close examination of
the history and implications of these unstated philosophical assumptions.

From Chapter 4 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

you may develop the tools to help pull all of us into the post-Newtonian age, I’ve chosen
modern post-Newtonian physics and its significance as one of the themes of this text.
Newton’s physics starts from only a few concepts and principles. You have already
learned two concepts, velocity and acceleration, and two principles, the law of
inertia and the law of falling. Newton’s other key concepts are force and mass
(Sections 1 and 2). His other key principles are the law of motion (Sections 3 and 4),
the law of force pairs (Section 5), and the law of gravity. Section 6 applies these
ideas to the motion of a device that has, for better or worse, reshaped our cities,
our landscapes, and our lives: the automobile. Section 7 presents another way of
looking at Newtonian physics based on the concept of “momentum.”

American Institute of Physics/ 1 FORCE: WHY THINGS ACCELERATE

Emilio Segre Visual Archives
We have used the word force synonymously with “external influence.” Now I need
Figure 1
Isaac Newton, 1642–1727. His
to be more specific. Since the law of inertia says that bodies having no external
Mathematical Principles of Natural influence (no force) on them are unaccelerated, it is natural to define a force as any
Philosophy, summarizing his, external influence that causes a body to accelerate. So a body “exerts a force on”
Descartes’s, and Galileo’s studies another body whenever the first body causes the second body to accelerate.
on the motion of material objects Some examples: If a ball is at rest on a table and you push it with your hand, the
on Earth and in the heavens, may ball will accelerate into motion. If the ball is already moving across a table and you
well be the single most important push it briefly from behind, it will speed up. If you “pat” a moving ball lightly on
book in the history of science. the front side, toward the rear, it will slow down. If you pat it lightly sideways, it
will change directions. In all four cases, your hand push accelerated the ball. In
Newton was not only the greatest
fact, a little experimentation shows that you cannot push the ball without accelerat-
genius that ever existed, but also ing it.2 So every hand push is a force. When you use the word force, it is useful to
the most fortunate, inasmuch as remember that a force is like a push.
there is but one universe, and it There are many misconceptions about the word force. Just like the word push, a
can therefore happen to but one force is an action rather than a thing. An object cannot be a force or possess force.
man in the world’s history to be Instead, force is something that one object does to another, just like “pushing.” A
the interpreter of its laws.
body can “exert a force on” another body.
Pierre-Simon De Laplace, Scientist
Pulling is another example. Starting with a ball at rest on the table, you can grasp
it and pull it toward you, accelerating it into motion. So pulls are forces. Instead of
pulling the ball with your hand, you could attach a string and pull the string, which
pulls on the ball to accelerate the ball. So strings, when they pull, exert forces.
Now suppose that Sam and Sally both push on a ball in opposite directions
(Figure 2). If they adjust their pushes, they can get them to balance so that the ball
remains at rest. Yet both are pushing on the ball. Even though the ball is unacceler-
ated, we will say that Sam exerts a force on the ball and that Sally does, too. In
cases involving more than one force, a body exerts a force on another body if, in
the absence of the other forces, the first body would cause the second body
to accelerate.
Figure 2
You could tap a ball with a hammer instead of pushing or pulling it with your
Both Sam and Sally are exerting a
force on the ball, but the ball is not
hand. Since the hammer tap accelerates the ball, it exerts a force on the ball. Try
accelerating. When we say “Sam
exerts a force on the ball” we mean
that Sam would cause the ball to
accelerate if no other forces were
acting. In the case pictured, Sally’s
force on the ball prevents Sam’s 2
Assuming that there is only one push at a time. Two simultaneous pushes in opposite directions could can-
force from causing it to accelerate. cel each other.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

tapping a motionless or moving ball from various directions yourself, and observe it I do not know what I may appear
carefully. Exactly when is it accelerating? to the world; but to myself I seem
———This is a pause for finding a ball and a hammer and trying this. to have been only like a boy play-
ing on the seashore, and diverting
Observe carefully. The ball accelerates only during the fraction of a second when
myself in now and then finding a
the hammer is touching it. So the hammer exerts a force on the ball only during this smoother pebble or a prettier
fraction of a second. After the tap, the ball moves at an unchanging speed in a shell than ordinary, whilst the
straight line, so there is no force exerted on it. Note that the moving ball does not great ocean of truth lay all undis-
“have force” and it does not “carry force along with it.” A force is like a push. You covered before me.
wouldn’t say that the ball “has push.” Newton

Friction and air resistance are two more forces. If you briefly shove a book and
let go so that it slides across a table, the book will slow down as it slides. Some
force must cause this acceleration (recall that slowing down is one type of acceler-
ation). This force results from the contact between the book and the tabletop, and is
exerted by the tabletop on the bottom of the book. This force exists because both
surfaces are rough or uneven at the microscopic level, as you can verify by sliding
the book across a smoother surface and observing that the (de-)acceleration is
reduced. Such a force, by one surface on another surface due to the roughness of the
surfaces, is called friction.
A fast bullet moving horizontally through air slows a little, so there must be a
force on the bullet. This force is caused by the bullet hitting air molecules as it trav-
els. It is called air resistance. Air resistance is similar to friction: The bullet slides
through the air in somewhat the same way that a book slides across a table.
You know that an apple falling freely to the ground accelerates all the way down.
Since the apple accelerates, there must be a force on it, commonly called the force
of gravity. But remember that forces are always actions by one object on another
object. Gravity is a force on the apple, but what is this force exerted by? The answer
is that it is exerted by planet Earth. The experimental evidence for this is that no
matter where you go on Earth, a falling apple always accelerates downward, toward
Earth’s center. You can think of a gravitational force as a pull, although not a
human, muscular pull. It’s a pull by Earth on nearby bodies.
There’s an interesting difference between gravitational forces and the other
forces we’ve looked at. Hand pushes, hand pulls, hammer taps, string pulls, friction,
and air resistance all are contact forces: forces exerted by an object that is touching
another object. The gravitational force by Earth on a falling apple is different,
because Earth is not actually touching the apple while it falls. Air is touching the
apple, but you could imagine removing the air and the apple would still fall. The
gravitational force acts at a distance, across empty space.

2 CONNECTING FORCE AND ACCELERATION

The crux of Newton’s theory of motion is really simple: forces cause accelerations.
It’s a surprising idea. Our Aristotelian intuitions tell us that outside influences are
needed to keep something moving, that is, that forces cause (or maintain) velocities.
But Newton says no force is needed to keep a thing moving, and that forces instead
cause accelerations.
Newton formulated the specific relation between force and acceleration. To
follow his reasoning, suppose that you put a smooth ball on a smooth table and tap
it once with a hammer. As you know, it accelerates during the tap. Experience

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shows that the more strongly you tap, the faster it will be moving after the tap. So
stronger forces cause larger accelerations. When this kind of experiment is done
quantitatively, it is found that as the force on an object increases, the object’s accel-
eration increases in exactly the same proportion: A doubled force causes a doubled
acceleration, a tripled force causes a tripled acceleration, and so forth. So an
object’s acceleration is proportional to the total force exerted on it. In symbols,
a r F

How do we know that acceleration is proportional to force? The proportional-

ity between acceleration and force can be demonstrated by using a setup such as
Figure 3: A coaster glides without friction, pulled by a spring. Measuring the coaster’s
acceleration with clocks and rulers, one finds that an unchanging pulling force (Figure
3a) causes an unchanging acceleration and that a doubled pulling force (Figure 3b)
causes a doubled acceleration.

Now imagine exerting forces on a light ball and a heavy ball. You’ll find that, if
you give them equal taps, the light ball accelerates into faster motion than does the
heavy ball. So the light ball has a larger acceleration during the tap. It’s useful to
extend the concept of inertia to this situation. Recall that an object’s inertia is its
ability to maintain its velocity. Since the heavier ball changes its velocity the least,
we say that it has more inertia than the light ball, using the word inertia to mean a
body’s resistance to acceleration.
It might seem, offhand, that “inertia” means pretty much the same thing as
“weight,” because the heavier or “weightier” ball has more inertia. And in fact an
object’s inertia and its weight are pretty much the same thing so long as the object
is near Earth’s surface. However, weight and inertia are actually different things.
Convincing evidence of this key fact comes from the study of objects in outer
space, objects such as the many isolated rocks moving through our solar system. If
you were in distant space holding such a rock in your hand, and then released it, the
rock wouldn’t “fall”; it would instead remain “floating” in front of you. But if you

Doubled force
Unchanging Doubled
acceleration acceleration
Unchanging force
Air coaster

(a) (b)

Figure 3
Quantitative demonstration that acceleration is proportional to force. (a) An unchanging pulling force
causes an unchanging acceleration of a frictionless coaster along a horizontal surface. (b) If the pulling
force is doubled, the acceleration is also doubled.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

push it with your hand, you’ll find that it resists your push. A huge push is needed
to get a large boulder moving at even a slow speed. A rock in space has inertia, even
though it has no weight. Such an object has no weight because weight is the force of
gravitational attraction and is too small to notice in deep space.
It’s useful to define inertia quantitatively. When inertia is made quantitative, it’s
called mass. That is, the mass of an object is its amount of inertia. To establish a
measurement scale for mass, scientists choose one particular object, called the
standard kilogram, and define its mass to be one kilogram, abbreviated kg
(Figure 4). There are good duplicates of it in most physics laboratories. Any object
having the same inertia as the standard kilogram is said to have a mass of 1 kilo-
gram. And any object having the same inertia as 2 kilograms bundled together has
a mass of 2 kilograms. The mass of any object is defined in this way, by comparing
its inertia with that of 1 or more kilograms (or with half a kilogram or some other
fraction).
Now, suppose you conducted further “coaster” experiments such as those shown
in Figure 3, but that this time you maintained an unchanging pulling force while
varying the amount of material being pulled (Figure 5). Figure 5a shows a single
coaster being pulled, and Figure 5b shows a double coaster (two identical coasters
linked together) being pulled by the same force. The acceleration should be smaller
in case (b), because the greater amount of material has greater inertia. But how
much smaller? The experimental answer turns out to be that the doubled coaster has National Institute of Standards and
Technology
half as much acceleration as the single coaster. And three coasters would have one-
third as much acceleration, and so forth. We express this by saying that an object’s Figure 4
acceleration is proportional to the inverse of its mass. Since the inverse of a num- The U.S. National Standard
ber is 1 divided by that number, this is abbreviated as a r 1>m. Kilogram no. 20, an accurate copy
You learn something else from this experiment: An object’s mass (its inertia) is a of the International Standard
measure of the “quantity of matter” (amount of material, number of atoms) it contains. Kilogram kept at Sèvres, France. It
For example, there is twice as much matter in the doubled coaster as in the single is stored inside two bell jars from
coaster, and also twice as much mass. which air has been removed.

Acceleration Half as much acceleration

Force Force
Two coasters

(a) (b)

Figure 5
Quantitative demonstration that acceleration is inversely proportional to mass. (a) Pulling on an air coaster
causes the coaster to accelerate, as in Figure 3. (b) Pulling on two air coasters (twice as much mass), with the
same force as in (a), causes half as much acceleration.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

Our two proportionalities, a r F and a r 1>m, can be put together to read

acceleration r force>mass; a r F>m

In words: An object’s acceleration is proportional to the force exerted on it divided

by its mass.
We need a measurement scale for force. The unit of force, called the newton
(abbreviated N), is defined as the amount of force that can give a 1 kg mass a 1 m/s2
acceleration. So the proportionality becomes an equality:

acceleration = force>mass; a = F>m

This formula gives the acceleration in m/s2, provided the force is in N and the mass in
kg. In the U.S. system of units, force is measured in pounds. One newton is a little less
than a quarter of a pound. Think of a quarter-pound (a single stick) of butter.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 A giant rock several kilometers across is at rest in outer

space, far from all outside influences. A small, slow-moving pebble lightly “taps”
the rock and bounces off. What does the rock do? (a) It accelerates up to a slow
speed during the tap, and then comes quickly back to rest. (b) It accelerates up to a
slow speed during the tap, and then comes gradually back to rest. (c) It accelerates
up to a slow speed during the tap, and then continues moving at that speed. (d) It
doesn’t accelerate at all. (e) It accelerates up to a high speed during the tap, and
then continues moving at that speed. (f ) It turns into a frog.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 Imagine you are in space and so far from all astronomical
bodies that gravity is negligible, with two blocks of metal in front of you. They look
identical, but you have been informed that one is made of aluminum and the other
of lead (which, on Earth, would be much heavier than aluminum). You could deter-
mine which one is which by (a) giving them equally strong hammer taps—the one
that then moves more slowly is aluminum; (b) giving them equally strong hammer
taps—the one that then moves more slowly is lead; (c) holding them in your two
hands—the heavier one is aluminum; (d) holding them in your two hands—the
heavier one is lead; (e) actually, none of these methods would work.

3 NEWTON’S LAW OF MOTION: CENTERPIECE OF

NEWTONIAN PHYSICS
I must discuss two other points about Newton’s theory of motion. First, what hap-
pens when more than one force acts on an object, perhaps pushing or pulling it in
different directions? In this text, we’ll only be concerned with situations in which
the individual forces all act along a single straight line. When the individual forces
all act in the same direction, their effects simply add up, and the overall effect is the
sum of the individual forces. What if two forces act in opposite directions on the
same object? If the forces are of equal strength (Figure 2) you know from experi-
ence that the object will not accelerate, so the overall effect must be zero. This sug-
gests subtracting the two forces. This suggestion is correct.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

So two or more forces acting in the same direction have the same overall effect
as a single force equal to their sum, while two forces acting in opposite directions
have an overall effect equal to their difference and acting in the direction of the 3N 10 N push
friction
larger force. We call this overall effect the net force.
For instance, if you push your book along a tabletop with a force of 10 N and the
tabletop exerts a 3 N frictional force on the book (Figure 6), the net force on the
book is 7 N. These 7 newtons represent the net, overall effect of the external envi-
ronment pushing and pulling on the book. It is this 7 N net force, and not just your
10 N pushing force, that accelerates the book. Figure 6
The second point is the direction of the acceleration. Since forces have direc- How strong and in what direction
tions, and since acceleration is proportional to force, it is not surprising that accel- is the net force on the book?
eration should have a direction, too. So far, the only accelerations I have discussed
quantitatively were ones in which an object was speeding up along a straight line. In
this case, the direction of the acceleration is forward, because the change in veloc-
ity is in the forward direction (Figure 7). What about an object slowing down along
a straight line? Since the velocity gets smaller, the change in velocity is backward
(Figure 8). This means that the acceleration is backward, opposite to the velocity.
Since an object’s acceleration is determined by the net force on it, it seems plau-
sible that the acceleration’s direction should be the same as the net force’s direction.
Simple experiments verify this: If you give a motionless ball a brief hammer tap, it
will accelerate into motion along the direction in which you tapped, so the acceler-
ation is along the direction of the force. If the ball is already moving and you tap it
from behind, it will speed up; the acceleration is forward, again along the direction
of the force. And if you tap a moving ball lightly from in front, the ball will slow
down; this is a backward acceleration, which again is along the direction of the
force.

1 2
Initial Change in
velocity velocity

Initial velocity
Final
velocity
Change in
velocity

Final
velocity
1 2

Figure 7 Figure 8
When an object speeds up along a When an object slows down along
straight line, its change in velocity a straight line, its change in veloc-
is along the direction of the motion. ity is opposite to the direction of
the motion.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

In summary:

Newton’s Law of Motion3

An object’s acceleration is determined by its mass and by the net force exerted on it
by its environment. The direction of the acceleration is the same as the direction of
the net force. Quantitatively, the acceleration is proportional to the net force divided
by the mass:
net force F
acceleration r ; a r
mass m

If force is measured in newtons, mass in kilograms, and acceleration in m/s2, the

proportionality becomes an equality:
net force F
acceleration = ; a =
mass m

CONCEPT CHECK 3 A slow car moves at a steady 10 km/hr down a straight

highway while another car zooms past at a steady 120 km/hr. Which car has the
greater net force on it? (a) The slower one. (b) The faster one. (c) The one having
the greater air resistance and rolling resistance. (d) None of the above.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 You push your 2 kg book along a tabletop, pushing it with
a 10 N force. If the book is greased so that friction is negligible, the book’s acceler-
ation (a) is 5 m/s2; (b) is 10 m/s2; (c) is 20 m/s2; (d) is 0.2 m/s2; (e) keeps getting
larger and larger as long as you keep pushing; (f) keeps getting smaller and smaller
as long as you keep pushing.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 Follow-up on Concept Check 4: A nongreased book also

has a mass of 2 kg and is pushed with a 10 N force, but now there is a 4 N frictional
force. The book’s acceleration is (a) 12 m/s2; (b) 20 m/s2; (c) 28 m/s2; (d) 3 m/s2;
(e) 5 m/s2; (f ) 2 m/s2.

4 WEIGHT: GRAVITY’S FORCE ON A BODY

As you know, Earth exerts a gravitational force on objects that are falling to the
ground. This force is called “weight.” An object still has weight even when it’s not
falling, as when it’s at rest on the ground. We’ll discover that the sun, moon, plan-
ets, stars, and all other astronomical bodies exert gravitational forces, too. It’s use-
ful to extend the meaning of the word weight to include all such possibilities. In
other words, the weight of an object refers to the net gravitational force exerted on
it by all other objects. Since weight is a force, it can be measured in newtons. In
U.S. units, weight is measured in pounds.
Weight and mass are related concepts, but they certainly are not the same thing.
An object’s weight is the force on it due to gravity, whereas its mass is its quantity
of inertia. Weight is measured in newtons (or pounds, in U.S. units) while mass is
measured in kilograms. An object’s weight depends on its environment; for

3
Often called, boringly, Newton’s second law.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

instance, an object’s weight is less when it is on the moon than when it is on Earth,
because the force of gravity is smaller on the moon than on Earth. But an object’s
mass is a property of the object alone and not of its environment, so its mass is the
same on the moon as on Earth. For example, a kilogram has a mass of 1 kilogram
regardless of whether it is on Earth or on the moon or in distant space, but its weight
is about 10 N (or 2.2 pounds) on Earth, only 1.6 N on the moon, and essentially
zero in distant space.
If you drop a stone and a baseball, Galileo’s law of falling tells us that their accel-
erations will be the same (neglecting air resistance). If the stone and baseball happen
to have the same mass, Newton’s law of motion tells us that the forces on them are
the same. But this force is just the force of gravity, which means that their weights
are equal. This is a plausible and important conclusion: Two objects of equal mass
also have equal weight, so long as you measure both weights at the same place (you
wouldn’t want to measure one on Earth and the other on the moon). So you can com-
pare masses by comparing weights, for instance on a balance beam (Figure 9). Any
object that balances a kilogram has a mass of 1 kilogram, for example.
Figure 9
The metric ton, or tonne (it’s always spelled this way), equal to 1000 kilograms,
You can compare masses by com-
is useful for measuring larger masses. The similar U.S unit—the ton—is
paring weights, for instance on a
2000 pounds. On Earth, the mass of a ton is about 900 kilograms, so a ton is a little balance beam. Since they balance,
less massive than a tonne. As you can see, the U.S system gets needlessly confus- the stone and the baseball have
ing, so you’ll perhaps be glad to hear that I’ll henceforth dispense with it entirely. equal masses.
For example, consider a book resting on a table. Suppose it weighs 12 N, mean-
ing that the gravitational force by Earth on the book is 12 N. This force has a down-
ward direction. But the book is obviously not accelerating downward through the
table. Since the book’s acceleration is zero, Newton’s law of motion tells us that the
net force on it must also be zero. So there must be an upward force of 12 N acting
on the book to balance the downward weight. The table must exert this force,
because if the table vanished the book would fall.
It may seem strange that an inanimate object could exert a force. Why should a Figure 10
table push on a book? The tabletop doesn’t seem to be doing anything. A micro- As an explanation of the normal
scopic view is enlightening. The upward force is exerted by the atoms in the table- force by a table on a book, imagine
top on the atoms in the book’s bottom.4 When the book presses against the tabletop, that the tabletop is covered with
the tabletop is squeezed down and slightly deformed. And like a squeezed spring, small springs. When the book rests
the atoms then push upward against the book (Figure 10). The direction of this force on the table, it squeezes the
springs, causing the springs to
by the tabletop is directly away from the surface, perpendicular to it. A force simi-
push back against the book.
lar to the upward force by the table on the book is exerted when any object touches
a solid surface. Physicists call any such force a normal force, because “normal”
Normal
means perpendicular. force on book
Figure 11 shows the forces exerted on the book. Each force is represented by an
arrow. A force diagram like this can help in analyzing forces and motion. When
you draw a force diagram, show every one of the individual forces acting on what-
ever object is of interest. Show each force as an arrow pointing in the direction in
which that force pushes or pulls on the object, and name each force.
As another example, suppose that a rocket at liftoff weighs 150,000 N and has a
mass of 15,000 kg and that the rocket engines exert a 210,000 N “thrust” force on
Weight
of book

Figure 11
4
More precisely, this force is an electric force by the electrons in the table’s atoms on the electrons in the The forces exerted on a book at
book’s atoms. Electrons repel one another strongly when they get very close together. rest on a table.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

the rocket (Figure 12). (You’ll learn more about the thrust force in the next section.)
Thrust,
210,000 N
How large is the net force on the rocket, and how big is the rocket’s acceleration?
Solution: The net force is 210,000 N – 150,000 N = 60,000 N upward. It is only this
60,000 N that actually accelerates the rocket. To find the acceleration, Newton’s law
of motion says to divide the net force by the mass: 60,000 N/l5,000 kg = 4 m/s2.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 Suppose the rocket develops a thrust of only 165,000 N.

The acceleration is then (a) 4 m/s2; (b) 3 m/s2; (c) 2 m/s2; (d) 1 m/s2; (e) 0 m/s2.

CONCEPT CHECK 7 An astronaut on Earth has a mass of 70 kg and a weight of

700 N. On the moon, the astronaut’s mass and weight will be (a) 11 kg and 700 N;
Weight, (b) 70 kg and 110 N; (c) 11 kg and 110 N; (d) 70 kg and 700 N.
150,000 N
CONCEPT CHECK 8 Would it be easier to lift a book on Earth or on the moon?
(a) On the moon, because the book’s weight would be smaller. (b) On the moon,
because the book’s mass would be smaller. (c) On Earth, because the book’s weight
would be smaller. (d) On Earth, because the book’s mass would be smaller. (e)
Same in both places.

5 THE LAW OF FORCE PAIRS: YOU CAN’T DO JUST

ONE THING

How do we know that forces always come in pairs? Try these: Slap a tabletop
with your hand. Grasp the edge of a table and pull hard on it. Now push hard on it. Find
two balls of any kind; place one at rest on a smooth surface and roll the other one toward
it so that they collide.
Figure 12 ———Pause. I hope you’re actually doing some of this stuff that I suggest. It keeps your
The forces exerted on a rocket dur- brain awake.
ing liftoff. Note that the diagram When you slap a table, it slaps back, as you can feel when it stings your hand. This
shows only the individual forces slap by the table is a force, because it accelerates your hand (by stopping your hand).
and not the 60,000 N net force. When you pull on a table, the table pulls you toward it. And when you push on the table,
The 60,000 N net force is not an the table pushes you away. These are forces exerted by the table on you. When the balls
individual force (it is the sum of all collide, the ball you rolled (call it the first ball) exerts a force on the second ball, as you
the individual forces) and hence is can see from the fact that the second ball accelerates into motion. But the second ball
not shown. exerts a force on the first ball, too, as you can see from the fact that the first ball’s veloc-
ity changes. These experiments indicate that whenever one object exerts a force on a
second object, the second exerts a force on the first: Forces always come in pairs, called
force pairs.
Do things still work out this way even if the two objects are not touching? You could
investigate this with a pair of magnets. Place the magnets on a smooth surface and hold
them at rest with their poles near each other but not touching. When you release them,
they both accelerate (if they don’t then find a smoother surface). So each exerts a force
on the other.

Physicists like to think of every force as an interaction between two objects,

rather than as something one object does to another. If you think of slapping a table
as an interaction between your hand and the table, it’s natural to conclude that each
exerts a force on the other.

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Touch your friend’s face. Your hand is touched by your friend’s face. You cannot
touch without being touched.5
Slap lightly on a tabletop. Now slap hard. The table slapped back harder the sec-
ond time, right? This gives us quantitative information about force pairs: When one
member of a force pair grows bigger, so does the other. In fact, quantitative experi-
ments show that the two members of any force pair have the same strength. If one of
them is, say, 3.71 newtons, the other one will be 3.71 newtons too. The directions of
the two forces in a force pair are not the same, however. In fact, our examples show
that they are in opposite directions. For instance, when you pull a table toward you,
the table pulls you toward it (Figure 13).
Newton recognized this idea as a key physical principle. I’ll summarize it
as follows:

The Law of Force Pairs6

Every force is an interaction between two objects. Thus, forces must come in pairs:
Whenever one body exerts a force on a second body, the second exerts a force on
the first. Furthermore, the two forces are equal in strength but opposite
in direction.

The fact that the two forces always have exactly the same strength is surprising.
This says, for example, that a bug hits a car with the same force that the car hits the
bug! Surprising—but true. However, these equal forces cause vastly different
responses in the bug and the car: The bug feels an enormous acceleration, while the
car experiences a barely measurable acceleration. The reason for this difference is
Newton’s law of motion, and the vastly different masses of the bug and the car.
Figure 14 illustrates an interesting point. Since Earth exerts a gravitational force Force by
Earth on
on an apple, the law of force pairs says that the apple must exert a gravitational apple
force on Earth! Furthermore, the strengths of these two forces must be equal: If Apple
Earth exerts a 2 N force on the apple, then the apple must exert a 2 N force on
Earth. This might seem surprising. Why haven’t you noticed this force, by apples
and other objects, on Earth? Why doesn’t Earth accelerate toward the apple?

Force by table Force by

Force by table on you on you apple on
Force by you Earth
on table

Force by you
on table
Earth
(a) Pulling on the edge of the table. (b) Pushing on the table.

Figure 13
When you pull or push on a table, it pulls or pushes on you in the opposite direction.

Figure 14
5
Thanks to my friend Paul Hewitt, author of Conceptual Physics, 10th ed. (New York: Addison Wesley Earth and a falling apple: Which
2006), for this nice way of putting it. one exerts the larger force?
6
Often called, boringly, Newton’s third law. (Answer: They are the same).

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 Why Things Move as They Do

The answer is that an apple causes only a slight acceleration of Earth because
Earth’s mass is so large. You can’t use an apple to noticeably accelerate a planet.
Large astronomical objects, however, can noticeably accelerate a planet. For exam-
ple, scientists can detect Earth’s acceleration in response to the motions of the moon.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 Your hands push a heavy box across the floor. The other
member of the force pair is (a) friction pushing backward on the box; (b) gravity
pulling downward on the box; (c) the box pushing backward against your hands;
(d) the box pushing downward against the floor.

As you can see from Concept Check 9, the two forces in a force pair always act
on different objects; your hands exert a force on the box, while the box pushes back
against your hands. Similarly, if a rope pulls forward on a water skier, the skier
pulls backward on the rope. So both the skier and the rope feel forces. The first
force keeps the skier moving forward, while the second force keeps the rope taut.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 A big truck and a small car collide head on. Regarding
the forces: (a) the truck exerts a larger force on the car than the car does on the
truck; (b) the car exerts a larger force on the truck than the truck does on the car;
(c) the truck and car exert equally large forces on each other.

CONCEPT CHECK 11 Regarding the accelerations in the preceding question:

(a) The truck’s acceleration is largest; (b) The car’s acceleration is largest; (c) The
truck and the car have equally large accelerations.

6 NEWTON MEETS THE AUTOMOBILE

You can’t get anywhere by pulling on your nose. Try it (Figure 15)! You might pull
your nose out of joint, but you won’t go anywhere because your nose pulls back on
your hand, and both pulls are on your body, so they result in zero net force on your
body—they “cancel out.” The same argument shows that you can’t get anywhere by
pushing or pulling anywhere on your own body. If you want to accelerate, some-
thing outside of you—something in your environment—must exert a force on you.
That’s why Newton’s law of motion says that an object’s acceleration is determined
by the net force exerted on it by its environment.
This presents an interesting dilemma when you consider self-propelled7 objects
such as an automobile or an animal that accelerates itself into motion. How can they
get themselves going if things cannot push or pull themselves into motion?
Try this: Stand up and walk just one step, noting carefully the sensations in your
legs, especially along the bottom of the foot that is accelerating you. Your foot
pushes backward against the floor.8 You can demonstrate this more convincingly by
accelerating rapidly from standing to running on a dusty dirt road. Your feet push
dust backward, showing that they exert a backward force on the road.
The law of force pairs tells us that when your foot pushes backward on the
ground, the ground pushes forward on your foot. Voila! We’ve discovered the force

Figure 15 7
You can’t get anyplace by pulling “Self-propelled” means that the energy to propel the object comes from within the object itself. But, as
we’ll soon see, the force to propel it comes from the outside.
on your nose. 8
... if you are barefoot. Otherwise, your foot pushes backward against your shoe, which in turn pushes back-
ward against the floor.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

that accelerates you forward! It’s the ground pushing forward on your foot. This
force arises from friction between the two surfaces (the surface of the ground and the
bottom of your foot), as you can demonstrate by accelerating quickly from rest to a
fast run on a nearly frictionless surface such as a smooth sheet of ice (be careful!).
Automobiles are useful applications of Newtonian principles. What’s more
important, automobile technology has drastically reshaped the social fabric of the
modern world. Like all powerful technologies, cars have important social pros and
cons. They provide unparalleled freedom of movement, have transformed our cities,
use most of our petroleum, create much of our pollution, and are the leading cause of
death of Americans under 35. They will come in for lots of discussion in this text.
Before reading further, try listing or drawing the forces exerted on a car by its
environment while traveling along a straight, level road.
———(A pause, for listing or drawing.)
As shown in Figure 16, one force is the gravitational force, or weight of the car,
exerted downward by Earth on the car. A second force is the normal force, exerted
upward by the road on the car. These two forces act vertically. Since a car on a level
road has no acceleration in the vertical direction, the net vertical force must be zero.
So these two vertical forces must be of equal strength.
The three horizontal forces relate more directly to the car’s motion. Two back-
ward resistive forces act on the car: The atmosphere exerts the force of air resist-
ance already discussed in Section 1, and the contact between tires and road creates
another backward force known as rolling resistance. Rolling resistance is caused
by flattening of the tire where the rubber meets the road. It turns out that the force
that the road exerts on the deformed tire acts to slow the tire’s rotation, so the road
exerts a retarding (backward) force on the car. This is most pronounced in more
flexible, air-filled tires. Hard tires rolling on a smooth, hard surface, such as steel
wheels on steel tracks, reduce rolling resistance to a minimum—one reason trains
are far more energy efficient than cars. Rolling resistance also explains why under-
inflated tires reduce your gas mileage. High-mileage cars such as the Toyota Prius
use special low-rolling-resistance tires for this same reason.
The four forces discussed so far act even on a car that is coasting with its engine
shut off. If these are the only forces on the car, then the net force must be backward,
so the acceleration is backward and the car must slow down. But when a car is driv-
ing instead of coasting, there is an additional force on it. It’s a misconception to
think that this force is exerted by the engine, because things cannot accelerate
themselves and the engine is part of the car. Instead, the engine causes the drive
wheels to turn; the drive wheels exert a frictional force backward against the road;
and (because of the law of force pairs) the road in turn exerts a frictional force for-
ward against the drive wheels.
If the car moves at an unchanging velocity, there is no acceleration. Newton’s
law of motion tells us that the net force must then be zero, which means that the five
forces shown in Figure 16 must balance. In this case, the forward force on the drive
wheels must equal the sum of the two resistive forces. In order for the car to speed
up, the forward frictional force on the drive wheels must be larger than the sum of
the two resistive forces; in order for the car to slow down, this forward force must
be smaller than the sum of the resistive forces.
Most other self-propelled objects are similar to this: A swimmer pushes back-
ward on the surrounding water, and the water pushes forward on the swimmer. A
motorboat’s propeller pushes backward on the water, and the water pushes forward
on the propeller. An airplane’s propeller pushes backward on the surrounding air,

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 Why Things Move as They Do

Figure 16
The five forces on an automobile. Normal
force by
road on car
Air resistance
by air on car

Rolling
resistance by road
surface on car

Drive force, a second

force by surface of
road on drive tires
Gravitational force
by Earth on car

and the air pushes forward on the propeller. A jet airplane pushes air backward, too.
As a jet engine moves through air, the air flowing into its front end heats by com-
bustion with jet fuel, and the heated gas expands and rushes out of the back end at
high velocity.
One nice thing about space travel is that there are no resistive forces in space, so
you don’t need a forward force by the environment on the spaceship to keep going.
Your spaceship keeps going because of the law of inertia. But if you want to accel-
erate your spaceship—by changing its direction for instance—you have a problem.
It’s difficult to get the surroundings to exert a force on your spaceship because
there’s nothing around to push against!
You would have a similar problem if you were stranded in the middle of a
smoothly frozen pond. If the ice were absolutely smooth, you could not walk off it
because, with no friction, you could not push backward on the ice. How could you
get off? You could fan the air, pushing air backward in the way that a swimmer
pushes water backward. That would work. But suppose that, as in space, there were
no air. What then? Well, suppose you had something with you that you could throw
away—your physics book, or a shoe. While throwing your shoe, you would push on
the shoe, so it would push in the other direction on you, so your body would accel-
erate away from the shoe. When you let go of the shoe, you would have acquired a
velocity. So you would slide along the pond.
This is the principle of rocket propulsion. Rockets take along their own mate-
rial just to have something to push against. Shoes would work, but they aren’t terri-
bly practical (Figure 17). The rocket fuel for the U.S. space shuttle’s main rocket
engines is hydrogen and oxygen, stored as low-temperature liquids. When com-
bined, their combustion produces steam, which accelerates rapidly out the back end
of the engine. Thanks to the law of force pairs, this backward push by the shuttle on
the steam means that the escaping steam must push the shuttle forward.
There are about 1000 large “near Earth asteroids” in our solar system—rocks
more than 1 kilometer in diameter that orbit the sun and can cross Earth’s orbit and
can therefore hit us, possibly dealing civilization a death blow. People are thinking

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 Why Things Move as They Do

about methods to nudge such rocks off course in case one of them is discovered
heading for Earth. One suggested method: Send a space probe to attach itself to the
asteroid, scoop up rock, and hurl it away. Thus is just like hurling shoes: The aster-
oid would react by moving in the opposite direction, deflecting it from its collision
course. The law of force pairs comes to the rescue!

CONCEPT CHECK 12 A car weighing 10,000 N moves along a straight, level

road at a steady 80 km/hr. Air resistance is 300 N, and rolling resistance is 400 N.
The net force on this car (a) is 10,000 N; (b) is 9300 N; (c) is 10,700 N; (d) is 700 N;
(e) cannot be determined without knowing the strength of the drive force; (f ) is zero.

CONCEPT CHECK 13 In the preceding question, the strength and direction of

the drive force are (a) 10,000 N forward; (b) 700 N backward; (c) 700 N forward;
(d) 400 N forward; (e) zero.

Figure 17
Shoe power.
7 MOMENTUM
An object’s momentum is defined as its mass times its velocity. It’s conventional to
abbreviate it with the symbol “p” (I have no idea why):
momentum = mass * velocity
p = mv

Momentum measures an object’s “amount of motion”—how much mass is moving v1 v2

how fast. It’s useful in connection with any “system” (this word simply means a col-
1 2
lection of objects) of two or more objects that interact with each other via “internal”
x
forces—forces exerted by objects in the system on other objects in the system. A
good example is two colliding pool balls. When they collide, each ball exerts a brief Figure 18
force on the other during the short time they’re in contact. As a result of these Two pool balls, moving along the
forces, both balls accelerate—usually changing both the magnitude (speed) and x-axis in the + and – direction,
direction of their velocity. To keep things simple, suppose the balls collide head-on respectively, about to collide.
so that all motion occurs along a single direction, call it the x-axis (Figure 18).
One reason momentum is important in physics is that it’s one of nature’s “con-
served quantities,” in other words a system’s total momentum remains unchanged
throughout collisions such as is shown in Figure 18, despite the changes in both
balls’ velocities during the collision. Here’s why:

How do we know momentum is conserved? During the short impact time, which
we’ll call ¢t, each ball experiences a change in velocity, which we’ll call ¢v1 and ¢v2.
(The symbol ¢ is often used to mean “a change in”). According to the definition of
acceleration, the accelerations of ball 1 and ball 2 during the impact are ¢v1>¢t and
¢v2> ¢t . Using Newton’s law of motion and Newton’s law of force pairs and making

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the important assumption that the only significant forces acting on either ball during the
collision are the force by ball 1 on ball 2 and the force by ball 2 on ball 1, a little
algebra9 shows that the change in the quantity m1 v1 is equal in magnitude but opposite
in direction to the change in the quantity m2 v2. In symbols,

¢ (m1 v1) = - ¢ (m2 v2)

The minus sign means “in the opposite direction along the x-axis.” In other words, the
change in the first object’s momentum is the negative of the change in the second
object’s momentum. But this means that the sum of the two momenta (plural of
momentum) doesn’t change at all during the collision.

Momentum has a direction, namely the same direction as the velocity. For
motion along a single axis, the direction can be indicated by a + or – sign: A posi-
tive momentum is along the +x direction, while a negative momentum is along the
–x direction.
I showed above that the total momentum p1 + p2 remains unchanged throughout
the collision, where total momentum means the sum of the two individual
momenta, with the directions (+ or –) included. This important result is known as
conservation of momentum. Remember that it only applies so long as there are no
external forces (forces other than the internal forces by each object on the other) on
the system.
For instance, suppose that ball 2 is initially at rest and ball 1, moving with a
velocity of +3 m/s (the + emphasizes that it’s in the +x direction), hits it. Then the
system’s total momentum before collision is
m 1v1 + m 2v2 = m * (3 m>s) + m * 0 = (3 m>s) m,
where “m” means the mass of either ball (pool balls all have the same mass).
Conservation of momentum says that the total momentum after collision must also
be 3 m:
p1 + p2 = (3 m>s) m
or
mv1 + mv2 = (3 m>s) m
or (with simple algebra)
v1 + v2 = 3 m>s
9
Newton’s law of motion applied to each ball tells us
¢v1> ¢t = F (on ball 1)>m1 and ¢v2> ¢t = F (on ball 2)>m2.
Multiply both sides of the first equation by m1 and both sides of the second equation by m2 to get
m1 ¢v1>¢t = F (on ball 1) and m2 ¢v2> ¢t = F (on ball 2)
But Newton’s law of force pairs says that the force on 1 by 2 and the force on 2 by 1 are equal and opposite,
in other words
F (on ball 1) = -F (on ball 2).
It follows that
m1 ¢v1 = -m2 ¢v2.
But m1 is just a fixed number, so m1 times the change in v1 is the same as the change in m1 v1, and the same
goes for ball 2. So the previous equation says that ¢ (m1v1) = - ¢ (m2v2).

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 Why Things Move as They Do

where v1 and v2 now represent the two balls’ final velocities. This result could be
useful: If you knew one of the two final velocities, you could find the other. For
instance, suppose ball 1 stops when it collides with ball 2. Then v1 = 0 and our
result says that v2 = +3 m>s. So ball 2 takes off with the same velocity ball 1 had
just before the collision.
For another instance, suppose the balls are made of soft clay and that they stick
together after collision. Then v1 = v2 and so v1 + v2 = 3 m>s tells us that
2v1 = 3 m>s. Simple algebra then says that v1 = v2 = +1.5 m>s.

CONCEPT CHECK 14 If ball 2 takes off with a velocity of 2 m/s, ball 1’s final
velocity is (a) 0 m/s; (b) 0.5 m/s; (c) 1 m/s; (d) –1 m/s (in the –x direction); (e) 1.25 m/s.

For yet another oddball (so to speak) instance, suppose both balls are covered
with a small amount of gunpowder, in such a way that a small explosion occurs when
they collide. And suppose that the explosion sends ball 2 zooming off with a veloc-
ity of +10 m/s. Notice that momentum must be conserved even in this situation,
because all the significant forces on the balls during the collision/explosion (includ-
ing the explosive force) are by 1 on 2 and by 2 on 1. If you worked through Concept
Check 14, I’ll bet you’ll be able to work through this problem and conclude that
v1 = -7 m>s. Both balls are now moving faster than ball 1 was moving before col-
lision. The system gained kinetic energy (energy of motion), and this kinetic energy
came from the chemical energy of the gunpowder.
For a violent but instructive example involving objects of different mass, sup-
pose that a 30,000 kg “18 wheeler” truck moving at 20 m/s (72 km/hr) collides
head-on into a small 1000 kg car moving in the opposite direction at 20 m/s.
Suppose that the car and truck become enmeshed in each other, so that they stick
together. How fast is the combined wreckage moving just after the collision (before
the frictional force by the road has had time to begin to slow the wreckage)? It’s
easiest if you let the x-axis be in the direction of the truck’s initial motion, so that
the car’s velocity is negative.
——— A pause, for figuring.
The result is that the truck is hardly slowed by the collision; it slows from its initial
+20 m/s to +18.7 m/s (the speed of the wreckage). But the car changes its velocity
from –20 m/s to +18.7 m/s. This is a huge velocity change of +38.7 m/s in a small
fraction of a second, and implies an enormous acceleration and hence (see Newton’s
law of motion) enormous forces by the windshield, seats, etc., on the car’s occupants.
Ouch. Notice that the forces on the car driver’s body would be much smaller if the dri-
ver’s velocity change of 38.7 m/s occurred in a much longer time, such as one second
instead of a small fraction of a second. This is why air bags and vehicle front-ends
designed to crumple slowly upon collision are a good idea. The truck driver, on the
other hand, suffers a much more mild velocity change of only 1.3 m/s.
This example gives you a feel for the momentum concept. Momentum involves
both mass and velocity, so more massive objects possess more of it, and faster
objects possess more of it. Despite the equal speeds of the car and the truck, the
truck has far more momentum because of its larger mass. Momentum is a measure
of the tendency of an object to keep moving despite forces (such as collisions) that
act to change the velocity: The truck slows only slightly, while the car changes its
velocity radically.
Conservation of momentum applies to an amazing variety of situations. Here are
a few.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

First, suppose the pool ball collision is a glancing collision, so that the two
balls shoot off into different directions (Figure 19). The collision is then “two-
dimensional,” not along a single line but still on the surface of the pool table.
Conservation of momentum is still valid; in fact, it applies to each of the two
directions on the table (since in this text we’re staying away from something omi-
nously called “vectors,” I won’t go into exactly what this means).
Now suppose there are more than two balls; for instance, suppose the collision is
between a cue ball and a rack of 15 pool balls. It’s amazing (at least I’ve always
found it amazing) but true that momentum is conserved: The total momentum of all
16 pool balls just after collision equals the momentum of the cue ball just before
collision. The 16 balls might be scattering all over the place, but if you add up all
16 momenta10 you’ll find that the result is equal, in both magnitude and direction,
to the magnitude and direction of the initial momentum mv of the cue ball! But
notice that momentum is conserved only from just before to just after the collision,
before any “external forces” such as friction from the table top or bounces from
pool table walls have had time to change any of the 16 velocities.
The balls could all have different sizes and masses, and momentum would still
be conserved. In fact, I allowed for two different masses in arriving (above) at the
principle of conservation of momentum for two pool balls.
The objects needn’t physically collide (bang against each other) at all. The “col-
lision” could be between two magnets sliding on a frictionless surface, never touch-
ing but simply influencing each others’ motion magnetically, or an encounter
between two stars that exert gravitational forces on each other and remain millions
of miles apart. The two stars’ interaction (“collision” isn’t the appropriate word
here) could take years, but so long as external forces (by other stars, for instance)
don’t interfere, the total momentum of the two stars remains the same throughout
the entire interaction.
We’ll find that Newton’s laws are far from absolute. They break down for fast-
moving (comparable to the speed of light) objects, for small objects such as indi-
vidual molecules, and in situations involving strong gravitational forces or
distances stretching across many galaxies. Since Newton’s laws break down, it’s
natural to question the principle of conservation of momentum in these situations.
But surprisingly, physicists have checked a wide variety of such situations and
found that momentum is always conserved. In fact, a very broad argument based
simply on the notion that the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the uni-
verse leads to the conclusion that momentum must be conserved in any system that
has no external forces exerted on it, regardless of whether Newton’s laws are valid.
Figure 19 y
A cue ball glancing off another ball, v2
viewed from above. The second ball 2 2
v1
is initially at rest. Arrows show the 1
initial velocity of the cue ball and 1
x x
final velocities of both balls. v1
Arrows point in the direction of the (a) (b)
velocity; longer arrows represent
greater speeds. (a) Just before colli-
sion. (b) Just after collision.

10
Since the collision occurs in two dimensions, the 16 momenta must be added using something called “vec-
tor addition,” which means roughly that you should add up 16 arrows whose lengths and directions repre-
sent the magnitudes and directions of the 16 balls’ momenta.

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 Why Things Move as They Do

Conservation of momentum seems to be one of the universe’s most fundamental

principles.
To summarize:

The Law of Conservation of Momentum

The total momentum of any system remains unchanged, regardless of interactions
among the system’s parts, so long as no part of the system is acted upon by forces
external to that system.

Contemporary physicists have learned that many of nature’s deepest principles

are conservation laws in which some quantity such as momentum remains
unchanged over time. We’ll encounter two other conservation laws: conservation of
energy and conservation of electric charge.

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

111
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Why Things Move as They Do
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

16. Draw a force diagram showing the forces on a rocket during

Review Questions liftoff. Which force is largest? What is the direction of the
net force?
FORCE 17. Where is it easiest to lift your automobile: on Earth or on the
moon? Where is the automobile’s mass larger?
1. How can we tell whether a body is exerting a force on
another body?
2. Can an object have force? Can an object exert a force? Can LAW OF FORCE PAIRS
an object be a force? Can an object feel a force?
18. Describe several experiments demonstrating that forces come
3. List at least six specific examples of forces. Try to list exam-
in pairs.
ples that are significantly different.
19. Do you exert a gravitational force on Earth? How do you
4. What is a resistive force? Give two examples.
know? What direction is this force?
5. Give two examples of forces that act at a distance.
20. Describe the other member of the force pair for each of the
following forces: the normal force on a book lying on a table,
NEWTON’S LAW OF MOTION the weight of an apple, the force by a bat against a baseball,
6. What does Newton say that forces cause? What does the force by a baseball hitting a catcher’s mitt.
Aristotle say?
7. What do we mean when we say that one object has “more
inertia” than another object? THE AUTOMOBILE
8. When you move an object from Earth to the moon, does its 21. Describe four examples of forces that propel “self-propelled”
inertia change? Does its weight change? Does its mass objects.
change? Does its amount of matter change? Does its 22. Draw a force diagram showing the forces on a car driving
acceleration differ while falling freely? Does it respond dif- along a straight, level road. How would this force diagram
ferently to a net force of 1 N? be altered if the car were coasting? What if the car were
9. Forces of 8 N and 3 N act on an object. How strong is the net braking?
force if the two forces have opposite directions? The same 23. What is the main difference between propeller-driven air-
directions? planes and jet airplanes?
10. Is an object’s acceleration always in the same direction as its 24. How does the forward force on a car compare with the resis-
velocity (its direction of motion)? If not, give an example in tive forces when the car maintains a constant speed? When
which it is not. Is an object’s acceleration always in the same the car is speeding up? Slowing down?
direction as the net force on the object? If not, give an exam- 25. When a car moves at constant speed along a straight road, is the
ple in which it is not. forward force (the force that moves the car forward) zero? Is the
11. As you increase the net force on an object, what happens to net force zero? Is the acceleration zero? Is the speed zero?
its acceleration? What if you double the net force? As you 26. What is the main difference between the force that propels a
increase the mass of an object (for example, by gluing addi- rocket and the force that propels airplanes and automobiles?
tional matter to it), what happens to its acceleration? What if
you double the mass?
MOMENTUM
WEIGHT 27. Conservation of momentum follows logically from two other
12. What is weight? Is it the same as mass? If not, what is the laws of physics. Which two?
difference? 28. Which of the following quantities do you need to know in
13. Describe a simple way to determine, in a lab, whether two order to calculate the magnitude of the momentum of an
objects have equal masses. Would this method work in distant object, and how do you do the calculation: weight, mass,
space? What would work in distant space? acceleration, velocity, location, length?
14. Find the gravitational force on a 1 N apple. Would it still 29. True or false: Every system’s total momentum is always con-
weigh 1 N if we took it to the moon? served. (Recall that a “system” is any collection of physical
15. Draw a force diagram showing the forces on an apple at rest objects). Explain your answer.
on a table. Find the net force on the apple.

From Chapter 4 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

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 Why Things Move as They Do: Problem Set

30. A hunter fires a rif le bullet northward and then spins and 13. A 40 tonne truck and a small 1 tonne car maintain a steady
fires a second bullet (from the same rif le) southward. Do speed of 80 km/hr on a straight highway. Which vehicle has a
the two bullets have the same momentum? Explain. larger net force exerted on it? Which vehicle has the larger
31. Which has greater momentum, a truck at rest or a slow- normal force exerted on it?
rolling pool ball? 14. A 40 tonne truck and a small 1 tonne car maintain a steady
32. What is the magnitude of the momentum of a 7 kg bowling speed of 80 km/hr on a straight highway. Which vehicle has
ball rolling at 3 m/s? the larger drive force exerted on it? The larger air resistance
force? The larger net force?
15. A 3 kg rock rests on the ice. You kick it, briefly exerting a 60 N
force. Find the rock’s acceleration, assuming that there is no
Conceptual Exercises friction. Still assuming no friction, what will be the rock’s
acceleration after your foot is no longer in contact with the
rock? Will the rock have a (nonzero) speed at this time?
FORCE 16. In the preceding question, assume now that a frictional force
1. Is any force exerted on you when you speed up along a of 6 N acts on the rock whenever it is moving across the ice.
straight line? When you slow down along a straight line? Find the net force on the rock and the rock’s acceleration.
How do you know? What can you say about the net force on the rock after your
2. Is any force exerted on you while you move in a circle at foot is no longer in contact with it?
unchanging speed? How do you know? 17. Ned the skydiver weighs 600 N and has a mass of 60 kg.
3. A smooth ball rolls on a smooth table. Initially, no horizontal How large must be the force of air resistance acting on Ned
forces are exerted on the ball. Then you bring a magnet near in order for Ned to maintain an unchanging speed while
the rolling ball, but you are not sure whether the magnet falling through the air?
actually exerts a magnetic force on the ball. How can you tell 18. In the preceding question, what would be Ned’s acceleration
whether the magnet is exerting a horizontal force on the ball? if there were no air?
4. Does a high-speed bullet contain force? Does a stick of dyna- 19. A car weighing 8000 N moves along a straight, level road at a
mite contain force? steady 80 km/hr. The total resistive force on the car is 500 N.
Find the net force on the car and the acceleration of the car.
20. In the preceding question, find the drive force on the car.
NEWTON’S LAW OF MOTION
5. You place your book on a table and hit it horizontally with a
hammer, strongly but briefly. Do not neglect friction. Describe WEIGHT
the motion of the book, beginning from just before you hit it 21. Roughly, what is your weight in newtons?
with the hammer. Describe the direction and strength of the 22. Which has the greater mass, a tonne of feathers or a tonne of
net force on the book during the entire motion. iron? Which has the greater weight? Which has the larger
6. If you exert a force on an object and then exert three times as volume?
strong a force on the same object, what (if anything) can you 23. Would you rather have a hunk of gold whose weight is 1 N
say about the object’s acceleration during the exertion of each on the moon or one whose weight is 1 N on Earth—or
force? Assume no other force acting on the object. wouldn’t it make any difference?
7. A ball weighing 8 N is thrown straight upward. Disregarding 24. Would you rather have a hunk of gold whose mass is 1 kg on
air resistance, find the direction and strength of the net force the moon or one whose mass is 1 kg on Earth—or wouldn’t it
on the ball as it moves upward. What is the direction of the make any difference?
ball’s acceleration? Are the net force and the acceleration in 25. A standard kilogram in your physics lab weighs (approxi-
the same direction in this case? Can they ever be in different mately) 10 N, or 2.2 pounds. What are its mass and weight in
directions? distant space?
8. An object moves with unchanging speed in a straight line. 26. Find the strength and direction of the net force on an apple
Does it then have no forces acting on it? Explain. Does it weighing 2 N, neglecting air resistance, in each of the follow-
have no net force acting on it? ing cases: The apple is held at rest in your hand. The apple is
9. An object is at rest. Does it then have no forces acting on it? falling to the ground. The apple is moving upward, just after
Explain. Does it have no net force acting on it? you threw it upward.
10. When you stand on the floor, does the floor exert a force on 27. An apple is accelerated upward by your hand. Which is larger,
your feet? In which direction? Why, then, don’t you acceler- the apple’s weight or the upward force by your hand? What if
ate in that direction? you accelerate the apple downward while it is in the palm of
11. You push on a solid concrete wall. Is your push the only hori- your hand? What if you lift the apple at an unchanging veloc-
zontal force on the wall? How do you know? What can you ity? What if you lower the apple at an unchanging velocity?
say about the net force on the wall? 28. Would it be easier (in other words, would it require less thrust
12. A car starts up from rest, moving along a straight highway and less rocket fuel) to lift a rocket off the moon’s surface
with an acceleration of 1 m/s2. A second car comes racing than off Earth’s surface? Why?
past at a steady 120 km/hr. Which car has the larger net force 29. An astronaut on the moon picks up a large rock. Would it be
acting on it? easier, or harder, or neither for him to pick up the same rock
on Earth?

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 Why Things Move as They Do: Problem Set

30. An astronaut on the moon kicks (horizontally) a large rock. THE AUTOMOBILE
What if she kicked the same rock on Earth? Neglecting 48. Since the law of inertia states that no force is needed to keep
frictional effects, would it hurt her foot more, or less, or just an object moving in a straight line at an unchanging speed,
as much? why is a force needed to keep a car moving?
31. Neglecting friction and air resistance, would it be easier to 49. While driving your car on a straight, level road, you slam on
set this book into horizontal motion at 5 m/s on Earth, or on your brakes. Draw a force diagram of the car during braking.
the moon, or in distant space? What is the direction of the net force? Draw a force diagram
for a car that is coasting without braking. In which of the two
LAW OF FORCE PAIRS cases is the net force stronger?
50. Why is it easier to pedal a bicycle with hard high-pressure
32. “Planet Earth is pulled upward toward a falling boulder with tires as compared with soft balloon tires?
just as much force as the boulder is pulled downward toward 51. When you hold your foot on a car’s accelerator pedal, is the
Earth.” True or false? Why? car necessarily accelerating? Could it be accelerating? Could
33. “Planet Earth is pulled toward a falling boulder with just as it have a forward acceleration? Could it have a backward
much acceleration as the boulder has as it moves toward acceleration?
Earth.” True or false? Why? 52. There are three acceleration devices on any car. What are
34. A large truck breaks down on the highway and receives a they, and what kinds of acceleration does each one give to
push back into town by a small car. While moving at the car?
unchanging speed, does the car exert any force on the truck? 53. If a jet airplane were above Earth’s atmosphere, could it then
Does the truck exert any force on the car? If so, is this accelerate? What about a rocket-driven plane?
force weaker or stronger than the force that the car exerts on 54. Magnetic forces can levitate railroad trains a short distance
the truck? above the tracks, making friction practically negligible.
35. A car collides head-on with a large truck. Which vehicle Suppose such a “maglev” train runs inside an evacuated
exerts the stronger force? Which has the larger force exerted (emptied of most air) tunnel from New York City to Chicago.
on it? Which experiences the larger acceleration? If friction and air resistance are negligible, during what parts
36. When a rifle fires, it accelerates a bullet along the barrel. of the trip would an external horizontal force act on the train?
Explain why the rifle must recoil. Discuss the direction of this force during each part of the trip.
37. A 2 N apple hangs by a string from the ceiling. Describe the
two forces on the apple. How strong is each of these forces?
Do these forces form a single force pair? If not, then for each MOMENTUM
force, describe the other member of that force’s force pair. 55. Which has greater momentum, a 1000 kg small car moving
38. A horizontally moving bullet slows down. Is anything exert- 10 m/s or a 1 kg artillery shell shot at 10 times the speed of
ing a force on it? How do you know? Is it exerting a force on sound (the speed of sound is 330 m/s)?
anything? How do you know? 56. Which has greater momentum, you steadily jogging one
39. I push you away from me. Do you also push (exert a force kilometer in 6 minutes or a 5-gram rifle bullet moving at
on) me? Which force is stronger—or does it depend on which 1000 m/s?
of us is heavier? 57. Why is it so much harder to stop or turn a moving super-
40. A pitcher exerts a force on a baseball while throwing it. tanker than a small speedboat?
Describe the other member of the force pair. 58. Can a swarm of flying insects have a total momentum of
41. A rope pulls forward on a water skier. Describe the other zero? Explain.
member of the force pair. 59. A stationary firecracker explodes, breaking into two parts of
42. As we know, “weight” is a force, and force is an interaction. equal mass. One part is moving north at 20 m/s. What is the
In the case of your own weight, name the two objects that are velocity of the other part?
involved in this interaction. 60. Explain, in terms of momentum, why guns recoil.
43. Describe the two forces that act on a book that rests in the 61. Are there any kinds of situations in which momentum is not
palm of your hand. Are these two forces equal but opposite to conserved? Explain.
each other? Are these two forces part of one force pair? 62. An artillery shell explodes in midair into many fragments. Is
44. Continuing the preceding question, suppose you accelerate the total momentum of the fragments just after the explosion
the book into upward motion. How many forces act on it? equal to the momentum of the shell just before the explo-
Are these two forces equal but opposite to each other? sion? Explain.
45. A freely falling apple has a weight of 1 N. Earth’s mass is
6 × 1024 kg. How strong is Earth’s force on the apple?
46. In the preceding question, how strong a force does the apple
exert on Earth?
47. Still continuing the preceding question, how big is the apple’s
Problems
acceleration? Find the acceleration that the apple would
cause Earth to have if the apple was the only object exerting a NEWTON’S LAW OF MOTION
force on Earth. 1. You push on a 2 tonne (2000 kg) vehicle on level pavement
with a force of 250 N. Find the vehicle’s acceleration.

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 Why Things Move as They Do: Problem Set

2. How large is the acceleration of a 60 kg runner if the friction 20. In the preceding question, how big is the net force on the
between her shoes and the pavement is 500 N? brick? Find the force (how big and in what direction) that the
3. In order for a 60 kg runner to accelerate at 8 m/s2, what must table exerts on the brick. How hard is the brick pressing
be the frictional force between her shoes and the pavement? down against the table?
4. A 747 jumbo jet of mass 30,000 kg accelerates down the run-
way at 4 m/s2. What must be the thrust of each of its four
engines? MOMENTUM
5. What would a skydiver’s acceleration be if air resistance were 21. A 1000 kg car moving at 20 m/s slams into a stationary
half as large as the skydiver’s weight? What if air resistance 27,000 kg truck from the rear, and sticks to the rear end of
were as large as the skydiver’s weight? the truck. Assuming the truck is free to roll, how fast is the
6. How much force must a pitcher exert on a 0.5 kg baseball in wreck moving after the collision?
order to accelerate it at 50 m/s2? 22. A 27,000 kg truck moving at 20 m/s slams into a stationary
7. Find the force acting on a 0.01 kg bullet as it is accelerated at 1000 kg car. The two stick together. Assuming the car is free
1 million m/s2 (100,000 times larger than the acceleration to roll, how fast is the wreck moving after the collision?
due to gravity!) down a rifle barrel. 23. A 50 kg boy and a 30 kg girl are standing on ice skates on a
8. A 2 kg flower pot weighing 20 N falls from a window ledge. smoothly frozen pond. The boy gives the girl a push and she
How large must air resistance be in order that the pot fall slides at unchanging speed to the edge of the pond, 20 m
with an acceleration of 8 m/s2? away, in 4 seconds. What happens to the boy?
9. An 80 kg firefighter whose weight is 800 N slides down a 24. A 30 kg girl standing on slippery ice catches a 0.5 kg ball
vertical pole with an acceleration of 3 m/s2. What is the fric- thrown with a speed of 16 m/s. What then happens to the girl?
tional force on the firefighter?
10. A black box and a white box accelerate at the same rate
across the floor despite the fact that the net force on the black
box is four times larger than the net force on the white box. Answers to Concept Checks
Which box has the larger mass, and how much larger?
11. A 70 kg runner speeds up from 6 m/s to 7 m/s in 2 s. Find the 1. The rock accelerates only when the pebble is pushing (tap-
runner’s acceleration and the frictional force by the ground ping) it; since the rock has a large mass, its acceleration will
on the runner during this time. be small, (c).
12. A 1 tonne (1000 kg) automobile experiences 100 N of air 2. If you tap them, Newton’s law of motion tells us that the one
resistance and 200 N of rolling resistance. How large a for- with the larger mass will accelerate less, (b).
ward force must the road exert on the drive wheels in order 3. (d), because neither car is accelerating, so both cars have
for the automobile to accelerate at 0.5 m/s2? zero net force on them.
4. acceleration = force>mass = 10>2 = 5 m>s2, (a).
5. The net force is now 10 - 4 = 6 N, so acceleration =
THE LAW OF FORCE PAIRS 6>2 = 3 m>s2, (d).
13. Wearing frictionless roller skates, you push horizontally 6. (d)
against a wall with a force of 50 N. How hard does the wall 7. The mass must stay the same, but the weight is far less than
push on you? on Earth, (b).
14. In Problem 13, if your mass is 40 kg, then what is your 8. (a)
acceleration? 9. (c)
15. Your friend (mass 80 kg) and you (mass 40 kg) are both 10. (c)
wearing frictionless roller skates. You are at rest, behind your 11. (b)
friend. You push on your friend’s back with a force of 60 N. 12. Since the acceleration is zero, the net force must also be
How hard does your friend’s back push on you? zero, (f ).
16. In the preceding question, what is your acceleration? What is 13. Since the net force is zero, the forward drive force must be
your friend’s acceleration? equal to the sum of the backward forces, (c).
17. A small car having a mass of 1000 kg runs into an initially 14. Since v1 = +2 m>s, v1 + v2 = 3 m>s tells us that
stationary 60,000 kg 18-wheeled truck from behind, exerting v1 + 2 m>s = 3 m>s, so v1 = +1 m>s, (c).
a force of 30,000 N on the truck. How big, and in what direc-
tion, is the force that the truck exerts on the car?
18. In the preceding question, find the car’s acceleration. Is this a
“speeding up” or a “slowing down” type of acceleration? Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual
Find the truck’s acceleration. Is this of the “speeding up” or
“slowing down” variety? Exercises and Problems
19. You press downward with a 100 N force on a brick weighing
40 N that rests on a table. With what force, and in what direc- Conceptual Exercises
tion, does the brick press against your hand? Draw a force 1. A force must be exerted on you, both when you speed up and
diagram similar to Figure 16, with an arrow representing when you slow down, in order to accelerate you. Newton’s
each force acting on the brick. law of motion says so.

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 Why Things Move as They Do: Problem Set

3. If the ball accelerates (speeds up, slows down, or changes 2 N. These do not form a force pair. The other members of
direction), it must have a force on it. the two force pairs are (1) the apple pulling downward on the
5. Initially, the book is at rest; then it quickly speeds up during string and (2) the apple’s gravitational force pulling upward
the fraction of a second that the hammer is actually in con- on Earth.
tact with the book. After the hammer is no longer touching 39. Yes, you push on me too. The two forces are equally strong.
the book, the book gradually slows down to a stop. There is 41. The backward pull by the water skier on the rope.
no net force on the book before the hammer hits it; then 43. Your hand pushes upward on the book. Earth’s gravitational
there is a large force in the forward direction while the ham- force pulls downward on the book. These two forces are
mer is in contact with the book. Then there is a smaller force equal and opposite, but they are not part of one force pair.
in the backward direction while the book is slowing down. 45. Earth exerts a 1 N force on the apple.
7. Since gravity is the only force acting on the ball, the net force 47. The apple’s acceleration is 9.8 m>s2. Earth’s acceleration
on the ball is 8 N downward. Thus the ball’s acceleration is would be a = F>m = 1 N>6 * 1024 kg = 1.7 *
also downward, opposite to the ball’s upward velocity, 10 - 25 2
m>s , which is so small that it is not measurable.
because Newton’s law of motion says that the acceleration is 49. The diagram should show a large frictional force, acting
in the direction of the net force. Acceleration and net force backward, in addition to the forces of air resistance (back-
are always in the same direction. ward), gravity (downward), and the road’s normal force
9. The object could have several forces on it, adding up to zero (upward). The net force is backward. For a car coasting with-
net force. For example, an object at rest on a table has two out braking, the forces are rolling resistance, air resistance,
forces on it: weight acting downward, and normal force by gravity, and the normal force. The net force is strongest in
the table acting upward. The object has no net force on it. the case of braking.
11. No, your push cannot be the only force on the wall. Because 51. No, the car could be moving at a constant velocity.
the wall doesn’t accelerate, the net force on the wall must be However, it could be accelerating. The acceleration could be
zero, and so there must be another force (provided by the forward (if the car is speeding up) or backward (if the car is
concrete structure) pushing back in the other direction on slowing down).
the wall. 53. No, a jet plane could not accelerate (except for the “natural”
13. Each vehicle has zero net force on it. The truck has the larger acceleration of 9.8 m>s2 downward due to gravity). A rocket-
normal force on it. driven airplane could accelerate.
15. a = F>m = 60 N>3 kg = 20 m>s2. After the kick, the accel- 55. For the car, p = 104 kg m>s. For the shell,
eration must be zero (the law of inertia). The rock will have p = 3.3 * 103 kg m>s. The car’s momentum is larger.
a non-zero speed. 57. The supertanker’s huge mass gives it a much larger momen-
17. 600 N, acting upward, to balance the force of gravity. tum than the speedboat.
19. The net force is zero, because the car is not accelerated. The 59. Conservation of momentum says that the two parts must
acceleration is zero. have equal and opposite momenta, and they have the same
21. Since 1 N is about 1/4 pound, multiply your weight in masses so they must have the same speeds. 20 m/s south.
pounds by 4 to get your approximate weight in newtons: 61. A system having external forces acting on it does not neces-
100 pounds is roughly 400 N, etc. sarily have an unchanging momentum.
23. You would be better off having a hunk of gold whose weight
is 1 N on the moon, because it would be a more massive Problems
hunk of gold (containing more gold atoms) than one whose 1. a = F>m = 250 N>2000 kg = 0.125 m>s2.
weight is 1 N on Earth. 3. a = F>m, where F is the frictional force. Solving for F,
25. Mass = 1 kg, weight = 0. F = ma = 60 kg * 8 m>s2 = 480 N.
27. The upward force by your hand must be larger, because the 5. Air resistance would reduce the downward net force to half
net force on the apple must be upward to provide the upward of the skydiver’s weight, so the skydiver would accelerate
acceleration. For the downward acceleration, the apple’s downward at half of the acceleration of gravity: 4.9 m>s2. If
weight must be larger. For the unchanging velocity (both lift- air resistance were as large as the skydiver’s weight, the sky-
ing and lowering), the upward force by your hand and the diver’s acceleration would be zero, i.e., he or she would be
downward force of gravity have equal strengths. falling at an unchanging speed.
29. Harder, because it would weigh more. 7. Solving a = F>m for F, F = ma = 0.01 kg * 106 m>s2 =
31. Same in all three places, because the book has the same 104 N = 10,000 N.
mass in all three places, and there are no resistive forces in 9. The net downward force is F = ma = 80 kg * 3 m>s2 =
any of the three places. 240 N. But the net downward force is F = weight - f,
33. False. The boulder has a much larger acceleration than does where f means “the upward force due to friction.” Thus,
Earth, because the boulder’s mass is much smaller than weight - f = 240 N. Solving, f = weight - 240 N =
Earth’s mass. 800 N - 240 N = 560 N.
35. The two vehicles exert equally strong forces on each other, 11. a = (change in speed)>(time to change)
and the two vehicles feel equally strong forces from the
= (7 m>s - 6 m>s)>2 s = (1 m>s)>2 s = 0.5m>s2
other vehicle. The car experiences the larger acceleration,
frictional force = net horizontal force = ma
because it has the smaller mass.
= 70 kg * 0.5 m>s2 = 35 N
37. The string pulls upward on the apple, and Earth’s gravita-
13. The wall pushes with 50 N.
tional force pulls downward. Each force has a strength of

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15. Your friend’s back pushes on you with a force of 60 N. 21. Using kg, m, and s: Initial momentum = 1000 * 20 =
17. The truck exerts a 30,000 N force on the car, in the backward 20,000. Final momentum = 1000 v + 27,000 v = 28,000 v.
direction. So conservation of momentum says 28,000 v = 20,000. So
19. The brick presses upward against your hand, with a 100 N v = 20,000>28,000 = 0.96 m>s.
force. 23. The initial momentum of the system (boy plus girl) is zero.
The girl’s momentum after the push is
(30 kg) * (20 m > 4 s) = (30 kg) * (5 m>s) = 150 kg m>s .
Since momentum is conserved, the boy must be sliding the
Table pushing other way with this same momentum. So 50 v = 150, from
upward which v = 3 m>s.

Gravity Your hand

pulling pushing
downward downward

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Newton’s Universe

From Chapter 5 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

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 Newton’s Universe

And from my pillow, looking forth by light

Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
William Wordsworth. P r e l u d e (Book III), 1850

T
he law of inertia might be history’s most fruitful scientific idea. Besides unify-
ing natural motion on Earth and in the heavens, undermining Aristotelian views,
promoting the idea of universal natural law, and leading to Newton’s law of
motion, it also led Newton to look in a new way at one specific kind of force: gravity.
Because gravity is all around us all the time, it’s difficult to even notice it. This has
made it difficult for scientists to properly conceptualize it. From Aristotle until
Newton, people believed that every solid body had a natural tendency to seek out
Earth’s center, in the way that a thirsty person seeks out water. External influences—
forces—were not needed to explain why objects fell: They fell because they “wanted”
to. But the inertial view is that bodies “want” to maintain their velocity. Descartes
first conceived of this new view of motion. It was a conceptual shift comparable to
Copernicus’s shift to a sun-centered view.
Newton then built on Descartes’s idea. If you believe that bodies have inertia, you
must ask why an apple, released above the ground, falls. Newton’s answer applied to
more than apples; it demonstrated that the same gravitational forces are at work in the
heavens as on Earth. We live in one universe, not two.
Section 1 presents the general idea of Newton’s theory of gravity, and Section 2
gives the specifics along with examples. One significant social/cultural development
of the past 100 years is our increased scientific understanding of the origin and future
of our universe, our planet, life, and humans. I’ll delve into such topics at several
points in this text, beginning with Sections 3 and 4. Section 3 applies Newton’s theory
of gravity to the birth and death of the sun and Earth. Section 4 tells of the violent
gravitational collapse of stars that are more massive than the sun and the exotic
objects that result from the collapse. Sections 5 and 6 return to our theme of compar-
ing Newtonian and modern physics: Section 5 looks at broad implications of
Newtonian physics, particularly the “mechanical universe.” Section 6 notes the limi-
tations of Newtonian physics in light of modern physics.

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 Newton’s Universe

1 THE IDEA OF GRAVITY: THE APPLE AND THE MOON

Isaac Newton, age 22, had just completed his bachelor of arts degree at Cambridge One has to be a Newton to see
University in England. He was invited to remain, but the school then closed for that the moon is falling, when
18 months because of a plague epidemic, so the graduate returned to his family’s everyone sees that it doesn’t fall.
Paul Valery, French Poet and
farm. But he didn’t just snooze. During those 18 months, Newton laid the foundations Philosopher, 1871–1945
for a theory of gravity and a theory of light and, in his spare time, invented calculus.
Some say that greatness is partly a matter of timing. Newton lived at a time that
was culturally ripe for a new view of the universe. The scientific foundations had
been laid by Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes. You have seen that
the inertial view of Descartes and Galileo leads naturally to Newton’s law of
motion. The concepts surrounding the law of motion, plus the astronomy of
Copernicus and Kepler, then led Newton to the law of gravity. Newton stood, as he
himself said, “on the shoulders of giants.”
As Newton recounted it late in life, the central idea of his theory of gravity came to
him during his stay on the family farm when an apple fell from a tree while he could
see the moon in the sky. Beyond the fact that both are more or less round, it’s difficult
to think of two more dissimilar objects than an apple and the moon. One is on Earth,
the other in the heavens; one rots, the other seems eternal; one falls to the ground, the
other remains aloft. Yet where others saw difference, Newton saw resemblance.
Let’s trace Newton’s thinking. Figure 1 shows an apple falling toward the ground,
accelerated by Earth’s gravitational pull. The directions of the apple’s velocity, accelera-
tion, and gravitational force are all downward toward Earth’s center, as shown. The
moon’s motion is quite different. The direction of its velocity is parallel to Earth’s surface
rather than toward its center. But we are interested in the forces on each, and, according
to the inertial view, forces cause accelerations, not velocities. So the forces on the two
could be similar, despite the dissimilarity of the velocities. How do the forces compare?
Aristotle would say that no force is needed to make the moon move in a circle
because that is its natural motion, but the inertial view is that in order for the moon
to deviate from straight-line motion, a force must act on it. What is the direction of

Moon’s velocity is directed Figure 1

along its orbit The apple and the moon.

Falling apple:
Velocity,
acceleration, and v, a, F
force all are
directed
downward

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 Newton’s Universe

Figure 2 Moon’s displacement Moon’s motion

A B
The moon is held into its orbit by due to its inertia without gravity
an inward-directed force.
Moon’s displacement
C due to gravity
Gravitational
force

Gravitational
force

this force? If the moon were at point A in Figure 2 and if no force acted on it, it would
move in a straight line toward point B. But instead it moves around to point C. As
you can see from Figure 2, the force required to pull the moon inward—so that it
arrives at C rather than B—is directed toward Earth’s center, just like the force on a
falling apple. Newton hypothesized that this force has the same source as the force
that pulls an apple downward: Earth’s gravitational attraction.
Newton offered another argument, one that helps us understand why the moon
and other satellites stay up. If you throw an apple horizontally, it will follow a curved
path as it falls to the ground (Figure 3). If you throw the apple faster, it will go farther
before hitting the ground. And if you throw it fast enough, it might “fall” around a
large part of Earth’s surface before striking the ground (Figure 4). If the apple is
launched at such a high speed that the curvature of its path just matches Earth’s cur-
vature, it will fall all the way around. In other words, it goes into orbit. The required
speed is about 8 km/s, or 29,000 km/hr. This is what any orbiting satellite does,
except that the required speed is less for higher-altitude satellites because they feel a
smaller gravitational pull and so don’t need to move as fast to avoid spiraling down
onto Earth’s surface. For instance, the moon’s speed is only about 1 km/s.
The force that shapes the moon’s path is gravity—the same gravity that pulled
the apple to the ground that day on Isaac Newton’s family’s farm.
It was an imaginative leap, in more ways than one. It was difficult to believe that
anything at all was pulling on the moon, much less that it could be the same force that
pulled on an apple. Most difficult was the notion that the gravitational force could
reach across nearly 400,000 kilometers of empty space (the distance was known in
Newton’s time). It’s easy to see that things exert forces on one another when they are
in direct contact, but a force that acts across so great a distance seems astonishing.

Figure 3
If you throw an apple horizontally,
the faster you throw it, the farther
Slower Faster
it will go.

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 Newton’s Universe

Suborbital Figure 4
Falling around Earth. If you throw
an apple fast enough, it will fall
around a large part of Earth’s
surface or even go into orbit. A
diagram like this appears in
Newton’s notebook.

Orbital

CONCEPT CHECK 1 A 2 N apple falls from a tree. Neglecting air resistance,

while it is freely falling the net force on it is (a) zero; (b) 2 N downward; (c) 2 N upward.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 In the preceding question, the apple’s acceleration is

(a) zero; (b) impossible to determine from the given information; (c) about 10 m/s2
downward; (d) about 10 m/s2 upward.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 Suppose you throw a 2 N apple horizontally, as shown in

Figures 3 and 4. Neglecting air resistance, the net force on the apple when it is in
the five positions shown is (a) zero; (b) 2 N in the forward direction (along the
direction of motion); (c) 2 N downward (toward Earth’s center); (d) 2 N upward
(away from Earth’s center); (e) impossible to determine.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 The net forces in Concept Checks 1 and 3 are the same in
both magnitude and direction. So, what must be the numerical value and direction
of the apple’s acceleration in Figures 3 and 4? (a) Zero. (b) Impossible to determine
from the given information. (c) About 10 m/s2 in the forward direction. (d) About
10 m/s2 downward. (e) About 10 m/s2 upward.

2 NEWTON’S THEORY1 OF GRAVITY: MOVING THE

FARTHEST STAR
Since Earth’s gravitational pull holds the moon into its orbit, it’s reasonable to sup- What makes planets go around
pose that all satellites—bodies in orbit around larger astronomical bodies—are the sun? At the time of Kepler
held in their orbits by the gravitational pull exerted by the larger body. Since the some people answered this prob-
planets are satellites of the sun, Newton’s insight regarding the moon also resolves lem by saying that there were
angels behind them beating their
wings and pushing the planets
around an orbit.... The answer is
1
not far from the truth. The only
This theory is usually called Newton’s law of gravity. But the term law, which is always inappropriate in sci- difference is that the angels sit in
ence because every general scientific principle is subject to some doubt, is especially inappropriate here. The
reason is that Newton’s theory of gravity has limitations, beyond which the theory isn’t valid. The more accu- a different direction and their
rate theory, having no known limitations, is always called Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It’s ridiculous wings push inwards.
to call Newton’s theory a “law” while calling Einstein’s theory a “theory.” Richard Feynman, Physicist

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Pick a flower on Earth and you the old question of why the solar system moves as it does! The planets keep moving
move the farthest star! forward because of the law of inertia, and the sun’s gravitational pull bends their
Paul Dirac, Physicist orbits into ellipses. Similarly, the moons of the planet Jupiter are held in their orbits
by Jupiter’s gravitational pull.
But why would gravity act only between astronomical bodies and their satellites?
For instance, it seems plausible that there should be a gravitational force between
Earth and Mars. Such a force between planets had not been noticed yet in Newton’s
day, but Newton realized that this was only because it was so much smaller than the
force by the sun on the planets. Likewise, there should be a gravitational force
between any two astronomical bodies, even between the farthest stars.
But why should gravity be restricted to astronomical bodies? Why shouldn’t a
gravitational force be exerted between smaller objects on Earth—oranges, rocks,
and so forth? Your physics book, for instance, should exert a gravitational pull on an
Force by apple, and vice versa (Figure 5). You won’t notice this force, but that is only because
apple on
book the force between such objects is very small.
So Newton reasoned that the gravitational force is universal; it’s exerted between
every pair of objects throughout the universe. This is the central idea of Newton’s
Force by book theory of gravity.
on apple Newton understood the importance of quantitative methods. Although his basic
insight was qualitative, its expression in a quantitative form led to powerful expla-
nations and predictions. Quantitatively, the gravitational attraction between two
Figure 5
Even ordinary-sized objects exert
objects must be stronger when the objects’ masses are larger, because an apple’s
gravitational forces on one another. weight is larger when its mass is larger (double the mass, for example, by replacing
Your physics book exerts a force the one apple by two apples glued together, and you double the weight). And since
on an apple, and vice versa. It’s a widely separated objects attract each other only weakly, the gravitational force
small force, but forces like this should get smaller when the distance between the objects gets larger.
have been measured. Newton put all this together (see “How Do We Know Newton’s Theory of
Gravity?” later in this section) and came to the following conclusions:

Newton’s Theory of Gravity

Between any two objects there is an attractive force that is proportional to the
product of the two objects’ masses and proportional to the inverse of the square
of the distance between them:
(mass of 1st object) * (mass of 2nd object)
gravitational force r
square of distance between them

m1 * m2
F r
d2

If mass is expressed in kilograms, distance in meters, and force in newtons, this

proportionality becomes
m1 * m2
F = 6.7 * 10 - 11
d2

For our first example, let’s consider your weight—the gravitational force exerted
by Earth on you. Newton’s theory of gravity tells us that this force is proportional to
your mass times Earth’s mass, which means that the force is proportional to each of

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the two masses separately. So doubling your mass would double your weight,
tripling your mass would triple your weight, and so forth—which certainly makes
sense. But the theory also says that if you imagined that somehow Earth’s mass
were doubled (without, however, changing its size), this also would double your
weight; halving Earth’s mass would halve your weight; and so forth. You can reduce
your weight without dieting or exercising: Simply reduce Earth’s mass! What if you
altered both masses? For instance, suppose you tripled your mass while simultane-
ously doubling Earth’s mass. Since the force is proportional to the product of the
two masses, this would multiply your weight by 6.
What happens when the distance between Earth and you is changed? In fact,
exactly what is meant by the “distance between the objects” in a case like this?
Does the distance from Earth to your body mean the distance from the near side of
Earth (the ground beneath your feet), from the far side, from the center, or from
some other point? And to what point in your body should you measure the distance?
Newton worked through a lot of mathematics to answer this—in fact, he invented
“integral calculus” to answer it. Newton’s answer was that the distance between the
“centers” of the two bodies is the correct distance to use when applying the gravita-
tional force formula to two extended bodies. In the case of a body such as Earth that
has an obvious center, distance is measured from that center. For other bodies, such
as your own, the distance should be measured from the body’s “balance point”—the
point at which the body would be balanced under the force of gravity. But because
your body is so small compared with the distance from Earth’s center to your body,
it matters little which point you choose within your body.
Suppose you travel away from Earth. Since the gravitational force is proportional to
the inverse of the square of the distance, the increased distance makes the force
decrease—another way to reduce your weight! For instance, your weight at the top of
Mount Everest, nearly 10 km above sea level, is 0.3% less than at sea level. If your
weight is normally 600 N (135 lb), it will be 598 N (134.5 lb) at the top of Mount
Everest. Your weight reduction is greater at an altitude of a few hundred kilometers,
where low-orbit artificial satellites travel. For example, at a 200 km altitude, your weight
would be reduced by 6%, so a person normally weighing 600 N would weigh only 560 N.
Now you’re really losing weight (but unfortunately you’re not losing any mass).
Moving to still higher altitudes, suppose you are 6400 km—1 Earth radius—
above the ground. What is your weight? The proportionalities in the theory of grav-
ity make this an easy question. If you rise 1 Earth radius above the ground, your
distance from Earth’s center doubles, so the square of the distance quadruples.
Since the force is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance, the force
is divided by 4. Your weight is now one-fourth of normal. Figure 6 is a graph of your
weight at various distances from Earth’s center. No matter how far you are from
Earth, the gravitational force by Earth on your body never reaches precisely zero.
But very far away, the force becomes very small. For example, at 10 Earth radii,
your weight is 1% of your normal weight.
It’s a good thing for us that the force of gravity declines at larger distances in just
the way it does. If the gravitational force declined a little faster, the planets would
not move in ellipses but would instead spiral into the sun, and you would not be
here to ask about things like gravity. And if the gravitational force declined a little
more slowly, the gravity from distant stars would dominate the gravity from Earth,
and again you would not be here. It’s something to think about.
You can use the theory of gravity to calculate the gravitational attraction between
any pair of objects, from apples and books to stars and moons. For example, the force

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 Newton’s Universe

Figure 6
A graph of your weight at various Normal
distances from Earth’s center. The
same graph applies to the weight
of any object.

Weight
1/4 of normal weight
1/9 of normal weight
1/16 of normal weight
1/100 of normal weight

2 4 6 8 10
Distance from Earth’s center
measured in Earth radii

between a kilogram and another kilogram 1 meter away is found by putting these
numerical values into the gravitational force formula. The answer is 6.7 * 10 - 11
newtons, or 0.000 000 000 067 newtons! It’s no wonder that the gravitational force
between ordinary objects is difficult to detect. The delicate experiments needed to
measure such tiny forces could not be performed until about a century after Newton’s
work. When they were performed, they verified Newton’s predictions.
The situation inside an orbiting satellite seems paradoxical. Judging from Figure 7,
you would feel weightless in an orbiting satellite, at any altitude. But you have seen that
if the satellite is in low orbit, your weight is actually only a little less than normal. Why,
then, would you feel weightless, even though you are not really weightless? To answer
this, let’s imagine a somewhat similar situation (Figure 8): Suppose you are in an eleva-
tor and the elevator cable breaks. The elevator is then in free fall, and so are you. After
the cable breaks, your feet no longer press down against the floor. If you try to press
your feet against the floor, you will simply push yourself away from the floor. A bath-
room scale glued to your feet would read zero, because your feet would not press down
on it. You are apparently weightless, but, because we have defined weight as the gravi-
tational force on an object, you are not really weightless. Although you have not (I hope)
actually experienced a freely falling elevator, you might have experienced a similar
“weightless” effect in a roller-coaster while moving rapidly over a crest in the track.
You would feel weightless in an orbiting satellite for the same reason that you
would feel weightless in a freely falling elevator. As you saw in the preceding sec-
tion, the satellite falls freely around Earth. You are falling freely around Earth too,
regardless of whether you are inside the satellite or outside in space. Since both
you and the satellite are just falling around Earth, you have the sensation of
weightlessness. Your body behaves as though it were removed from the effects of
gravity, but you are not really weightless.

How do we know Newton’s theory of gravity? How did Newton verify his theory of
gravity? The dependence on mass was not hard to deduce. Because an object’s weight
is proportional to its mass (for instance, two identical apples glued together surely have
twice the weight of one, so doubling the mass doubles the weight), Newton reasoned
that the force of gravity must be proportional to each of the two masses.
But what about the dependence on distance? Newton knew that the distance to the
moon is about 60 times larger than Earth’s radius (Figure 9). Newton’s theory of gravity
then implies that an object at the moon’s distance should experience a force that is
3600 (the square of 60) times smaller than the force on the same object on Earth. So

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NASA Headquarters
(a)

NASA/Johnson Space Center

NASA/Johnson Space Center

(b) (c)

Figure 7
Space travelers feel weightless when they are in orbit and at any other time that they are “falling” freely through space.
(a) Balancing. (b) Floating. (c) Spacewalking.

(since acceleration is proportional to force) the acceleration of an object at this distance

should be 3600 times smaller than the acceleration of an object falling to Earth. In other
words, Newton’s hypothesis implies that the moon’s acceleration should be
(1>3600) * 9.8 m>s2, or 0.0027 m/s2. But from the known distance to the moon, plus
the observed fact that the moon takes 27 days to complete a circle around Earth,
Newton could calculate directly that the moon’s acceleration (due to its circular motion)
actually is 0.0027 m/s2. Newton’s theory agreed with the observation.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 Suppose that you were in distant space, far from all plan-
ets and stars, and you placed an apple and a book at rest in front of you, separated by

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about 1 m, and then moved some distance away in order to observe the apple and
I’m book without influencing them. The apple and the book would then (a) very slowly
apparently accelerate toward each other; (b) very rapidly accelerate toward each other; (c) move
weightless. toward each other without accelerating; (d) remain at rest; (e) head for the beach.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 When you are in a high-flying jet plane, (a) your weight
and mass are both normal (the same as on Earth); (b) your weight and mass are both
less than normal; (c) your weight is normal but your mass is less than normal;
You’re (d) your weight is less than normal but your mass is normal.
apparently
in trouble.
CONCEPT CHECK 7 Your weight at an altitude of 2 Earth radii above Earth’s
surface is (a) zero; (b) impossible to calculate without knowing Earth’s radius;
(c) the same as your weight on Earth; (d) one-third of your weight on Earth; (e) one-
fourth of your weight on Earth; (f) one-ninth of your weight on Earth.
Figure 8
Falling freely in a freely falling M A K I N G EST I M AT ES Earth’s mass is about 100 times the moon’s mass, and
elevator. Earth’s radius is about 4 times the moon’s radius. From this information, use Newton’s
theory of gravity to quickly estimate how much more an object weighs on Earth, as
compared with its weight on the moon.
The moon is 60 times
farther from Earth’s center
than is the falling apple
3 GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE: THE EVOLUTION OF THE
SOLAR SYSTEM
Apple
Like you and me and everything else, stars have a beginning, they go through changes,
and they have an ending. The driving force behind this “stellar evolution” is the force
of gravity. Stars are made mostly from diffuse (thin) gas, mostly hydrogen atoms, that
Figure 9 is spread throughout the universe. In some regions, this material happens to be gath-
The moon is 60 Earth radii away ered slightly more densely into great gas clouds that are the spawning grounds for stars
from the center of Earth.
(Figure 10). Because of the gravitational pull between all bits of matter, all gas and dust
in space tends to aggregate, a process called gravitational collapse.
Here is how the sun and Earth were born. Some 5 billion years ago, the atoms that
would eventually form the solar system, including every atom in your body, were scat-
tered as cold, diffuse gas and dust over a region far larger than the solar system. Then a
blast of radiation and fast-moving particles from a nearby exploding star (more about
this later) caused turbulence and clumping in this gas and dust. Such a clump of matter,
if sufficiently dense, will gravitationally attract more gas and dust, causing still stronger
gravitational forces, pulling even more matter inward, and so forth in a self-reinforcing
buildup of matter. As our clump of gas and dust became more massive and more dense,
atoms fell at greater and greater speeds toward the center, where they collided and
formed a central region of fast-moving atoms. In other words, the center heated up.
Every gas cloud spins a little, simply from the net effect of its chaotic flowing
and swirling. As our gas cloud contracted, this spinning increased, just as a figure
skater spins faster and faster as she brings her outstretched arms into her sides.2 As

2
This is because of something called “conservation of angular momentum,” a sort of rotational version of
conservation of momentum.

SO LU T I O N TO M A K I N G EST I M AT ES In the theory of gravity, one of the masses is multiplied by 100 and
R is multiplied by 4. Thus F is multiplied by 100/42 = 100/16, or about 6. So your weight is six times larger
on Earth than on the moon.

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 Newton’s Universe

Figure 10
Star birth. These eerie, dark, pillar-
like structures are columns of cool
interstellar hydrogen gas and dust
that are also incubators for new
stars. They are part of the Eagle
Nebula, a nearby star-forming
region in our own galaxy. This
region is “only” 7000 light-years
away (i.e., it takes light 7000 years
to get here from there). The tallest
pillar (left) is about 1 light-year
long from base to tip—a distance
that is about 800 times larger than
the distance across our solar sys-
tem. This is one of the many beau-
tiful and informative photographs
taken by the Hubble Space
Telescope.

NASA Headquarters

contraction continued, this spinning became rapid enough to flatten the outer regions
of the gas ball into a disk, much as a wad of dough can be flattened to make a pizza by
spinning it. Some of the gas in the outlying disk rotated fast enough to go into orbit
around the larger central ball. Because it was orbiting, this material was left behind as
the center collapsed. The outer region continued orbiting while cooling, condensing,
and aggregating into clumps that became Earth and the other planets (Figure 11).
As the warming sun got hot enough to glow, light streaming outward swept away
the dust and gas that had filled the solar system. And then there was light on Earth.
The central ball continued collapsing and heating until the center reached
million-degree temperatures. New things happen at such temperatures: Atoms collide
so violently that their electrons are stripped off, leaving a gas made mostly of bare
hydrogen nuclei and electrons. The violently colliding hydrogen nuclei occasionally
stick together, a process known as nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion creates lots of heat,
and the pressure from this heat then prevents the ball of gas from collapsing further.
When it initiated nuclear fusion nearly 5 billion years ago, our sun turned itself on
and became a normal, self-sustaining star. A similar process of star birth is going on
all the time, all over the universe. The starry sky is not static.
Scientists have recently learned that our sun had a violent birth amidst high-
energy radiation and explosions of entire stars. Based partly on material found in
meteorites that formed along with the solar system, it’s now known that one or more
nearby stars must have exploded during the solar system’s formation. It’s thought

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Figure 11
An imaginary view of the newborn
sun during formation of the solar
system. Dust partially obscures the
sun. As comets streak by, a planet
(foreground) begins to form from
the dust.

Lynette R. Cook
that the sun and some 50 or more other stars all formed at roughly the same time
from a single huge region of gas and dust within our Milky Way Galaxy (our galaxy
was already some eight billion years old by then). The upper, lit-up, portion of the
left-hand “pillar” in Figure 10 is an example of such a star-forming region within our
galaxy today. At least a few very massive stars, far more massive than the sun, are
likely to form in such regions. Any such massive star “burns” (via nuclear fusion)
very hot and therefore very rapidly, and soon exhausts itself in a giant supernova
explosion (more on this in the next section). High energy radiation and ejected par-
ticles from such massive stars, as well as the blast effects from supernova explosions
themselves, then initiated the formation of smaller stars as described in the preced-
ing paragraph, and also helped shape such star formation processes.
Once our sun stopped collapsing, it settled into a middle age that has been going
on for nearly 5 billion years. The long-term stability of this period made it possible
for atoms on one planet to gather and evolve into highly complex forms such as
ourselves. Like the rest of the solar system, we came from the universe.
But stars eventually die. Over billions of years, our sun’s supply of hydrogen fuel
must deplete until, around the year 5,000,000,000 CE, it will no longer support nuclear
fusion in its central “core.” Then the sun will enter old age. Although nuclear fusion
will cease near the sun’s center, a thin outer shell of hydrogen will continue the fusion
process, causing the sun to brighten and expand to three times its present size. The
increased energy output will evaporate Earth’s oceans and perhaps cause a runaway
greenhouse effect that could make Earth even hotter than Venus’s 500°C. During the
following several hundred million years, the sun will become still brighter and 100
times larger, warming Earth to around 1000°C and killing any remaining life.
By this time, the central core will have grown hot enough to ignite new, hotter
nuclear reactions involving the element helium. The sun will then spend 100 mil-
lion years as a helium-burning star. Then comes another disaster. After exhausting
its helium, the sun will again expand, brighten, and eject its outer layers in a huge
shell of glowing gas that will expand outward, engulfing all the planets and drifting
outward beyond the solar system into interstellar space. After a million years of
this, the sun will have entirely exhausted its energy sources.

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Gravity will assert itself for the final time. Without a nuclear heating source, there
will be little to stop the sun from collapsing inward on itself. Certainly the interatomic
forces that hold up solid matter against outside pressures on Earth are far too puny to
stand up against the enormous inward pull of gravity in the final collapse of a star.
The sun will squeeze itself far inside its present boundaries and far inside the volume
it would have if it were made of ordinary solid material, squashing its atoms out of
recognizable existence until only a solid, tightly packed ball of bare nuclei and unat-
tached electrons remains. At this point, the collapse will be permanently stopped by
an effect known as “quantum exchange forces” between the electrons.3
The sun’s burnt-out corpse will be hot, solid, and about Earth’s size, or one-
millionth of its present volume! It will be extraordinarily compact, with many tonnes
packed into each cubic centimeter. On Earth, even a solid steel platform would be
unable to support a mere thimbleful of this material. The sun will warm enormously
during its final collapse, but once the collapse ends there will be no further source of
heating. This starry remnant will glow brightly for a while and then slowly dim like a
dying ember, still orbited by the charred remains of Earth and other planets.
A star the size of Earth? When such an object was first discovered in 1862,
astronomers thought there must be an error in their observations. But two other
such stars were soon discovered, and it’s now known that about 4% of the stars in
our galaxy—some 16 billion stars—are of this type. Because of their white-hot
glow they are called white dwarfs.

How do we know our solar system’s past and future? Detailed quantitative theo-
ries predict the scenario just sketched. Observations of stars in the various evolutionary
stages described and observations of Earth’s oldest rocks, the moon, moon rocks, mete-
orites, other planets, other moons, and the sun itself all support these theories.
The natural place to look for star births is among thick gas clouds in space. When the
Hubble Space Telescope searched the dense gas cloud known as the Eagle Nebula, it
found thousands of newly minted stars (Figure 10). Just as the theory predicts, nearly all
of these new stars were wrapped in disks of dust and gas, disks that are expected even-
tually to coalesce into planets.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 Suppose that the sun collapsed tomorrow to become a

white dwarf, but without any explosions or expansion that would alter the sun’s
mass or directly impact Earth. Which of the following would ensue? (a) Earth’s
orbit would be altered. (b) Life on Earth would be radically affected. (c) The gravi-
tational force by the sun on Earth would be radically altered. (d) The sun’s radiation
would be radically altered. (e) None of the above.

4 GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE: THE DEATHS OF MORE

MASSIVE STARS
A star’s life cycle is determined primarily by its mass. A star needs at least 10% of My suspicion is that the universe
the sun’s mass in order to get hot enough to initiate nuclear fusion and become a is not only queerer than we
star in the first place. All stars massive enough to initiate nuclear fusion go through suppose, but queerer than we
can suppose.
a middle age that is similar to the sun’s present state. Then when the hydrogen fuel
John B. S. Haldane, British Geneticist,
1892–1964
3
Quantum exchange forces have no explanation within Newtonian physics. They are far stronger than the
ordinary electrical forces that maintain the solidity of normal solid matter.

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 Newton’s Universe

in their central cores have been used up, they enter their final phases. Stars having
masses up to about 10 times the sun’s mass go through a final phase similar to the
sun’s, ending as white dwarfs.
But a quite different fate awaits more massive stars. Like the sun, they use up
their hydrogen fuel and then contract at the center. But the larger mass makes the
contraction stronger, so the center gets hotter. The high temperature initiates a wide
range of nuclear reactions that eventually turn the star’s small central core into solid
iron. This gets the star into serious trouble. Iron continues forming until the inner
core becomes so massive that it cannot hold itself up. The entire solid iron core then
abruptly collapses in just one second! As the core collapses, this unimaginably cat-
aclysmic supernova explosion blasts the rest of the star into space. For a brief
moment, the dying star glows as brightly as 4 billion suns.
No supernova has been seen in our galaxy since 1604, but today astronomers are
able to routinely discover them in other galaxies. The nearest of these burst into
view in 1987 and was visible to the naked eye (Figure 12). It occurred in a neighbor-
ing small galaxy at a safe distance of 150,000 light-years (meaning that light travels
from there to here in 150,000 years). A nearby supernova, if it were as close as 10
light-years or so, would produce various radiations that would create a fabulous
light show in Earth’s atmosphere, and that would soon kill us. But not to worry:
Such an event won’t happen in our corner of the Galaxy, because a candidate star
for a supernova must be at least 10 times as massive as the sun and there’s nothing
that massive that close. The nearest likely candidate is Betelgeuse, which has been
acting unstable for years. But it’s at a safe 430 light-years away.
Only 10% to 20% of the original star remains after the explosion. No further
nuclear reactions can occur in this remnant, so there is little to oppose the inward
pull of gravity. Within one second, this remaining massive core collapses to become
one of the two densest things in the universe, a neutron star or a black hole.
If the original star had a mass of between 10 and 30 suns, the final collapse is
strong enough that electron exchange forces (see the previous section) can’t stop it.

(a) (b)
National Optical Astronomy Observatories/Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers, Inc.
Figure 12
The supernova of 1987, the brightest supernova in 400 years. Its light reached Earth on February 23, 1987. “Before” (a) and
“after” (b) photos show the star as it looked before and shortly after the explosion. The supernova is the bright star on the
right in figure (b).

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 Newton’s Universe

But there’s one remaining force that does stop it, the so-called “neutron exchange
force,” a quantum effect similar to the electron exchange force but acting between
neutrons. The collapse not only squashes atoms out of existence, it also squashes
electrons out of existence by forcing them to merge with protons in the nuclei. This
turns each nucleus into a collection of neutrons, and it turns the entire star into an
object that resembles a giant nucleus made of neutrons. It’s called a neutron star.
Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who later gained fame as leader of the
team that developed the atomic bomb, predicted neutron stars in 1938. None were
discovered until 1967, when Jocelyn Bell (Figure 13), a sharp-eyed astronomy grad-

Robin Scagell/Photo Researchers, Inc.

uate student in England, discovered a source of radio waves in space that sent out
“beeps” or “pulses” every 1.3 seconds. Some scientists thought at first that she
might have discovered a radio beacon from an extraterrestrial civilization. But
another was soon discovered, and by now hundreds are known, with a wide range of
pulse rates. There’s little doubt that they are neutron stars.
A neutron star is pretty impressive. More massive than the sun, the star is only a
few kilometers across with a billion tonnes packed into each cubic centimeter! On
Earth, a barely visible speck of this material would weigh as much as a large, fully
loaded highway truck! The collapsing iron core spins faster and faster during its one-
second collapse, so that the remnant neutron star spins at incredible speeds for such
a massive object—up to 700 times every second. The surface of such a rapidly spin-
ning neutron star moves at an incredible 15% of the speed of light. This is staggering
when you realize that the star has a mass of some 1027 tonnes. This spinning com- Figure 13
bines with magnetic effects to create the rapid pulses of visible light and radio sig- Jocelyn Bell (later Burnell) discov-
nals observed from Earth, the signals that Bell discovered in 1967. As seen from ered the first four neutron stars.
Earth, the entire star appears to flash on and off many times every second. Figure 14 Using a radio telescope that she
is a sequence of photographs showing two of these visible flashes. The supernova helped build as part of her Ph.D.
explosion that created this neutron star was seen and recorded on Earth in 1054. For dissertation, Bell detected a rapid
a few days the light from the explosion was brighter than the planet Venus. Today, it’s set of pulses occurring at regular
called the Crab Nebula because the shape of the nebulous halo of gases blown into intervals. She determined that the
position of the unusual radio
space by the explosion resembles a crab.
source remained fixed with respect
Neutron stars pull hard. The star’s radius is only about 10 kilometers, which is to the stars, which meant that it
100,000 times smaller than the sun’s radius. Yet the star is more massive than the was located beyond the solar sys-
sun. Newton’s theory of gravity tells us that the weight of an object on the surface tem. During the course of the next
of a star is proportional to the inverse of the square of the star’s radius. If a collaps- few months, she discovered three
ing star’s radius becomes 105 times smaller, an object on its surface becomes more pulsating radio sources.
105 * 105 = 1010 (10 billion) times heavier. That’s heavy. These were later found to be rap-
What about stars even more massive than those that collapse to form neutron idly rotating neutron stars.
stars—stars having a mass of over 30 suns? When such a star runs out of fuel, the
ensuing collapse is so strong that no known force can stop it. According to current
theories, it collapses into a single point! Its matter—its atoms and subatomic
particles—is squeezed out of existence. The star retains its mass, however, and so it
retains its gravitational influence on the space around it. This star pulls really hard.
If you had the misfortune to get too close, you could not escape, because gravity
won’t let anything escape—not even light itself. That’s why it’s called a black hole.
For a typical black hole formed from a collapsing giant star, the distance within
which nothing can escape is 10 to 50 km (larger for more massive black holes). You
can think of this as the “radius” of the black hole. If you were within this distance
of the central point and you wanted to throw an object completely away from the

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 Newton’s Universe

N P 0532

National Optical Astronomy Observatories

Figure 14
A sequence of photographs of the neutron star at the center of the Crab Nebula. Portions of a surrounding gas
cloud, the remnant of the supernova explosion that created the neutron star, can be seen. This sequence lasts 1/20
second and includes two flashes, the first during frames 3 and 4, and the second during frames 9 and 10.

star, you would need to throw it faster than the speed of light. But objects cannot be
thrown faster than light. So nothing can escape a black hole.4

How do we know that black holes exist? Scientists detect black holes by their grav-
itational influence on things around them. The first black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discov-
ered in 1972. It’s thought to be a double star, two stars orbiting each other. One is a
visible giant star, the other an unseen compact (far smaller than a normal star) object. By
observing its gravitational effect on the visible star, the compact object’s mass can be
deduced to be 10 solar masses.5 Since theories indicate that a compact object of more
than 3 solar masses can only be a black hole, astronomers believe that Cygnus X-1 is a
black hole. Satellites in orbit around Earth detect X-rays from Cygnus X-1 that further con-
firm it to be a black hole. Apparently the invisible object’s gravitational pull is drawing
gases from the visible star and accelerating them down into and around the black hole,
a process that tears apart the gas atoms and causes them to emit X-rays that scientists
can observe (Figure 15). Astronomers have now identified about 20 similar objects
Julian Baum/New Scientist/Science within our galaxy that are thought to be black-hole remnants of collapsed stars, and they
Photo Library/Photo Researchers,
suspect that there might be around one billion of them in our galaxy.
Inc.
Scientists don’t go out of their way to invent bizarre ideas like black holes. To the con-
Figure 15 trary, they look for the least strange explanation of the data. For example, people once
In this artist’s conception, a black found it strange that Earth could orbit the sun, but astronomers such as Copernicus
hole pulls matter from a compan- found that this was the most natural way to account for the data. In the same manner,
ion star and accelerates it into a astronomers today find that a black hole is the most natural explanation for what they
hot, X-ray–emitting disk before observe at Cygnus X-1. If it is not a black hole, then this object is not compact, or it does
slowly swallowing it. not have a mass larger than 3 suns, or compact objects of greater than 3 solar masses
are not always black holes. Astronomers find it easier or “less strange” to believe that
Cygnus X-1 is a black hole than to believe any of these options.
There is a second kind of black hole for which the evidence is even more compelling
than it is for Cygnus X-1. The centers of most galaxies contain extremely massive black
holes. In 1994, for example, the Hubble Space Telescope found a tiny, bright source of

4
More precisely, quantum theory allows black holes to emit subatomic particles, but this effect is negligible
for collapsed stars. This effect is expected to be important for low-mass black holes, although such small
black holes have never been observed and may not exist.
5
The original star, before collapse, had a mass of more than 30 suns, but most of this mass blew into space
during the collapse.

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 Newton’s Universe

light at the center of a distant galaxy. Detailed analysis of this light showed that nearby
gas and stars are orbiting this center so rapidly that gravity can hold them in their orbits
only if the bright object has a mass of several billion suns. Given that the central object’s
size is only slightly larger than our solar system, it could only be a black hole. The light
apparently comes from high-energy processes occurring just outside the black hole.
Study of distant galaxies reveals that the centers of most or all of them contain black
holes having masses of millions or billions of suns. The distant and powerful objects
known as “quasars” are powered by such giant black holes. Observation of a small por-
tion of sky, and extrapolation to the entire sky, leads to an estimate of at least 300 billion
giant black holes populating the observable universe! Observations of stars dashing in
tight orbits around the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy at up to 1/30th of the speed
of light imply a giant black hole lurks there. Despite having a mass of nearly 4 million
suns, it is only about 20 times larger than our sun! Such giant black holes radiate X-rays
and light as they swallow nearby stars and gas. Their origin is not yet understood.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 If Earth collapsed from its present 6000 km radius to only
6 km, your weight would be (a) unchanged; (b) l/1000th of your present weight;
(c) 1/1,000,000 of your present weight; (d) 1000 times your present weight;
(e) 1,000,000 times your present weight.

5 THE NEWTONIAN WORLDVIEW: A DEMOCRATIC,

MECHANICAL UNIVERSE
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the new sun-centered astronomy
and inertial physics ushered in a new philosophical and religious view that I’ll call
the Newtonian worldview.6 It is one of the most significant consequences of
Newtonian physics. Even though Newtonian scientific ideas have been partly
superseded by other more accurate theories, the worldview based on Newtonian
physics retains its influence on popular culture.
In the Western world, the pre-Newtonian worldview combined medieval I am much occupied with the
Christianity, the Earth-centered astronomy of the ancient Greeks, and Aristotle’s investigation of the physical
physics. Central to this view was the idea of purpose, or future goals. During the causes [of the motions of the
solar system]. My aim is to show
Middle Ages in Europe, popular culture united with religion and science in the
that the heavenly machine is not
belief that there was a purpose for everything and that the universe’s larger pur- a kind of divine, live being, but a
poses were tied to humans, so that humankind was central to all creation. Ancient kind of clockwork... insofar as
Earth-centered astronomy and Aristotelian physics, with its goal-directed natural nearly all the manifold motions
motions, chimed in perfectly with this traditional view. It was well attuned to the are caused by a most simple,
era’s hierarchical social structure, comprising a God-ordained king surrounded by magnetic, and material force, just
a few land-holding nobles surrounded in turn by many land-working serfs and as all motions of a clock are
caused by simple weight.
peasants.
Kepler
Astronomy and physics since the Middle Ages have contradicted Earth-centered
astronomy and Aristotelian physics. Copernicus removed Earth from the center, Kepler
replaced the planets’ “natural” circular orbits with ellipses, and Descartes declared that
bodies move not because they have a goal but simply because there is nothing to stop
them. The hierarchy of natural places, the notion that Earth is special, the centrality of
humankind, and the scientific basis for purpose in the universe—all were swept away.
It was not by chance that stirrings for religious and political freedom began at
about this time. Once the hierarchical cosmology began to crumble, it was no
6
Newton, Descartes, and Galileo were among the scientists and philosophers who contributed to this view.

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 Newton’s Universe

longer obvious to people that they should follow the old hierarchical cultural habits.
The new science established universal natural laws, rather than particular people or
religious beliefs, as the ultimate framework for human behavior. Religious reform-
ers such as Martin Luther felt freed to challenge medieval Christian traditions.
Political reformer Thomas Jefferson could draw up a Declaration of Independence
that threw off the divine rights of the king of England and that was permeated with
the concept of “unalienable rights” flowing directly from “the Laws of Nature and
of Nature’s God” to all people as the basis for human equality. Thus does our sci-
ence influence, on quite a deep level, our religion, our social order, and our politics.
Galileo sought only to describe how things behave, not why they behave as they do.
He was not concerned with a physical phenomenon’s purpose. Analysis—the new
technique of separating phenomena into their simplest components and studying those
components—was one of his tools. This led to a focus on the simplest and smallest
components of matter: atoms. And so atomism—the idea that nature can be reduced to
the motions of tiny material particles—underlay the new physics. For example, in a
view remarkably similar to Democritus’s view, Newton stated:
It seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard,
impenetrable, movable particles... and that these primitive particles being solids are
incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them, even so hard as
never to wear or break in pieces....
[Men are] engines endowed Newton, Galileo, and Descartes believed firmly in God. What place within the new sci-
with wills. ence could be found for God? Descartes reconciled the new science with traditional
Robert Boyle religion by assuming that there were two realities, a notion known as dualism. The first
reality was the material world, made of matter and operating according to nature’s
inflexible laws. Here, the true realities, or primary qualities, were assumed to be
impersonal physical characteristics such as the motions of atoms. The second reality
was spiritual, the realm of human thoughts and feelings and communication with God.
These were assumed to be secondary qualities that were not part of the physical world
but were merely reflections of the primary qualities. Thus did science and philosophy
relegate human concerns to a shadowy secondary role in a physical universe.
This left little room for God in the workings of the material universe. In the
traditional view, God is continually and actively present throughout the universe,
continually endowing all things with purpose. In the new view, God is, at most, an
Now I a fourfold vision see, uninvolved observer. Descartes and Galileo believed that God was needed to estab-
And a fourfold vision is given lish the laws of nature and to start the universe moving but that once started, the
to me; whole thing would run itself.7
‘Tis fourfold in my
A machine, especially a finely tuned machine such as a clock, is an excellent
supreme delight
And threefold in soft
analogy for the Newtonian worldview. Once the owner starts it, a clock runs itself
Beulah’s night according to its own operating principles. The founding fathers of physics thought
And twofold Always. of the universe as a clockwork mechanism whose operating principles were the laws
May God us keep of nature and whose parts were atoms. Because of its machinelike quality, I’ll call
From Single vision this view the mechanical universe.
And Newton’s sleep! In fact, one major consequence of Newtonian physics is that every physical sys-
William Blake, 1757–1827, Poet, Painter,
Rebel Against the Mechanical Single
tem is entirely predictable, like a perfectly operating clock. For a simple example,
Vision, or Linear Thinking, of Newton Newtonian physics can predict precisely how far a freely falling object will fall

7
With a few exceptions, Newton also believed that God did not intervene in the universe. On certain occasions,
namely in situations for which Newton himself could not find a scientific explanation, he believed that God
momentarily intervened. However, this “god of the gaps” view—that every phenomenon that cannot be
explained by science requires an intervention by God—becomes less and less tenable as science closes the gaps.

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 Newton’s Universe

during any specified time. This clocklike predictability has surprising implications. [It is unbelievable] that all nature,
To understand them, imagine a simple, isolated, self-contained collection of atoms all the planets, should obey eter-
that move and interact in accordance with Newtonian physics. Suppose you specify nal laws, and that there should
be a little animal, five feet high,
the precise positions and velocities of every atom at one particular time. Then,
who in contempt of these laws,
according to Newton’s theory of motion, the entire future behavior of this system could act as he pleased, solely
can be precisely predicted, for all time. according to his caprice.
But the Newtonian view is that the universe itself is just such a collection of atoms. Voltaire, French Philosopher and Writer,
Thus, the future is entirely determined by what all the atoms of the universe are doing 1694–1778

right now or at any other time. Furthermore, since humans are entirely made of atoms, it
They may say what they like;
follows that every thought or feeling that enters your head is reducible to the motion of everything is organized matter.
atoms within your brain and elsewhere. Thus, all of your thoughts, feelings, and actions Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769–1821
are entirely predetermined and predictable. You never choose to scratch your nose, for
example—the laws of nature choose for you. You might believe that you choose, but this, I never satisfy myself until I make
too—this believing that you choose—was chosen for you by the laws of nature. a mechanical model of a thing. If
Such a mechanistic universe, the loss of free will, and the absence of a continu- I can make a mechanical model I
can understand it. As long as I
ously creative God strike many observers as inhuman and cold. For example, cannot make a mechanical model
German social scientist Max Weber (1864–1920) spoke of the “disenchantment of all the way through I cannot
the world” brought about by Newtonian science. Poet and painter William Blake understand.
(1757–1827) wrote disdainfully in a poem “May God us keep/From Single vision/ Lord Kelvin, Nineteenth-Century British
and Newton’s sleep!” Nevertheless, from the seventeenth into the twentieth century, Mathematician and Physicist

these ideas influenced many educated people. Newtonian physics was so successful That Man is the product of causes
that the associated philosophy was accepted with little question. People absorbed which had no prevision of the
the clockwork universe without knowing they were absorbing it. end they were achieving; that his
There are reasons today to question both the Newtonian worldview and origin, his growth, his hopes and
Newtonian physics. Nevertheless, it would be surprising if these views were not fears, his loves and his beliefs,
still influential today. A person’s worldview tends to be absorbed thoughtlessly, as are but the outcome of accidental
part of the cultural air of the times. It seems likely that the Newtonian worldview collocations of atoms;... all these
things, if not quite beyond dis-
remains active, even (or perhaps especially) among people who have never heard of pute, are yet so nearly certain,
Isaac Newton. that no philosophy which rejects
It is for you, valued reader, to determine to what extent the Newtonian worldview them can hope to stand.
is valid, whether it retains a significant influence, and what difference it might make. Bertrand Russell, Philosopher and
Mathematician, 1872–1970

6 BEYOND NEWTON: LIMITATIONS OF It’s a material world.

Madonna
NEWTONIAN PHYSICS
Tested repeatedly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Newtonian
physics stood up in quantitative detail to every challenge. In fact, it was so powerful
and accurate that scientists began to accept it as true in an ultimate, absolute sense.
But science is never absolute. Even though a scientific principle has been con-
firmed repeatedly, it hangs always by the slender thread of new experiments.
Around 1880, experimental results began appearing that couldn’t be reconciled
with Newtonian physics. The incorrect Newtonian predictions arose in four extreme
situations: at high speeds, for enormous gravitational forces, at huge distances, and at
tiny distances. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein,
Werner Heisenberg, and many others invented three new theories to account for these
discrepancies: special relativity, general relativity, and quantum physics. To date, at
least, scientists have found no exceptions to any of the new theories.
Experiments show that Newton’s law of motion and Newtonian views of time
and space break down at high speeds. The disagreement is not noticeable at slow

137
 Newton’s Universe

speeds, but the errors become worse as speeds increase. The non-Newtonian effects
are difficult to detect for automobiles, jet planes, or even orbiting satellites moving
at some 10 km/s. But at 30,000 km/s (around the world in about 1 second!),
Newtonian predictions are off by 0.5%. At 290,000 km/s, nearly the speed of light,
typical Newtonian predictions are incorrect by a factor of 4! Scientists didn’t notice
these non-Newtonian effects for 200 years because they had never closely studied
such fast-moving objects. Special relativity gives correct predictions at all speeds,
both low and high. These predictions become indistinguishable from Newtonian
physics whenever the speeds are considerably less than the speed of light.
Similarly, experiments show that Newton’s theory of gravity, Newton’s law of
motion, and Newtonian views about time and space are incorrect for objects sub-
jected to enormous gravitational forces and also over huge distances. For example,
non-Newtonian gravitational effects are measurable, but small, for the orbit of the
innermost planet, Mercury, which feels strong gravitational forces from the sun.
Non-Newtonian gravitational effects are pronounced near neutron stars and black
holes and for physical systems that range over large portions of the observable uni-
verse. General relativity gives correct predictions for all these situations and is
regarded as the correct theory of gravity. The predictions of general relativity
become indistinguishable from Newtonian physics whenever gravitational forces
are not too strong and distances are not too large.
The disagreements between Newtonian physics on the one hand and Einstein’s
special and general relativity on the other stem from profoundly different ways of
viewing space and time. Newton took the common intuitive view that all of us take
in our daily lives: Space is infinite in extent, time is infinite in duration, and both
have the same properties everywhere and at all times. Einstein, however, found that
space and time are “relative,” or different for different observers, namely observers
moving at different speeds. For example, the duration of a process such as the melt-
ing of your ice cream cone is different as viewed by you from its duration as viewed
by your friend who is moving past you. From this, all sorts of new results emerge,
such as that space can “curve,” and time runs differently in different places.
Finally, experiments show that Newton’s law of motion and subtle Newtonian
views concerning predictability and cause and effect are incorrect for objects of
molecular dimensions or smaller. Quantum physics gives correct predictions for
objects of all sizes, from microscopic to macroscopic. For macroscopic objects like
footballs and apples, quantum theory’s predictions become indistinguishable from
Newtonian physics.
Although quantum physics represents an even more profound revolution than
does relativity, it stems from a seemingly insignificant difference concerning such
properties as speed, momentum, and energy. Newtonian physics allows such
properties to have any numerical value whatsoever within a continuous range of
possibilities, for example, the speed of a particular airplane might be anything
between zero and 1000 km/h. But quantum physics states that such properties
can only have specific “permitted” values, such as 0.01 km/h, 0.02 km/h, 0.03
km/h, etc. up to 1000.0 km/h.8 The speed of the airplane is said to be “quantized.”

8
This is an exaggerated example for purposes of illustration; the differences between the permitted values
would be much much smaller than this for a real airplane, and so this “quantization principle” isn’t signifi-
cant for airplanes and other large objects. But for microscopic objects, these “small” differences between
permitted values are more important, and so quantization makes a big difference in the microworld.

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 Newton’s Universe

This turns out to have surprising and profound implications, especially in the micro-
scopic world.
Figure 16 is one way of indicating, graphically, these limits of validity of
Newtonian physics. The vertical axis represents the speed of individual objects.
Special relativity predicts that objects cannot move faster than the speed of light—
300,000 km/s—so these speeds are forbidden. The horizontal axis shows the size of
individual objects. Because a principle known as “quantum uncertainty” predicts
that objects cannot be both small9 and slow moving, there is another forbidden
region in the small-size, low-speed corner of the diagram.
The lesson is that it’s not a Newtonian universe. Earth, where Newtonian physics
works well for ordinary objects, is an exception in a universe dominated by rela-
tivistic and quantum phenomena. The conditions we regard as normal occur only
rarely in the universe. Newtonian and intuitive concepts of time, space, matter, and
much else are far from correct throughout most of the universe. The “real” universe—
the quantum-relativistic universe—is fundamentally different, and far stranger, than
our Earth-bound intuitions could have imagined.

Speed

Forbidden
Speed of light,
300,000 km/s

Quantum
⫹ Special
special relativity
relativity
General
relativity

10% of speed
of light,
30,000 km/s
Quantum
Newtonian
Forbidden

10⫺5 m 1022 m Size or distance

Figure 1610
Newtonian physics is correct for common phenomena on Earth, but breaks down for objects
that are very small, very large, or very fast. Newtonian physics also breaks down for strong
gravitational forces, such as those near a neutron star or black hole. The quantum and relativ-
ity theories apply throughout the entire range of the phenomena observed to date. The dia-
gram is only schematic and approximate.

9
“Highly localized” is a more accurate term than “small.” A particle such as an electron is said to be “local-
ized” within a small region of space when it is observed (or known) to be located within that region. The
quantum uncertainty principle implies that a particle that is localized within a very small region must have
(on the average) a high speed.
10
Thanks to Douglas Giancoli, the author of several physics textbooks, including Physics: Principles with
Applications (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991), for suggesting diagrams of this type.

139
140
Newton’s Universe

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

Newton’s Universe
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

21. List some of the ways in which Copernican and Newtonian

Review Questions science are less supportive of the medieval worldview.
22. How is Newtonian physics related to democracy?
THE IDEA OF GRAVITY 23. According to the Newtonian worldview, is a red napkin really
“red”? Explain.
1. What is the direction of a falling apple’s velocity? Of 24. List several ways in which, according to the Newtonian
its acceleration? worldview, the universe is similar to a clock.
2. What is the direction of the moon’s velocity? Of its acceleration?
3. Does Earth exert a force on the moon? What is its direction?
How would the moon move if this force suddenly vanished? BEYOND NEWTON
4. In what ways are the moon and a falling apple similar? In
25. For what kinds of phenomena is Newtonian physics incor-
what ways do they differ?
rect? Why did it take so long to discover such exceptions?
26. List the three theories that give correct predictions for the sit-
NEWTON’S THEORY OF GRAVITY uations in which Newtonian physics is incorrect.
5. Does this book exert a gravitational force on your body?
6. What would happen to this book’s weight if you managed to
double Earth’s mass? What if, instead, you doubled the book’s Conceptual Exercises
mass? What if you doubled both?
7. In order to use Newton’s theory of gravity to calculate your
weight, what data would you need? THE IDEA OF GRAVITY
8. If you were orbiting Earth in a satellite 200 km above the 1. Does Earth’s gravity pull more strongly on a block of wood
ground, would you be weightless? Would your weight be as or on a block of iron having the same size?
large as it is when you are on the ground? Would you feel 2. Which one falls faster when dropped, a block of wood or a
weightless? Explain. block of iron having the same size (neglect air resistance)?
3. What is the magnitude (strength) and direction of the gravita-
GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE tional force on you right now?
9. What caused the sun to get hot? What keeps it hot today? 4. When you crumple a sheet of paper into a tight ball, does its
10. Describe the process that formed the planets. mass change? Does its weight change?
11. Since gravity pulls inward on the material in the sun and since 5. Are you in orbit around (falling around) Earth’s center? Is
the sun is made only of gas, why doesn’t the sun collapse? there anything around which you are in orbit?
12. Are there places in our galaxy where stars are being born? 6. The moon is in orbit around two objects simultaneously.
13. Name the process and also the substance that fuels the sun. Which two? (Actually, there is a third—our galaxy’s center.)
14. What will happen to the sun after it runs out of fuel? 7. Do you exert a gravitational pull on people around you? Do
15. Name and describe the object into which the sun will evolve they exert a gravitational pull on you?
after it runs out of fuel. 8. Do you exert a gravitational force on Earth? If so, how large
16. What causes different stars to evolve differently? is it, and in what direction is it?
17. All stars eventually evolve into one of three types of objects. 9. How far does Earth’s gravitational influence extend?
Name them. What kinds of stars evolve into each of the three 10. As a spacecraft travels from Earth to the moon, does it ever
types of objects? entirely leave Earth’s gravitational influence?
18. Describe a neutron star. 11. A low-orbiting satellite weighs 8000 N. How big and in what
19. Describe a black hole. Since nothing can come out of a black direction is the gravitational force on it? How big and in what
hole, how can we detect it? direction is the gravitational force by the satellite on Earth?
12. What would be the approximate orbital period (time for one
THE NEWTONIAN WORLDVIEW complete orbit) for an apple placed in circular orbit around
Earth at the moon’s distance from Earth?
20. List some ways in which ancient Greek astronomy and 13. If gravity suddenly shut off right now, what would be the
Aristotelian physics support the medieval philosophical and shape of Earth’s orbit? What about the moon’s orbit?
religious worldview. 14. What force (if any) keeps the planets moving?

From Chapter 5 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

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 Newton’s Universe: Problem Set

NEWTON’S THEORY OF GRAVITY 26. Suppose that a heavy- and a lightweight satellite are put into
15. Which is larger, the gravitational force by Earth on the moon low orbits around Earth. Could you tell, by observing the
or the gravitational force by the moon on Earth? shape or speed of the two orbits, which satellite was the
16. How strongly and in what direction does Earth pull on a 1 N heavy one?
apple? How strongly and in what direction does the apple 27. Suppose that two satellites are put into orbit, one around
pull on Earth? Earth and one around the moon, and suppose that the radii of
17. Suppose you went to another planet that was identical to the two orbits (the distance from the center of Earth and the
Earth on the surface but that was mostly hollow inside. moon) are the same. From the knowledge that Earth’s mass is
Would this affect your weight? How? larger than the moon’s mass, can you make any predictions
18. Suppose you went to another planet having a larger radius about the speeds of the two orbits?
than Earth but having the same total mass as Earth. Would 28. Communications satellites must be in geosynchronous orbits.
this affect your weight? How? That is, they must remain above a fixed point on Earth’s sur-
19. List at least three bodies that have a detectable (measurable) face, enabling sending and receiving antennas to be aimed at
gravitational effect on Earth’s motion. a fixed point overhead. What, then, must be a communication
20. The giant planet Jupiter is about 300 times more massive satellite’s orbital period (the time for one complete orbit
than Earth. It seems, then, that an object on Jupiter’s surface around Earth)?
should weigh 300 times more than it weighs on Earth. But it 29. In the “orbital” case in Figure 4, draw three arrows—labeled
actually weighs only about 3 times as much. Explain. f, a, v—attached to the apple that show the direction of the
21. If you were in a freely falling elevator and you dropped your gravitational force on the apple, the direction of the apple’s
keys, they would hover in front of you. Are the keys falling? acceleration, and the direction of the apple’s velocity.
Are the keys weightless? 30. Figure 3 shows two possible paths for an apple that has been
22. If gold were always sold by weight, could you make money thrown horizontally. Assume that air resistance is negligible.
buying gold at one altitude above the ground and selling it at For each path, draw three arrows—labeled f, a, v—attached
a different altitude? Where would you want to buy—at a high to the apple that show the direction of the gravitational force
altitude or a low altitude? on the apple, the direction of the apple’s acceleration, and the
23. Would you weigh more in Denver or in Los Angeles? Why? direction of the apple’s velocity.
24. Is there any net force acting on the moon? 31. Suppose that the gravitational force between an apple and an
25. Is the moon accelerated? If so, in what direction is the accel- orange placed a few meters apart is one-trillionth (10–12) N.
eration? In what direction is the moon’s velocity? What would the force be if the distance were doubled?
Halved? Tripled? Quartered?

Figure 4 Suborbital
Falling around Earth. If you throw
an apple fast enough, it will fall
around a large part of Earth’s
surface or even go into orbit. A
diagram like this appears in
Newton’s notebook.

Orbital

Figure 3
If you throw an apple horizontally,
the faster you throw it, the farther
Slower Faster
it will go.

142
 Newton’s Universe: Problem Set

32. Referring to the previous exercise, what would the force be if 7. In the preceding question, how large is the force by Earth on the
the mass of the apple were doubled? Tripled? What if the moon? In what direction is the force by Earth on the moon?
mass of the apple were tripled and the mass of the orange 8. Find the force by the sun on Earth. Their masses are
were quadrupled? 2.0 * 1030 kg and 6.0 * 1024 kg, and it is 150 million kilo-
33. Referring to the previous exercise, what would the force be if meters between their centers.
the mass of the apple were doubled, the mass of the orange 9. In the preceding question, how large is the force by Earth on
were doubled, and the distance between them were doubled? the sun? In what direction is the force by Earth on the sun?
10. Find the force by a 0.1 kg apple on another 0.1 kg apple, if
GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE their centers are 2 m apart.
34. If Earth collapsed to one-tenth of its present radius, how 11. MAKING ESTIMATES Estimate the gravitational force, in
much would you then weigh? newtons, that you exert on a person standing near you. Is the
35. If Earth expanded to 10 times its present radius, how much answer closer to 1000 N, 1 N, one-thousandth N, one mil-
would you then weigh? lionth N, or one-billionth N?
36. Find your weight at a distance of 10 Earth radii from Earth’s
center. Compare with the preceding question.
37. Will Earth ever collapse to become a black hole? Why? Will Answers to Concept Checks
the sun?
38. The orbits of all nine planets lie approximately in the same 1. (b)
flat plane. Why? 2. (c)
3. (c)
BEYOND NEWTON 4. According to Newton’s law of motion, if the net force is the
same, then the acceleration is also the same, (d).
39. What theory or theories would be needed to predict the 5. (a)
behavior of an atom moving at half the speed of light? 6. Although your mass is unchanged, your weight is reduced
40. According to the most widely accepted scientific theory of because you are farther from Earth’s center, (d).
the creation of the universe, the observable universe during 7. You have multiplied the distance by 3, so you’ve divided the
the first few moments (much less than 1 second) of its exis- force by 9 (3 squared), (f ).
tence was extremely hot, was full of densely packed matter, 8. (b) and (d)
and was very tiny—smaller than an atom. What theory or 9. The radius is reduced to 1/1000th of its previous value. The
theories would be needed to explain what was happening dur- square of this is 1/1,000,000, and the inverse of this is
ing these first few moments? 1,000,000, (e).

Problems Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual

NEWTON’S THEORY OF GRAVITY
Exercises and Problems
1. What happens to the gravitational force between two planets Conceptual Exercises
when the distance between them is decreased to one-third of 1. Iron. They fall equally fast.
its previous value? 3. The magnitude is your weight (in pounds, or in newtons),
2. What happens to the gravitational force between two planets and the direction is downward.
when the distance between them is increased to three times 5. No, you are not in orbit around Earth’s center (although you
its previous value? are revolving around that center due to Earth’s spinning
3. Earth’s mass is 6.0 * 1024 kg, and its radius is 6.4 * 106 m. motion). You are in orbit around the sun.
Use Newton’s theory of gravity to find the weight of a 1 kg 7. Yes; yes.
object lying on Earth’s surface. 9. It extends to infinity (but it is very small at great distances).
4. The moon’s mass is 7.4 * 1022 kg, and its radius is 11. 8000 N, downward. 8000 N, upward.
1.7 * 106 m. Use Newton’s theory of gravity to find the 13. A straight line; a straight line.
weight of a 1kg object lying on the moon’s surface. If you did 15. The law of force pairs tells us that these two forces are of
the preceding problem, then compare the two answers. equal strength.
5. A certain neutron star has a mass of 4.0 * 1030 kg (twice the 17. The other planet’s mass would be less than Earth’s mass, so
sun’s mass) compressed into a sphere of radius only 10,000 m your weight would be reduced.
(10 km). Find the gravitational force on a cubic centimeter of 19. The sun, Earth’s moon, planets such as Mars and Venus.
water, whose mass is 1 gram, lying on the surface (in reality, 21. Yes, the keys are falling, along with you. The keys have
this “water” would no longer be in its normal liquid state if it weight, although they are “apparently weightless.”
were on the surface of a neutron star!). 23. You would weigh more in Los Angeles, because your dis-
6. Find the force by the moon on Earth. Their masses are tance from Earth’s center would be smaller.
7.4 * 1022 kg and 6.0 * 1024 kg, and it is 3.8 * 108 m 25. Yes, the moon is accelerated in the inward (downward)
between their centers. direction. The moon’s velocity is forward—along the
moon’s orbit.

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 Newton’s Universe: Problem Set

27. The inward force on the earth satellite would be larger 5. F = 6.7 * 10 - 11 m1 * m2>d2
(because Earth’s mass is larger than the moon’s mass), so the = 6.7 * 10 - 11 (10 - 3 kg) * (4 * 1030 kg)>(104 m)2
earth satellite would have the larger acceleration (because of = 2.7 * 109 N (2.7 billion newtons!)
Newton’s law of motion). In order to have this larger acceler-
7. The answer is the same as in Problem 6, 2.1 * 1020 N. The
ation, the earth satellite would have to be moving faster.
29. f and a point directly toward Earth’s center, and v points force by Earth on the moon is directed toward Earth’s center.
along the path of motion. 9. The answer is the same as in Problem 8, 3.6 * 1033 N,
directed toward Earth’s center.
31. (1>4) * 10 - 12 N, 4 * 10 - 12 N, (1>9) * 10 - 12 N,
- 12 11. A typical mass for a person is about 50 kg. A typical distance
16 * 10 N. from you to a person next to you might be about 1 meter. So
33. The force would be unchanged. the gravitational force by one person on the other is about
35. 1/100th of your present weight. (6.7 * 10 - 11) * (50) * (50)>(1)2 N = 1.7 * 10 - 7 N, less
37. No. Earth does not have sufficient mass for it to collapse this than one-millionth N.
far. Neither does the sun.
39. Special relativity and quantum theory.
Problems
1. The new force is nine times larger than it was.
3. F = 6.7 * 10 - 11 m1 * m2>d2
= 6.7 * 10 - 11(1 kg)(6.0 * 1024 kg)>(6.4 * 106 m)2
= 9.8 N

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Conservation of Energy

From Chapter 6 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

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 Conservation of Energy
You Can’t Get Ahead—

Energy is the most difficult part of the environment problem, and environment is the
most difficult part of the energy problem. The core of the challenge of expanding and
sustaining economic prosperity is the challenge of limiting, at affordable cost, the environ-
mental impacts of an expanding energy supply.
John Holdren, President Obama’s Science Advisor

E
nergy is physics’ most important concept and, as you can see almost every day
in the newspapers, energy is also highly relevant to society. In fact, we define
human cultures largely by their use of energy resources. Civilization itself is
nearly synonymous with the organized use of solar energy. Humankind’s first per-
manent villages developed 10,000 years ago because of the needs of trade and agri-
culture. For centuries, trade was facilitated by solar energy, which drove the winds
that pushed the sails of merchant ships, warships, and exploration ships. And agri-
culture is the organized use of solar energy to grow food. Today, the chemically
altered remains of ancient life known as fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—
energize our industrial culture.
Energy is one of the four recurring themes of this text. It will be the basis for ana-
lyzing all sorts of natural phenomena in this chapter and for discussing many energy-
related social issues. Our goal in this chapter is to understand what scientists mean by
energy and to use this concept to understand a multitude of physical processes. Like
all powerful scientific ideas, energy explains and unifies a wide variety of phenom-
ena. Unlike Newton’s laws, the principles of energy apply to all phenomena, from
subnuclear “quarks” to the cosmos, observed so far.
New energy sources have been nearly synonymous with significant social changes.
The coal-fueled steam engine stimulated the Industrial Revolution around 1750,
with profound economic and social consequences. Because the new industrial
machines were large, complex, and expensive, traditional home workshops grew into
large centrally located factories run by the rich. Whereas the skills of traditional
craftspeople required a long apprenticeship, even unskilled workers and children
could tend the new machines. Consequently, nineteenth-century Europe and North
America were marked by increased productivity, the capitalistic organization of
industry, and a shift of population from farms to cities. Many political ideologies of
the twentieth century—facism, communism, capitalism, socialism—grew out of the
economics of the Industrial Revolution. Today, the Industrial Revolution is spreading
all over the world and to new industries such as computers.
The new industries stimulated nineteenth-century scientists to understand the two
grand principles of energy. This chapter develops one of these principles, conserva-
tion of energy. This principle appears in Section 5, following the development in

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 Conservation of Energy

Sections 1 through 4 of the concepts of work and energy. Everything that happens in
the universe involves an energy transformation of one sort or another. Section 6 stud-
ies several examples of energy transformations. Section 7 looks at a highly useful
related idea: power, or the rate (per unit of time) of transforming energy.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 We’ve never observed a violation of conservation of energy

or the second law of thermodynamics. Thus, these principles of energy are (a) good
theories; (b) good hypotheses; (c) certain to be correct in all future observations;
(d) facts; (e) absolutely true; (f) hogwash.

1 WORK: USING A FORCE TO MOVE SOMETHING

People commonly say that a material system such as a person, a flashlight battery,
or a tank of gasoline, has “energy” if it has an inherent capacity to bring about
changes in its environment or itself. The physicists’ definition of energy is a refine-
ment of this notion. I’ll say a system has “energy” whenever it has the capacity to
do work, where “work” refers to bringing about external or internal changes. In this
section, I’ll discuss “work.”
The physicist’s definition of work is a refinement of the common notion that you
do work whenever you exert yourself to perform a task. In physics, work is done
whenever an object is pushed or pulled through a distance. For instance, you do
work on a book when you push it across a table. A magnet does work on a paper clip
when the magnet pulls the clip toward the magnet. More precisely, object A (a per-
son or any other thing) does work on object B if A exerts a force on B while B
moves in the direction of that force (we won’t need to consider situations in which
the motion is not in the same direction as the force). You do work on a book when
you lift it. Earth does work on the book when the book falls. Notice that work is
always done by one specific object on another specific object. And notice that both
force and motion are needed in order for work to be done.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 Jed leans against a brick wall while Ned pushes hard against
it and “works up” a sweat in the process (Figure 1). Is either Jed or Ned doing any work
on the wall? (a) Both are. (b) Ned is but Jed is not. (c) Neither one is.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 A single electron flies through the vacuum (assume it’s a
“perfect” vacuum) inside your TV picture tube, from the back to the front side,
where it makes a tiny flash when it strikes the inside of the screen. Neglect the force
of gravity on the electron. During the electron’s motion through the tube, (a) only
Jed
air resistance does work on the electron, causing it to slow down; (b) inertia does
work on the electron, causing it to move at an unchanging speed in a straight line;
(c) inertia does work on the electron, causing it to slow down; (d) no work is done
on the electron, which moves at an unchanging velocity; (e) no work is done on the
electron, which slows down. Ned

Figure 1
Anybody who has ever thought about the cost of filling a car’s gas tank, or about Is either Jed or Ned doing any
a car’s gasoline efficiency, knows that it’s of practical importance to be quantitative work on the brick wall?
about energy. Let’s think about the quantity of work you do in various situations. If
the word work is to agree roughly with common language, the work you do in lifting
a load should be larger for larger loads. To see how much larger, compare lifting one

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 Conservation of Energy

book with lifting two identical stacked books (Figure 2). The effect is twice as big in
the second case, so the work done should be twice as big. This means work should be
proportional to force.
Now compare pushing a book across one table with pushing it all the way across
two adjoining tables (Figure 3). Again the effect is twice as big in the second case.
So work should be proportional to the distance moved.
So work should be proportional to both force and distance. Thus, we define the
amount of work done by object A on object B as the force exerted by A on B times
the distance that B moves while experiencing that force:1
work = force * distance = Fd

Figure 2
For instance, if you push on a book with a 3 newton force while pushing it 2 meters,
It takes twice as much work to lift you have done (3 N) * (2 m) = 6 newton-meters of work. Note that the unit of
two books. work is the newton-meter, a unit that’s so widely used that it’s been renamed the
joule (J) (rhymes with school), in honor of James Prescott Joule (Figure 4).
From the following Concept Checks you can see that the work done in lifting an
object is the object’s weight multiplied by the height lifted.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 Suppose you slowly, and at constant speed, lift a 12 N book
from the floor to a shelf 2 m above the floor. While you are lifting it, the net force on
the book is (a) zero; (b) 12 N; (c) 24 N.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 The force by your hand against the book in the preceding
question is (a) zero; (b) 12 N; (c) 24 N.
Figure 3
It takes twice as much work to CONCEPT CHECK 6 The work done by you on the book in the preceding question
push one book twice as far. is (a) zero; (b) 24 J; (c) 48 J.

2 WORK AND ENERGY: A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Do this two-step experiment and observe carefully: First, place your book on your
outstretched hand on the floor; slowly lift it to some height; hold it there a few sec-
onds; and then slowly lower it back to the floor. Second, repeat the same lifting
process to the same height, but this time suddenly remove your hand from the book
so that it falls to the floor.
You do work on the book when lifting it, but it does work on you when lowering
back to the floor, because the book pushes downward against your hand all the way
down. So the raised book has a capacity to do work and it actually does this work as
it’s lowered.
Let’s look more closely at the “capacity to do work.” You just saw that raised
objects have this capacity. And so do moving objects. For example, suppose that
you throw your book, horizontally, at a wall. One way to get work out of the moving
book would be to stick a thumbtack partly into the wall, directly in line with the
American Institute of Physics/ book’s motion, so that the book will hit the tack and drive it in farther (Figure 5).
Emilio Segre Visual Archives Any moving object has the capacity to do work.
Figure 4
British physicist James Prescott Joule. 1
This definition assumes that the motion is in a straight line in the direction of the force. If the motion and
His experiments in the 1840s helped the force are not in the same direction, then in the formula we must use only that part or “component” of
unravel the confusion surrounding the force that is along the motion. We won’t need this refinement here.
thermal energy and so led to the first
clear understanding of energy.

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 Conservation of Energy

In the second step of our experiment, the book was again raised, and in the raised
position it again had the capacity to do work. But then you dropped it so that it simply
fell, without doing work on your hand. As the falling book lost height, it gained speed,
so it retained an ability to do work. Just before hitting the floor, the book still had a
capacity to do work; only now this capacity resulted from the book’s speed rather than
from its height. You could get the falling book to actually do this work by sticking a
tack partly into the floor and letting the book drive in the tack farther (Figure 6).
So you give your book the capacity to do work when you lift it or throw it. The
work you do is “stored” in the raised or moving book. You could get this work back Figure 5
at any time, for example by letting the book push your hand down to the floor. One way to get work out of a
Physicists have a word for the capacity to do work. It’s called energy. You’ve seen moving book: Allow it to push a
that both raised objects and moving objects have energy. It’s useful to distinguish thumbtack into a wall.
these different forms. We’ll say that a raised object has “gravitational energy,”
because this energy is caused by Earth’s gravitational pull on the object, and that a
moving object has “kinetic energy,” because “kinetic” is related to the Greek word
for motion. As you’ll see, there are several other energy forms.
As it falls, the book loses gravitational energy but gains kinetic energy and so
retains energy. This retention of energy when no outside agent (such as your hand)
influences the system is one example of the law of conservation of energy.
These are the essential ideas about work and energy, presented in the context of
a simple example. The rest of this chapter expands on these ideas.

3 A QUANTITATIVE LOOK AT ENERGY

Figure 6
Let’s look quantitatively at the experiment described in the preceding section. Recall One way to get work out of a
that the amount of work you do to lift an object is its weight multiplied by the height falling book.
raised. Once the book is raised, it has gravitational energy because it can do work in
pushing your hand back to the floor. How much gravitational energy does it have?
Quantitatively, we define an object’s energy to be the amount of work it can do. It’s
measured in joules (or newton-meters), just as work is. The energy of the raised book
is the amount of work it can do in slowly pushing your hand back down to the floor,
which is just the book’s weight multiplied by the distance to the floor. You can see
from this that, for any raised object,
gravitational energy = weight * height
When you slowly lower the book, it uses up its energy while pushing your hand
back to the floor. But when the book falls, its gravitational energy is transformed
into kinetic energy. How much kinetic energy is possessed by a moving object such
as the book? In other words, how much work can a moving object do because of its
motion? It’s possible to work out the answer to this question, starting from Newton’s
laws, although we won’t work it out here. The answer turns out to be

kinetic energy = a b * (object’s mass) * (square of object’s speed)

1
2
This formula tells us that a more massive object has more kinetic energy and a
faster object has more kinetic energy, as we might expect. It makes sense that the
formula should involve the object’s mass rather than its weight, because kinetic
energy is possible even in the absence of gravity.

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 Conservation of Energy

Now comes an incredible fact, also provable from Newton’s laws: If you neglect
air resistance (which I’ll deal with later), the amount of gravitational energy the
book has at the beginning of its fall will precisely equal the amount of kinetic
wt ⫻ ht at
this point
energy it has at the end (Figure 7). The book’s total capacity to do work, its total
energy, is quantitatively unchanged during the falling process. Its energy is simply
changed in form—transformed—from gravitational to kinetic, but its total energy
remains the same. As physicists put it, energy is precisely “conserved.” This physics
use of the word conserved should be distinguished from the way “energy conserva-
equals tion” is used socially. When the newspapers speak of energy conservation, they
(1/2) ms 2 mean preserving certain high-value forms of energy such as oil by consuming them
at this
point
less. When physicists speak of the conservation of energy, they mean that the total
amount of energy remains unchanged throughout some physical process.
Furthermore, since energy is conserved for any distance of fall, it must be con-
served at halfway down, at three-quarters of the way down, and at every other point
Figure 7
during the fall. The loss in gravitational energy during any portion of the fall pre-
An amazing thing: The gravitational cisely equals the gain in kinetic energy during that portion (Figure 8).
energy at the top precisely equals
the kinetic energy at the bottom, just CONCEPT CHECK 7 How much kinetic energy does a car have when it moves
before the book hits the ground. at 100 km/hr, as compared with when it moves at 50 km/hr? (a) The same amount.
(b) One-half as much. (c) One-fourth as much. (d) Twice as much. (e) Four times
as much.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 A bag of groceries having a mass of 6 kg and a weight of

60 N falls from a shelf that is 2 m high. Just as it begins to fall, its gravitational
1
energy (relative to the floor) is (a) zero; (b) 12 J; (c) 120 J; (d) none of the above.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 Refer to the preceding question. Neglecting air resistance,

just before hitting the floor the bag of groceries’ gravitational energy and kinetic
2 energy are (a) both zero; (b) zero and 120 J, respectively; (c) 120 J and zero, respec-
tively; (d) both 120 J; (e) none of the above.

MAKI NG ESTI MATES Estimate your physics book’s energy, relative to the floor,
when lifted to arm’s length over your head. Assume the book’s weight is about 10 N.
If you dropped it from this height, about how much kinetic energy would it have just
Figure 8 before hitting the floor?
The total energy is conserved all the
way down. The loss in gravitational
energy between points 1 and 2 4 ENERGY: THE CAPACITY TO DO WORK
during the fall is precisely balanced
by the gain in kinetic energy Now let’s expand on the preceding two sections, extending these ideas to a wide
between these two points. This is variety of systems. This word system comes up a lot in science. It means a specific
true no matter where point 2 might part of the universe, such as a particular collection of objects.
be between the woman’s hands and Any system having the capacity to do work is said to have energy. Quantitatively,
the floor. a system’s energy is the amount of work it can do. Although work and energy can
both be measured in joules, work and energy are not the same thing. A system does

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES Suppose you can lift to about 2 m above the floor:
GravE = wt * ht L 10 N * 2 m = 20 J. If you drop it, it will have nearly this entire 20 J of energy, in the
form of kinetic energy, just before it hits the floor. The remaining small amount is converted to thermal
energy, due to air resistance.

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 Conservation of Energy

work, but it has energy. Work is a process, whereas energy is a property of a system.
You can think of energy as stored work. A system’s energy is the amount of work the
system could do, regardless of whether it ever actually does this work: A raised boul-
der has energy, even though it might be tied up and left that way forever and never do
any work. The difference between energy and work is similar to the difference
between money and spending. Just as energy is the capacity to do work, the money
in your bank account represents your capacity to spend. Work is then similar to the
act of spending some of that money. Notice that although your bank account and
your spending are both measured in dollars, they are different things.
There are many forms of energy, because there are many ways to do work. I’ll
discuss eight of them, beginning with the two you already know something about.
Kinetic energy (KinE) is energy due to motion. It’s the work a system could do
while coming to rest.
Gravitational energy2 (GravE) is energy due to gravitational forces. It’s the work
a raised system could do while Earth (or any other object that can pull gravitation-
ally) pulls it back to its initial position. There’s a quirk about gravitational energy: Its
numerical value depends on the level chosen as the initial or reference level, simply
because the amount of work you can get from a raised object depends on how far
down it must go before you consider it no longer “raised.” For instance, your book’s
gravitational energy is only a few joules relative to the floor of your room, but it may
be thousands of joules relative to sea level. So we sometimes need to be explicit
about the agreed-upon reference level when discussing gravitational energy.
If you stretch a rubber band or bend a ruler, it can snap back when released.
There’s energy in the deformed system because it can do work while snapping back.
For instance, a stretched rubber band can do work in pulling your fingers together.
This energy, resulting from the capacity of a deformed system to snap back, is
called elastic energy (ElastE).
A pot of hot water has more energy than does a pot of cold water of the same
size. How do we know? Well, if the hot pot is boiling, it can rattle its lid, and this
requires work, so boiling water has the capacity to do work. If the hot pot is below
the boiling temperature, one way to get work from it would be to find another liquid
that boils at a lower temperature and let the hot pot warm the other liquid to boiling
so that this other liquid rattles its lid. This kind of energy that exhibits itself as
warmth—as higher temperature—is called thermal energy (ThermE).3
It’s enlightening to look at thermal energy microscopically. As you know, temperature
is associated with random microscopic motion, or thermal motion, that’s not visible
macroscopically. For example, as water’s temperature rises, its molecules move faster,
gaining kinetic energy. Thermal energy is this microscopic energy that cannot be directly
observed macroscopically.4 To prevent confusion. I will reserve the term kinetic energy
for macroscopic kinetic energy.
Put one hand on a warm object and the other on a similar cool object. From a
microscopic point of view, you are not really experiencing warmth and coolness, you

2
Also known as “gravitational potential energy.” Some books define “potential energy” as energy resulting
from a system’s position or configuration. Gravitational, elastic, and electromagnetic energy are all forms
of potential energy. In the interest of brevity, we won’t use the word potential.
3
More precisely, thermal energy (which is sometimes called “internal energy”) exhibits itself not only in a
system’s temperature but also in its pressure and other so-called “thermodynamic variables.”
4
More precisely, thermal energy includes all of the microscopic forms of energy that are not directly visible
at the macroscopic level. It includes energy that results from the forces between molecules, a point that is
important to understanding melting and other “phase transitions.”

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 Conservation of Energy

are only experiencing fast and slow molecules. Is that amazing or what? It amazes
me. How could the mere motion of microscopic particles, that I can’t even see or feel
individually, create the feeling of warmth in my hand? The idea of warmth has been
replaced by, or “reduced to,” motion. In a way, the notion of warmth has vanished, a
classic example of science’s reduction of a wide assortment of phenomena to a few
basics. This reduction of sense impressions to the mechanical motion of atoms is
precisely what Democritus was talking about when he proclaimed, “By convention
hot is hot and cold is cold.... The objects of sense are supposed to be real—but in
truth they are not. Only the atoms and the void are real.”
Historically, thermal energy was confusing because it didn’t fit comfortably
into the mechanical framework of Newtonian physics and because it is fundamen-
tally different from the other energy forms. During the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, Joule and others eventually demonstrated that what is experienced as
warmth is in fact a form of energy. This was a key step in comprehending what
energy really is.
I’ll run quickly over the remaining four types of energy, returning to them in
more depth later.
The energy that results from electric and magnetic forces is called
electromagnetic energy (ElectE), or sometimes simply “electric energy” or
“magnetic energy.”
There is energy in a light beam, as you can tell from the fact that light (sunlight,
for instance) can warm things, and you can get work out of warm things. The
energy carried by a light beam is one form of radiant energy (RadE). There are
other forms of radiant energy, some of them familiar to you: radio, microwave,
infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray energy.
Chemical reactions can do work, as you can see from a wood fire used to boil
water. This energy results from the molecular structure of the wood. The energy that
results from a system’s molecular structure is called chemical energy (ChemE).
Whereas chemical energy results from molecular structure, nuclear energy
(NuclE) results from nuclear structure, from the way protons and neutrons are
arranged into nuclei. One obtains nuclear energy from nuclear reactions, just as one
obtains chemical energy from chemical reactions.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 An operating lightbulb transforms ElectE into (a) KinE;

(b) ElectE; (c) ThermE; (d) ChemE; (e) RadE.

CONCEPT CHECK 11 In the operation of a hydroelectric power plant, the energy

to generate the electricity can be traced to (a) GravE in the lake behind the plant’s
dam; (b) ChemE in the lake behind the plant’s dam; (c) ThermE in the lake behind the
plant’s dam;(d) RadE that comes from the sun; (e) ChemE that comes from the sun;
(f) good vibes.

5 THE LAW OF ENERGY: ENERGY IS FOREVER

You’ve seen that the gravitational energy lost during any portion of an object’s
fall is exactly balanced by its kinetic energy gain, provided you neglect air resist-
ance and observe the object only until just before it hits the floor. The object’s

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overall, or total, energy is conserved all the way down. Newton’s physics predicts
this, and experiment confirms it. In fact, it’s possible to prove, still based on
Newton’s laws, that any system that experiences only gravitational forces con-
serves its total energy, just as the falling object does. To a good approximation,
our solar system is a system of this type that moves under the influence of gravity
alone. It’s remarkable that there should be this rather abstract quantity, energy,
that remains unchanged as the eight planets and their moons go through their
complex motions.
But far more remarkably, experiments show that the energy principle goes far
beyond Newton’s physics. Energy is conserved in every physical process yet
observed. We call this

The Law of Conservation of Energy

The total energy of all the participants in any process remains unchanged through-
out that process. That is, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Energy can be
transformed (changed from one form to another), and it can be transferred (moved
from one place to another), but the total amount always stays the same.

This statement is as true as any general rule ever gets in science. It’s correct in every
situation yet observed. It holds even when Newton’s physics is not remotely correct,
such as near black holes, close to the speed of light, and for subatomic particles.
It’s a useful principle, because once you have calculated or measured the total
energy at one moment during some process, you automatically know it at any other
moment without having to calculate or observe all the messy details of what hap-
pened between the two moments. For example, the number of joules of chemical
energy consumed from a car’s fuel tank must equal the total number of joules
appearing as the car’s kinetic and gravitational energy, exhausted thermal energy,
chemical energy of pollutants, and so forth, during that time.
The law of conservation of energy says that something, namely a system’s total
capacity to do work, or its “total energy,” remains the same throughout any phys-
ical process. It’s similar to the law of conservation of momentum, which says that
a system’s total motion through space or “total momentum” remains the same.
You’ll encounter a third such conservation law: conservation of something called
“net electric charge.” Another prominent conservation law, one that I won’t be
discussing, states that any system’s total rotational motion or “total angular
momentum” remains the same. And there are certain subatomic properties associ-
ated with microscopic interactions that are also conserved.
Energy conservation is a kind of symmetry principle. Recall that a system has
symmetry if it looks the same from various perspectives. Energy conservation says
that a system’s energy remains the same no matter at what time you view it. In fact,
all conservation principles can be traced to symmetries in nature.
There’s a useful alternative way of stating conservation of energy. Whenever
work is done, it’s done by some system on some other system. The system doing the
work must lose some of its capacity to do work; in other words, it must lose energy.
Since total energy is conserved, this energy cannot just vanish but must instead go

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into the system on which work is done. So work is an energy transfer from the sys-
tem doing the work into the system having work done on it. I’ll call this

The Work-Energy Principle

Work is an energy transfer. Work reduces the energy of the system doing the work
and increases the energy of the system on which work is done, both by an amount
equal to the work done.5

It takes about 8 solid light-years of How do we know that energy is conserved even in nuclear processes? Early in
lead to stop half the neutrinos the twentieth century, nuclear physicists investigated a form of “radioactive decay”
emitted in a typical nuclear decay. known as beta decay, a process in which a nucleus spontaneously creates an electron
They move like “greased lightning” and spits it out of the nucleus. This alters the original nucleus. If energy is conserved, the
through matter.... If you make a fist, nuclear energy of the original nucleus should equal the nuclear energy of the altered
there are thousands of neutrinos nucleus plus the energy of the ejected electron.
flying through it right now, because But measurements showed that the energy was larger before than after! Being reluc-
the entire universe is filled with tant to conclude that energy was not conserved, physicists hypothesized that some unde-
neutrinos.... Another proposal,
tected particle was also ejected along with the electron. It was thought that when this
made tongue-in-cheek, is for a
other particle’s energy was included, the energies would balance. Although the hypothe-
neutrino bomb, a pacifist’s favorite
sized particle had not been detected, it was thought that its energy could be directly
weapon. Such a bomb would
explode with a whimper and flood
measured by surrounding the nucleus with a large cylinder of lead. The unseen particle
the target area with a high flux of would surely be slowed down and stopped inside a sufficiently thick cylinder and so
neutrinos.... [T]he neutrinos would deposit its energy in the lead, causing a temperature rise in the lead.
fly harmlessly through everything. But there was no measurable temperature increase. Perhaps energy was not con-
Heinz Pagels, in The Cosmic Code served in beta decay. This is where the matter stood from 1914 to 1930. By 1929, some
physicists, such as Niels Bohr, were suggesting that energy conservation didn’t apply to
the nucleus. But others didn’t accept this suggestion, and in 1930 Wolfgang Pauli hypoth-
esized that the new particle was so penetrating that it could pass right through the thick
lead without depositing any energy and that energy would be found to be conserved
once the elusive particle was found.
This set off a search for such a particle. Before long, physicists found other indirect evi-
dence (other than beta decay), and they gave the hypothesized particle a name: “neu-
trino.” It was finally detected directly in 1956. Experiments showed that, as Pauli had
predicted, energy was conserved once the neutrino was included in the balance.

CONCEPT CHECK 12 Farswell Slick (Figure 9) invites your investment in a busi-

ness venture to manufacture his remarkable “supertranspropulsionizer.” His diagrams
$ show a dazzling array of superconductors, lasers, liquid-helium coolants, and fancy
computers. Slick informs you that this ultimate propulsion system will accelerate
$

x spaceships to nearly lightspeed for interstellar travel. Amazingly, no fuel supply is

x
needed, either on board or outside the spaceship. The principle involved, he explains, is
“bremsstrahlung superconduction” (BS). With BS, the device operates in a continuous
cycle that both accelerates the spaceship and “feeds back” some of its laser light to
maintain, for as long as may be desired, the operation of the transpropulsionizer itself.
$

Should you invest?

Figure 9
“A remarkable device,” Farswell
5
Slick remarks. Would you buy a There is another worklike process by which energy can be transferred, called “heating.” Heating is thermal
supertranspropulsionizer from energy transfer due to a temperature difference and can be thought of as microscopic work. When
expanded to include not only ordinary work but also heating, the work–energy principle is called “the first
this man?
law of thermodynamics.” We won’t need the first law of thermodynamics in what follows.

154
 Conservation of Energy

6 TRANSFORMATIONS OF ENERGY
Everything that happens can be described as an energy transformation. This section
describes the energy transformations involved in some familiar processes.
Once again, drop your book to the floor (it’s coming in for a lot of rough treatment
in this chapter!). You’ve studied this process up until its impact with the floor. Where
is the energy after impact? Conservation of energy says it can’t just vanish. Going
through our eight forms of energy, there’s only one plausible candidate: thermal
energy. The impact must warm the book or the floor. This temperature rise is hard to
detect, but you can demonstrate the same effect by driving a nail into a board with a
hard hammer blow. Feel the nail before and after the blow. Try several blows.
We can summarize the energy transformations in the following way:
GravE (at the top) : KinE (just before impact) : ThermE (after impact)
Let’s add the effects of air resistance. Since air resistance slows the book, the
falling book has less kinetic energy than it did before. But this energy is not lost—
you can’t lose energy. It must be transformed into thermal energy. The air and book
must warm a little as the book falls.
Until the work of Joule and others around 1850, scientists had long believed that
the work going into forces such as air resistance and friction, work that produces
warming, was lost. Thus, it was believed that energy tended to decrease in most sys-
tems, rather than being conserved. The key to uncovering conservation of energy
was discovering that warming represented an energy increase in a then-unknown
form of energy, namely, thermal energy.

How do we know that energy is conserved even when thermal energy is

involved? I asserted above that air warms when you stir it with a falling object. James
Prescott Joule (Figure 4) did an experiment like this in the 1840s, using water instead of
air. He placed a paddle wheel in a tub of water, stirred the water with the paddle wheel,
and measured the temperature rise in the water.6 He quantified the experiment by allow-
ing a falling weight attached to a cord to turn the paddle wheel. The weight’s energy loss
is then its weight multiplied by the distance fallen. Joule found that the water’s tempera-
ture rise was precisely proportional to the gravitational energy lost. This showed that the
lost gravitational energy went directly into a temperature rise, in other words into thermal
energy.
Energy concepts were murky in Joule’s day because scientists didn’t understand that
warmth (thermal energy) actually is a form of energy. Joule clarified matters by showing
that work is precisely convertible to thermal energy. This breakthrough showed that the
principle of energy conservation extends to processes involving thermal energy, a micro-
scopic form of energy that lies outside of Newtonian physics.

Joule showed that a particular amount of work, about 4200 J, produces a 1°C rise
in the temperature of 1 kilogram of water. This amount of energy is the dietitian’s
Calorie.7 Although the Calorie is often used to measure thermal energy, Joule’s
work showed that it is really a general energy unit, equivalent to 4200 joules.

6
When you stir hot water in open air, the water cools because of evaporation. In Joule’s experiment the stir-
ring occurred inside a closed container that prevented evaporation.
7
The dietitian’s Calorie is always spelled with a capital C. Physicists use “calorie” (lowercase c) to denote the
energy needed to raise 1 gram of water by 1°C.

155
 Conservation of Energy

ThermE (air) Back to the falling book (it’s remarkable what you can learn just by thinking care-
fully about a falling book): Just before impact, all the energy has been converted to
kinetic energy of the book and thermal energy of the air and book. Since air resist-
GravE ance has only a small effect on the motion, thermal energy must form only a small
Kin
E fraction of the total. Finally, the impact converts the pre-impact kinetic energy to
ThermE (impact)
thermal energy of the floor and the book.8
As a helpful way to visualize energy transformations of all sorts, I’ll use energy
Figure 10 flow diagrams. For example, Figure 10 shows the energy of the falling book trans-
Energy flow diagram for a falling forming as though it were water flowing through pipes, beginning as gravitational
book, with air resistance. The energy, then transforming into kinetic energy and a little thermal energy of the air
“pipe” widths correspond to the (note the smaller pipe), and finally transforming entirely to thermal energy. Since
amounts of energy involved in energy is conserved, the pipe widths match up at each intersection.
various parts of the process. Since Now give your book a quick hard push so that it slides across your tabletop, slid-
energy is conserved, the pipe widths ing to rest (Figure 11). Where does the energy come from for this process, and in
match up at each intersection.
what form is it? (...Time out, for thinking.)
... It comes from your body, in the form of chemical energy. Figure 12 shows the
energy flow diagram for this process. Most of the initial chemical energy used to
push the book turns into thermal energy in your body. The small amount that goes
into the book then winds up as thermal energy produced while the book slides to
rest. You might have noticed how frequently the various forms of energy transform
into thermal energy.
Energy transformations in animals provide many interesting examples. The
energy that enables you to do useful work comes from foods and is stored in your
body as chemical energy. Dietitians measure this stored chemical energy in Calories.
For example, a 70 Calorie slice of bread gives you 70 Calories of stored chemical
energy that can then provide 70 Calories of work and thermal energy.
When animal chemical energy is used to do work, only a small fraction actually
Figure 11
transforms into useful work. We say that such a process is “inefficient.” A “highly
What energy transformations occur
efficient” process, on the other hand, is one in which most of the initial, or “input,”
when you briefly push a book and
then let it slide? energy is transformed into useful “output” energy and the wasted fraction is small.
Quantitatively, the energy efficiency of any energy transformation is the fraction of
the input that appears as useful output:
ThermE (body)
useful output energy
energy efficiency =
ChemE total input energy

Ki
It is usually expressed as a percentage. The energy efficiency of typical human
nE muscular activities is only about 10%.
ThermE (table and book)
Energy being one of this text’s four major themes, you will encounter many more
Figure 12 energy transformations and energy flow diagrams in future texts.
Energy flow diagram for a book
that is given a quick push and CONCEPT CHECK 13 The energy transformation during photosynthesis is (a)
allowed to slide across a surface
KinE : ThermE; (b) ThermE : KinE; (c) KinE : ChemE; (d) ElectE : ChemE;
while coming to rest. The pushing
(e) RadE : ChemE; (f) ChemE : RadE.
process is very inefficient, with
most of the initial chemical energy
going into warming your body
rather than into the book.

8
And you can hear the impart. A small fraction of the energy is transformed into the energy of sound, a
form of kinetic and elastic energy of the air.

156
 Conservation of Energy

CONCEPT CHECK 14 While a wooden matchstick burns, the energy transfor-

mation is (a) ThermE : ElectE + RadE; (b) ElectE : ThermE + RadE; (c)
KinE : ChemE + RadE; (d) ChemE : KinE + RadE; (e) ThermE : ChemE +
RadE; (f) ChemE : ThermE + RadE.

CONCEPT CHECK 15 Robin Hood shoots an arrow from his bow. Beginning just
before he draws the bow, the energy transformation is (a) ChemE : ElastE : KinE;
(b) ThermE : ElastE : KinE; (c) ElastE : ChemE : KinE; (d) ChemE :
KinE : ElastE; (e) ElastE : KinE; (f) ThermE : ElastEly.

7 POWER: THE QUICKNESS OF ENERGY TRANSFORMATION

What’s the difference between running and walking up a flight of stairs? Your grav-
itational energy increases by the same amount in both cases. So the work you do is
the same. And yet your body knows there’s a difference between running and walk-
ing upstairs. The difference is that you do the work in less time when you run.
There’s a word for this notion of how quickly work is done. It’s called power.
Quantitatively, power is the work done per second—in other words, the work done
divided by the time to do it:
work done
power =
time to do it
Because work is an energy transformation, power can be thought of as the rate of
transforming energy.
Suppose you run up one flight of stairs and then walk up a second, identical
flight of stairs in twice the time it took to run up the first flight. You do the same
work for each flight, but your power output during the first flight is double your
power output during the second flight. The difference is a power difference, not an
energy difference.
The unit of power is the joule per second (J/s). It differs by an all-important “per
second” from the unit of work or energy. Power is such a popular concept that its unit
is given a special name. The joule per second is called the watt (W), in honor of the
eighteenth-century developer of the steam engine, James Watt. The kilowatt (kW) is
1000 watts, and the megawatt (MW) is 1 million watts.
Think of several everyday devices: automobile, lightbulb, electric blender,
toaster, and so forth. These can be understood as energy transformers; they trans-
form energy from one form to another form that you can use. An important feature
is often the rate at which the energy is converted. For example, to get a certain light-
ing level from a lightbulb, the bulb must convert a certain number of joules per sec-
ond to visible light. So lightbulbs and other devices must be rated in power units
(watts) rather than energy units. A popular power unit for automobile engines and
other heat engines is the horsepower, equal to about 750 watts.
Table 1 gives the power transformed by typical household electrical appliances.
The numbers give the power consumed only during the time that the appliance is
turned on. Total electric energy consumption, perhaps over one day or over one year,
often tells quite a different story. For example, one ordinarily uses a toaster for only
a short time each day, so its daily energy consumption is low even though its 1200 W
power consumption is high. And refrigerators, although their power consumption

157
 Conservation of Energy

MAKI NG ESTI MATES What’s your power output while running up a flight of
stairs? If the energy efficiency of this process is 10%, what’s your (chemical) power
input, in watts and in Calories/second?

can be as low as 300 W, are leading household energy consumers because they oper-
ate for so many hours every day.
Although home energy use over the course of a year determines how much
energy a power plant must deliver, energy use during so-called peak times has a
special impact on the need for new plants. Each electric plant has a maximum
power output, its power rating, usually one hundred or more megawatts. The plant’s
actual power output is largest at times such as hot afternoons when many people are
running air conditioners. If the power peak approaches the plant’s rating, the plant
will cut its output by reducing the supply to all customers, causing lightbulbs and
other appliances to dim in a “brownout.”
Because industrial societies waste enormous amounts of energy, there are count-
less opportunities today for electric power companies to save customers’ money,
enhance company profits, and protect the environment, all with no reduction in
services, by finding ways to avoid building expensive new power plants. Pressures

Table 1
Power consumption of household appliances while the appliance is turned on
and consuming electric energy
Appliance Power (W)
Cooking range 12,000
Clothes dryer 5,000
Water heater 4,500
Air conditioner, window 1,600
Microwave oven 1,400
Dishwasher (incl. hot water) 1,200
Toaster 1,200
Hair dryer 1,000
Refrigerator, frostless 600
Refrigerator, not frostless 300
TV, color 350
Stereo set 100

SOLUTION TO MAKING ESTIMATES Suppose that you weigh 500 newtons (110 pounds), the vertical height
of one flight of stairs is 4 meters (measure it!), and you run up one flight in 5 seconds (try it!). The work done
to lift yourself and the power output are
work = weight * height = 500 N * 4 m = 2000 J
power = work , time = 2000 J , 5 s = 400 W

This is a large power output for a human being, as you will discover if you do the experiment. To produce
this output at 10% efficiency, you must convert chemical energy at a rate of 4000 W, or 4000 J/s. In
Cal>s (1 Cal = 4200 J), this is 4000>4200 L 0.95 Cal>s, your metabolic rate in this example. If you could
maintain this rate for an hour (3600 s), you would “burn up” (transform) 3600 * 0.95 = 3400 Calories, the
energy content of a big steak.

158
 Conservation of Energy

for new plants arise when existing plants can no longer provide the electricity
needed during periods of peak demand. Energy-efficient devices can provide the
same services (the same amount of light, for example) with less energy. Because
such efficiency measures are usually far cheaper than the cost of building new
plants, many power companies are actively seeking and providing new energy-
efficiency opportunities. For example, because it’s usually far cheaper to warm a
house with additional insulation than with additional electricity, many power
companies provide services and low-cost loans to encourage customers to insu-
late their homes. Everybody wins: the customer, who gets a warmer home
cheaper; the power company, for which the insulation is cheaper than a new plant;
and the environment, which benefits from reduced resource consumption and less
pollution.
Pricing is another way to reduce the need for new power plants. If electric compa-
nies charge higher rates at peak power times, balanced by reduced rates during off-
peak periods, people have an incentive to switch their power use from peak to
off-peak times. This reduces the need for new power plants, and the resulting finan-
cial savings can reduce customers’ electrical bills while increasing company profits.
The most useful energy unit for measuring your home’s electric energy con-
sumption is the kilowatt-hour, the amount of energy transformed when a power of
1 kilowatt operates for 1 hour. Since 1 kilowatt is 1000 joules/second and 1 hour is
3600 seconds,

1 kilowatt-hour = 1000 J>s * 3600 s = 3.6 * 106 J

If a known power in kilowatts operates for a known number of hours, it’s easy to
figure the number of kilowatt-hours of energy consumed: Just multiply the number
of kilowatts by the number of hours.
Electricity costs about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. That sounds pretty cheap for
3,600,000 joules. How cheap? For instance, how far could 3,600,000 joules lift a
1000 newton (225 pound) person? Since the work done in lifting an object is the
object’s weight times the distance through which it’s raised, the 3,600,000 J must
equal 1000 N times the distance. So the distance is 3,600,000 J divided by 1000 N,
or 3600 meters—nearly 12,000 feet! That’s a lot of lifting for just a dime.
Electricity is phenomenally cheap, and we use a lot of it. The average U.S. house-
hold consumes about 1.4 kilowatt-hours of electric energy every hour!
Society’s use of energy is a crucial topic today for many reasons, including
global warming, pollution, national security, declining energy resources, nuclear
power issues, and environmental destruction.

CONCEPT CHECK 16 You press a 500 N weight from your shoulders up to arms’
length, a distance of 0.8 m, during a period of 2 seconds. How much work did you do?
(a) 800 W. (b) 800 J. (c) 400 W. (d) 400 J. (e) 200 W. (f) 200 J.

CONCEPT CHECK 17 In the preceding question, your power output is (a) 800 W;
(b) 800 J; (c) 400 W; (d) 400 J; (e) 200 W; (f) 200 J.

159
160
Conservation of Energy

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

Conservation of Energy
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

19. An apple in a tree has 90 J of gravitational energy (relative to

Review Questions the ground). It falls. If you neglect air resistance, what can
1. What type of energy technology fueled the Industrial you say about the amount of kinetic energy the apple has just
Revolution? before it hits the ground? What if you do not neglect air
2. What is a fossil fuel? Name three kinds. resistance?

WORK POWER
3. Is work done whenever a force is exerted? Explain. 20. Explain the difference between energy and power.
4. Is work done whenever an object moves through a distance? 21. Choose the correct answer(s): The (watt, newton per second,
Explain. joule, calorie, joule per second, meter per second, horse-
5. To what two quantities is work proportional? power, kilowatt-hour) is a unit of power. Which are units
6. You slowly lift a 3 N grapefruit by 2 m. How much work did of energy?
you do and on what object? 22. You lift a 2 N rock by 4 m in 3 s. What is your work output?
7. A 3 N grapefruit falls 2 m to the floor. Was work done during Your power output?
the fall? By what object on what other object? 23. Which do you pay for in your monthly electric bill, energy
or power?
ENERGY
8.
9.
Explain the difference between energy and work.
List eight physical types of energy.
Conceptual Exercises
10. Explain thermal energy from a microscopic point of view.
11. Give one example of each of these energy forms: elastic, WORK
thermal, chemical, kinetic, radiant, gravitational. 1. Does Earth do gravitational work on you as you walk
12. If you double the speed, how is the kinetic energy downstairs?
affected? If you double the height, how is the gravitational 2. In order for you to get out of bed with the least amount of
energy affected? work, would it be better for your bed to be on the floor or
13. Choose the correct answer(s): One joule is the same as one about a meter high? Explain.
(watt-meter, newton-meter, meter per second squared, 3. Describe some work you could do that would produce elastic
newton-second, kilowatt-hour). energy. Repeat for gravitational energy. For kinetic energy.
4. Describe some work you could do that would produce ther-
THE LAW OF ENERGY AND ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS mal energy.
14. Has the law of conservation of energy been found to be cor- 5. Your left hand lifts a 2 N apple by 1.5 m, and your right hand
rect in all situations observed so far? Is the same true of lifts a 4 N grapefruit by 0.5 m. Which hand did the most
Newton’s laws? Explain. work? Which hand exerted the largest force?
15. Choose the correct answer(s): For a system that returns to its 6. MAKING ESTIMATES About how much work would it take to
initial state, during one complete cycle you can’t get more lift the U.S. population by 1 km?
(acceleration, force, energy, power, speed) out of the system
than was put in. ENERGY
16. What energy transformations occur when this book falls to 7. Which of the eight physical types of energy was the basis for
the floor? When you lift this book? the earliest human culture? Which was the basis for the
17. Give an example of each of these energy transformations: industrial revolution? Which other types might have been
kinetic energy : thermal energy, kinetic energy : elastic used by early cultures, and which other types are used today?
energy, elastic energy : kinetic energy. 8. Name the type of energy possessed by each of the following:
18. What do we mean when we say that the energy efficiency of Jill at rest at the top of a sliding board, Jill sliding off the bot-
a lightbulb is 10%? tom of the sliding board, sunlight, coal, hot air.

From Chapter 6 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

161
 Conservation of Energy: Problem Set

9. Name the main type of energy possessed by each of the fol- THE LAW OF ENERGY AND ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS
lowing: dynamite, water at rest behind a high dam, a bow 23. Give an example in which kinetic energy transforms into
about to release an arrow, a wooden match, food. gravitational energy.
10. Name the type of energy possessed by each of the following: 24. Give an example in which kinetic energy transforms into
a raised book, gasoline, a stretched spring, sunlight, a speed- thermal energy.
ing train, hot steam. 25. Give an example in which chemical energy transforms into
11. Does your body contain any kinetic energy when you are sit- kinetic energy.
ting still? Explain. 26. What is the main energy transformation (input and useful
12. Give an example of a system that has both kinetic and gravi- output) when an automobile speeds up? When a bicycle
tational energy. speeds up?
13. A rubber ball is thrown upward and bounced off a ceiling. 27. Neglecting air resistance, does the energy of a falling rock
What kinds of energy does it have at its highest point (when increase, decrease, or remain the same? What happens to its
it hits the ceiling)? kinetic energy? Its gravitational energy?
14. Name two kinds of energy that are produced as a result of a 28. Including air resistance, does the energy of a falling rock
typical explosion, such as exploding dynamite. What kind of increase, decrease, or remain the same? What happens to its
energy is used (or transformed)? kinetic energy? Its thermal energy?
15. You lift a brick and put it on top of a wall. What quantities 29. What is the main energy transformation (input and useful
could you measure in order to determine how much work output) in the operation of an electric blender? A toaster? A
you did? lightbulb?
16. You throw a baseball. What quantities could you measure in 30. You squeeze an elastic spring and clamp it in the squeezed
order to determine how much work you did during the throw? position. You then drop the clamped spring into acid, dissolv-
17. Explain, in microscopic terms, why the air pressure inside a ing the spring. What happened to its elastic energy?
tire increases on a hot day. If the air in a balloon is warmed, 31. What energy transformation occurs when you climb a rope?
will the balloon expand or contract? Why? 32. You throw a baseball horizontally, and Jill catches it. Neglect
18. (a) Where would an apple have greater gravitational energy, air resistance. Describe the energy transformation that occurs
at 100 km high or at 1000 km high? (b) Would the gravita- (a) during the throw (while the ball is in your hand) and
tional energy of an orbiting satellite be increased or (b) during the catch.
decreased by moving it from an orbit that is 6000 km high up 33. You throw a ball upward and then catch it at the same height.
to an orbit that is 12,000 km high (see Figure 13)? (c) At How does the ball’s final speed compare with its initial
which point, 6000 km high or 12,000 km high, does a satel- speed, (a) neglecting air resistance and (b) including air
lite have the larger gravitational force on it? resistance? Defend your answers.
34. Does an automobile use more gasoline when its lights are
on? When the air conditioner is on? (Note: The battery does
not run these devices while the engine is running.) Defend
your answer.
35. Imagine a 100% efficient automobile. Would it emit any
exhaust? Would its engine be hot?
36. Figure 14 is a graph of a roller coaster’s height above the
ground versus the length of track it covers. The coaster is
powered up to its high point at 100 m from the starting point.
From the high point, the coaster coasts freely all the way to
the end. Assume that the coaster starts from rest at the high
6000 km 12,000 km point and encounters no friction or air resistance. Between
Before After 200 m and the finish, where is it moving slowest? Fastest?

Figure 13
What happens to the gravitational energy of the satellite
Elevation, meters

when it is moved to a higher orbit? 40

30

20
19. If you triple your altitude above the ground, how is your grav-
itational energy (relative to the ground) affected? 10
20. If you halve your altitude, how is your gravitational energy
(relative to the ground) affected? 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
21. If you triple your speed, how is your kinetic energy affected?
22. If you halve your speed, how is your kinetic energy affected? Track distance, meters

Figure 14
Elevation versus track distance for a roller coaster.

162
 Conservation of Energy: Problem Set

37. Referring to the preceding exercise, is the roller coaster mov- power for 8 hours each day, and the electricity costs 10¢ per
ing faster at 1000 m or at 1100 m? Describe how the coaster’s kilowatt-hour. What if it is frostless?
speed changes during the last 300 m (900 m to the end). 47. If one load takes 30 minutes to dry in an electric dryer and
you dry 16 loads per month, how much does one month’s
POWER drying cost at 10¢ per kilowatt-hour?
38. You start a bowling ball rolling by swinging it with your arm 48. A clothes dryer is equivalent to how many 100 W lightbulbs?
and releasing it. Then you start a second identical bowling Use Table 1.
ball rolling, at the same speed as the first, by hitting it 49. MAKING ESTIMATES Use Table 1 to estimate the number of
sharply with a sledge hammer. Which process, the arm swing kilowatt-hours of electric energy a typical single-family
or the hammer blow, imparts more kinetic energy to the ball? home consumes in one month. Don’t forget lightbulbs (they
Which process has the greater power output? aren’t in Table 1).
39. You lift bricks, one at a time, onto a table. After a while, you
begin to lift bricks slower and slower. As you slow down,
does the energy you put into lifting each brick increase, Problems
decrease, or remain the same? What about the power you put
into lifting each brick? WORK
40. What other unit(s) could automobile engines be rated in,
instead of horsepower? 1. Your gasoline engine has a limited supply of gasoline, able to
41. Why are electricity rates often higher in summer than in do 5000 J of work. If you weigh 800 N, how high can this
winter? engine lift you?
42. Which process has the largest power output: 2 J of work per- 2. A jumbo jet has four engines, each having a thrust of
formed in 0.1 s, or 1000 J of work performed in an hour? 30,000 N. How much work do the engines do during a
Which has the largest energy output? 1500 m takeoff run?
43. An automobile travels 60 km in 50 minutes, doing 30 × 106 J 3. If you do 20 J of work lifting a rock weighing 30 N, how far
of work against outside forces (air resistance and rolling will you lift it?
resistance) in the process. What is the automobile’s average 4. If an airplane does 40 million joules of work during a takeoff
power output in watts? run that is 1000 m long, what must be the total thrust of its
44. Referring to the previous question, if the auto’s energy effi- engines?
ciency is 10%, what is its power input (its rate of converting
the gasoline’s chemical energy into other forms) in watts? ENERGY
How many 100 W lightbulbs could this light up? 5. You slam on your automobile brakes, sliding 40 feet with
45. A cyclist delivers 150 W of power to her bicycle, while her locked brakes. How much farther would you slide if you had
metabolic rate is 1000 W. What is her body’s bicycling been moving twice as fast?
energy efficiency? 6. You slam on your automobile brakes, sliding 40 feet with
46. How much does it cost to run a nonfrostless refrigerator for a locked brakes. About how far would you have slid if you had
month? Use Table 1. Assume the refrigerator consumes been moving half as fast?

Table 1
Power consumption of household appliances while the appliance is turned on
and consuming electric energy
Appliance Power (W)
Cooking range 12,000
Clothes dryer 5,000
Water heater 4,500
Air conditioner, window 1,600
Microwave oven 1,400
Dishwasher (incl. hot water) 1,200
Toaster 1,200
Hair dryer 1,000
Refrigerator, frostless 600
Refrigerator, not frostless 300
TV, color 350
Stereo set 100

163
 Conservation of Energy: Problem Set

7. Ned the skydiver weighs 600 N and is falling at terminal

speed. That is, he has sped up until air resistance has built up Answers to Concept Checks
so much that he has reached a final unchanging speed. How
much work does Ned do on the air as he falls through 200 m 1. (a)
at this terminal speed? 2. Neither Jed nor Ned is moving the wall, so the work done is
8. In the preceding question, into what type of energy does this zero, (c). However, at the microscopic level, Ned’s muscles
work go? From what type of energy did it come? do work on one another. This microscopic work is done only
9. How much more gravitational energy (relative to the water’s within Ned’s body. It causes Ned to sweat, but does not result
surface) does a diver have when she stands 7 m above the in any work being done on the wall.
water, as compared with when she stands 2 m above the water? 3. (d)
10. How much more kinetic energy does a runner have when 4. Except for starting and stopping the book, it moves at
dashing at 7 m/s as compared with jogging at 2 m/s? unchanging velocity (zero acceleration), so the net force is
11. MAKING ESTIMATES Estimate the energy (relative to the zero, (a).
water) of you standing on a high diving board, 3 m above 5. (b)
the water. 6. (b)
12. MAKING ESTIMATES Estimate your jogging speed, in m/s 7. (e)
(Hint: 1 mile = 8/5 km), and then estimate the kinetic energy 8. (c)
(in joules) of you jogging. 9. Its height above the floor is now zero, so there is no gravita-
13. Use your answer to the preceding question to estimate the tional energy. Conservation of energy tells us that the total
kinetic energy of you walking, assuming that your walking energy is still 120 J, so this must be the amount of kinetic
speed is half of your jogging speed. energy (since no other kind of energy is produced during the
fall), (b).
THE LAW OF ENERGY AND ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS 10. (c) and (e)
11. The high water level in the lake creates the water pressure
14. Jack, who has a mass of 30 kg and weighs 300 newtons, sits that presses water through the turbines, (a). This water level
in a child’s swing. You pull the swing back so that it is 2 m can be further traced back to the evaporation of water that
above its low point, and release it. What form of energy, and lifted it so that it could fall as rain. The sun’s radiation
how much energy, does Jack have when he is pulled back and caused this evaporation, (d).
held at rest? 12. Don’t invest. And don’t bother investigating his design. BS
15. In the preceding question, what form of energy, and how violates conservation of energy. Work must be done by the
much energy, does Jack have as he swings through the low transpropulsionizer to accelerate the spaceship, so the device
point (neglect air resistance and friction in the moving parts)? puts out energy. Conservation of energy then tells us that the
How fast is Jack moving at this point? device must also consume energy, so it needs a consumable
16. In a crash test, a 1000 kg automobile moving at 10 m/s fuel supply. You can’t get something for nothing.
crashes into a brick wall. How much energy goes into demol- 13. (e)
ishing and warming the wall and the auto? 14. (f)
17. Referring to the previous question, from how high a cliff 15. (a)
would the automobile need to fall in order to sustain the same 16. work = force * distance = 500 N * 0.8 m = 400 J, (d).
amount of damage upon hitting the ground? (Note: A 1000 kg 17. power = work>time = 400 J>2 s = 200 W, (e).
automobile weighs (on Earth) about 10,000 N.)

POWER Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual

18. You do a pullup, lifting yourself by 0.5 m in 2 s. If your
weight is 600 N, how much work did you do, and what was Exercises and Problems
your power output during lifting?
19. How much energy does a 75 W lightbulb use while running Conceptual Exercises
for 30 minutes? 1. Yes, because Earth exerts a downward force on you as you
20. How long must a 100 W lightbulb run in order to use a mil- walk downward.
lion joules of electrical energy? 3. Examples: Stretch a rubber band, lift a rock, throw a
21. Find the power output of a 60 kg runner who accelerates baseball.
from 0 to 10 m/s in 2 s. 5. Left hand does 2 * 1.5 = 3 joules of work, right hand does
22. Compare the amount of metabolic energy used by a typical 4 * 0.5 = 2 joules of work. So the left hand does the most
person in running up a flight of stairs to the energy required work, although the right hand exerts the largest force.
to light a 100 watt bulb for 1 minute. 7. Possible energy forms used by early cultures: chemical
(food), thermal (fire), gravitational (falling water), elastic
(bow and arrow), radiant (warmth from sun). Used today: all
of the eight types discussed in Section 4, prominently
including chemical (fossil fuels).
9. Chemical, gravitational, elastic, chemical, chemical.

164
 Conservation of Energy: Problem Set

11. Yes, it contains the kinetic energy of moving blood, a beating 47. 5 kW * 8 hr = 40 kW # h
heart, moving lungs, etc. 40 kW # h * $0.10>kW # h = $4
13. Elastic and gravitational (but not kinetic). 49. To answer this, perform a calculation similar to Exercise 47
15. The weight of the brick and the distance to the top of for each appliance used in your home, getting the number of
the wall. kW # h of electric energy consumed by each appliance during
17. The air inside gets hotter, so the molecules move faster and one month. Then add up all of the appliances.
hit the inside wall of the tire harder, so the pressure against
Problems
the inside wall is larger. The balloon will expand because of
1. W = Fd. Solving for d, d = W>F = 5000 J>800 N = 6.25 m.
the increased air pressure inside the balloon.
3. W = Fd. Solving for d, d = W>F = 20 J>30 N = 0.667 m.
19. Tripled, because gravitational energy is proportional to
5. At twice the speed, you would slide four times as far. Here’s
height.
why: Your car has four times as much kinetic energy, so it
21. Multiplied by 9, because kinetic energy is proportional to
will do four times as much work in coming to rest, thus it
the square of the speed.
must exert its sliding frictional force over four times as much
23. One example: A ball moving upward after being thrown
distance (remember W = Fd) in coming to rest.
upword.
7. The force of air resistance on Ned must be 600 N, in order to
25. Examples: A bomb exploding, the operation of a gasoline-
maintain his unchanging speed. So the force by Ned on the
fueled vehicle.
air must be 600 N (law of force pairs). Thus,
27. It remains the same; its kinetic energy increases; its gravita-
W = Fd = 600 N * 200 m = 120,000 J.
tional energy decreases.
9. Since GravE is proportional to height, she has 7/2 (3.5)
29. Electric to kinetic; electric to thermal; electric to radiant.
times as much.
31. Chemical energy (of human body) to gravitational energy.
11. My weight is about 160 pounds, or about 700 N. At 3 m high,
33. (a) The speed would have to be the same, since the ball’s
my gravitational energy is wt * height = 700 N * 3 m
energy has not changed.
= 2100 J.
(b) The speed would have to be less, since the ball lost some
13. At half the speed, you have 1/4th as much kinetic energy. So
of its energy in warming the surrounding air.
the preceding answer is divided by four.
35. No, it would not emit exhaust, and its engine would not be
15. All 600 J of the original gravitational energy is now kinetic
hot because no energy would go into heating anything.
energy.
37. Faster at 1000 m, because its elevation is lower. During the last
300 meters: It speeds up and then slows down from 900 to KinE = (1>2)ms2. Solving for s,
1000 m, it speeds up then slows down between 1000 to 1100 m, s = 2(2 * KinE>m) = 2(2 * 600 J>30 kg)
and it speeds up then slows down then travels a short distance = 240 = 6.32 m>s.
at constant speed between 1100 to 1200 m. 17. The initial energy should be the same as the result found in
39. The energy remains the same; the power decreases. the preceding question, namely 50,000 J. GravE = wt * ht.
41. Because everybody runs their air conditioner in the summer, Solving for ht, ht = GravE>wt = 50,000 J>10,000 N = 5 m.
there is a larger total load on electric plants, so the electric 19. P = W>t. Solving for W, W = Pt = 75 W * (30 *
company charges more in order to hold the load down (and 60 s) = 135,000 J.
also in order to pay for higher-cost “peaking power” that 21. Assume that all the work goes into speeding up the runner
might need to be added). (i.e., into kinetic energy).
43. Fifty minutes is 3000 seconds. So the power output is KinE = (1>2)ms2 = (1>2) 60 kg * (10 m>s)2 = 3000 J
30 * 106 J>3000 s = 10,000 W. P = W>t = 3000 J>2 s = 1500 W.
45. 150>1000 = 15%.

165
166
Second Law of
Thermodynamics

From Chapter 7 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

167
 Second Law of
Thermodynamics
—And You Can’t Even Break Even

Many times I have been present at gatherings of people who . . . are thought highly
educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the
illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company
how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response
was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific
equivalent of: “Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?”
C.P. Snow, British Scientist and Author

Y
ou might have noticed that the energy going into many processes eventually
turns into thermal energy. This tendency of nonthermal forms of energy to end
up as thermal energy is an important general feature of the universe, known as
the second law of thermodynamics or “second law” for short. It’s our focus in this
chapter.
The big breakthrough in understanding energy was the discovery that “heat” (ther-
mal energy) is a form of energy, in other words that thermal energy can do work, just
like other forms of energy. This breakthrough showed the validity of the law of con-
servation of energy even in processes involving thermal energy. Because of the cen-
tral role of thermal energy in understanding the general principles of energy, the study
of energy is called thermodynamics, and a reformulated version of the law of con-
servation of energy is often called the first law of thermodynamics. These laws of
thermodynamics have no known exceptions and are among the most general scien-
tific principles known.
There are three different ways of stating the second law. In its most straightforward
form, it is a familiar observation about thermal energy flow (Section 1). Like many
common observations, it has profound consequences. Section 2 discusses one of
these, namely, another form of the second law that highlights the special nature of
thermal energy. Unlike other energy forms, thermal energy can be transformed into
other forms only with limited efficiency. This leads to discussion of a socially signif-
icant device: the heat engine (Sections 2 and 3). Section 4 presents the third way of
stating the second law, known as the law of increasing entropy. Its intriguing philo-
sophical implications include the direction of time, the ultimate fate of the universe,
and why there is a second law of thermodynamics. Sections 5, 6, and 7 study the
physics and social implications of two significant heat engines: the automobile and
the steam–electric power plant. Because these topics bring up energy resource issues,
it’s natural at this point to discuss exponential growth and its implications for resource
depletion (Section 8).

168
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

1 HEATING
Touch a piece of ice (Figure 1). Energywise, what happens? Since your hand Higher
temperature
cools and the ice begins to melt, thermal energy must have flowed from your
hand to the ice. Now touch a hot cup of coffee (Figure 2). Your hand warms while
the coffee cools, so thermal energy must have flowed from the cup to your hand. Low
temperature
Notice that in each case, thermal energy flowed from the high-temperature
object to the low-temperature object. There is a general principle operating here, Thermal-
energy flow
a principle that you experience whenever you touch an object that feels hot or
cold: Thermal energy flows spontaneously (without external assistance) from Figure 1
hot to cold. Any such flow of thermal energy from a higher to a lower tempera- When you touch a piece of ice,
ture is called heating. thermal energy flows from your
Heating is a one-way affair: Thermal energy flows spontaneously from higher to higher-temperature hand to the
lower temperature, but not from lower to higher temperature. Like a lot of simple lower-temperature ice, so the
ideas, this one-wayness of heating has profound consequences. It’s one way of stat- ice gets warmer and your finger
ing the second law of thermodynamics: gets colder.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics,

Stated as the Law of Heating Lower
temperature
Thermal energy flows spontaneously from higher to lower temperature, but not
from lower to higher temperature.
High
temperature
Now we need to be more quantitative. Temperature is a quantitative measure of Thermal-
warmth. An object’s temperature is related to the microscopic motion of its mole- energy flow
cules. Most materials expand as they warm, because more rapidly moving mole-
cules take up more space than slow-moving molecules, for the same reason that Figure 2
jitterbugging couples need more space on a dance floor than slow-dancing couples. When you touch a hot cup of cof-
fee, thermal energy flows from the
So it’s not surprising that most materials expand as they warm. Such an expansion
high-temperature cup to your
can be used as the basis for a temperature-measuring device, or thermometer. One
lower-temperature hand, so your
choice is liquid mercury, which expands inside a glass tube. The standard (metric) finger gets warmer and the coffee
temperature unit is the degree Celsius (°C). The Celsius scale assigns 0°C and cup cools.
100°C to the freezing and boiling points of water. The United States still uses the
antiquated Fahrenheit scale, where water freezes at 32 and boils at 212 (Figure 3).
Temperature and thermal energy are related but different. For instance, a cool
lake contains far more thermal energy than does a hot cup of coffee, even though
the lake has a lower temperature, because the lake is so much larger. A single cup of
lake water has less thermal energy than a hot cup of coffee.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 The temperature of a nice day is about (a) 10°C; (b) 75°C;
(c) 40°C; (d) 55°C; (e) 25°C. (Hint: See Figure 3.)

CONCEPT CHECK 2 Suppose you grasped a cold doorknob and found, sur-
prisingly, that this warmed your hand and further cooled the doorknob. This
would violate (a) conservation of energy; (b) the second law of thermodynamics;
(c) both conservation of energy and the second law; (d) neither conservation of
energy nor the second law although it would violate other physical laws; (e) no
known physical laws.

169
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

C F
2 HEAT ENGINES: USING THERMAL ENERGY
100
TO DO WORK
200
Drop a book on the floor. Slide it across a table. Smack it with your hand. Imagine
tearing out a page and burning it up. Thermal energy is created during each of these
processes! Creating thermal energy is easy—almost inevitable. What about processes
150 or devices that convert thermal energy to other forms? Can you think of any?
———(Keep thinking.)
50 One example is an automobile engine, which operates in regular, repeated cycles
to use the thermal energy from burning gasoline to do work. Another would be a
100
steam engine, which operates in repeated cycles to use hot steam to do work. Any
such cyclic device that uses thermal energy to do work is called a heat engine.1
Most heat engines, for example the automobile engine, are based on the expansion
of a gas when it’s heated. The expanding gas pushes against a movable surface, the
50
“piston,” that causes a car or other device to move.
0 One significant feature of an automobile engine is that, in addition to doing
work, it ejects lots of unused thermal energy through its radiator and its tailpipe. So
0
not all the thermal energy created in the engine is actually used to do work. This
turns out to be true for every heat engine. A heat engine’s ejected thermal energy is
called its exhaust. So the energy transformation for any heat engine is
ThermE (input) ¡ Work (which could then produce any form of energy)
Figure 3
The Celsius and Fahrenheit scales + ThermE (exhaust)
compared.
See Figure 4.
The energy efficiency of any device is its useful energy output divided by the
total energy put into the device. Since we usually consider the work done by a heat
Heat engine
engine to be “useful” and the exhaust to be “not useful,” the energy efficiency of
Work output any heat engine is
work output
energy efficiency =
thermal energy input
ThermE input
ThermE exhaust As you can see from Figure 4, the energy efficiency of any heat engine must be less
than 1, in other words less than 100%.
This fact, that you cannot entirely consume (or use) thermal energy but must always
have some left over as exhaust, has been found to be true every time anybody has
Figure 4
checked. It is, in other words, a fundamental principle of nature. But as we will see, it
Energy flow for a heat engine.
Heat engines consume thermal
turns out not to be another new principle of nature. It has a one-way quality about it
energy and turn part of it into that’s reminiscent of the law of heating. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that it turns
work, which could then produce out to be the second law of thermodynamics, only put into new words. I’ll call it
any from of energy.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics,
Stated as the Law of Heat Engines
Any cyclic process that uses thermal energy to do work must also have a thermal
energy exhaust. In other words, heat engines are always less than 100% efficient
at using thermal energy to do work.

1
Some noncyclic devices use thermal energy to do work. For example, a hot air balloon uses heated air to
lift a balloon. I won’t call such devices heat engines.

170
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

How do we know that no heat engine can be 100% efficient? One reason we
accept the law of heat engines is that if it were not true, then it would be possible to
make thermal energy flow from cold to hot, in violation of the law of heating. The follow-
ing argument shows this by using an imagined “thought experiment”—a type of argument
used frequently in science.
Let’s temporarily suppose that (in violation of the law of heat engines) there is a heat
engine that can convert thermal energy entirely to work. We could then use that heat
engine to extract thermal energy from, say, a pot of warm water and convert this energy
entirely to work. This work could then produce thermal energy (by frictional heating of a
piece of metal, for example) at a higher temperature. The net result would be to transfer
all of the thermal energy from a lower to a higher temperature, without any other change
taking place. But this is exactly what the law of heating says we cannot do. In other words,
any violation of the law of heat engines would imply that the law of heating can be vio-
lated. But we know directly from experiment that the law of heating cannot be violated.
So it follows that the law of heat engines cannot be violated either.

Heat engines depend on the spontaneous flow of thermal energy from hot to
cold. In fact, a heat engine may be described as a device that makes practical use of High-temperature
object
the natural hot-to-cold flow of thermal energy by shunting aside some of the flow-
ing thermal energy to do work (Figure 5). Since heat engines are driven by thermal
energy flowing from hot to cold, you must have a temperature difference before you

Thermal energy flow

can have a heat engine. The ocean, for example, contains a lot of thermal energy,
but you can’t use it to do work unless you have a colder system into which the
ocean’s thermal energy can flow.2 Heat engines always operate between two sys-
Work
tems with different temperatures, as Figure 5 shows. Heat
How energy efficient can the very best heat engine be? It’s an important ques- engine
tion, because most of the world’s energy passes through heat engines, mainly trans-
portation vehicles and steam–electric power plants. Since a heat engine operates
because of thermal energy flowing from hot to cold, we expect its energy efficiency
to be influenced by both its hot input temperature at which thermal energy is put
into the engine and its cooler exhaust temperature. Since temperature differences Low-temperature
drive heat engines, we expect a higher efficiency for larger temperature differences object
between input and exhaust. Nineteenth-century physicists found a quantitative for-
mula that predicts the best possible efficiency of a heat engine operating at any pre- Figure 5
determined input and exhaust temperatures.3 As examples, Table 1 lists the best Heat engines use a portion of the
possible efficiencies predicted for several specific types of heat engines, along with thermal energy that flows naturally
the actual efficiencies obtained by these heat engines in practice. from a high to a low temperature
Table 1 shows how important the second law is to society. It says that, for practical and convert it to work.
heat engines, conversion efficiencies of thermal energy into other forms are only 60%
even in the best, or “perfect,” case. Friction and other imperfections reduce this fur-
ther, so that less than half the thermal energy fed into these heat engines goes into
work. But it’s important, in these energy-conscious times, to note that the remaining
thermal energy, the exhaust, needn’t be wasted. There’s a myriad of direct heating
uses for this lower-temperature thermal energy. This dual use of thermal energy to
simultaneously produce both work (usually in the form of electricity generation as

2
This means that temperature differences between different depths of ocean water could be used to run a
heat engine.
3
Here’s the formula: efficiency = (Tin - Tex)>Tin. In this formula, the temperatures must be measured in
degrees Kelvin (K), a new temperature scale. The temperature in K is found by adding 273 to the tempera-
ture in °C. A temperature of 0 K (equal to −273°C) is known as absolute zero, because it is the lowest possi-
ble temperature—the temperature at which all microscopic motion is at its absolute minimum.

171
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

Table 1
Heat engine efficiencies. Typical temperatures, best possible efficiencies, and actual efficiencies.
Efficiency (%)

Engine type Tin(°C) Tex(°C) Best possible Actual

Transportation
Gasoline automobile/truck 700 340 37 20
Diesel auto/truck/locomotive 900 340 48 30
Steam locomotive 180 100 20 10
Steam-electric power plants
Fossil fuel 550 40 60 40
Nuclear fuel 350 40 50 35
Solar powered 225 40 40 30
Ocean-thermal (solar) 25 5 7 ???

described in Section 7) and useful heat is called co-generation. It can save society
enormous amounts of fossil fuel and other energy resources.
For example, many European, and a few American, communities locate electric
power plants near large residential neighborhoods and use the plants’ “waste” ther-
mal energy to heat their homes, saving enormous amounts of natural gas or electric-
ity that would otherwise be used for home heating. Communities are beginning to
install smaller electrical generation systems, running perhaps on burning trash from
a housing development, and piping the “waste” thermal energy to the houses for
home heating. Given the expense of transmitting and distributing electricity over
large areas, there’s a lot to be said for such small, local electrical generation facili-
ties. U.S. law allows co-generators at such community facilities to sell their excess
electricity to electrical power companies at reasonable prices.
For another example, steam heating plants at universities and other institutions
often produce such high steam temperatures that the steam can be used to generate
electricity at reasonable efficiencies. The “waste” thermal energy from electricity
generation is then used to heat the university. Universities can often generate a sig-
nificant fraction of their electricity consumption in this fashion, saving energy
resources while getting electricity and heating for roughly the operating costs of the
heating alone. If your college or university isn’t doing this, maybe it should.
Table 1 shows the importance of “burning hot” and “exhausting cool.” For exam-
ple, fossil, nuclear, and solar generating plants have progressively lower input tem-
peratures. As you can see, efficiencies decline as the difference between Tin and Tex
declines.
Ocean-thermal generation of electric power uses some of the ocean’s thermal
energy by exploiting temperature differences between different ocean depths. In the
tropics, the ocean’s temperature drops from 25°C at the surface to 5°C at 300 m
down. This small temperature difference could be used to run a heat engine with an
efficiency of 7%. Because the energy resource would be free—sunlight falling on
the ocean—the low energy efficiency would be of little concern.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 Assuming that the energy flows in Figure 5 are propor-
tional to the width of each “pipe,” this engine’s efficiency is closest to (a) 1/3;
(b) 1/2; (c) 1/10; (d) 2/3; (e) 1; (f) 2.

172
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

CONCEPT CHECK 4 An engine that consumes 400 J of thermal energy while

exhausting 300 J has an efficiency of (a) 133%; (b) 100%; (c) 75%; (d) 66%;
(e) 33%; (f) 25%.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 A typical large coal-fired electric-generating plant burns

about 1 tonne (1000 kg) of coal every 10 seconds. According to Table 1, how much
of the tonne actually goes into producing electric energy? (a) 600 kg. (b) 60 kg.
(c) 500 kg. (d) 400 kg.

3 ENERGY QUALITY: THINGS RUN DOWN

Thermal energy is special. A moving bullet or a raised rock can easily use nearly
100% of its kinetic or gravitational energy to do work, but the second law places
strict limits on the percentage of thermal energy that can be converted to work.
Thermal energy is thus less useful, or “of lower quality,” than other forms.
Whenever you transform other energy forms into thermal energy—say by friction
or combustion—you reduce the energy’s usefulness even though the total amount of
energy is conserved.
So there is a one-wayness, an irreversibility, about any process that creates ther-
mal energy. Once a system creates thermal energy, that system will never by itself
be able to return to its previous condition. To return, it would have to convert all the
created thermal energy back to its original form, and the second law prohibits this.
The system can return to its initial state only with outside help.
Think of a rock swinging back and forth on a string tied to a hook (Figure 6). Air
resistance and friction (between the string and the hook) gradually bring the rock to
rest. Although the complete system (rock, string, hook, and surrounding air) loses
no energy, it can’t return to its initial condition because thermal energy is created,
and this cannot be entirely reconverted to kinetic or gravitational energy.
Something is permanently lost when systems run down like this, but it cannot be
energy because energy is conserved. Instead, energy quality is lost. Figure 6
When we use Earth’s energy resources, we don’t reduce Earth’s total energy. A rock swinging on a string tied to
Instead, we degrade energy from highly useful forms such as the chemical energy a fixed point overhead. The rock
of oil to less useful forms, usually thermal energy. Thus one of the two great laws of “dies down,” illustrating the irre-
energy says that the quantity of energy is conserved, and the other says that the versibility of natural processes
quality of energy runs down. You can’t get ahead, and you can’t even break even. implied by the second law.

4 THE LAW OF ENTROPY: WHY YOU CAN’T BREAK EVEN

Suppose you put a box of hot gas and a box of cold gas into contact so that thermal
energy (but not the gases themselves) can flow between them. The law of heating
predicts that the hot box will heat the cold one, and that this will continue until
there is no longer a temperature difference between the boxes.
Figure 7 views this process microscopically, showing just a few molecules. The hot
box’s molecules are moving faster on the average. The exchange of thermal energy
causes the molecules of the hot gas to slow down and the molecules of the cold gas to
speed up until both gases come to some intermediate temperature. Now the average
speeds in the left- and right-hand boxes are the same, so the fast molecules and slow

173
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

High temperature Intermediate temperature

Low temperature

(a) (b)

Figure 7
Microscopic view showing just a few molecules in a box of hot gas and a box of cold gas
(a) at the instant they are put into contact and (b) after there has been time for the boxes
to come to the same temperature. Figure (b) shows less organization than (a), because the
faster molecules are no longer separated from the slower molecules.

molecules are no longer separated from each other.4 From the microscopic point of
view, the system is less organized. Microscopic disorganization (a mouthful—sorry!)
has increased.
This turns out to be the general situation, no matter whether the materials are
gases or anything else. When thermal energy flows from hot to cold, microscopic
disorganization always increases. In fact, the universal increase of microscopic dis-
organization turns out (although we won’t prove it here) to be equivalent to thermal
energy always flowing from hot to cold. In other words, this is another way of stat-
ing the second law.
Physicists have found a quantitative measure of the microscopic disorganization
of any system. It’s called entropy. For example, the entropy of 1 kg of water is
greater than the entropy of 1 kg of ice, because the molecules of water are not
organized into a regular crystal pattern as are the molecules of ice. We don’t need to
delve into the precise definition of entropy here. Suffice it to say that entropy can
be precisely defined and it can be measured entirely macroscopically by measure-
ments of temperature, thermal energy, and a few other quantities such as volume.
So we have yet a third way of stating the second law:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics,

Stated as the Law of Entropy
The total entropy (or microscopic disorganization) of all the participants in any
physical process cannot decrease during that process, but it can increase.

The law of entropy is similar to the law of conservation of energy. Both place
restrictions on natural processes: The total energy of all the participants in any
process must remain unchanged, and the total entropy must not decrease.
The law of entropy predicts that most processes are irreversible—they cannot
proceed in the opposite direction. For example, our hot and cold boxes of gas can

4
If the boxes contain different kinds of gases, then the average kinetic energies, rather than the average
speeds, of the individual molecules of the two gases become equal when a common intermediate tempera-
ture is attained.

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 Second Law of Thermodynamics

come to the same temperature spontaneously, but they cannot start from the same For some reason, the universe at
temperature and evolve to different temperatures unless they have outside help (a one time had a very low entropy
heater on one side and a refrigerator on the other). Processes must go in the direc- for its energy content, and since
then the entropy has increased.
tion of increasing, not decreasing, entropy. In fact, except for a very subtle effect at
So that is the way toward the
the subatomic level,5 the second law is the only principle of physics that distin- future. That is the origin of all
guishes between the forward and backward directions of time. irreversibility, that is what makes
So if it weren’t for the second law, everything could just as well run backward. the processes of growth and
For example, a book resting on a table could spontaneously leap into the air by con- decay, that makes us remember
verting some of its thermal energy into kinetic and gravitational energy. This is the the past and not the future,
reverse of a book falling onto a table. It might appear to violate such principles as remember the things which are
closer to that moment in the
Newton’s law of motion, but if viewed at the microscopic level, there is no viola-
history of the universe when the
tion: It is possible, although highly improbable, for the randomly moving molecules order was higher than now, and
in the book to all just happen to be moving upward at the same instant, with suffi- why we are not able to remem-
cient speed to cause the book to leap from the table. Similarly, water could run ber things where the disorder is
uphill. Thermal energy could flow from cold to hot. And people could grow higher than now, which we call
younger instead of older. Perhaps you have seen a movie run backwards. The only the future.
law of physics that would be violated if these backward events occurred in real time Richard Feynman, Physicist

is the second law of thermodynamics.

The law of entropy suggests a deeper reason behind the second law. As you can
see from the cartoon at the end of this chapter, increased disorganization is com-
mon in everyday life. For example, if you start with a partly organized deck of cards
having all the spades collected together and then shuffle the deck, you’ll almost cer-
tainly disorganize the deck further. This is simply because there are so many more
ways to disorganize the deck than there are ways to further organize it. It’s easy to
disorganize things but it takes effort—or lots of luck—to organize them. So the sec-
ond law arises for simple statistical reasons. Like a deck of cards, molecular sys-
tems are much more likely to evolve toward greater disorganization than toward
greater organization, simply because there are many more ways for a molecular sys-
tem to become disorganized than to become organized.
This leads to a fascinating point about the long-term fate of the universe.
Applied to the universe as a whole, the second law says that its natural evolution
must be toward greater disorganization. Its long-term fate would then be a state of
maximum disorganization, in which no further macroscopic developments would
occur. Such a state would be really boring. All the stars would have burned out and
no new ones could form because all nuclear reactions would have run their course.
Life could not exist because of the lack of sunlike stars and because all chemical
reactions would have run their course. This has been called the “heat death” of the
universe. Being hundreds of billions of years in the future, it’s not exactly our most
pressing issue. More importantly, there is a huge speculative element here, because
it’s always risky to assume that the principles of physics are so precisely understood
that they can be applied to the entire universe for all time.
Looking toward earlier instead of later times, the law of entropy implies that the
universe must have had lower entropy—greater organization—in the past. In fact,
physicists agree that the universe began in a highly organized, low-entropy state at the
time of the big bang and that its entropy has been increasing ever since. The big bang

5
There is indirect but compelling evidence that certain types of subatomic particles distinguish between the
forward and backward directions of time in processes involving the “weak force,” one of nature’s four fun-
damental forces. It’s not known whether this discovery is in any way related to the second law or to our
sense of a forward direction in time.

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 Second Law of Thermodynamics

A living organism . . . feeds upon was the source not only of energy and matter but also of the organization we see in the
negative entropy. Thus the device universe today.
by which an organism maintains Biological systems provide interesting examples. For example, a growing leaf
itself at a fairly high level of
manufactures complex and highly organized glucose molecules out of less organized
orderliness (= fairly low level of
entropy) really consists in contin- CO2 and H2O molecules. The leaf must create this organization. How does it manage
ually sucking orderliness from its to produce this decrease in entropy, in apparent violation of the second law?
environment. The answer is that the leaf had help. The second law says that the total entropy of
Erwin Schroedinger, Physicist, in all the participants in any process cannot decrease. In the growth of a leaf, the other
What Is Life?
vital participant is the sun. Solar radiation has a temperature, the 5500°C surface
temperature of the sun. When this radiation is absorbed by a leaf, only about 2% of
the energy is converted to chemical energy. The remaining solar energy is reradi-
ated out into space, at the 25°C temperature of the leaf. So most of the solar energy
Radiant
energy from flows from 5500°C to 25°C. The large entropy increase of this thermal energy flow
sun at allows the remaining solar energy to be organized into low-entropy chemical
5500 energy (Figure 8), without violating the second law, because the total entropy
increases. The sun both energizes and organizes life on Earth!
ThermE In view of the second law, it seems paradoxical that life on Earth could have
98% is in
reradiated evolved on its own from the simple organisms that existed shortly after Earth
at 25 : formed billions of years ago into the highly organized plants and animals of today.
large increase
in entropy But like the leaf, biological evolution had help from the sun. Evolution is assisted
2% is
by sunlight flowing through plants from higher to lower temperature, representing a
converted to great entropy increase that compensates for the decrease that occurs when plants
low-entropy evolve. And animals, which do not use solar energy directly, reduce their entropy by
chemical
ThermE
energy:
eating highly organized food—another form of outside help. Thus, biological evo-
out lution does not contradict the second law.
smaller
decrease in Your brain is one result of this long evolution toward greater organization. As an
entropy
information-storage device, the human brain is the most highly organized form of
matter on Earth. It could even be the most organized form of matter in the Milky
Way galaxy. It’s remarkable that, in the human brain, nature has finally created a
self-aware collection of molecules, molecules so well organized that they are capa-
Figure 8
Energy flow through a leaf. The
ble of knowing they are a collection of molecules! Nature has spent billions of years
leaf is similar to a heat engine. A of evolution getting to this point. So please, my friend, take good care of yourself,
growing leaf illustrates how Earth and of all of us.
has become more organized,
despite the universe’s trend toward CONCEPT CHECK 6 When a tablespoon of salt mixes with a quart of water,
increased entropy. does entropy increase? (a) Yes. (b) No. (c) Sometimes. (d) Only on Fridays.

5 THE AUTOMOBILE
You now have the physics background needed for four energy-related social topics
that will occupy the remainder of this chapter.
Few technologies shape our society as strongly as the automobile. It brings new
freedom while affecting our quality of life, family structure, self-perceptions, phys-
ical environment, health, work, community structure, resource use, economy, and
even war and peace. For most Americans, the environmental effects of their auto-
mobile use far outweigh the environmental effects of any other individual activity.
Transportation consumes much of the USA’s energy (Figure 9) and most of its oil
(Figure 10), most of it going into cars and trucks (Figure 11).

176
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

Residential Trans- Residential Pipeline

22% portation 4% Water 2%
28% 5%
Industrial Trans- Air 7% Autos
23% portation
Rail and 63%
68%
bus 3%
Electricity
generation
Trucks
3%
Commercial 20%
Industrial Commercial
18% 2%
32%

Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11

The fraction of total U.S. energy The fraction of U.S. petroleum consumed The fraction of U.S. transporta-
consumed by each economic sector. by each economic sector. (U.S. Energy tion energy consumed by each
(U.S. Energy Information Information Administration, 2003) transportation mode. (U.S. Bureau
Administration, 2007) of Transportation Statistics, 2007)

MAKI NG ESTI MATES Experiments show that upon combustion, 1 liter

(0.26 gallons) of gasoline releases (converts to thermal energy) about 32 * 106 J of
energy. Use this figure to estimate the rate, in watts, at which a typical car consumes
chemical energy. (Hints: Typical gasoline consumption is 10 km/liter (25 miles/
gallon), and moderate highway speeds are about 80 km/hr (50 mi/hr).)

The preceding Making Estimates question shows that a typical car driven at
moderate speed without acceleration consumes its gasoline’s chemical energy at a
rate of 70 kW. This is equivalent to the electric power going into 700 continuously
burning 100 W bulbs! As another comparison, 70 kW is about the average electric
power consumption of 50 households. And if the car is accelerating, you can multi-
ply these figures by about 5. Cars are powerful energy consumers.
Most transportation fuel goes into heat engines, where it burns to produce ther-
mal energy that is then partially transformed into useful work. Most cars and trucks
are powered by internal combustion engines that burn a fuel–air mixture. The mix-
ture’s high combustion temperature gives it a high pressure, so that the hot gases
Cylinder walls
push strongly on a piston, a movable metal plate connected to a rod (Figure 12). The
piston does the work that turns the drive wheels. Combustion is “internal” because it
occurs directly inside the gases that do the work, in contrast to external combustion, Piston
which occurs in a fuel that then provides thermal energy to a second substance, such Expanding
gas
as steam, that does the actual work.
Work
Figure 13 shows the energy flows (measured in kW, or thousands of joules of
energy transformed per second) in a typical gasoline-fueled automobile. An average
of 1 kilowatt’s worth of fuel evaporates into the atmosphere, where it contributes to Figure 12
chemical pollution. The remaining 69 kW go to the engine, which produces about Cross-section of a single cylinder
in an automobile’s engine, showing
the conversion of thermal energy
SO LU T I O N TO M A KI N G ESTI M ATES During 1 hour at 80 km/hr, a car travels 80 km and so consumes
8 liters. The chemical energy in 8 liters is 8 * 32 * 106 = 2.6 * 108 J. Since this is consumed in 1 hour
to useful work using a piston.
(3600 s), the chemical energy consumed per second is
2.6 * 108 J>3600 s L 70,000 J>s, or 70,000 watts, or 70 kW

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 Second Law of Thermodynamics

Evaporation
1 kW

Removed by
28 kW
radiator

Waste, 60 kW
From Thermal
Into
fuel energy
engine,
tank, of exhaust, Out of
69 kW 27 kW
70 kW 55 kW tailpipe

1 kW
Water pump, etc.
Friction, etc.
3 kW

Work, 10 kW
Figure 13 5 kW
Typical energy flow rates in an Work, 14 kW
Air resistance
unaccelerated gasoline-fueled Engine
Transmission 5 kW
car at a moderate highway speed. Rolling
and drive
train resistance

14 kW of work and exhausts the remaining 55 kW as thermal energy and unused

chemical energy.
About half of the exhaust energy is removed by the radiator, and the other half
goes out through the exhaust pipe as polluting gases. Gasoline is a hydrocarbon,
made of hydrogen (H) and carbon (C) atoms. Both H and C combust with oxygen
from the atmosphere, so the exhaust gases are mostly CO2 and H2O. Although the
H2O is harmless, CO2 from fossil fuel combustion is the main source of global
warming.
The tailpipe exhaust carries various other molecules, mainly CO, NO, NO2, and
unburned hydrocarbons. These are toxic pollutants, and their unused chemical
energy also represents an energy inefficiency. The carbon monoxide and unburned
hydrocarbons are the result of incomplete combustion of the fuel. The two oxides of
nitrogen—collectively called NOx—form from atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen,
which combine under the influence of the engine’s high temperatures. Cars and
trucks produce two-thirds of America’s CO pollution, one-third of its hydrocarbon
pollution, and half of its NOx pollution.
The automobile’s main loss of useful energy occurs in the engine, as a consequence
of the second law. The engine’s theoretically ideal efficiency is 37% (Table 1), and its
actual efficiency is 14 kW/69 kW = 20%. Several losses combine to bring the engine’s
efficiency from the 37% allowable by the second law down to 20%: incomplete com-
bustion, the formation of NOx, friction in the engine, and thermal losses through the
engine’s wall. Of the 14 kW of work produced by the engine, 1 kW goes to internal
devices like the water pump and air conditioner, and the rest goes to the transmission
and drivetrain that couples the engine to the drive wheels. This coupling is about 75%
efficient, so 10 kW finally arrive at the drive wheels. About half of this goes into over-
coming air resistance, while the other half goes into overcoming rolling resistance. The
overall energy efficiency of the entire automobile (not just the engine) is 10/70 = 14%,
or one-seventh.
Because the problems of scarce oil resources and dangerous global warming
pollution loom ever larger, and because the automobile is a chief source of both,
alternative transportation modes (next section) and alternative automobile fuels

178
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

are increasingly important. Table 2 and Figures 14 through 17 present several alter-
native automobile fuels.
Several alternatives to the standard internal combustion engine are now on the
market or under development. Electric vehicles (EVs, Figure 15) are powered by
large batteries that use stored chemical energy to create electricity. They are “zero-
emission vehicles” because they have no tailpipes and emit no chemical pollutants

AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jeff McIntosh

Figure 14
University of Michigan team members run with their solar car, driven by Brooke Bailey, as it
crosses the finish line to win the 2008 North American Solar Challenge. Race drivers had to
obey posted speed limits while driving 3800 km from Texas to Calgary, Canada, powered
only by the sun and what could be stored in the car’s battery. The race has been described as
the “Tour de France of engineering.”

Table 2
Fuels for automobiles and trucks
Fuel Source of fuel Description

For internal combustion

Gasoline or diesel fuel petroleum liquid, widely used
Compressed natural gas natural gas high-pressure gas
Liquefied natural gas natural gas low-temperature liquid
Methanol (wood alcohol) wood, natural gas, coal liquid
Ethanol (grain alcohol) grain, sugar, trash liquid
a any source of electricity hydrogen produced from water
Hydrogen
For noncombustion
Storage batteriesa any source of electricity recharge electrically
a hydrogen, methane, other hydrogen can be produced from water
Fuel cell
a
Since electricity for hydrogen production, for storage batteries, or for hydrogen fuel cells can come from any source, the
ultimate energy resource can be wind, hydroelectric, nuclear, fossil fuel, photovoltaics, etc.

179
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

Vince Bucci/Getty Images

Figure 15
The Tesla Roadster, billed as the world’s first highway-capable all-electric car, runs on
900 pounds of rechargeable lithium ion batteries (shown). For safety, the car has a cooling
system to prevent overheating the batteries. Its range is 380 km (240 miles) on one battery
charge, a full recharge requires 3.5 hours, and its top speed is electronically limited to
200 km/h (125 mi/h). The high cost of the batteries makes it an expensive purchase. The
company plans to produce 15,000 cars per year by 2011.

AP Photo/Atsushi Tsukada
Figure 16
The Toyota Prius debuted in 2001.
It’s a gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle
that runs on a battery and on a small
gasoline engine that energizes the
battery and provides additional power
when needed. Thus the car combines

Chevrolet Corporation
the convenience of gasoline with
much of the environmental advantage
of electric vehicles, while achieving
80 km (50 miles) per gallon. The
front end is shown; the electric
“inverter” that converts the battery’s
DC to the engine’s AC and vice-versa
is on the right, and the gasoline
engine is on the left. The nickel- Figure 17
metal-hydride battery pack, war- The chassis of the Chevrolet Volt. A small gasoline engine-generator is on the far side (pas-
ranted for 10 years or 240,000 km senger side) of the front end, an electric motor is on the near side (steering wheel side) of the
(150,000 miles), is in front end, and a long lithium-ion battery can be seen extending through the center of the car;
the back end. the 180 kg (400 pound) battery then branches out in the rear end into a T shape (the top of the
T is between the rear wheels and cannot be seen in the photo). The car should go on the mar-
ket in 2011.

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 Second Law of Thermodynamics

while in operation. But the electricity to charge the battery must come from some-
where. If it comes from a fossil-fuel electric generating plant, then the vehicle
causes plant emissions that create pollution and global warming. If the electricity
comes from a less polluting source such as solar cells or wind, the vehicle becomes
more environmentally benign. Typical EVs require several hours of recharging from
a wall socket, the batteries are heavy, and EVs are expensive today. However,
intense research is in progress to reduce these problems.
Gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles (Figure 16) have recently achieved unprece-
dented energy efficiencies. “Hybrid” vehicles are fueled by gasoline, which runs a
small gasoline engine that maintains a constant low power level. The engine does
not directly drive the car, but instead drives an electric generator that provides elec-
tricity to energize a storage battery, which in turn drives the car just like an electric
vehicle. Since the engine runs at a steady low power, it’s very energy efficient.
Since the storage battery is continuously recharged, it needn’t store large amounts
of energy, so it can be far smaller and lighter than an EV’s battery. Additional effi-
ciencies are obtained by making the car of lightweight but strong (for crash safety)
materials, streamlining (to reduce air resistance), and employing a braking mecha-
nism that recovers kinetic energy losses during deceleration. Several hybrid passen-
ger vehicles have entered the market. Because of recent and probable future rises in
the price of oil, the Toyota Motor Corporation is betting that hybrids will become
much more popular and has announced plans for all of its vehicles to eventually be
run by hybrid engines.
The plug-in hybrid car is an important newer variant. It’s a cross between the
all-electric car (Figure 15) and the “conventional” hybrid vehicle (Figure 16). The
Chevrolet Volt is a good example and will probably be the first plug-in hybrid on
the market, in 2011. Figure 17 shows the Volt’s chassis, so you can see a little of how
it works. While hybrids carry a battery that is continuously recharged on-board by a
small gasoline engine, the Volt carries a battery that drives the car solely on elec-
tricity for the first 40 miles, after which the battery is assisted by a small gasoline
engine for another several hundred miles. To re-charge the battery after use, it must
be plugged in for several hours. So plug-in hybrids, like electric cars but unlike
conventional hybrids, get energy for their battery from the electrical grid. The
advantage of this is that no gasoline is needed for trips under 40 miles, so on aver-
age the car uses far less gasoline than other cars, replacing the gasoline with elec-
tricity and energy efficiency. This in turn reduces CO2 emissions, the main
contributor to global warming, enormously: By year 2050, plug-in hybrids could
reduce U.S. oil consumption by 4 million barrels a day (a 20% reduction), and
reduce U.S. CO2 emissions by half a billions tons per year (a 33% reduction in
vehicular emissions).
Fuel cell vehicles are fueled by hydrogen obtained from fossil fuels or water.
Even though the universe is made mostly of hydrogen, this light-weight element
escaped from Earth’s gravitational hold long ago and is nearly absent on Earth in its
free form (the H2 molecule), uncombined with other elements. It must be obtained
from fossil fuels by chemical processes or from water by using electricity to split
H2O molecules. It can be stored in the vehicle as a compressed gas, or as a liquid at
extremely low temperature, or it can be chemically inserted into certain metals.
Instead of being burned, the fuel is fed into a device called a fuel cell that converts
the hydrogen’s chemical energy directly into electricity. It works by exploiting
hydrogen’s tendency to combine chemically with oxygen—like a battery with
hydrogen at one electrode (or pole) and oxygen at the other. The difference between

181
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

a battery and a fuel cell is that batteries store chemical energy during the life of the
battery, whereas fuel cells feed a chemical source through the cell when needed. So
batteries must be recharged, while fuel cells must be refueled. Compared with bat-
teries, fuel cells are less massive and operate continuously over longer times. But
there are many scientific and practical barriers to the widespread use of fuel cells,
and they are quite expensive today.
Unlike gasoline engines, fuel cells convert chemical energy directly into electri-
cal energy, so they are not heat engines and the second law does not affect the
essentials of their operation. Thus, typical efficiencies of obtaining electrical
energy from the hydrogen fuel’s chemical energy are 60% or more, far greater than
the 20% that’s typical for gasoline engines.
Environmental benefits depend on the source of the hydrogen. If the hydrogen is
produced from water using solar-generated electricity, fuel cells are one of the most
environmentally benign transportation technologies. Since the fuel cell combines the
hydrogen fuel with oxygen to yield water as the only emission, there’s no pollution.
There’s no fossil fuel consumption, and no global warming gas emissions. But there
are several barriers to practical hydrogen fuel cells for cars: Today it’s expensive to
produce the hydrogen from water, the fuel cells themselves are expensive, it’s not easy
to store sufficient hydrogen in an automobile, and a new fuel distribution system will
be needed for the hydrogen. Several companies have small numbers of experimental
fuel cell vehicles on the road today. Hydrogen fuel cells might be on the market
within ten years but if they are marketed that soon they’ll probably get their hydrogen
from natural gas instead of from water and so they’ll lose two of their major advan-
tages—they will consume fossil fuels, and they will emit global-warming gases.
Some experts have dubbed the arrival of fuel cells in the marketplace—when and if it
happens—as the dawning of a new energy age, the “Hydrogen Age.”

CONCEPT CHECK 7 Which of the following uses a heat engine? (a) Gasoline-
fueled car. (b) Diesel-fueled car. (c) Electric car. (d) Fuel cell car running on
methane. (e) Fuel cell car running on hydrogen. (f) Hybrid car.

6 TRANSPORTATION EFFICIENCY
My previous definition of energy efficiency—work output divided by total energy
input—doesn’t really capture the automobile’s purpose. Although its purpose is to
move people, its energy goes mostly into moving the car itself rather than people.
Gasoline mileage, the common measure of automobile efficiency, suffers from the
same defect. Neither of these measures captures people-moving efficiency, in other
words, transportation efficiency. Gasoline mileage is, however, useful for compar-
ing different cars with each other (Table 3). Most of the high-efficiency vehicles listed
use hybrid engine technology, but the two-person Smart Car (Figure 18) instead
achieves high efficiency by means of size and weight reductions.
An appropriate measure of people-moving efficiency is passenger-kilometers per
Mary Ellen Scullen unit of energy. For example, if a bus moves 20 passengers a distance of 3 km, it has
delivered 20 passengers * 3 km = 60 passenger-km. Similarly, the appropriate
Figure 18
measure of freight-moving efficiency is the tonne-kilometer per unit of energy. For
The two-person Smart Car. Its
example, if a truck moves 5 tonnes a distance of 80 km, it has delivered 400 tonne-km.
reduced size, weight, and engine
Table 4 compares passenger-moving efficiencies. For walking and bicycling, the
give it a gasoline efficiency of
16 km/liter (37 mi/gal). table uses the “gasoline equivalent” of the required number of food calories.

182
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

Table 3
Fuel efficiencies of passenger vehicles
km/liter mi/gal
National averages:
All U.S. passenger vehicles (cars, SUVs, pickups) 9 22
New U.S. passenger vehicles 12 27
New European Union passenger vehicles 14 34
New cars:
Ford Expedition, SUV 6 16
Honda Accord 11 25
Ford Escape, SUV hybrid 13 32
Nissan Altima, hybrid 14 34
Smart Car 16 37
Honda Civic, hybrid 18 42
Toyota Prius, hybrid 21 50

Table 4
U.S. passenger-moving efficiencies of several human transportation modes
passenger-km passenger-mi passenger-km
per liter per gal per MJ

Human on bicycle 642* 1530* 18.0

Human walking 178* 425* 5.0

Intercity rail 60 144 1.7

Carpool auto (occupancy = 4) 36 88 1.0
Urban bus 33 80 0.9
Commercial airline 21 50 0.6
Commuting auto (occupancy = 1.15) 11 25 0.3
*For walking and bicycling, the table uses the “gasoline equivalent” of the required number of food calories.

Pierre Verdy/AFP/Getty Images

Walking and bicycling come out far ahead because no energy goes into moving a Figure 19
heavy vehicle, and because no heat engine is employed so there is no loss due to the The French TGV (Train à Grande
second law of thermodynamics. Bicycling is more efficient than walking because Vitesse or “train of great velocity”)
wheels keep rolling and thus take maximum advantage of the law of inertia. Walking has been in service since 1972.
requires you to start and stop your legs with every step, and these accelerations About 350 TGV “trainsets” are in
require a force (Newton’s law of motion), which means that work is done. Trains service today. Like most of Europe’s
(Figure 19) are far more energy efficient than other vehicles because they can more high-speed trains, the TGV rou-
tinely travels at about 300 km/hr
efficiently overcome air resistance and rolling resistance and because one train can
(186 mi/hr). Trains are far more
carry many passengers. Because a train presents a small frontal area relative to its
energy efficient than other vehicles
large load, its air resistance per kilogram of load is far below that of cars and trucks. because they can carry several hun-
And because a train rolls on inflexible steel wheels, there is little rolling resistance. dred passengers, because they pres-
Table 5 compares freight-moving efficiencies. Again, the advantage of rail is obvi- ent a small frontal area relative to
ous. Since one freight train can carry the loads of 500 trucks, this is not surprising. their large load, and because they
You can see from Figures 9, 10, and 11 that transportation is a major consumer roll on inflexible steel wheels that
of energy in general and of oil in particular. This consumption poses huge problems experience little rolling resistance.

183
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

Table 5 for the United States: increasing energy costs, declining domestic and foreign
Freight-moving efficiencies of three sources of oil, and two Middle Eastern wars that were partly due to
transportation modes oil-related security problems. Tables 3, 4, and 5 suggest many ways to reduce oil
kg-km tonne-km
consumption:
per MJ per liter
• Enact automobile efficiency standards to bring new U.S. cars up to at least the
Rail (freight train) 2900 100 efficiency of new European cars.
• Use incentives to promote hybrid vehicles.
Truck (heavy) 720 25
• Promote carpooling.
Air (freight) 145 5
• Encourage mass transit while discouraging cars.
• Move freight by train instead of by truck.
• Plan cities that encourage walking, bicycling, and transit and discourage driving.
Table 6 For fun, let’s compare the entire realm of locomotion by animals and all forms of
Mass-moving efficiencies of human technology. Which animal or human transportation mode is the most effi-
animals and machines, in kilogram- cient transporter of mass: fruit flies? trains? horses? jet planes? humans walking?
kilometers per megajoule bicycling? To compare fruit flies, horses, and humans fairly, we must incorporate
Human on bicycle 1100 the fact that the horse’s energy goes into moving a lot more mass. So the useful out-
Salmon 600 put should be measured as the animal’s (or the human’s plus the machine’s) total
mass times distance moved. Table 6 gives several such mass-moving efficiencies, in
Horse 400
kilogram-kilometers per megajoule of energy. Again, bicycles come out far ahead,
Human walking 300
because animals don’t have wheels so they can’t take advantage of rolling and
Typical bird 200 because bicycles are about the only major human transportation technology that is
Intercity rail 100 not a heat engine. In other words, bicycles come out on top because of the law of
Urban bus 55 inertia and the second law of thermodynamics! As an avid bicycle commuter, I
Hummingbird 50
think that’s cool.
This reasoning implies that animals with wheels would have a big energy advan-
Carpool auto 40
tage. In fact, some salamanders and other animals use this energy advantage by
Commercial airline 25 rolling their bodies into hoops and rolling down hills. One could speculate that on
Fly, bee 20 another planet with surfaces created by smooth lava flows, wheeled animals might
Commuting auto 12 evolve and be abundant!
Mouse 5
CONCEPT CHECK 8 You wish to move 125 tonnes of freight a distance of 200 km.
Adapted from S. Wilson, “Bicycle Technology,”
Scientific American, March 1973. How many liters of gasoline are needed to move it by truck, and by rail? (a) 125 liters
by truck and 500 liters by rail. (b) 500 liters and 125 liters. (c) 250 liters and
1000 liters. (d) 1000 liters and 250 liters.

7 THE STEAM–ELECTRIC POWER PLANT

Let’s turn now to another heat engine that has transformed modern society: the
steam–electric power plant.
Figure 20 is a schematic diagram of the operation of a coal-burning electric power
plant. Coal is the most widely used energy source for electricity. Other plants that use
oil, natural gas, nuclear energy, or solar energy to turn water into steam in a boiler
operate much as a coal-burning plant does in producing electricity from steam.
The coal combusts externally in a furnace, and its thermal energy is transferred
Every time I see an adult on a to water inside a boiler. Most combustion products escape through the stack but
bicycle, I no longer despair for the some pollutants are removed first. The boiler produces high-pressure steam at over
human race. 500°C, far above the normal boiling temperature. The steam moves through pipes
H. G. Wells, English Historian,
Sociologist, Author of War of the Worlds
to a large rotating device called a steam turbine that turns when it feels a higher
and Other Novels. pressure on the front (upstream) side than on the back. Like a car’s piston, the steam

184
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

Electricity

Stack gases

Generator
Hot steam

Turbine

Cooler steam

Hot steam
Condenser Cold water

Hot water

Boiler

Pump Water

Furnace Lake or cooling tower

Fuel

Figure 20
A schematic diagram showing the operation of a coal-fueled steam–electric generating plant.

turbine is the key device that transforms thermal energy into work. The turbine
turns an electric generator that creates electricity.
The rotating turbine converts some of the hot steam’s thermal energy into work.
The second law tells us that this is possible only if the remaining thermal energy
flows to a cooler temperature. To maintain the required temperature difference, the
exhaust side of the turbine is cooled by an external stream or lake or by evaporative
cooling in the atmosphere. To obtain the greatest efficiency, the exhaust is cooled
sufficiently to “condense” the steam back into liquid water, because this greatly
reduces the pressure against the back side of the turbine. The steam is then sucked
forcefully through the turbine, from very high pressure on one side to near-vacuum
on the other. Once condensed, pumps move the water back around to the boiler,
where the cycle begins again. As you can see from Figure 20, the plant is a heat
engine. Thermal energy flows in at the boiler and out at the condenser, and work is
done by the turbine (compare Figure 5).
Figure 21 shows the energy flow (more precisely, the energy per second in
megawatts). A large plant generates about 1000 MW of electric power, enough for a

185
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

Stack emissions, 300 MW

From Waste,
coal, To Turbine exhaust, 1200 MW 1600
2500 turbine, (removed by condenser) MW
MW 2200
MW
Work, Lost in
1000 MW transmission,
100 MW

Useful
Electric energy, To user, 900 MW work,
1000 MW 900
Turbine MW
(heat engine)

Figure 21
Energy flow in a typical 1000 MW coal-fueled electric generating plant.

large city. Because a typical plant’s efficiency is 40%, this electrical output requires
2500 MW, or 2500 million joules of energy input every second, requiring 100 kilo-
grams of coal every second!
Of the 2500 MW input, 300 MW go out through the stack, accompanied by
oxides (oxygen compounds) of nitrogen, oxides of sulfur, carbon dioxide, and small
incombustible particles called “ash.” Oxides of nitrogen and sulfur cause acid rain,
and carbon dioxide is the main source of global warming. Modern plants remove
most of the sulfur oxides, some of the nitrogen oxides, and nearly all of the ash,
which then presents a significant solid-waste disposal problem. Since coal is made
mainly of carbon, CO2 is by far the predominant stack gas. None of it is removed
today, although in the future it may be possible to remove it and inject it in gaseous
form into the ground.
The turbine converts the thermal energy of steam to useful work, which in turn
drives a generator that creates 1000 MW of electric power. The plant’s biggest loss
in useful energy, the 1200 MW exhausted (Figure 21), is an unavoidable conse-
quence of the second law. This exhaust goes into the condenser’s cooling water. If
the cooling water comes from a lake or river, the exhaust warms the water, an effect
called thermal pollution. Many plants use the atmosphere as the coolant by employ-
ing large evaporative cooling towers (Figure 22). Finally, an average 100 MW of the
generated electricity is lost as thermal energy during transmission over electric
power lines, and 900 MW gets to the user.
Grapes/Michaud/Photo
Researchers, Inc. CONCEPT CHECK 9 Judging from Figures 20 and 21, the efficiency of the
Figure 22 boiler in converting the coal’s chemical energy into steam is (a) 100%; (b) 12%;
Cooling towers (on the right) and (c) 88%; (d) 36%; (e) 10%.
stacks at a coal-fueled generating
plant. Cool air is sucked into the CONCEPT CHECK 10 A particular coal-burning generating plant consumes
bottom of the cooling towers, 8000 tonnes of coal per day. Assuming that the coal is pure carbon, which of the fol-
where it cools hot water from the lowing is closest to the amount of carbon dioxide that this plant injects into the atmos-
plant. The tower’s shape promotes
phere every day? (a) 8000 tonnes. (b) 3200 tonnes. (c) 4800 tonnes. (d) 24,000
a rapidly rising hot-air column.
tonnes. (e) 16,000 tonnes. (f) 48,000 tonnes.

186
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

M A K I N G EST I M AT ES At 100 kg/s, estimate the amount of coal (in tonnes) that
a typical plant uses in one day. How many traincars full of coal is this, at about
100 tonnes per traincar?

8 RESOURCE USE AND EXPONENTIAL GROWTH6

The social implications of energy raise many growth-related issues. As our growing The arithmetic of growth is the
numbers and environmental impact begin to affect the entire natural world, it is forgotten fundamental of the
important to understand the long-term effects of growth. energy crisis.
Albert Bartlett
Suppose you invest $100 at a rate of return or growth rate of 10% per year.
When will you double your money? You earn $10 during the first year, so you have
$110. In the second year you earn 10% of $110, or $11. Now you have $121, so you
earn $12.10 during the next year. Each year you earn more than you did the previ-
ous year. Figure 23 graphs your account and compares it with a second graph that
increases by a fixed $10 every year. The second graph illustrates linear (straight-
line) growth. As you can see, there’s a big difference between $10 per year and
10% per year. When a quantity grows by a fixed percentage in each unit of time, its
growth is said to be exponential.7
If you continue adding 10% each year, your account will about double to $200
after 7 years. What will happen after another 7 years? Since the same arithmetic
applies, it will double again, to $400. In the next 7 years it will double again, to
$800. And so forth. Exponential growth has an unchanging doubling time.

2000
Value of account in dollars

1800
1600 Growth at 10% per year:
1400 exponential growth
1200
1000
800
Growth at $10 per year:
600
linear growth
400
200

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
Years

Figure 23
The 10% investment account. The initial investment is $100. Would you rather have expo-
nential growth at 10% per year or linear growth at $10 per year?

6
This section draws on the work of University of Colorado physicist Albert A. Bartlett.
7
It is called “exponential” because the account is worth 100 * 1.1 after 1 year, 100 * 1.12 after 2 years,
100 * 1.13 after 3 years, and so forth. The number of years is in the exponent.

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES The number of seconds in a day is

60 s>min * 60 min>hr * 24 hr>day ' 105 s>day. 100 kg enter the plant every second, so the amount
entering in a day is 105 * 100 = 107 kg, or 10,000 tonnes. This is 10,000/100 = 100 traincars every day!

187
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

MAKI NG ESTI MATES You take a job requiring you to work every day for 30 days
and your employer offers you just one cent for the first day and then a doubled salary
every day after that. Will this be a good salary for the month?

Pressures resulting from unre- In a population of animals, the number of newborns each year is roughly propor-
strained population growth put tional to the number of potential parents in the population that year. So if the popu-
demands on the natural world lation doubles, the number of newborns should also double. So the percentage
that can overwhelm any efforts to increase—the number of newborns divided by the total population—should be
achieve a sustainable future. If we
roughly the same from year to year. This unchanging percentage increase means
are to halt the destruction of our
environment, we must accept that population growth is roughly exponential.
limits to that growth.
From World Scientists Warning to CONCEPT CHECK 11 Bacteria reproduce themselves by simply dividing. If you start
Humanity, a Declaration Signed with 1 bacterium, it will divide into 2; they will divide into 4, then into 8, and so forth.
by Nearly 1700 Leading Scientists
from 71 Countries, Including Since each population doubling occurs in the same time interval, this is an exponential
104 Nobel Laureates process. Suppose that some strain of bacteria has a dividing time of 1 minute. You put 1
bacterium into a bottle at 11 A.M., and at noon you note that the bottle is full of bacteria.
The bottle was half full at (a) 11:30; (b) 11:40; (c) 11:50; (d) 11:55; (e) 11:58; (f) 11:59.

As Concept Check 11 shows, when you consume a finite resource exponentially, it’s
easy to use nearly all of it before you realize there’s a problem (Figure 24). Continuing with
Concept Check 11, suppose that at 11:56 A.M. (when the bottle was only 1/16 full, or 94%
empty!), some visionary bacteria, realizing they have a problem, launch an all-out search
for new bottles. By 11:58 A.M., this program has been successful in discovering a vast new
reserve: three new bottles! It took the bacteria an entire hour to fill the first

0.9

0.8
that is filled with bacteria

0.7
Fraction of jar

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60
Number of minutes past 11 A.M.

Figure 24
Bacterial growth in a jar. A finite resource, consumed exponentially, runs out surprisingly rap-
idly toward the end. On the scale of this graph, growth is imperceptible until 11:53 A.M. when
the bottle is 1% full.

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES You will earn $5.12 on day 10. To simplify matters, round this to just
$5. Now continue doubling. On day 20, your earnings will be $5120. Round this to $5000, and continue. On
day 30 alone, your earnings are more than $5 million!

188
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

bottle. When will the new bottles be full? The answer is at 2 minutes past noon. Continued
exponential growth eventually overwhelms all attempts to expand the resource base.
There is a simple and useful quantitative relation for exponential growth. Any
increase in the growth rate must decrease the doubling time, so we might expect to
find a relation between these two. It turns out that they are inversely proportional.
The relation is, approximately,
70
doubling time =
growth rate
70
T =
P
where T stands for the doubling time and P is the growth rate (the percentage
growth per unit time, expressed in percent). This can be turned around to read
70
P =
T
Either quantity, the doubling time or the growth rate, is equal to 70 divided by
the other quantity. For instance, the 10% savings account has a doubling time of

T = 70>P = 70>10 = 7 years

For a historical example, consider the growth of U.S. electric power. As you can see
by examining Figure 25, production grew exponentially between 1935 and 1975, dou-
bling about every 10 years for a percentage growth rate of P L 70>T = 70>10 = 7%
per year. What if this growth rate had continued past 1975? In 1975, all electric energy
could have been provided by about 400 large plants. If the 10-year doubling time had
continued, 800 plants would have been needed in 1985, 1600 in 1995, 3200 in 2005,
and 6400 in 2015. Sixty-four hundred power plants would mean some 125 in every
U.S. state, with everybody living within a few miles of a large power plant! Obviously,
expansion at a fixed growth rate is unsustainable. In fact electric power production
increased by only 3% per year during 1973 to 1988, by 2% per year during 1988 to
2000, and by 1% per year during 2000 to 2010.
U.S. oil production illustrates what happens when a finite resource is consumed
exponentially. Like many industries, oil production grew exponentially during its
early years, maintaining 8% annual growth during 1870–1930. But this could not be
maintained, because recoverable oil resources would be gone by now. The growth

4000
3500
Electricity generated in
one year, in billions of

3000
kilowatt-hours

2500 Figure 25
The history of electric power
2000
production. The annual electric
1500 energy produced, in billions of
1000 kilowatt-hours, is graphed
from 1900 through 2010. The
500
growth was roughly exponen-
0 tial between 1935 and 1975.
1900 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 2000 2010
(U.S. Energy Information
Year Administration)

189
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

rate declined, and then around 1970 U.S. oil production in the 48 contiguous states
began to drop, as in Figure 26. This bell-shaped curve is typical for a nonrenewable
resource—a resource that cannot be readily replaced within a human lifetime. U.S.
oil production is following this pattern and is in region C on the graph. World oil
production is probably in region B. Resource depletion is inevitably driving the
world toward the end of the oil age, although other problems such as global warm-
ing might end it even sooner.
Renewable resources, such as wood or solar energy, follow a different history
(Figure 27). In their early stages, renewable and nonrenewable resource use rises
exponentially. But renewable resources can be sustained indefinitely, assuming they
are consumed at less than the replacement rate, so the graph levels off as shown.
Finally, consider world population growth (Figure 28). It took 6 million years for
the human population to grow to its first billion in 1825. It reached its next billion
only a century later in 1930, and its third billion in 1960. The sixth billion was
reached in 1999. Population experts estimate that the population in 2050 will be
around 9 billion. The actual outcome will be strongly dependent on human fertility
between now and then. We can find the approximate current rate of growth from the
population doubling during 1960 to 2000: P = 70>T = 70>40 = 1.75%. As you
can see from the graph, this is a large—in fact explosive—rate.

CONCEPT CHECK 12 U.S. oil production grew at 8% per year during

1870–1930. Its doubling time was roughly (a) 6 years; (b) 9 years; (c) 12 years;
(d) 15 years; (e) 30 years.

Region C: no growth,
Region C: sustainable level
exhaustion
consumption
consumption

and decline
Yearly
Yearly

Region A: Region A:
Region B: Region B:
exponential exponential
reduced growth, reduced growth,
growth growth
leveling off leveling off

Years Years

Figure 26 Figure 27
A typical bell-shaped curve showing the life history of con- A typical life history of a renewable resource such as hydroelectric
sumption of a nonrenewable resource. Exponential growth must power. Exponential growth slows as consumption reaches its natural
slow as the resource is depleted. Consumption eventually levels limits. Consumption eventually levels off at some sustainable value.
off and declines as the resource nears exhaustion.

190
 Second Law of Thermodynamics

9
About 9 billion in 2050

6
World population, in billions

6 billion in A.D. 1999

Third billion in 1960

3
Second billion in 1930

First billion in 1825

Figure 28
The population explosion: faster
0 ⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫺
⫺ 200 180 160 140 120 100 800 600 400 200 0 200 400 600 800 100 120 140 160 180 200 than exponential. Note the resem-
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Year blance to Figure 24.
© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

191
192
Second Law of Thermodynamics
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 18. Describe two different ways of measuring a transportation

mode’s efficiency and give an appropriate measurement unit
for each.
HEATING 19. Why are trains more efficient than other transportation vehicles?
1. What is heating?
THE STEAM–ELECTRIC POWER PLANT
2. In your own words, state the law of heating.
3. Give an example showing that thermal energy and tempera- 20. In a steam–electric power plant, what is the purpose of the
ture are really two different things. turbine? Generator? Condenser? Cooling tower? Stack?
21. What is thermal pollution?
HEAT ENGINES AND ENERGY QUALITY 22. What is the source of the most important inefficiency in a
steam–electric power plant’s operation?
4. Give an example of each of these energy transformations: 23. What part of a steam–electric power plant is analogous to the
kinetic to thermal, gravitational to thermal, thermal to piston in an automobile?
kinetic.
5. In your own words, state the law of heat engines.
EXPONENTIAL GROWTH
6. What properties of the input and the exhaust are the most
important to determining a heat engine’s efficiency? 24. What is the difference between exponential and linear growth?
Describe the manner in which the efficiency depends on 25. Your savings account grows at 7% per year. What is its dou-
these properties. bling time?
7. Is the actual overall energy efficiency of an automobile clos- 26. Draw a typical life-history graph for a nonrenewable
est to 98%, 90%, 40%, 10%, or 2%? What about a resource. Is any part approximately exponential?
steam–electric power plant? 27. Repeat the previous question, but for a renewable resource.
8. If a heat engine operated entirely without friction, would it
then be 100% efficient? Explain.
9. In terms of energy, what happens when the motion of a rock Conceptual Exercises
swinging from a string “dies down”? In what sense is this
behavior irreversible?
HEATING
THE LAW OF ENTROPY 1. How would you describe the weather on a day when the tem-
perature was –3°C? +3°C? 22°C? 35°C?
10. What is entropy? 2. Give the approximate temperature, in °C, of each of the fol-
11. In your own words, state the entropy form of the second law. lowing: your body, water boiling in an open pot, ice water, a
12. Which law or laws of physics distinguish between forward nice day.
and backward in time? 3. Which is larger, a Celsius degree or a Fahrenheit degree?
13. When a growing leaf increases its organization, does it vio- 4. How does the flow of thermal energy through a closed win-
late the second law? dow illustrate the second law? Which direction is this flow
when it is cold outside? Hot outside?
THE AUTOMOBILE AND TRANSPORTATION 5. Try to think of at least one technological device that causes
14. Name two general types of heat engines of major social thermal energy to flow “uphill,” from colder to hotter. Does
importance. this device violate the law of heating? Explain.
15. Why do we call it an internal combustion engine? Describe 6. In the operation of a refrigerator, does thermal energy flow
in your own words how it works. from hot to cold, or is it from cold to hot? Does this happen
16. Name two alternative fuels (not gasoline or diesel fuel) for spontaneously, or is outside assistance required?
the automobile.
17. What is the source of the largest inefficiency in an automo-
bile’s operation?

From Chapter 7 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

193
 Second Law of Thermodynamics: Problem Set

HEAT ENGINES 17. In one cycle of its operation, a heat engine consumes 1500 J
7. Is it possible to convert a given quantity of kinetic energy of thermal energy while performing 300 J of work. What is
entirely into thermal energy? Is it possible to convert a given its efficiency? How much energy is exhausted in each cycle?
quantity of thermal energy entirely into kinetic energy? In each
case, either give an example or explain why it is impossible. ENERGY QUALITY AND THE LAW OF ENTROPY
8. Is it possible to convert a given quantity of chemical energy 18. When your book falls to the floor, is this a thermodynamically
entirely into thermal energy? Is it possible to convert a given irreversible process? Is energy conserved? Does entropy
quantity of thermal energy entirely into chemical energy? In each increase?
case, either give an example or explain why it is impossible. 19. When we say that the motion of a rock swinging on a string
9. Which are not heat engines: natural-gas-burning power plant, is irreversible, do we really mean that it is impossible to get
hydroelectric power plant, ethanol-fueled automobile, bicy- the rock back to its starting condition? Explain.
cle, solar–thermal electric power plant, steam locomotive? 20. When a block of wood slides down a sliding board, is this a
10. Which of the following are heat engines: nuclear power plant, thermodynamically irreversible process? Does this mean that
diesel locomotive, electric locomotive, geothermal power it is impossible to make a block of wood slide up a sliding
plant, wind turbine (windmill for generating electricity), board? Explain.
solar hot water heater? 21. As an egg develops into a chicken, its contents become more
11. What does the second law tell us about the efficiency of heat ordered. In light of what you have learned about the second
engines? law of thermodynamics, do you expect that this process vio-
12. Can you think of any way to drive a ship across the ocean lates the law of increasing entropy? Explain.
by using the ocean’s thermal energy without violating the 22. A pan of liquid water freezes when you place it outside on a
second law? cold day. Liquid water has greater molecular disorder than
13. Farswell Slick approaches you with plans for a revolutionary ice does. Is the freezing process then an exception to the law
transportation system. He has noticed that when he drives an of entropy? Explain.
automobile without accelerating, all the input energy eventually 23. When orange juice and grapefruit juice are mixed, does
shows up as thermal energy. Slick proposes to use this thermal entropy increase?
energy to drive the car at a constant speed. The car will still
need fuel, but only for accelerating. It will be possible to travel THE AUTOMOBILE AND TRANSPORTATION
cross-country on only a few gallons of gasoline. He describes 24. Describe the energy input for walking and bicycling. How do
his scheme as a “computerized advanced-technology exhaust walking and bicycling illustrate the second law?
feedback afterburner.” Should you invest in Slick’s scheme? 25. Suppose an automobile’s fuel could be made to burn hotter
Explain. without harming the engine’s operation (for instance, without
14. On the Fahrenheit scale, what are the freezing and boiling cracking the engine). Would you still get the same amount of
points? Use your answer to calculate the number of useful work from each gallon of gasoline?
Fahrenheit degrees in one Celsius degree. 26. Suppose an automobile could run on hard wheels that were
15. Use the result of the preceding question to convert 10°C to not squeezed by the weight of the car on the road. Would this
Fahrenheit. Convert 30°C to Fahrenheit. alter the car’s efficiency? How might this affect the gas
16. In one cycle of its operation, a heat engine does 100 J of mileage? What kind of wheels and road might you suggest?
work while exhausting 400 J of thermal energy. What is its 27. According to Figures 9, 10, and 11, which of the three main
energy input? Its efficiency? sectors of the U.S. economy (industry, residential–
commercial, transportation) consumes the most oil?

Residential Trans- Residential Pipeline

22% portation 4% Water 2%
28% 5%
Industrial Trans- Air 7% Autos
23% portation
Rail and 63%
68%
bus 3%
Electricity
generation
Trucks
3%
Commercial 20%
Industrial Commercial
18% 2%
32%

Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11

The fraction of total U.S. energy The fraction of U.S. petroleum consumed The fraction of U.S. transporta-
consumed by each economic sector. by each economic sector. (U.S. Energy tion energy consumed by each
(U.S. Energy Information Information Administration, 2003) transportation mode. (U.S. Bureau
Administration, 2007) of Transportation Statistics, 2007)

194
 Second Law of Thermodynamics: Problem Set

28. One car has twice the gasoline mileage efficiency of a sec- EXPONENTIAL GROWTH AND RESOURCE USE
ond car. Compare the amounts of pollution they produce 37. A lily pond doubles its number of lilies every month. One day,
when they both travel the same distance. you notice that 2% of the pond is covered by lilies. About how
29. Out of every 100 barrels of gasoline, about how many actually long will it be before the pond is entirely covered?
go into driving a typical car down the road? 38. On June 1 there are a few water lilies in a pond, and they then
30. A bus carries 30 people 200 km using 300 liters of gasoline. double daily. By June 30 they cover the entire pond. On what
Find its passenger-moving efficiency. day was the pond still 50% uncovered?
39. Company X increases its profits every year by $50 million. Is
THE STEAM–ELECTRIC POWER PLANT its growth in profits exponential? Company Y increases its
31. Which type of generating plant would you expect to be more profits by 1% every year. Is its growth in profits exponential?
energy efficient, steam–electric or hydroelectric? Defend 40. According to Figure 25, did electric power production grow
your answer. exponentially between 1910 and 1935? Estimate the number
32. Would it be more energy efficient to heat your home electri- of kilowatt-hours produced in 1935, 1945, 1955, 1965, and
cally or to heat it directly using a natural gas heater, assum- 1975, and verify that production grew approximately expo-
ing that the electricity comes from a steam–electric plant? nentially between 1935 and 1975.
33. Which method of fueling your car is likely to be more energy 41. Which of the following are renewable energy resources: coal,
efficient, and why: gasoline used in a standard car engine or firewood, nuclear power, wind, water behind a dam.
electricity taken from a coal-fueled generating plant and 42. What is the original source of energy in each of the following
stored in lightweight car batteries? Assume that the batteries energy resources: oil, firewood, wind, water behind a dam,
convert electricity to work at 100% efficiency. geothermal, ocean-thermal electricity? Which of these are
34. Out of every 100 tons of coal fed into an electric generating renewable resources?
plant, roughly how many tons produce the electricity you can 43. The most recent world population doubling, to a total popula-
use at your home and how many go into waste energy? Use tion of about 6 billion, has occurred in about 40 years. Making
the approximate energy flows indicated in Figure 21. the (unrealistic!) assumption that this rate of population will
35. For every 100 kilograms of coal entering a generating plant continue for two centuries, what would the world’s population
(recall that this much enters every second), about 15 kilo- be two centuries from now? Such unrealistic assumptions are
grams of sulfur oxides and ash are removed, producing a sig- often useful in projecting future trends because they give us a
nificant solid-waste disposal problem. For a typical 1000 MW sense of what is likely or unlikely. For example, this exercise
plant, how much of this solid waste is produced every day? shows us that it is very unlikely that our present population
Express your answer in tonnes (1 tonne = 1000 kg). growth will continue for two more centuries.
36. How would the annual pollution from two coal plants com- 44. The most recent world population doubling has occurred in
pare if the first plant is twice as energy efficient as the sec- about 40 years. Suppose that the next doubling occurs also in
ond? Assume that they both produce the same amount of 40 years, but that a new agricultural “green revolution” man-
electric power. ages to also double food production. Then how many people
will be starving 40 years from now, as compared to the num-
ber starving now?

Stack emissions, 300 MW

From Waste,
coal, To Turbine exhaust, 1200 MW 1600
2500 turbine, (removed by condenser) MW
MW 2200
MW
Work, Lost in
1000 MW transmission,
100 MW

Useful
Electric energy, To user, 900 MW work,
1000 MW 900
Turbine MW
(heat engine)

Figure 21
Energy flow in a typical 1000 MW coal-fueled electric generating plant.

195
 Second Law of Thermodynamics: Problem Set

4000
3500

Electricity generated in
one year, in billions of
3000

kilowatt-hours
Figure 25 2500
The history of electric power
2000
production. The annual electric
energy produced, in billions of 1500
kilowatt-hours, is graphed 1000
from 1900 through 2010. The
500
growth was roughly exponen-
tial between 1935 and 1975. 0
1900 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 2000 2010
(U.S. Energy Information
Administration) Year

45. Is the graph of Figure 29 an exponential curve? Explain.

Table 1, how much work can be obtained from this locomo-

tive during 1 s of operation under ideal conditions (no fric-
tion or other imperfections)?
Time
7. In the preceding question, how much work can be obtained
under actual conditions?
Figure 29
Is this an exponential curve? THE AUTOMOBILE AND TRANSPORTATION
8. You travel alone from New York to Los Angeles, about
2800 miles. Working from Tables 3 and 4, how many
gallons of gasoline will you use if you travel by car (assum-
Problems ing your car gets average gasoline mileage for U.S. automo-
biles)? How many gallons if you travel by air? By bus?
By train?
HEAT ENGINES
9. A 100-car freight train hauls 16,000 metric tonnes of freight
(You will need footnote 3 to solve some of these problems.) from New York to Los Angeles, about 5000 km. How many
trucks would be needed for this load, assuming that each
1. If a heat engine’s efficiency is 30% and its work output is truck carries 32 tonnes of freight? Working from Table 5,
2000 J, how much thermal energy must have been put into it? how many liters of gasoline are saved if this load is carried
2. If a heat engine’s efficiency is 20% and 1.5 million joules of by train rather than by truck?
energy are put into it, how much work does it do?
3. The steam entering the turbine in a coal-burning power plant THE STEAM–ELECTRIC POWER PLANT
is heated to 500°C. The steam is cooled and condensed to
water at 80°C. Find the best possible efficiency of the power 10. MAKING ESTIMATES. In the United States, solar energy strikes
plant. Remember that you must convert Celsius temperatures a single square meter of ground at an average rate (averaged
to degrees Kelvin before using the formula. over day and night and over the different seasons) of 200
4. A solar-heated steam–electric generating plant heats steam to watts (200 joules/second). At what average rate does solar
250°C. After passing through the turbine, cooling towers cool energy strike a football field (about 100 m by 30 m)?
the steam to 30°C. Calculate the best possible efficiency of 11. Continuing the preceding question, a typical U.S. home con-
this power plant. Remember that you must convert Celsius sumes electricity at an average rate of 1 kW. How much surface
temperatures to Kelvins before using the formula in footnote 3. area would be needed to provide this electric power, assuming a
5. In the preceding question, suppose that for every 1000 J of 10% conversion efficiency? What dimensions would a square-
thermal energy going into this plant, the cooling towers shaped photovoltaic collector need to cover this area?
remove 750 J as exhaust. What is the actual efficiency of this
power plant? EXPONENTIAL GROWTH
6. A coal-burning steam locomotive heats steam to 180°C and 12. How much electric energy would have been produced in
exhausts it at 100°C. During 1 s of operation, it consumes 1985 if the exponential growth of 1935–1975 had continued
500 million J of energy from the burning coal. According to for another 10 years beyond 1975? If this growth had contin-

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 Second Law of Thermodynamics: Problem Set

Table 3
Fuel efficiencies of passenger vehicles
km/liter mi/gal
National averages:
All U.S. passenger vehicles (cars, SUVs, pickups) 9 22
New U.S. passenger vehicles 12 27
New European Union passenger vehicles 14 34
New cars:
Ford Expedition, SUV 6 16
Honda Accord 11 25
Ford Escape, SUV hybrid 13 32
Nissan Altima, hybrid 14 34
Smart Car 16 37
Honda Civic, hybrid 18 42
Toyota Prius, hybrid 21 50

Table 4
U.S. passenger-moving efficiencies of several human transportation modes
passenger-km passenger-mi passenger-km
per liter per gal per MJ

Human on bicycle 642* 1530* 18.0

Human walking 178* 425* 5.0

Intercity rail 60 144 1.7

Carpool auto (occupancy = 4) 36 88 1.0
Urban bus 33 80 0.9
Commercial airline 21 50 0.6
Commuting auto (occupancy = 1.15) 11 25 0.3
*For walking and bicycling, the table uses the “gasoline equivalent” of the required number of food calories.

Table 5
Freight-moving efficiencies of three
transportation modes 14. World population is now about 7 billion. The growth rate has
been roughly 2% per year since the end of World War II
kg-km tonne-km (1945). If a 2% per year growth rate continued, when would
per MJ per liter world population be 14 billion?
15. Centerville, with a growth rate of 7% annually, is using its
Rail (freight train) 2900 100 only sewage treatment plant at maximum capacity. If it con-
Truck (heavy) 720 25 tinues its present growth rate, how many sewage treatment
plants will it need 40 years from now?
Air (freight) 145 5 16. During the 1980s, U.S. car and truck miles traveled increased
by 4% per year, but the length of highway increased by only
0.1% per year. Find the doubling time for vehicle miles trav-
ued, roughly how many power plants would have been eled and for miles of highway.
needed in 1985, as compared with 1975? 17. Continuing the preceding problem, suppose that these rates
13. During 1985–1990, annual U.S. population growth was 0.8% are maintained in the future. While vehicle miles double (a
per year, for Mexico it was 2.2%, and for Kenya (the highest) 100% increase), by roughly what percentage will the amount
it was 4.2%. At these rates, how long does it take for the pop- of highway increase? Roughly, how much worse will traffic
ulations of each of these countries to double? congestion be at that time?

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 Second Law of Thermodynamics: Problem Set

Answers to Concept Checks 21. This does not violate the law of increasing entropy,
because the egg is not an isolated system; it has outside
help in the form of energy (thermal energy that is trans-
1. (e) ferred into the egg).
2. (b) 23. Microscopic disorganization increases, so entropy increases.
3. The “work” pipe appears to be about 1/3 as wide as the “ther- 25. You should get more useful work, because the efficiency
mal energy flow” pipe coming out of the high-temperature would tend to be higher due to the higher input temperature.
source, (a). 27. Transportation.
4. The work done must be 400 J - 300 J = 100 J, so the effi- 29. Assuming an efficiency of 13%, about 13 barrels go into
ciency is 100 J/400 J, (f). getting the car down the road.
5. Table 1 tells us that the actual efficiency is about 40%, so the 31. Hydroelectric, because it is not a heat engine and so is not
amount that goes into producing electricity is subject to the inefficiency implied by the second law of
0.4 * 1000 kg = 400 kg, (d). thermodynamics.
6. Salt and water molecules are randomly mixed together, so 33. Electricity from a coal-fired generating plant, because such
microscopic disorganization (entropy) increases, (a). a plant is about 40% efficient while a car engine is only
7. (a), (b), and (f ) 10%–15% efficient (Table 1).
8. 125 tonnes * 200 km = 25,000 tonne-km. Table 5 tells us 35. (15 kg>s) * (3600 s>hour) * (24 hr>day) =
that a truck can transport 25 tonne-km on 1 liter of gasoline, 1,300,000 kg>day = 1300 tonnes per day.
so the number of liters needed for 25,000 tonne-km is 37. Between 5 and 6 months: 4% in 1 month, 8% in 2 months, etc.
25,000>25 = 1000 liters. The number of liters needed for a 39. No; yes.
train is 25,000>100 = 250 liters, (d). 41. Firewood, wind, water behind a dam, ocean thermal.
9. 2200>2500 = 88%, (c) 43. World population is about 6 billion now. 200 years is 5 dou-
10. According to the periodic table, carbon and oxygen atoms have bling times, so the population would have increased by a fac-
roughly equal masses (oxygen is actually 33% more massive). tor of 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 32. So the population would
Thus the CO2 molecule is roughly three times as massive as be 32 * 6 billion = 192 billion (of course, this will not hap-
the C atom, so the CO2 emitted is roughly three times as mas- pen because the doubling time will not be maintained).
sive as the coal. 3 * 8000 tonnes = 24,000 tonnes, (d). 45. No, because part of it is a straight line.
11. (f )
12. T = 70>P = 70>8 L 9, (b) Problems
1. eff = Work output>ThermE input, so
ThermE input = Work>eff = 2000 J>0.3 = 6670 J.
Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual 3. Input temp = (500 + 273) K = 773 K, eff = (input
temp - exhaust temp)>input temp = 420 K>773 K = 54%.
Exercises and Problems 5. The actual efficiency is (work output)>(total energy
input) = (1000 J - 750 J)>1000 J = 250 J>1000 J = 25%.
Conceptual Exercises 7. From Table 1, actual eff = 0.1. eff = Work out>ThermE in,
1. Cold, below freezing; cold, above freezing; a nice day; a so Work = ThermE in * eff = (500 * 106 J) *
hot day. 0.1 = 50 * 106 J.
3. A Celsius degree. 9. Number of trucks = 16,000 tons>32 tons = 500 trucks. The
5. Refrigerator; it moves thermal energy from inside the refrig-
number of tonne-km is 16,000 tonnes * 5000 km =
erator to outside. It does not violate the second law, because
the second law states that thermal energy cannot sponta- 8 * 107 tonne-km. By truck, the gallons of gasoline required
neously flow from cold to hot. In a refrigerator, the flow is is 8 * 107 tonne-km>25 tonne-km>liter = 3.2 * 106 liters.
not spontaneous (it is assisted by the operation of the refrig- By train, the gallons of gasoline required is only 1/4 as much
erator, which draws thermal energy out of the inside). (because it’s four times more efficient, according to Table 5), or
Another example: air conditioner. 0.8 * 106 liter.
7. Yes; an example is dropping a book onto a table. No, 11. To receive 1 kW, a home would need to use all of the solar
because the second law prohibits it. energy striking an area of 5 m2. But since the conversion
9. Hydroelectric power plant, bicycle. efficiency is only 10%, the receiving area would need to be
11. The efficiency must be less than 100%. 10 times larger, or 50 m2. A square-shaped collector would
13. Don’t invest. Slick’s scheme violates the second law of ther- need to be about 7 m on a side.
modynamics, because it purports to convert thermal energy 13. T = 70>P = 70>0.8 = 80 yr (U.S.),
entirely into the work needed to drive the automobile. T = 70>2.2 = 32 yr (Mexico),
15. According to the preceding question, there are T = 70>4.2 = 17 yr (Kenya).
1.8 Fahrenheit degrees in each Celsius degree. 10°C is 15. T = 70>P = 70>7 = 10 yr. So 40 years is 4 doubling times.
10 Celsius degrees above freezing, which is 10 * 1.8 = Centerville’s population will increase by a factor of 16 dur-
18 Fahrenheit degrees above freezing, or 32°F + 18°F = ing this time. It will need 16 treatment plants.
50°F. Similarly, 30°C is 30 * 1.8 = 54 Fahrenheit degrees 17. At a 4% rate of increase, the number of vehicle miles trav-
above freezing, or 32°F + 54°F = 88°F. eled per year will double in T = 70>4 = 18 yrs. During this
17. Efficiency = 300 J>1500 J = 20%. 1200 J are exhausted in time, the number of miles of highway will increase by about
each cycle. (0.1%>yr) * 18 yrs = 1.8%, a very small increase. Thus,
19. No. We can push the rock back to its starting condition. The congestion will be about twice as bad.
precise process (without the push) cannot be reversed.

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Electromagnetism

One day, Sir, you may tax it.

Michael Faraday, Co-Discoverer of Electromagnetism, When asked by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer about the Practical Worth of Electricity

I
n this chapter, we are on the trail of light: What is light? How does it behave? How
is it related to the basic physical forces such as electricity? Are phenomena such as
“X-rays” and “infrared rays” related to light, and if so, how? How do these various
kinds of rays affect our planet?
Light is all around us, yet it’s not easy to say what light is. How are you able to see
this page? Do your eyes emit invisible rays that then move toward the page, as Plato
and Euclid thought? Does the page send out or reflect a stream of particles that is
received by your eyes, as the Pythagoreans and Isaac Newton thought? Is light a
wave, as Newton’s contemporary Christian Huygens thought? The nature of light is
one of science’s oldest questions, a question that led to both of the great modern
(post-1900) theories, namely relativity theory and quantum theory. Light and other
“electromagnetic radiations” are also crucial for understanding social topics like solar
energy and global warming.
This chapter studies electromagnetism, meaning the combined effects of electric
and magnetic forces. It’s a topic that’s essential for understanding light, for under-
standing modern physics, and for discussing ozone depletion and global warming.
Sections 1 and 2 study the electric force and the electric, or planetary, model of the
atom. Section 3 looks at electric current and other implications of the electric atom.
Section 4 studies electric circuits.
In Section 5, you’ll meet a radically new concept: force fields or simply “fields.”
“Radical” is not too strong a term, for this text has so far been based on the
Newtonian view of a universe made of particles moving mechanically in empty space,
and fields are in many ways the opposite of particles. Physicist Michael Faraday first
conceived of force fields in 1831 in connection with magnetism, and they soon
became essential for understanding electromagnetic phenomena. Today, fields are
essential for understanding most of modern physics, especially electromagnetism,
gravity, and quantum physics. Section 6 uses fields to present the full electromagnetic
force.

From Chapter 8 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

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 Electromagnetism

1 THE ELECTRIC FORCE

Find a couple of plastic transparencies that teachers sometimes use on overhead
projectors. Rub them vigorously with tissue paper and hold them from one edge in
separate hands, parallel and just a few centimeters apart (Figure 1). They should
repel each other. The force weakens at larger separations, but careful observation
would show that this force still exists even when the transparencies are far apart.
Now spread out the tissue on a level surface and hold a rubbed transparency directly
Figure 1
Two rubbed transparencies exert
above it. The tissue is pulled to the transparency. You may experience similar forces
electric forces on each other. when you take clothes from a dryer or brush your hair. Figure 2 shows an extreme
example.
This force is a little like gravity: It can act across a distance, and it weakens as
the separation widens. But there are reasons why it cannot be gravity: The trans-
parencies repel each other, whereas gravity attracts: this new force is far stronger
than gravity could possibly be between relatively low-mass objects such as trans-
parencies and tissues; and this force depends on whether the transparencies are
rubbed, and it’s hard to see how rubbing could affect gravity.
This force is called the electric force. An “electrified” object such as the rubbed
transparency or tissue is said to be electrically charged or just “charged,” and any
process that produces this state is called charging.
The experiments show that when we electrically charge two identical objects in
Gordon R. Gore identical ways, they repel each other. But the charged transparency and the charged
tissue attract each other. So the transparency must be charged differently from the
Figure 2 tissue. After experimenting with lots of charged objects, one finds that they all fall
A really bad hair day: electric hair. into just two categories: those that repel the transparency but attract the tissue, and
The source of this effect is the
those that attract the transparency but repel the tissue. These two categories are
“charged” metal sphere.
named positive and negative. Don’t attach much significance to the names—they
could just as well be called red and blue, or charming and revolting.
During the eighteenth century, French physicist Charles Coulomb measured the
changes in the electric force between two objects (that is, the force by either object
on the other) as he varied the amount of charge on them and the distance between
them. He found that the force is proportional to the amount of charge on either
object: If you double the charge on the first object, the force doubles; if you triple
the charge on the second object, the force triples, etc. This is pretty much what
you’d expect. But the way the force varies with distance is more interesting. As the
transparency experiment shows, the force gets smaller as the distance gets larger.
Working with charged objects that were small compared to the distance between
them, Coulomb found that if the distance doubles, the force falls to one-fourth the
initial value; if the distance triples, the force falls to one-ninth; if the distance
quadruples, the force falls to one-sixteenth. Any guesses as to the relationship
between distance and force?

——— Time out, for guessing.

We found precisely the same relationship between force and distance when we
studied gravitational force. The electric force is proportional to the inverse of the
square of the distance, just as is the gravitational force. I’ll summarize all this as

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 Electromagnetism

Coulomb’s Law of the Electric Force

Between any two small charged objects there is a force that is repulsive if both
objects have positive charge or if both have negative charge, and is attractive if one
has positive and the other has negative charge. This force is proportional to the
amount of charge on each object, and proportional to the inverse of the square of
the distance between them:
(charge on 1st object) * (charge on 2nd object)
electric force r
square of the distance between them

Using abbreviated symbols,

q1 * q2
F r
d2

If electric charge is measured in “coulombs” (see below), distance in meters, and

force in newtons, then this proportionality becomes1
q1 * q2
F = 9 * 109
d2

The definition of the measurement unit for electric charge, the coulomb (abbre-
viated C), was chosen for convenience of use in electrical circuits. It turns out that
it’s the total charge of 6.25 billion billion electrons. That sounds like a lot of charge.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 Two objects each carry a charge of 1 C. How much force
do they exert on each other at a distance of 1 meter? (a) 1 N. (b) 9 N. (c) 9 million N.
(d) 9 billion N. (e) about 10–10 N.

Concept Check 1 reveals one way of defining the “coulomb”: It’s the amount of
charge that causes an electric force of 9 * 109 N on an identical charge at a dis-
tance of 1 m. This is about the weight of 25,000 fully loaded highway trucks!
Clearly, 1 C is a lot of charge. Nevertheless, 1 C is only the amount of charge that
passes through an ordinary (incandescent) 100-watt lightbulb in a little over a sec-
ond. This seems paradoxical: Lightbulbs don’t exert forces equal to the weight of all
those trucks! The resolution (see Section 3 for more on this) is that the electrons
that flow through wires and bulbs are always surrounded by an equal number of sta-
tionary protons, so that the wire and the bulb are actually electrically neutral (no net
charge) and exert no electrical force on surrounding objects.2 Coulomb’s law refers
to two small objects (much smaller than the distance between them) having net
charges q1 and q2, unbalanced by other charges of the opposite sign. The charges on
most such objects are usually measured in millionths of a coulomb (10 –6 C).
Although Coulomb’s law looks a whole lot like Newton’s law of gravity, there are
differences. For one thing, the electric force can be either attractive or repulsive, but
the gravitational force can be only attractive. “Negative mass”—mass that repels
ordinary mass—has never been observed, but both positive and negative electric
charge is all around us.

1
More precisely, the number on the right-hand side is 8.988 * 109.
2
For reasons described in Section 6, they can, however, exert magnetic forces on surrounding objects.

201
 Electromagnetism

For another thing, the electric force between any two charged particles is gener-
ally vastly larger than the gravitational force between them. For example, the
electric force between the electron and the proton in a hydrogen atom is more than
1000 trillion trillion trillion (or 1039) times larger than the gravitational force
between them. This is why scientists can ignore the effects of gravity within an
atom. Comparison of the huge “proportionality constant” 9 * 109 in Coulomb’s
law with the tiny proportionality constant 6.7 * 10 - 11 in Newton’s law of gravity
also indicates that, at the macroscopic level in ordinary units, electric forces tend to
be much larger. This is why it’s so easy to demonstrate electrical forces between
ordinary charged objects (Figures 1 and 2) but challenging to demonstrate gravita-
tional forces between ordinary objects.
Finally, the electric and gravitational forces arise from different sources: one from
charge, the other from mass. You can, for example, add additional charge to a
charged object without appreciably changing its mass, perhaps greatly increasing the
electric force on the object but without noticeably changing the gravitational force.
So these are fundamentally different forces. Nevertheless, their similarities
encouraged Albert Einstein to spend the latter part of his life searching unsuccess-
fully for a “unified field theory” that would unify these two forces into a single
force. More recently we’ve begun to realize Einstein’s dream, but at the micro-
scopic level. We’ve learned that there seem to be four fundamental forces—gravita-
tional, electromagnetic, strong, and weak. Using quantum physics, the weak and
electromagnetic forces have been unified and the unification of these two forces
with the strong force appears near at hand, but the ultimate unification of these
three forces with gravity looks far more challenging.

2 THE ELECTRIC ATOM

Although thermal energy, chemical reactions, and much more are comprehensible
in terms of the Greek model of the atom as a single tiny rigid object, it’s difficult
to fit electromagnetic phenomena into this indivisible-particle picture of the atom.
Where does electric charge come from? How can rubbing produce it? Why are there
two kinds of charge? These and other questions led, early in the twentieth century,
The energy produced by the to the planetary model of the atom.3 According to this theory, the atom is not a
breaking down of the atom is a solid, indivisible object. To the contrary, the planetary model of the atom is almost
very poor kind of thing. Anyone entirely empty, is divisible, and is made of many parts.
who expects a source of power
As its name implies, the planetary model of the atom resembles a miniature solar
from the transformation of these
atoms is talking moonshine. system. Figure 3 portrays single atoms of two different elements, helium and carbon.
Ernest Rutherford, discoverer of the The defining feature of the planetary model of the atom is the tiny nucleus (greatly
atomic nucleus, made this famous enlarged in the figure) at the center, surrounded by a number of even tinier
wrong prediction in 1933.
electrons (“electrified ones”) that orbit the nucleus at a distance much greater than
the size of the nucleus itself. The overall size of an atom, the distance across its
electron orbits, is typically 10–10 m. This is roughly the distance between the centers
of adjoining atoms in solid materials. But a typical nucleus is 10,000 times smaller,
on the order of 10–14 m in size. To put this into perspective, if we built a scaled-up
atom in which the nucleus were represented by a soccer ball, the orbiting electrons
would be dust specks several kilometers away! An atom is nearly totally empty.

3
It’s sad but true that the widely used term “planetary model of the atom” is self-contradictory. “A-tom”
means indivisible, but “planetary” refers to the parts into which the atom can be divided! The old Greek
name, atom, has stuck, but not its essence.

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 Electromagnetism

You can add or remove charge from macroscopic objects such as transparencies
and tissues, but you can’t remove the charge from an electron—it’s permanently
negatively charged. Furthermore, to as high a precision as we can measure, all elec-
trons have precisely the same amount of charge and the same mass. The electron’s
mass is about 2000 times smaller than the mass of even the least massive atom.
Nobody has any idea of why any of this is so. Helium
The nucleus is itself made of several subatomic particles of two types, called
protons and neutrons. A proton (“positive one”) is another permanently charged
particle, charged precisely as strongly as the electron, but positively instead of neg-
atively. When we say that electrons and protons are charged “equally strongly,” we
mean that when they are placed near some other charged object, both exert the same
amount of force (but in opposite directions) at the same distance away. But they
don’t have equal masses. The proton is about 2000 times more massive than an elec-
tron. The neutron (“neutral one”) is an uncharged, or neutral, particle whose mass
is nearly the same as the proton’s mass. Between one and a few hundred protons and
neutrons form the nucleus of any atom.
The “glue” that holds electrons into their orbits around the nucleus is the electric
attraction between electrons and protons. The glue that holds the nucleus together,
however, must be some nonelectric force, because the electric force between the
positively charged protons is repulsive and neutrons do not exert an electric force.
Since an atom’s electrons are relatively distant from the nucleus, it’s not surprising Carbon
to learn that it’s easy to remove electrons from atoms. But on Earth, most atoms have
just as many electrons as protons, because any atom having a deficiency of electrons Figure 3
carries a net positive charge and quickly attracts electrons from its environment, while Two examples of the planetary
any atom having an excess of electrons quickly loses its outermost electrons to its model of the atom. Protons are
environment. That’s why it took so long to discover many electrical phenomena: green, neutrons are white, and elec-
Individual atoms are normally electrically neutral and exhibit no obvious electrical trons are black. The diagrams are not
effects. An atom that does have an excess or deficiency of electrons is called an ion. drawn to scale! If they were drawn to
scale, the nuclei and the electrons
would be too small to be seen.
How do we know that electrons exist? In 1897, English physicist J. J. Thomson
(Figure 4) was investigating a type of invisible beam known as a cathode ray. Cathode
rays were produced in a nearly evacuated (emptied of air) glass tube whose two ends
were attached by metal wires to a source of electric power. When the power was
switched on, rays of unknown composition streamed along the length of the tube, as
could be observed by the flashes of light where they hit one end of the tube.
Suspecting that these rays were electrically charged, Thomson placed electric charges
and magnets around them. The flashes of light shifted in position, which meant that the
rays had to be charged. The only charged microscopic objects then known were ions,
observed in certain chemical experiments. So Thomson hypothesized that the electrically
charged cathode rays were streams of such ions. He then measured the deflections of
the rays. Using the known electric and magnetic force laws, he deduced from these
measurements that these rays were streams of charged particles whose charge was the
same as the charge of typical ions but whose mass was far smaller, only about 1/2000th
of an ion’s mass.4 These, then, were not ions.
This was revolutionary. It established that atoms had parts. According to Thomson, “At
first there were very few who believed in the existence of these bodies smaller than
American Institute of Physics/
atoms.... It was only after I was convinced that the experiments left no escape from it that
Emilio Segre Visual Archives
Figure 4
4
More precisely, he found that the ratio of the mass to the charge was 1/2000th of the ratio of mass to J.J. Thomson, discoverer of the
charge for any known ion. electron. He was the first to show
that atoms are made of smaller,
electrically charged parts.

203
 Electromagnetism

I published my belief in the existence of bodies smaller than atoms.” Thomson had dis-
covered the electron. Today, Thomson’s rays, now known as electron beams, are used in
TV tubes, fluorescent bulbs, computer screens, and much more.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 Which one of the following has the smallest mass, and which
one has the largest mass? (a) Proton. (b) Electron. (c) Helium nucleus. (d) Neutron.
(e) Water molecule. (f) Oxygen atom.

How do we know that every atom has a nucleus? Like others around 1910, New
Zealander Ernest Rutherford (Figure 5) was trying to determine the atom’s internal struc-
ture. He knew that atoms contained electrons, so a positive charge must be present too.
It was known that atoms are pressed right up against one another in solid materials and
that huge forces are required to compress solids into smaller volumes. This suggested to
scientists that atoms must be filled with matter throughout most of their volume.
To test this hypothesis, Rutherford used what has become a traditional physics tech-
nique: He threw tiny things at other tiny things in order to see what would happen. He
“threw” a recently discovered ray known as an alpha ray at the atoms residing in a thin
metal foil, similar to aluminum foil. The alpha ray was a high-energy stream of positively
charged and fairly massive “alpha particles” (helium nuclei, made of two protons and two
neutrons) that emerged from certain “radioactive” substances.
The idea was to observe how far the foil deflected the fast-moving alpha particles from
their original directions and, from this, to deduce how matter must be distributed within
the foil’s atoms (Figure 6). The deflection was measured by observing flashes of light
where the alpha particles hit a screen placed partially around the foil, as shown in the fig-
ure. Similar experiments had been done before, and it had been found that the foil had
surprisingly little effect on the motion of the alpha particles. Most deflections were less
than 1 angular degree, as shown in the two “magnified” portions of the diagram. Since the
foils were about 500 atoms thick, alpha particles apparently passed straight through most
atoms without deflection. Apparently, atoms were fairly porous, open structures.
Then in 1911, Rutherford decided to see whether any alpha particles were deflected
through very large angles, greater than 90 degrees. He studied this by nearly surrounding the
C.E.Wynn-Williams/American foil with the detection screen. He expected to see no large deflections, because a fast-moving
Institute of Physics/Emilio Segre and massive alpha particle was thought to pass through an atom like a cannonball through
Visual Archives
pudding and would have to experience an enormous force to be deflected by very much.
Figure 5 His coworkers came to Rutherford a few days later with the news that a few alpha
Ernest Rutherford, codiscoverer of particles had been deflected backward. In Rutherford’s words, “It was quite the most
the nucleus and one of the greatest incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as
experimental physicists of the if you fired a 15-inch [artillery] shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit
twentieth century, talks with a col- you.” Apparently, nearly all of the atom’s material was concentrated at its center. The can-
league. Because Rutherford’s nonball had struck another cannonball and bounced back. Rutherford and his colleagues
resounding voice could upset deli- had discovered the atomic nucleus.
cate experimental apparatus, the
CONCEPT CHECK 3 Which of the following objects has an overall, or “net,”
sign overhead was playfully aimed
at him. His research on radioactiv-
charge? (a) Proton. (b) Electron. (c) Helium nucleus. (d) Neutron. (e) Ionized oxy-
ity and nuclear physics influenced gen atom. (f) Nonionized hydrogen atom.
a generation of experimental physi-
cists early in the twentieth century.
3 ELECTRIC CURRENT AND OTHER APPLICATIONS
Not exist—not exist! Why I can OF THE ELECTRIC ATOM
see the little beggars there in
front of me as plainly as I can Like all good theories, the planetary model of the atom explains many things.
see that spoon!
It explains our experiments with charged objects. When you rub a transparency
Rutherford, When Asked over a Dinner
Table Whether He Believed That Atomic with tissue, some of the loosely attached outermost electrons in the transparency’s
Nuclei Really Existed

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 Electromagnetism

Metal foil
(target)

Part of metal
foil, magnified

Alpha ray

Source of
alpha ray
Receiving screen Single atom,
to detect alpha magnified
particles

An occasional alpha particle

is bounced back by a close Most alpha particles
encounter with a nucleus pass straight through

Figure 6
Rutherford’s alpha-scattering experiment.

atoms are rubbed off and transferred to the tissue’s atoms, charging the trans-
parency positively and the tissue negatively. That’s why the two attract each other
after rubbing. The two rubbed transparencies repel each other because both have a
deficiency of electrons.
The planetary model provides a microscopic explanation of many chemical
phenomena, including why all atoms of a single element have identical chemical
behaviors and why different elements are chemically different. An element’s chem-
ical behavior results from the behavior of its orbital electrons. Table salt, NaCl,
makes a good example. Sodium (Na) combines readily with chlorine (Cl) because
the Cl atom has a stronger attraction for electrons than does Na, so one electron
from Na is attracted to Cl, leaving an overall positive charge on the Na and a nega-
tive charge on the Cl. The electric force between opposite charges then attracts and
holds the Na and the Cl atoms together.
The property that really defines an element is the number of protons in the
atomic nuclei of that element, because the number of electrons in the neutral (non-
ionized) atom must equal the number of protons, and the number of electrons in
turn determines the chemical properties of the atom. Two neutral atoms with the
same number of electrons have the same chemical properties because their electron
orbits have the same shapes. So it makes sense to number the different elements
according to the number of protons in an atom of the element. This number is called
the element’s atomic number.

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 Electromagnetism

Since an atom is mostly empty space, what keeps solid matter solid? The answer
is that the repulsion of electrons by other electrons keeps atoms from penetrating one
another. All contact forces, such as your hand slapping a table, can be interpreted
microscopically as forces by the orbital electrons in atoms (in your hand, for
instance) on the orbital electrons in other atoms (in the table). Every time you touch
something, you experience the force between orbiting electrons! In fact, all the
forces in your daily environment come down to just two kinds: The gravitational
force explains weight, while the electromagnetic force explains all the contact forces
and also the forces between charged objects and, as we’ll see, magnetized objects.
That’s some unification!
When you electrically charge an object, electrons (or it could be protons, which
are also moveable in some situations) are merely moved onto or off of the object.
No electrons are created or destroyed. Charge is “conserved.” In fact, careful meas-
urements have verified to high precision that the net (positives minus negatives)
amount of charge is conserved in every process. Even in high-energy physics
processes where charged particles such as electrons are actually created rather than
merely transferred, equal numbers of oppositely-charged particles such as “anti-
electrons” are always created. This is another conservation law, similar to, and as
fundamentally important as, conservation of momentum and conservation of
energy:

The Law of Conservation of Charge

Although charge can be moved around and although charged particles can be created
or destroyed, no net charge (positives minus negatives) can be created or destroyed.

Nobody has ever figured out how to split an electron into parts. So when you
charge an object, it always gains or loses some whole number multiple of the elec-
tron’s charge. An object can have a charge of 1 electron, 2 electrons, 3 electrons,
etc., but it cannot have a charge of 1.6 or 2.9 electrons. We call this quantization of
charge, with the smallest quantity or “quantum” of charge being the electron’s (or
proton’s) charge.5 Another way to say this is that charge is a discontinuous (com-
puter buffs might say “digital”) quantity rather than a continuous (or “analogue”)
quantity: It increases or decreases in steps that are whole number multiples of the
electron’s charge. This is our first example of a quantized aspect of nature.
The planetary atom underlies many electrical devices, such as batteries. Any bat-
tery has two “terminals,” one positively charged and the other negatively charged.
Chemical processes within the battery maintain these charges by removing elec-
trons from one terminal and depositing them on the other. If we attach the two ends
of a single copper (or other metal) wire to the terminals, every charged particle in
the wire instantly feels an electric force. These forces produce practically no distur-
bance of the positively charged copper nuclei, which are fixed in position. But in
copper or any other metal, each atom’s outermost electrons are only loosely held to

5
We’ve discovered that protons are made of smaller particles called “quarks,” and quarks carry charges hav-
ing one-third and two-thirds the magnitude of the electron’s charge. However, quarks have never been
found in isolation—they’re always combined into particles such as the proton carrying a whole number
multiple of the electron’s charge.

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 Electromagnetism

their parent atom. As soon as these conduction electrons feel the electric forces
established by a battery, they all simultaneously begin to move along the wire,
through the body of the metal. As they move, they constantly bump into atoms,
slowing the electrons and causing the atoms to vibrate, warming the wire. Such a
flow of charged particles is called an electric current (Figure 7).
Such a battery with a simple wire attached to the terminals forms an electric circuit:
a closed loop around which electric current can flow. But try the experiment shown
in Figure 7 carefully and only with a small flashlight battery. The problem is that
electrons flow so easily through ordinary wires that the electric current is large, so
the warming effect described above can burn out either the battery or a portion of
the wire.
Materials such as copper and other metals through which electric current can
easily flow are called electrical conductors; they have atoms whose outermost
electrons are only loosely attached. Materials such as rubber and dry wood whose
outermost electrons are more firmly attached don’t permit the easy flow of electric
current and are called insulators.
If, as shown in Figure 8, we insert a lightbulb into the circuit of Figure 7, electrons
will flow through the bulb’s thin filament and heat it by simply bumping into atoms,
causing them to vibrate energetically. As compared with the circuit of Figure 7, the
insertion of the narrow filament causes the flow of current in the circuit to decrease, for
the same reason that the flow of water in a garden hose is reduced if you squeeze the
hose at one point to make the cross-sectional area smaller: Conduction electrons can’t
get through the narrow part (the filament) in such large numbers.
We say that the filament creates electrical resistance in the circuit, by which we
mean that the filament reduces the overall flow of current throughout the entire
circuit. This is why you can easily burn out the battery of a circuit like Figure 7, while
a circuit like Figure 8 doesn’t burn out quickly. The filament, on the other hand, is
made of a heat-resistant material such as tungsten and is designed to heat up until
it glows. It heats up because conduction electrons move faster through the thin
filament than through the fatter wire, much as water “spouts” more rapidly out

Figure 7
A battery produces electrical
Short length of forces that cause conduction elec-
wire, magnified trons (black dots in the magnified
view) to move through the volume
Electrons move
through wire of the metal wire (the green circles
are the wire’s atoms). Electrons
flow around the wire circuit,
repelled by the battery’s negative
terminal and attracted toward the
positive terminal. Chemical forces
within the battery then push the
electrons through the battery from
Wire the positive electrode back to the
+ loop
–
negative electrode. Note that elec-
trons within the battery feel elec-
tric forces toward the positive
terminal, while leftward chemical
forces push them toward the nega-
tive terminal.

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 Electromagnetism

Figure 8
Because electrons flow so easily
through ordinary wires, the circuit
of Figure 7 would soon burn out –
the wire or battery. Inserting an +
incandescent lightbulb or other
“circuit element” reduces the flow
to safe levels. This happens
because the lightbulb’s glowing
filament is very thin and thus – +
restricts or “resists” the current,
much as a squeezed garden hose
restricts the flow of water.

of a garden hose when you narrow the nozzle. These faster electrons collide more
violently with the atoms of the filament, heating the filament to high temperatures.
The average forward speed of electrons in typical electrical circuits is surpris-
ingly slow because they constantly run into atoms and bounce in all directions, enor-
mously slowing their forward motion. A conduction electron’s average forward
speed along a wire, called its drift velocity, is typically less than one millimeter per
second! You might wonder, then, how the lightbulb in your room lights up so quickly
after the switch is turned on, since it’s at least a few meters from the switch to the
bulb and a conduction electron would take about an hour to cross this distance. The
answer is that the electric force is not transmitted by the motions of the conduction
electrons. Instead, the light switch connects a wire containing the bulb’s filament to
a power source such as a battery, and electric forces and energy spreading outward
from the power source at the speed of light exert forces on all the electrons in the cir-
cuit, causing them all to move at practically the same instant.
All the standard electrical appliances—toasters, lightbulbs, electric motors, and so
forth—are based on a similar flow of the electrons that ordinarily orbit within atoms,
and they all create electrical resistance in the circuit that powers them. Figure 8 shows
how the process works when a battery causes the electric force. Electrical outlets in
your home work in a similar way, except that the current reverses its direction of flow
many times every second (Figure 9). Such a current is called alternating current or
AC, while current that always flows in the same direction is called direct current or
DC. In any battery, one terminal remains negative and the other remains positive
because the chemical reactions inside continue operating in the same direction, so
batteries produce DC. Although devices exist that can transform DC into AC and
vice-versa, AC typically arises from an entirely different process. This different
process is the rotation of a loop of wire in a magnetic field. Commercial electric
power plants in the United States use a rotational frequency of 60 cycles per second.
So when you plug your lamp into a wall outlet, the conduction electrons in the elec-
tric cord and in the lamp instantly (well, with a slight delay determined by the speed
of light) begin moving back and forth 60 times per second, moving forward and then
backward at a drift speed of less than 1 mm per second. Think of electrons jiggling
back and forth over tiny distances while bouncing rapidly in all directions.

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 Electromagnetism

Figure 9
Electrical appliances are based on
the motion of unseen electrons that
move back and forth in the appli-
ances. A wall socket (more pre-
cisely, a generating station
connected by wires to a wall
socket) is the electrical equivalent
of a water pump. It “pumps” (ener-
gizes) the electrons so that they can
move back and forth in the circuit.
When the plug is plugged in,
electrons flow first in the direction
of the black arrows, and then in the
Wall Plug direction of the green arrows, reversing
directions many times every second.
socket
Normally, the two wires shown stretching
from the plug to the bulb are both placed
inside a single electrical cord.

4 ELECTRIC CIRCUITS
Electricity, in the form of electrons flowing through all sorts of devices, is so perva-
sive today that it’s a defining feature of modern life. Many poorer regions of the
planet have little or no electricity and so live very different lives from you and me.
Think of how your life—the past 24 hours for example—would be different if you’d
lived two centuries ago when there was no electricity!
To understand in more detail how electricity works, look again at Figure 8. This
simple electric circuit has three essential electrical elements: a battery, a metal wire
that conducts electric current, and a light bulb.
The battery moves electrons from the positive to the negative terminal by means
of chemical reactions that we won’t further delve into here. Even without the wire,
an isolated battery has electrons piled on the negative terminal and excess protons
(a deficiency of electrons, really) on the positive terminal. Since there’s nowhere
for these electrons to go, nothing happens: The battery just sits there with charge
piled on both terminals and no current flowing. But once you attach the wire and
bulb, electrons have someplace to go: from the negative terminal onto the wire, and
from the wire onto the positive terminal. As described in the previous section, con-
duction electrons immediately start flowing everywhere in the circuit.
Let’s look at this in terms of energy. With the disconnected battery (no wire),
excess electrons are more or less at rest on the negative terminal. Nevertheless, they
have energy. The reason is that energy is the capacity to do work, and these electrons
could do work if you connected the external circuit to the terminals and allowed the
electrons on the terminal to flow through the circuit. For this circuit, the work would
be done within the lightbulb filament as electrons heat the filament. What do you
suppose we call the form of energy that the electrons have when they’re at rest on the
negative terminal?

——— (Pause, for supposing)

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 Electromagnetism

The answer is electrical (or electromagnetic) energy; it could be defined as “the

energy that an electrically charged object has due to electrical (or electromagnetic)
forces on it.”
A useful analogy: The electrical energy of an electron on the negative terminal is
analogous to the gravitational energy of a rock at the top of a hill. Just as the rock can
give up its gravitational energy (while creating kinetic and thermal energy) by slid-
ing down the hill, the electron can give up its electrical energy (while creating radi-
ant and thermal energy) by flowing around the external circuit (the wire and bulb) to
the positive terminal. Electrons arriving at the positive terminal are like the rock
arriving at the bottom of the hill. They’ve lost their electrical energy. The purpose of
the battery is then to “pick up” these electrons from the positive terminal and push
them back “up” to the negative terminal, against the electrical attraction of the posi-
tive terminal and the repulsion of the negative terminal, so that they can again flow
around the external circuit. The battery re-energizes the electrons.
Quantitatively, a battery’s voltage is a measure of the amount of energy it gives
to each electron. More precisely, a battery’s voltage is the number of joules of elec-
tric energy that the battery provides to each coulomb of electrons (some 1019 elec-
trons) flowing through the battery. More generally, the voltage between (the official
term is “across”) any two points A and B along an electrical circuit is the amount of
electrical energy that a coulomb of charge would lose (or gain) in moving from A to
B. For example, the voltage across a lightbulb is the number of joules of electrical
energy lost by one coulomb of electrons in flowing from the negative side to the
positive side of the bulb (Figure 8). Note that electrons lose energy in flowing
“downhill” across a circuit element such as a lightbulb, and they gain energy when
they are pushed “uphill” across a battery. From its definition, voltage is measured
in joules/coulomb. But we have an abbreviation for this: the joule/coulomb is
called—you guessed it (perhaps)—the volt.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 As electrons move around the circuit of Figure 8, the

energy transformations first in the battery and then in the bulb are
(a) ChemE ¡ ElectE and then ThermE ¡ ElectE; (b) ElectE ¡ ChemE
and then ThermE ¡ ElectE; (c) ChemE ¡ ElectE and then ElectE ¡
ThermE + RadE; (d) ElectE ¡ ChemE and then ElectE ¡ ThermE + RadE;
(e) ThermE ¡ ElectE and then ElectE ¡ ThermE + RadE.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 Suppose the battery of Figure 8 has a voltage of 2 volts,

and that the battery sends 3 coulombs of electrons from the negative terminal and
through the bulb to the positive terminal. The energy of these 3 coulombs of elec-
trons as they leave the negative terminal, as compared with their energy upon arriv-
ing at the positive terminal, is (a) –6 joules; (b) +2 joules; (c) +6 volts; (d) +2 volts;
(e) +6 joules.

Now let’s look more closely at the wire carrying current. I described this process
microscopically in the previous section. The amount of current flowing in the wire
could be quantitatively measured in electrons per second flowing into, out of, or
across any cross-section of, the wire. This would be a huge number in most circuits,
something like 1019 electrons per second. A more practical (because it’s a smaller,
less cumbersome number) measure is the number of coulombs flowing, measured in
coulombs/second. There’s an abbreviation for the coulomb/second: It’s called the
ampere, or amp. The amount of current flowing out of the battery, into the bulb, out

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 Electromagnetism

of the bulb, or in fact across any cross-section of the wire, filament, or battery, is the
same everywhere along the circuit of either Figure 7 or 8. If this weren’t true, for
instance if there were more electrons (per second) coming out of the small magni-
fied segment of wire in Figure 7 than were going into it, then electrons would have
to be created inside the small segment, which would violate conservation of charge.
Finally, let’s look at the bulb. I explained in the previous section that the bulb’s
filament slows or “resists” the flow of electrons mainly because the filament is nar-
row. The filament’s length and the material of which it’s made also help determine
its resistance to the flow of electrons.
Unsurprisingly, a battery of higher voltage causes a larger electric current to
flow in the circuit of Figure 8 because the higher voltage provides more energy to
each electron. But how much larger? Measurements show that, in most circuits, the
current through any circuit element is proportional to the voltage across the ele-
ment. For instance, if you double the voltage of the battery in Figure 8, you’ll dou-
ble the current through the bulb. This proportionality is called Ohm’s law, although
it’s just a practical rule that holds for most circuit elements in most circuits rather
than a basic physical law comparable to Newton’s law or conservation of momen-
tum. Maybe we should call it “Ohm’s rule of thumb.”
Ohm’s law says that current is proportional to voltage. Equivalently, voltage
must be proportional to current: voltage r current, or

voltage = R * current

where R is some fixed number for any particular circuit element. The standard sym-
bols for voltage and current are V and I in which case V = RI or, equivalently, V = IR.
Summing up:

Ohm’s Law

V = IR

where V is the voltage across any circuit element and I is the current through it.
Although V and I may vary, R is a fixed number for any particular circuit element.
R is called the circuit element’s resistance.

“Resistance” is the right word for R because small R means that only a small volt-
age is needed get 1 amp (say) of current to flow in the element, while large R means
a large voltage is needed to get 1 amp to flow.
According to Ohm’s law, R is measured in volts/ampere. But we have an abbrevi-
ation for this combination, called the ohm.
V = IR can be rearranged into two other useful forms:

I = V>R, and R = V>I

Example: Returning to the circuit of Figure 8, a resistance of 200 ohms is typical

for an incandescent bulb filament. In this case, a 10-volt battery would create an
electric current of I = V>R = 10 volt > 200 ohm = 0.05 amp.
Every wire has a certain amount of electrical resistance. For example, the resist-
ance of a 1-meter length of copper wire having a cross-sectional diameter of 1 mil-
limeter is about 0.02 ohms. As we saw in the preceding section, a thinner wire (such

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 Electromagnetism

as a lightbulb filament) would have a larger resistance. A longer wire should also
have a larger resistance because the conduction electrons bump into more atoms as
they more down a longer wire as compared with a shorter wire. So it’s not surpris-
ing that the resistance of 100 m of 1 mm diameter copper wire is 100 times the
resistance of a 1 m length, or 2 ohms.
From the preceding two paragraphs, you can see that in a circuit like Figure 8,
each of the two strands of wire usually have a far smaller resistance than the circuit
element. From an energy point of view, as electrons pass through the external cir-
cuit they lose a little energy in each strand of wire, but they lose most of their
energy in the circuit element.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 Suppose a 1 m strand of 1 mm diameter copper wire is

attached directly from the negative to the positive terminal of a 6-volt battery, as in
Figure 7. The current in the wire is then (a) 3000 amp; (b) 300 amp; (c) 30 amp; (d)
3 amp; (e) 0.3 amp.

Don’t try this at home. The current found in concept check 6 is large enough to
raise the copper wire to its melting point within a few seconds! This is why you
don’t want to attach a low resistance device such as a simple strand of wire across a
battery, or worse yet (because the voltage is larger) a wall outlet. Such a situation is
called a short circuit.

Fields are conditions of space 5 FORCE FIELDS: A DISTURBANCE OF SPACE

itself, considered apart from any
matter that may be in it. Fields To some people, it seems unbelievable that Earth could exert a force on the moon
can change from moment to across 400,000 km of nearly empty space. After all, when you push a box across the
moment and from point to point floor, you exert a force on the box by actually touching or “contacting” it. How might
in space, in something like the you push a box without contacting it? Well, you could put another box between your
way that temperature and wind hand and the box you want to push, and push on this other box (Figure 10). But it’s
velocity are conditions of the air
that can vary with time and posi-
hard to see how you could push on box 2 in the figure without box 1 or something else
tion in the atmosphere.... In the to fill the space between your hands and box 2.
modern theory of elementary par- By the same token, many nineteenth-century physicists felt that if Earth exerts a
ticles known as the Standard gravitational force on the moon, then something must fill the space between Earth
Model, a theory that has been and the moon to transmit the force. They called this “something” a gravitational
well verified experimentally, the field. It’s not really a “thing” in any ordinary sense—not material, not made of
fundamental components of atoms. It’s one example of a “force field” (or simply “field”), a concept that lies at
nature are a few dozen different
kinds of fields.
the heart of most new fundamental physics since 1900. Although physicists invented
Steven Weinberg, Co-Inventor of the
this idea in order to understand forces like gravity that act across empty space, we’ll
Standard Model of Elementary Particles discover that force fields are not imaginary but are physically quite real.

Figure 10
Could you push on box 2 from
some distance away without having
box 1 or some other object
between you and box 2? 2
1

212
 Electromagnetism

Earth’s gravitational field fills the space around Earth, out to far beyond the
moon. Think of this and other force fields as the effect that the source of a force
(Earth, in this case) has on the surrounding space: not on the things in the space, but
on the space itself. Think of a field as a distortion or disturbance of space. Earth’s
gravity disturbs the space between Earth and the moon, and this disturbance—this
gravitational field—pulls on the moon. So the gravitational field transmits
Earth’s gravitational force to the moon.
Earth’s gravitational field exists everywhere around Earth, even in places where
there is nothing to feel any gravitational force. It would exist even if the moon
weren’t there. The field fills the surrounding space in the way that smoke can fill a
room. Earth’s gravitational field exists everywhere that a material object would feel
Earth’s gravitational pull if such a material object were present.
More generally: A gravitational field exists throughout any region of space
where an object would feel a gravitational force if an object were placed there.
Please ponder that sentence. A gravitational field is “the possibility of a gravita-
tional force.” Every material object can exert gravitational forces and so is sur-
rounded by its own gravitational field. We can speak of the gravitational field of the
sun, the moon, a rock, your body, and so forth. Strictly speaking, each object’s grav-
itational field fills all space, but from a practical point of view, most fields can be
neglected at large distances from the objects that create them.
This force field concept applies to every force that can act across empty space,
so it applies to the electric force. Just as a gravitational field surrounds every object
possessing mass, an electric field surrounds every charged object. An electric field
exists wherever any other charged object would (if it were present) feel an electric
force; it is “the possibility of an electric force.” It fills the space between two or
more separate charged objects and causes them to exert forces on each other.
Force fields might seem abstract at first, but they are a simple and natural concept.
Every mass, and every electric charge, is surrounded by a force field that you can’t
see but that you can feel when the field exerts a force on other masses or other
charges. For instance, an electrically charged transparency creates an electric field
around itself, and this field exists even in the absence of other material objects around
the transparency. Even if the transparency is isolated in outer space, it still creates an
electric field throughout the space around it. You can demonstrate the existence of
this electric field by holding a second charged transparency in the vicinity of the first
⫹
transparency and finding that this second transparency feels an electric force. A
To visualize fields, we represent them by “field lines.” For an electric field, the
field lines are in the direction of the force that would be exerted on a positive
charge. For two examples, Figure 11(a) and (b) show some of the electric field lines (a)
surrounding a small positive charge and a small negative charge, respectively. In
Figure 11(b), the lines point inward toward the negative charge since this is the B
direction of the force that would be exerted on a positive charge placed anywhere
near the negative charge. For two more examples, Figure 12(a) shows some of the ⫺
electric field lines surrounding two small equal (the same number of coulombs) but
opposite (one positive and one negative) charges, while Figure 12(b) shows the elec-
tric fields lines surrounding two small equal positive charges.
(b)

CONCEPT CHECK 7 The direction of the force on a positive charge placed at Figure 11
point A in Figure 11 would be (a) upward (toward the top of the page); (b) down- Electric field lines (a) near a small
ward; (c) leftward; (d) rightward. What would be the direction of the force on a positive charge and (b) near a
negative charge placed at point A? small negative charge.

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 Electromagnetism

Figure 12 C
Electric field lines surrounding
(a) two small equal but opposite
charges and (b) two small equal D
positive charges. ⫹ ⫺

(a)

⫹ ⫹

(b)

CONCEPT CHECK 8 The direction of the force on a negative charge placed at

point B in Figure 11 would be (a) upward; (b) downward; (c) leftward; (d) rightward.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 The direction of the force on a positive charge placed at

point C in Figure 12 would be be (a) upward; (b) downward; (c) leftward; (d) right-
ward. What if the positive charge were instead placed at point D?

During the nineteenth century, scientists began using electric fields and also
magnetic fields to help them understand and visualize electric and magnetic forces.
In fact, it’s possible to state the basic laws of electricity and magnetism entirely in
terms of force fields. Written in terms of the electric field, but leaving out the quan-
titative details, we can restate the electric force law (Coulomb’s law) this way:

The Electric Force Law,

Stated in Terms of Fields6
An electric field surrounds every charged object. Furthermore, any charged object
that happens to be located at a point in space where an electric field exists will feel
an electric force due to that field. Briefly, charged objects create electric fields and
feel forces due to the electric fields of other objects.

6 ELECTROMAGNETISM
Have you ever played with magnets? Everyone should have the opportunity to expe-
rience these intriguing toys. You can buy some at a toy store. If you bring two bar

6
If you really want to know the quantitative details, here they are: The “electric field strength” at a distance d
from a small charge q1 is E = (9 × 109) q1/d2, and the force on any charge q 2 placed at any point in an elec-
tric field E is F = q2 E. Putting the two formulas together, we recover Coulomb’s law.

214
 Electromagnetism

magnets near each other, you will discover that their ends either attract or repel each
other even when they are not touching. The ends of a magnet are called its north and
south magnetic poles. Experiment shows that similar poles repel each other and
dissimilar poles attract each other. This reminds us of the forces between electric
charges: Likes repel, and unlikes attract.
It’s plausible that the force acting between magnets actually is the electric force.
This hypothesis is easy to check, for it predicts that magnets should exert forces on
electrically charged objects such as a rubbed transparency or tissue. If you try this,
you’ll find that the magnets do not exert forces on a rubbed transparency or tissue.7
So our hypothesis is false. The force between bar magnets is not the electric force,
and the two ends of a magnet are not electrically charged.
There are other big differences between magnetism and electricity. First, a bar
magnet’s magnetism is permanent and has nothing to do with rubbing. Second,
every magnet has both a north and a south pole. Nobody has found an object that
possessed either kind of pole without the other kind, despite serious searches for
such “monopoles.” On the other hand, it’s easy to find objects such as a rubbed
transparency that possess only one kind of electric charge.
We call this new type of force the magnetic force. The similarities between the
electric and magnetic force suggest that they might be related. One of the great tri-
umphs of nineteenth-century physics was the demonstration that this is in fact the
case. The most concrete evidence was an experiment, first conducted in 1820, in
which electrically charged particles that were in motion exerted a measurable force on
a small magnet. Note that it is only moving charged objects that can exert forces on
magnets. As we have seen, stationary charged objects do not exert forces on magnets.
Further experiments during the nineteenth century showed that all magnetic
forces can be traced to the motion of charged objects. Moving charged objects exert
and feel magnetic forces over and above whatever purely electric forces they would
feel if they were at rest. This additional force, due to the motion, is the magnetic
force. This means that the separate concept of magnetic poles is not needed, so we
can drop the idea of magnetic poles and just think of moving charges instead. For
example, Earth’s magnetic effects are due to electrically charged material flowing
within Earth. This is a good thing, because it permits the operation of magnetic
compasses so that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts can find each other.
But if all magnetic forces can be traced to the motion of charged objects, where
are the moving charges responsible for permanent magnets? The answer is that the
moving charges are found at the subatomic level, in both the orbiting and spinning
motions of electrons in atoms. Because of these motions, each electron in a bar
magnet exerts its own tiny magnetic force on each electron in another bar magnet.
In most materials, these tiny magnetic forces cancel one another because all the
electron motions have different orientations. But the treatment of the iron when a
magnet is manufactured locks many electron orbits into similar orientations, caus-
ing the many microscopic magnetic forces to add up to a large macroscopic effect.
Permanent magnets can temporarily magnetize objects such as nails by forcing
many of the nail’s electrons to orient themselves in similar directions. This is why
non-magnetized nails are attracted to permanent magnets.
7
A small attractive force is sometimes obtained with the transparency, due to an electric effect called “elec-
trical polarization.” This force occurs equally strongly even if an unmagnetized piece of metal is used in
place of the magnet, so it is not caused by the magnetic poles. Rather, it is caused by redistribution of the
highly mobile electrons within a metal when a charged object is brought near it. A similar electrical polar-
ization occurs quite dramatically when a charged transparency is brought near an empty aluminum can
that is free to roll. Try this!

215
 Electromagnetism

Summarizing:

The Magnetic Force Law

Charged objects that are moving exert and feel an additional force beyond the
electric force that exists when they are at rest. This additional force is called the
magnetic force. All magnetic forces are caused by the motion of charged objects.

How do we know that moving charges act like magnets? With the help of a
D cell, a short length of insulated copper wire, and a sensitive magnetic compass with a
well-balanced needle, you can demonstrate the magnetic force law. When the compass
is placed on a level surface and the wire connected to the poles of the battery in such a
way that the wire runs north-south (parallel to the needle) and is above or below the
compass, the needle should rotate to a new position. Explanation: The battery causes
electrons to flow along the wire, and the flowing electrons exert a magnetic force on the
magnet. Caution: Connect the wire for only a few seconds to prevent the battery from
quickly burning out. Use insulated wire because the wire might get hot.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 The force between two bar magnets cannot be due to
gravity because (a) it’s far too strong to be caused by gravity; (b) it’s far too weak to
be caused by gravity; (c) it can be attractive, while gravity is always repulsive; (d) it
can be repulsive, while gravity is always attractive; (e) gravity acts even over large
distances, while magnetism acts only over short distances.

CONCEPT CHECK 11 If you rub a transparency with a tissue to charge both

objects and then hold them at rest several meters apart, the forces they exert on each
other will be (a) zero; (b) electrical repulsion only; (c) electrical attraction only;
(d) electrical repulsion, plus a magnetic force; (e) electrical attraction, plus a mag-
netic force; (f ) a magnetic force only.

CONCEPT CHECK 12 If you saw off one end of a magnet, you will have (a) two
nonmagnetized pieces of metal; (b) two magnets; (c) two magnets that have mag-
netic poles on only one end; (d) none of the above.

Just as charged objects create electric fields in their vicinity, moving charged
N objects create magnetic fields; they also feel forces arising from the magnetic fields
created by other moving charged objects. Like electric fields, magnetic fields can
exist in a vacuum—in a region of space that contains no material particles. Just as
an electric field exists wherever any charged object would (if it were present) feel
an electric force, a magnetic field exists wherever any moving charged object
would (if it were present) feel a magnetic force. Like electric fields, we can visually
S represent magnetic fields by “magnetic field lines.” For example, Figure 13 shows
the magnetic field lines in the vicinity of a bar magnet. They point in the direction
along which a small compass needle would orient itself. Just as electric field
lines point outward from positive charges and inward toward negative charges
(Figure 11), magnetic field lines point outward from north poles and inward toward
south poles (Figure 13).
Figure 14 is an experimental demonstration that a bar magnet’s field actually does
Figure 13
have the shape drawn in Figure 13. Figure 14 is made by sprinkling small iron
A representation of the magnetic
field of a bar magnet.
filings in the vicinity of a bar magnet. The long slender filings are temporarily

216
 Electromagnetism

magnetized by the magnetic field, and the magnetic forces on their north and south
poles then cause the filings to line up parallel to the field of the bar magnet.
Summarizing:

The Magnetic Force Law, Stated in Terms of Fields

A magnetic field surrounds every moving charged object. Furthermore, any moving
charged object that happens to be located at a point in space where a magnetic
field exists will feel a magnetic force due to that field. Briefly, moving charged
objects create magnetic fields and feel forces due to the magnetic fields of other
moving charged objects.

As you’ve seen, electric and magnetic forces both arise from electric charge, so
we think of them as different aspects of a single electromagnetic force. Similarly, Figure 14
both electric and magnetic fields arise from electric charge; we think of them as dif- An experimental demonstration,
ferent aspects of a single electromagnetic field. using iron filings, that the field of
English physicist Michael Faraday (Figure 15) was the first scientist to take elec- a bar magnet actually does have
tromagnetic fields seriously. Partly because of his ability to visualize electromag- the shape drawn in Figure 13.
netic phenomena in terms of fields, he was one of history’s greatest experimental
scientists. During the mid-nineteenth century, he carried out a wide variety of
experiments involving electromagnetic forces and fields. In the course of these
experiments, he investigated what happens when a magnet is brought close to a
simple circular loop of wire. He found that nothing at all happens so long as both
the magnet and the wire loop are stationary. But when he moved either the wire
loop or the magnet, an electric current was created in the wire. As soon as the
motion of the wire loop or the magnet ceased, the electric current ceased.
Apparently, the moving magnet exerted a force on the electrons within the wire
loop, even in the case when the wire loop was stationary. Visualizing this in terms
of fields, Faraday realized that moving either the loop or the magnet caused the
magnetic field in the vicinity of the wire loop to change and that this changing
magnetic field must in turn create an electric field in the vicinity of the loop
because it takes an electric field to cause electrons to begin flowing in a stationary
metal wire. This was something new. Today it is called

Faraday’s Law
When a wire loop is placed in the vicinity of a magnet and when either the loop or American Institue of Physics
the magnet is moved, an electric current is created within the loop for as long as Emilio Segre Archives
the motion continues. Stated in terms of fields: A changing magnetic field creates
an electric field. Figure 15
Michael Faraday was reared in a
nineteenth-century British working
Like the electric and magnetic force laws, Faraday’s law has enormous social class family, and had little formal
schooling. He entered science at age
consequences. It is behind large-scale electric power generation in steam–electric
21 when he applied for a job as
(fossil-fueled or nuclear-fueled) power plants, hydroelectric power plants, and wind
technical assistant to a well-known
turbines (windmills that generate electricity). These power plants are based on chemist, Humphry Davy, whose pub-
machinery that is caused to rotate by either high-pressure steam, high-pressure lic lectures he had attended. Faraday’s
water, or wind. Once you have rotating machinery, you can use Faraday’s law to enthusiasm and talent for science
generate electric current by wrapping many loops of wire around the machinery and soon established him as an independ-
allowing it to rotate in the presence of magnetic fields created by powerful magnets. ent researcher who, at age 34, suc-
ceeded Davy as director of the Royal
Institution of Great Britain.

217
 Electromagnetism

Each loop generates additional electricity, so large amounts of electric energy can
be supplied in this way. The basic principle, showing only a single loop, is illus-
trated in Figure 16.

CONCEPT CHECK 13 A proton is placed at rest in the middle of a “vacuum

chamber,” an enclosure that has been emptied of all matter. Consider some point X
near a particular corner of the chamber. Neglect all influences other than the proton.
Then at point X there is (a) an electric field; (b) an electric force; (c) a magnetic
field; (d) a magnetic force; (e) none of the above, because there is nothing at point X.

CONCEPT CHECK 14 In the preceding question, suppose that the proton is

made to shake back and forth. Then at point X there is (a) an electric field; (b) an
electric force; (c) a magnetic field; (d) a magnetic force; (e) none of the above,
because there is nothing at point X.

CONCEPT CHECK 15 Suppose that, as in Concept Check 13, a proton is placed

at rest in the middle of a vacuum chamber, and also that an electron is placed at rest
at point X. Then the electron (a) feels an electric force due to the electric field cre-
ated by the proton; (b) feels a magnetic force due to the magnetic field created by
the proton; (c) feels no electromagnetic force.

N
Shaft from
power source

Moving (slip) rings

Stationary
conducting
brushes

Figure 16
The principle of electric power generation, showing only a single rectangular loop of wire. A
power source such as wind or steam causes the shaft to rotate, which rotates the loop.
Stationary magnetic north and south poles are placed above and below the loop, so that their
magnetic field passes through the loop as the loop is rotated. As Faraday’s law predicts, this
generates an electric current that flows around the loop and onto the moving metal “slip
rings” that are rigidly attached to the loop. This current then flows onto the stationary metal-
lic brushes that are in electrical contact with the moving rings. The current from the brushes
can then flow to an external consumer of electricity such as the lightbulb shown.

218
 Electromagnetism

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

219
220
Electromagnetism
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 22. State Ohm’s law.

23. What is a short circuit?

ELECTRIC FORCE FORCE FIELDS AND ELECTROMAGNETISM

1. When you rub two transparencies with tissue and hold them 24. Name two kinds of force fields.
close together, they stand apart. Give two reasons that the 25. Which force fields would be felt by a stationary charged
force causing this cannot be gravity. object: gravitational, electric, or magnetic?
2. Cite the evidence supporting the claim that there are two, and 26. Which force fields would be felt by a moving uncharged
only two, types of electric charge. object: gravitational, electric, or magnetic?
3. Suppose that the electric force between two objects is 2 N 27. Which force fields would be felt by a moving charged object:
and that you then double the distance between the objects. gravitational, electric, or magnetic?
What is the new force? 28. What does it mean to say that there is an electric field
4. Suppose that the electric force between two objects is 2 N throughout this room?
and that you then double the electric charge on each object. 29. What does Faraday’s law say about magnets and wires?
What is the new force? 30. What does Faraday’s law say about magnetic fields and elec-
5. Describe at least two ways in which the gravitational force tric fields?
and the electric force differ. 31. Give two reasons that the force between bar magnets cannot
6. In what ways are the electric and gravitational force be the electric force.
laws similar? 32. Magnetic forces are always caused by what types of objects?

THE ELECTRIC ATOM

7. List the types of particles that are found within the atom.
Conceptual Exercises
8. Which types of particles within the atom are electri-
cally charged? ELECTRIC FORCE
9. What holds, or binds, an atom’s orbiting electrons to 1. Suppose that you rub a transparency with a tissue to charge
the nucleus? both objects and then hold them several meters apart and
10. What is an ion? shake both of them back and forth. Name the forces that they
11. What is an electric current? exert on each other.
12. List several phenomena that require the planetary model of 2. Since matter is made of electrically charged particles, why don’t
the atom, rather than the Greek atom, for their explanation. we and the objects around us feel electric forces all the time?
13. Name and briefly describe the three kinds of subatomic parti- 3. When you remove a wool dress from a garment bag, the sides
cles found in atoms. of the bag might tend to stick to the dress. Explain.
14. Give evidence supporting the claim that most of an atom’s 4. Figure 17 shows an electroscope. The leaves (made of metal
mass is concentrated in a tiny nucleus at the center. foil) normally hang down, but they spread apart when the
15. Explain what happens at the microscopic level in a wire metal sphere on top touches a charged object. Explain.
when a battery creates an electric current in the wire. 5. How does the operation of the electroscope (previous exer-
16. What is an atomic number, and how is it related to the chemi- cise) demonstrate electric current?
cal elements? 6. When tiny scraps of paper are placed between two flat metal
plates that have been oppositely charged (one plate charged
ELECTRIC CIRCUITS positively and the other charged negatively), they bounce
17. What is an electric circuit? back and forth between the plates. Explain this phenomenon.
18. Give an example of electric energy. 7. Highway trucks can become electrically charged as they
19. What is the meaning of a battery’s “voltage”? travel. How can this happen? This can be dangerous, espe-
20. What is an ampere? cially for gasoline tank trucks. How can it be prevented?
21. How does AC differ from DC? 8. What happens to the electric force between two charged
objects if the charge on one of them is reversed in sign?

From Chapter 8 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

221
 Electromagnetism: Problem Set

Metal
sphere

Wire Helium

Leaves of
thin metal
foil

Figure 17
Why do the leaves stand apart?

9. What happens to the electric force between two charged

objects if the charges on both of them are reversed in sign? Carbon
10. Ping pong ball A has an electric charge that is 10 times larger
than the charge on ping pong ball B. When placed suffi- Figure 3
ciently close together to exert measurable electric forces on
Two examples of the planetary
each other, how does the force by A on B compare with the
force by B on A? model of the atom. Protons are
11. Objects A and B are both electrically charged. If the distance green, neutrons are white, and elec-
between them is halved while the charge on A is also halved, trons are black. The diagrams are not
what happens to the force between them? drawn to scale! If they were drawn to
12. If the distance between two charged objects is reduced to scale, the nuclei and the electrons
one-fourth of its original value, what happens to the electric would be too small to be seen.
force between them?
13. If the distance between two charged objects and the charge
on each of them are all doubled, what happens to the electric
force between them? 20. In the preceding question, would anything be different if it
lost only one electron?
THE ELECTRIC ATOM 21. MAKING ESTIMATES About how many atoms thick is a sheet
of paper?
14. While brushing your hair, you find that the hairs tend to
22. MAKING ESTIMATES Which is bigger, an atom or a wave-
stand apart from one another and that they are attracted
length of light? Roughly how much bigger?
toward the brush. Explain this in microscopic terms.
15. A covered mystery shoebox is placed on a table. What are a
few ways that you could learn something about its contents ELECTRIC CIRCUITS
without directly touching it or having it lifted? 23. Is a wire that carries current electrically charged?
16. After you walk across a rug and scuff electrons off the rug, 24. At what point or points in the circuit of Figure 8 do electrons
are you positively or negatively charged? have the least energy? What kind of energy?
17. According to Figure 3, what are the atomic numbers of car- 25. Does more current flow out of a battery than into it?
bon and helium? Roughly how much more massive is the car- 26. Only a small fraction of the electric energy that is used up in
bon atom than the helium atom? an incandescent lightbulb is transformed into light. What
18. Some science fiction stories portray atoms as true miniature happens to the remaining energy?
solar systems populated by tiny creatures. What are some dif- 27. In the circuit of Figure 8, would a thicker lightbulb filament
ferences, other than size, between our solar system and the produce a larger current, smaller current, or neither? Explain.
planetary model of an atom? 28. Do the headlights of an automobile carry AC or DC? What
19. An atom loses its two outermost electrons. How does the about a toaster in your kitchen?
resulting ion behave when it is near a positively charged 29. The filament of a lightbulb glows, while the connecting wires
transparency? A negatively charged tissue? do not. Why?

222
 Electromagnetism: Problem Set

Figure 8
Because electrons flow so easily
through ordinary wires, the circuit
– of Figure 7 would soon burn out
+ the wire or battery. Inserting an
incandescent lightbulb or other
“circuit element” reduces the flow
to safe levels. This happens
because the lightbulb’s glowing
– + filament is very thin and thus
restricts or “resists” the current,
much as a squeezed garden hose
restricts the flow of water.

FORCE FIELDS 2. Referring to Problem 1, how far apart must the objects be in
order to exert an electric force of 4F on each other?
30. Do the electric circuits in your home produce magnetic 3. Two small electrically charged objects are placed a certain dis-
fields? Suggest a measurement that might check your answer. tance apart, where they exert an electric force of 4 N on each
31. Is an electric field a form of matter? Explain. What about a other. Suppose the charge on object #1 is doubled. What hap-
gravitational field? pens to the force? What if the charge on both objects is doubled?
32. A proton is placed, at rest, at some point A within a room 4. Two small electrically charged objects are placed a certain dis-
that is otherwise devoid of all matter. At some other point B tance apart, where they exert an electric force of 4 N on each
within the room is there an electric field? An electric force? other. Suppose the charge on object #1 is halved. What happens
A magnetic field? A magnetic force? Is there energy at to the force? What if the charge on both objects is halved?
point B? 5. Two small objects, each containing an electric charge q, are
33. Suppose that, in the preceding exercise, the proton is oscillat- placed a certain distance apart, producing an electric force F
ing back and forth. Is there an electric field at point B? An by each object on the other. Suppose half of the first object’s
electric force? A magnetic field? A magnetic force? Energy? charge is transferred to the second object. What happens to
34. Suppose you have a piece of metal wire and a bar magnet. the force?
Describe two ways in which you could create an electric cur- 6. How does the electric force between two helium nuclei placed
rent. What law of physics is involved here? a certain distance apart compare with the force between two
hydrogen nuclei placed the same distance apart?
ELECTROMAGNETISM 7. How does the electric force between a helium nucleus and a
35. You have three iron bars, only two of which are permanent lithium nucleus placed a certain distance apart compare with
magnets. Because of temporary magnetization, all three bars the force between two hydrogen nuclei placed the same dis-
at first appear to be magnetized. How can you determine tance apart?
which one is not magnetized, without using any other objects? 8. How does the electric force between two hydrogen nuclei
36. Suppose you have two iron bars (see the previous exercise), one placed a certain distance apart compare with the force between
magnetized and one not magnetized. Can you then determine two helium nuclei placed twice as far apart?
which one is magnetized, without using any other objects? 9. What is the electric force between two pellets that each have
37. If you place a proton at some point in an electric field and a charge of 10–6 C placed 1 cm apart?
then release it, what will happen? 10. A dust particle carrying a charge of -3 * 10 - 10 C is 2 mm
38. How would a proton’s motion differ from the motion of an to the left of another dust particle carrying a charge of
electron placed at the same point in the same electric field? +4 * 10 - 10 C. Find the magnitude and direction of the elec-
39. How would a proton’s motion differ from the motion of an elec- tric force on the first particle.
tron placed at the same point in the same gravitational field? 11. Two objects carrying equal amounts of charge are placed
10 cm apart, where the force between them is found to be
0.9 N. Find the charge on each of the objects.
Problems 12. How far should an object carrying a charge of 2 * 10 - 6 C
be from another object carrying a charge of 4 * 10 - 6 C in
order for them to exert a force of 6 N on each other?
THE ELECTRIC FORCE
1. Two small electrically charged objects are placed 8 cm apart, ELECTRIC CIRCUITS
where they exert an electric force F on each other. How far 13. What should be the resistance of a lightbulb in order for it to
apart must they be in order to exert an electric force of draw a current of 2 amp when plugged into a 120-volt outlet?
(1/4) F on each other?

223
 Electromagnetism: Problem Set

14. A blow dryer with a resistance of 6 ohms is plugged into 13. The force is unchanged.
a 120-volt outlet. How much current does it draw from 15. Roll a ball so that it collides with the box to see whether the
the outlet? contents have high mass or low mass. Tie a string around the
15. If the coils of a heater have a resistance of 12 ohm, how much box and pull it; the box’s mass can be determined by measur-
current does it draw when plugged into a 120-volt outlet? ing the pulling and the acceleration. Fire bullets into the box
16. An 0.5 amp current runs through a lamp whose resistance is from all directions. Hit the box with a hammer to see if any-
150 ohm. What is the voltage across the lamp? thing inside rolls around.
17. If a lightbulb has a resistance of 40 ohm and a current of 2 amp, 17. 6 and 2. The ratio is about 12 to 4, which is the same as
at what voltage is it operating? 3 to 1.
18. A 1.5-volt battery is short-circuited by a 1-meter length of 19. The ion will carry a positive charge, so it will be repelled by
wire having a resistance of only 0.02 ohm. How large is the a positively charged transparency, and attracted to a nega-
current flowing through the wire (before the wire or the bat- tively charged tissue.
tery burn out)? 21. A 500-sheet stack of typing paper is about 5 cm thick, so the
thickness of one sheet of paper is about 5 cm>500 =
0.01 cm = 10 - 4 m. An atom is about 10 - 10 m across, so a
Answers to Concept Checks piece of paper is about 10 - 4>10 - 10 = 106 times bigger.
23. No, the number of protons in any segment equals the number
1. If you set q1 = 1 C, q2 = 1 C, and d = 1 m, Coulomb’s law of electrons. But the protons remain at rest while the elec-
tells you that F = 9 * 109 N, (d). trons move along the wire.
2. Smallest mass (b), largest mass (e). 25. The amount of current flowing out always equals the amount
3. (a), (b), (c), and (e) flowing in. For instance, if more electrons were flowing out
4. (c) than in, electrons would have to pile up someplace along the
5. (e) circuit.
6. I = V>R = 6 volts>0.02 ohm = 300 amps, (b). 27. A thicker filament would allow electrons to flow through
7. (c). The force on a negative charge placed at A would be in more easily, so it would produce a larger current.
the opposite direction, (d). 29. The filament gets a lot hotter because, due to the thinness of
8. The field points downward at point B, so the force on a small the filament, the moving electrons bump into so many of the
negative charge placed at point B would be upward, (a). filament’s atoms.
9. The direction of the field at point C is rightward, so the force 31. An electric field is not made of atoms or of other material
on a positive charge placed at point C would be rightward, particles, so it is not a form of matter. The same goes for a
(d). If the charge were instead placed at point D, the force on gravitational field.
it would be downward, (b). 33. At B there is an electric field (because of the charge at A),
10. (a) and (d) there is no electric force (because there is no charge at B),
11. (c) there is a magnetic field (because the charge at A is mov-
12. (b) ing), there is no magnetic force (because there is no charge
13. (a). Note that (b) is incorrect because there is no material at B), and there is energy (because of the presence of an
object at point X to feel a force; (c) is incorrect because the electromagnetic field).
proton is stationary, so it doesn’t create a magnetic field. 35. The two permanent magnets will be able to both attract and
14. (a) and (c) repel each other, depending on which ends are put together.
15. (a) The non-magnetized bar will only be attracted to (and not
repelled by) the other two bars.
37. It will start to move in the direction of the field.
Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual 39. They wouldn’t differ. They would both move at the same
acceleration and the same speed, just like two falling objects
Exercises and Problems having different masses (Galileo’s principle of falling).
Conceptual Exercises Problems
1. Both an electric force and a magnetic force will be exerted. 1. Because of the inverse-square nature of the force, placing
(There will also be a tiny gravitational force.) them twice as far apart (16 cm) will cause the force to be
3. The bag and the dress become oppositely charged, due to 1/4 as strong.
friction, causing them to attract each other and cling together. 3. With doubled charge on #1, the force will double to 8 N. If
5. Charge must have flowed, or moved, from the metal sphere both charges are doubled, the force will be 16 N.
down to the leaves; this motion of charge is electrical current. 5. #1 now contains a charge of q/2, while #2 contains (3/2)q.
7. The truck picks up charge from the road by friction (the tires Thus q1q2 = (1>2)q * (3>2)q = 3>4q2. So the force is
rubbing against the road). It can be prevented by providing reduced to 3/4 of its previous value.
an easy pathway for charge back to the road—a chain hang- 7. Lithium has three protons, helium has two protons, and
ing from the truck to the road, for example. hydrogen has one proton. So the force between a lithium and
9. The forces on each charge are unchanged. helium nucleus is 3 * 2 = 6 times larger than that between
11. The force is doubled. two hydrogen nuclei.

224
 Electromagnetism: Problem Set

9. From Coulomb’s law, 13. R = V>I = 120>2 = 60 ohm.

(10 - 6) * (10 - 6) 15. I = V>R = 120>12 = 10 amp.
F = 9 * 109 * = 90 N. 17. V = IR = 2 * 40 = 80 volt.
(0.01)2
11. Coulomb’s law tells us that F = 9 * 109 q2>d2, from which
0.9 = 9 * 109 q2>(0.01)2. Thus q2 = 0.9 * (0.01)2>
9 - 14
9 * 10 = 10 .
Taking the square root, q = 10 - 7 C.

225
226
Waves, Light, and
Climate Change
Quite simply, I think it is no exaggeration to say that climate change is the biggest prob-
lem our civilization has ever had to face up to in its 12,000 years, because it requires a
collective response.
David King, Chief Science Adviser to the British Government, 2001–2007

T
his chapter continues our quest to grasp the nature of light, and looks at the
planetary consequences of recent human interference with the radiations
(including light) that arrive from the sun.
In the first two sections, you’ll learn about waves, a topic that we’ll also need for
studying quantum physics. In Section 3, you’ll see what waves have to do with light.
Section 4 explains light in terms of electromagnetic fields. Section 5 makes the
important, even revolutionary, point that electromagnetic fields are physically real
and looks ahead to the modern view that, at the most fundamental level, the universe
is made of fields. The electromagnetic field theory of light leads to an understanding
of several other lightlike “radiations” (Section 6) and of sunlight (Section 7). In line
with my goal of presenting important physics-related social implications as soon as
the physics background is prepared, I’ll describe in Sections 8 and 9 two ways in
which humans have significantly altered the interaction of our planet with the sun:
(1) alteration in the planetary impact of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, caused by
human depletion of atmospheric ozone, and (2) alteration of the planetary impact of
the sun’s infrared radiation, caused by human emissions of carbon-dioxide and other
gases. The two problems have a lot in common. Encouragingly, humans have solved
the first of these, but the second looms ever larger.

1 WAVES: SOMETHING ELSE THAT TRAVELS

You’re probably familiar with some kinds of waves (Figure 1). Stretch a few meters
of flexible rope along the floor, fix one end (perhaps under a friend’s foot), and give
the free end a single shake. Something travels down the rope. Figure 2 is a series of
pictures taken with a movie camera, showing a similar “something” traveling down
a long spring that has been given a single up-and-down shake at the right-hand end.
As another example, imagine (better yet, try it!) stretching a Slinky™ toy between
your two hands along a tabletop. Quickly move the left end a short distance toward
the right and then back to the left, holding the right end fixed. Something travels
along the Slinky from your left to your right hand (Figure 3). This “something”

From Chapter 9 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

227
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

that travels across the water, along the rope, and along the Slinky is called a wave.
As another example, the continued shaking of one end of a rope causes a long con-
tinuous wave to travel along the rope (Figure 4).
But wave is just a word that names the behavior without telling us what it really
is. What actually happens here? In Figure 2, how do the individual parts of the
spring actually move? As you can see from the motion of the small ribbon tied to
the spring, each loop just moves up and then back down.
How does a particular part of the water move in Figure 1? Fill a bowl with water,
Jeff Greenberg/Omni-Photo float a small cork in it, and drop a small pebble in, several centimeters from the
Communications, Inc. cork, to create ripples. Observe the cork as ripples pass by. If the ripples are small,
Figure 1 the cork will move up and down, not outward along with the ripples. Each portion
Water waves. of the water just shakes or “vibrates” up and down, but does not travel along the
water surface. The Slinky wave is similar, except that the vibrations are parallel
instead of perpendicular to the Slinky.
One thing that is traveling with each of these waves is energy. You can verify this
for yourself by holding the fixed end of a rope while a friend shakes the other end.
Your hand vibrates as the pulse arrives. It takes work to force your hand back and
forth this way, and we know that work requires energy. So waves transfer energy.
On the other hand, no material substance is transferred by waves: No water is
transferred outward in Figure 1, no part of the spring is transferred from right to
left in Figure 2, and no part of the Slinky is transferred from left to right in
Figure 3. This type of motion is unlike any motion we have examined before.
Previously we studied balls, books, molecules, and other material objects actually
moving from one place to another.
What do we see traveling along the spring in Figure 2? Well, we see a bump trav-
eling along the otherwise straight spring! In Figure 3 we see a compression, a
squeezed region, traveling along the Slinky. We could describe both as “distur-
bances” that travel along the otherwise undisturbed spring or Slinky. The situation

Compression

Compression moves toward the right

Figure 3
With the right-hand end of the Slinky held fixed, a quick motion of the left-hand end
to the right and back again to the left creates a pulse that travels down the Slinky.
Uri Haber-Schaim
Figure 2
A series of pictures taken with a
movie camera, showing a wave
moving along a spring. A ribbon is
tied to the spring at the point Direction of wave motion
marked by the arrow. The ribbon
moves up and down as the wave Figure 4
goes by, but it does not move in the Continued shaking of the end of a rope creates a continuous wave that travels down
direction of the wave. the rope.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

is similar for water waves. The material through which the disturbance travels—the
spring or Slinky or water—is called the medium for the wave.
So a wave is a disturbance that travels through a medium in such a way that energy
travels through the medium but matter does not.
A “sports wave” in a large stadium filled with people is an instructive example.
It begins when all the people at one end of the stadium stand up briefly with their
hands in the air. As they sit down, the people in the adjoining part of the stadium
stand up briefly with their hands in the air, and so forth all around the arena.
Although this gives the appearance of something traveling around the stadium, this
“something” is not any single thing. The people who are momentarily standing con-
stitute a disturbance of the otherwise-seated crowd, and it is this disturbance that
travels through the crowd. This is precisely the sort of situation we have in mind
when we use the word wave.
We need some quantitative terms. The wavelength of a continuous, repeated wave
is the distance from any point along the wave to the next similar point, for example,
from crest to crest or from trough to trough in Figure 5. A wave’s frequency is the
number of vibrations that any particular part of the medium completes in each sec-
ond. Waves are usually sent out by a vibrating source of some kind, in which case the
wave’s frequency must be the same as the source’s frequency. The frequency could
also be defined as the number of waves that the source sends out during each second.
The unit for measuring frequency is the vibration per second, also called a hertz (Hz).
A wave’s amplitude is its maximum height or depth (Figure 5), in other words, its
maximum disturbance from the “neutral” or undisturbed situation. The wavespeed is
the speed at which the disturbance moves through the medium.1
In most waves, disturbances are able to travel through a medium because of the
connections between the parts of the medium. (In the sports wave, this connection
is mental rather than directly physical.) For example, when you shake one end of a
rope, this disturbance moves down the rope because the different parts of the rope
are connected, so that when one part is lifted, its neighbor is soon lifted also. So it’s
reasonable to suppose that the wavespeed is determined mainly by the medium and
is roughly the same for differently shaped disturbances in the same medium.
Experiments confirm this notion that differently shaped disturbances all travel
through any particular medium at roughly the same wavespeed.

Wavelength

Amplitude

Wavespeed

Figure 5
The meaning of wavelength and amplitude. The wavespeed is the speed at
which a crest or a trough moves down the rope.

1
Quantitatively, a wave’s wavelength l, frequency f, and wavespeed s are related by s = f l. For example, if
three waves are sent out by the wave source every second ( f = 3 vib>s) and each wave has a length of
2 meters (l = 2 m), then it seems reasonable that the wavespeed should be 3 * 2 = 6 m>s. Extending
this argument, you can see that the general relation is s = f l.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

CONCEPT CHECK 1 Which of the following is a true wave? (a) A row of

falling dominoes. (b) Ripples on the surface of a pond, extending outward from a
pebble dropped in the water. (c) A large water wave coming into the beach, one that
surfers can ride on. (d) Water rushing downstream.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 In Figure 6, which wave has the larger or “higher” fre-
quency, and which carries more energy? (a) The top wave has higher frequency and
carries more energy. (b) The top wave has higher frequency but the bottom wave car-
ries more energy. (c) The bottom wave has higher frequency and carries more energy.
Figure 6 (d) The bottom wave has higher frequency but the top wave carries more energy.
Which wave has the higher
(larger) frequency, assuming that
both have the same wavespeed?
From Concept Check 2, note these useful rules: Shorter wavelength means
higher frequency and, if the amplitude remains unchanged, then higher frequency
means higher energy.

2 INTERFERENCE: A BEHAVIOR UNIQUE TO WAVES

How do different waves traveling through the same medium interact with one
another? For example, what happens when the large upward wave in Figure 7 meets
Before
meeting the small downward wave? Experiment shows that they just pass through each other
without distortion (Figure 8). You might have expected this, because each wave sim-
ply lifts or lowers the rope as it travels, so when the two waves meet, the rope is
raised a lot by the large wave and simultaneously lowered a little by the small wave.
Figure 7
Effects such as this, occurring when two waves are present at the same time and
Two waves travel in opposite direc- place, are called wave interference, or just “interference.”
tions along a rope. What happens
when they meet? CONCEPT CHECK 3 Suppose that the two waves in Figure 7 had the same size
and shape, with the wave on the right being inverted as shown, and that the wave on
the left is a 2 cm crest (high point). The resulting interference would be (a) a 4 cm
crest; (b) a 2 cm crest; (c) flat; (d) a 4 cm trough (low point); (e) a 2 cm trough.
Before

Two equal waves of opposite orientation interfere by canceling each other

(Figure 9), and two equal waves of the same orientation interfere by reinforcing each
other (Figure 10). These two cases, cancellation and reinforcement, are called
destructive interference and constructive interference.
During
Wave interference shows, once again, the stark difference between the motion of
a material object and wave motion. Two moving material objects—say, two freight
trains—don’t pass through each other undisturbed! This distinction will be signifi-
cant later in this text.
Interference gets more interesting when it happens in two or three dimensions.
After An undisturbed rope has only one significant dimension, length. The surface of a
lake is “two-dimensional” because it has length and width; the space in a room is
“three-dimensional” because it has length, width, and height. In a two- or three-
dimensional medium, the waves created by a small source are outward-spreading
Figure 8 circles (Figure 1) or spheres, respectively.
Two waves meeting: interference. As a two-dimensional example, suppose you fill a rectangular pan with water
and tap your fingers at the same steady rate on the surface at two points along one
side of the pan. Continuous waves will spread out from each of the two sources
and soon cover the water surface. With the help of Figure 11, you can predict the
interference effects. The figure shows the water as viewed from above. The two

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

sources are marked A and B. The solid circles represent crests from source A act-
ing alone, and the dashed circles represent crests from source B acting alone. The
troughs, not drawn, lie midway between the crests. To predict the interference pat-
tern, work through Concept Check 4.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 In Figure 11, draw an “x” (a color enhances the effect) at
every point of constructive interference. (Hint: These are places where crest meets
crest, and where trough meets trough.) Can you see a pattern? Next, draw an “o” (in
a different color) at every point of destructive interference. (Hint: These are places
where crest meets trough.) Now can you see a pattern?

Before
Before

During

During

After

After

Figure 9 Figure 10
Two waves meet and interfere Two waves meet and interfere
destructively. constructively.

Figure 11
Continuous surface waves spread-
ing out from two sources. What will
the interference effects look like?

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Figure 12 is a photograph of this experiment, looking down onto the water’s sur-
face. The photographic technique causes crests to appear bright, troughs to appear
dark, and flat places to appear gray. As you can see, the interference pattern has
lines of undisturbed water radiating outward as though they came from a point
somewhere between the two sources. The interference is destructive along these
lines. Between these undisturbed lines are other lines of constructive interference,
with large crests and troughs. Just what Concept Check 4 predicted, right?
Our analysis so far has been at one instant in time. Now “turn on time” by imag-
ining a moving picture that begins with the snapshot in Figure 12. Since the indi-
vidual circular waves move outward from A and B, the entire pattern must move
outward also; in other words, the “rays” of destructive and constructive interference
Uri Haber-Schaim
remain fixed in place, while the large waves within the constructive rays move out-
ward, as shown by the arrows in Figure 13.
Figure 12 Finally, imagine that the water is a rectangular swimming pool and that you exam-
Interference between continuous ine the waves as they slosh against the right-hand wall of the pool. What would you
surface waves spreading out from observe? You can predict the answer using Figure 13. The observer should find some
two sources: experimental results. points where large waves pound against the wall, marked with large Xs in Figure 14,
Crests (constructive interference) and other points, marked with large Os, where no waves roll in.
are bright, troughs (also construc- The difference between the pattern from a single source and from two sources is
tive interference) are dark, and flat striking. Waves from a single source, say source A operating alone, roll into all
places (destructive interference)
parts of the bordering wall (Figure 15). If we also turn on the second source, B, the
are gray.
pattern along the wall shifts to an interference pattern (Figure 14). The most dra-

X
x Observer stands on
x
x this side and looks
x
x x O down at pool,
o o
x x o o
observing large
x x o waves rolling into
oo
x x o o o x X points marked X at
A x x
x xo o x x x
side of pool, and no
x o x x waves rolling into
x o x x O
o ox x x o o o o o
o o o points marked O.
x o o o o Small x’s and o’s
o o
Uri Haber-Schaim x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X are places on
o o o
x x xo o o o o o surface of pool
o o x x o o o o where interference
Figure 13 x o o x x o O
x o x x is constructive (x’s)
Lines of constructive and destruc- x x o o x x
B o o x x and destructive (o’s).
tive interference remain fixed in x x
x o o X
x x o o
place, and constructive (large) x x o o
waves move outward within the x o
x O
constructive regions in the direc- x
x
tions indicated by the arrows. x
x
X

Figure 14
An observer scanning a wall at the far border of the pool finds points
where large waves come into the wall, interspersed with points
where no waves come in.

232
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Figure 15
If one of the two wave sources
shuts off, an observer scanning the
wall will find that waves arrive at
all points. Since waves now spread
out from only a single source,
there is no longer any interference.

matic change is that now no waves come into the points marked O, even though
they did come into these points when only one source was operating. It seems par-
adoxical: When you add a second source you get a reduced (in fact, zero) effect at
the points marked O.
Now let’s look at light.

3 LIGHT: PARTICLES OR WAVE?

When you turn off the lightbulb at night, it gets dark. So the light in your room must
have come from the lightbulb and not, for example, from your eyes. When you look at a
luminous (light-emitting) object like a lightbulb, light goes from the bulb to your eyes.
In order for you to see a nonluminous object, such as the wall of your room, light from
the lightbulb must bounce (reflect) off the wall and then into your eyes. The light
reflecting from the wall does not give you a nice mirror reflection, however, because the
rough surface of most walls scatters the incoming light in many different directions.
But what enters your eyes when you see light? This has been debated for cen-
turies, with most of the suggested answers falling into either the “particle” or
“wave” category. Experiment is the ultimate judge. We need an experimental test
that distinguishes between the particle and wave models of light. The preceding
section suggests a good candidate: wave interference. Particles might interact in
various ways, but they do not interfere in the way that waves do. What does light
do? To answer this, we need an experiment like the water–wave interference exper-
iment, but with light. The first experiment you might think of is to simply shine two
flashlights on a flat surface. But if you try this (do it!), you’ll find that it gives no
observable interference effects—no alternating regions of constructive (brightly lit)
and destructive (darker) regions. So maybe light is a stream of particles.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Figure 16
The double-slit experiment with light.
What will we see on the screen?
A
B ?

Partition with two very

small thin slits (shown
here greatly enlarged)
to let light through Screen

But in our discussion of water–wave interference, we assumed that the two wave
sources had identical vibrations. For example, if the two sources in Figure 12 were
changing their frequency all the time and in different ways, we would not expect to see
a recognizable interference pattern. A flashlight bulb’s light is produced by heating up
the bulb’s thin wire, or filament, until it glows. The microscopic thermal motions that
make the filament hot enough to glow are highly random, so we wouldn’t expect two
different bulbs to have identical vibrations, so they wouldn’t show interference even if
light were a wave.

How do we know whether light is a wave, or particles? In 1801, Thomas Young

solved the problem of finding two sources with identical vibrations by using a single light source
that he split into two parts. He then recombined these parts to see whether they interfered.
Figure 16 shows how to do this. A single light source sends light through two very
small and narrow parallel slits (shown greatly enlarged) in a partition that blocks all the
light except that going through the slits. The two slits act as two new sources of light. If
light is a wave, these two sources should have synchronized vibrations, because the light
from each slit originates in the same filament.2 Young found an experimental result like
that shown in Figure 17. This photograph was made by placing photographic film at the
position of the receiving screen as shown in Figure 18.
To interpret Figure 17, let’s compare it with water–wave interference. The receiving screen of
Figure 16 is similar to the right-hand wall in Figure 14. But water waves occur on the two-dimen-
sional surface of water, while light fills three-dimensional space. The two sources of light are not
Figure 17 tiny points like A and B in Figure 14 but instead are slits that extend into the third dimension. If
The double-slit experiment with these slits send out light waves, we would expect the interference pattern on the receiving
light: experimental result. screen to be alternating lines of constructive and destructive interference running parallel to the
slits, not small points like those marked X and O in Figure 14. In other words, we would expect
alternating bright (lit) and dark lines—precisely the outcome in Figure 17.
Conclusion of this double-slit interference experiment with light: light is a wave.

A
What happens if we close one of the slits, leaving only one slit open? If light is a
B
wave, we would expect waves to spread out from the open slit, without interference,
just like the water waves in Figure 15. A broad band of light should then cover a
large area of the receiving screen (Figure 19). This is, in fact, what happens.
Very narrow The clearest evidence that the flashlight is sending out waves and not particles can
slits, shown here be found at the positions of the dark lines in the double-slit experiment, the points
greatly enlarged.

2
More precisely, the light must first be filtered so that it is all of one color (one frequency), and it must first
Figure 18 come through a single narrow slit so the vibrations at slit A are synchronized with those at slit B. This
The double-slit experiment with light: makes Young’s experiment exactly analogous to Figures 13 and 14. In those figures, the waves from A and
the experimental setup and result. B have the same frequency and they are synchronized.

234
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

where no light arrives. With only one slit open, light spreads out over the entire
receiving screen. How is it, then, that if we simply open a second slit, no light arrives
at these particular positions? It’s difficult to see how particles coming through the two A
slits could cancel one another in this way, but it’s just what we expect of waves.
By measuring the distance from one bright constructive-interference line to the
next such line in a pattern such as Figure 17 and using a little geometry, it’s possi-
ble to calculate the wavelength of the light that created the pattern. Measurements Extremely narrow single slit,
of interference patterns like this are the usual method of measuring the wavelength shown here greatly enlarged. To
get the noninterference pattern
of light. This wavelength turns out to be very small. Light sources have wavelengths shown, the slit’s width must be less
ranging from about 0.4 * 10-6 m to 0.7 * 10-6 m (less than a millionth of a meter, than the wavelength of the light!
or less than one-thousandth of a millimeter).
Figure 19
If one of the two slits is closed,
How do we know that light is a wave? You can easily demonstrate light-wave inter- light will arrive at all points along
ference yourself, using a single-slit wave-interference effect that occurs when the slit is the receiving screen. The white
hundreds of times larger than the wavelength of the light. With such a wide slit, the light screen indicates that there is no
coming through the slit acts like hundreds of tiny sources. If light is a wave, then all the interference pattern—that light
individual waves from these hundreds of sources should interfere with one another to arrives everywhere on the screen,
form an interference pattern. in contrast to the pattern that
Here’s the experiment: Focus your eyes on a well-lit wall or other surface. Make a slit emerged in Figure 18.
by holding your thumb and forefinger about a millimeter apart and several centimeters in
front of your eye. Focus on the light source (the wall), not on your fingers, so that your
fingers look blurred. Where the blurs overlap, you should see narrow bright and dark lines
running parallel to your fingers. These lines are constructive and destructive interference
regions, formed at the position of your eye.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 If water waves of longer wavelength were used in the

experiment shown in Figure 14, the Xs and Os along the right-hand side of the fig-
ure would be (a) farther apart; (b) closer together; (c) unchanged.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 If shorter-wavelength light were used in the experiment

whose result is shown in Figure 17, the alternating bright and dark lines in the fig-
ure would be (a) unchanged; (b) greater in number, but unchanged in length or
width; (c) wider; (d) narrower; (e) longer; (f) shorter.

MAKI NG ESTI MATES Roughly, how does a typical light wavelength compare
with the thickness of a piece of paper?

4 THE ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE THEORY OF LIGHT

Water waves, rope waves, and Slinky waves are waves in water, ropes, and Slinkies.
But what medium vibrates when light waves travel? Hmm... It’s not an easy ques-
tion. We don’t see light beams directly the way we see water waves (Figure 20). It is
as though we could see the impact of water waves against the edge of a swimming
pool, without being able to see the water. We can see light beams in dusty air

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES Choose a typical wavelength of light, say 5 * 10-7 m (in making Figure 20
estimates, choose simple but reasonable numbers). To estimate the thickness of a sheet of paper, estimate the Light beams cannot be seen from
thickness of, say, 500 sheets (about 5 cm) and divide by 500 (5 cm>500 = 0.1 cm = 10-4 m). The number the side. What invisible medium is
of wavelengths in this thickness is 10-4>(5 * 10-7) = 10-4 + 7>5 = 103>5 = 1000>5 = 200. carrying these waves?

235
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

(Figure 21), but only because the light is reflected off the dust particles. The medium
for light waves is itself invisible.
Could the medium be air? Sounds plausible. But what about light traveling
here from the sun, moon, and stars? Air extends, in any appreciable amounts, only
a few miles above Earth’s surface, so air cannot be the medium for light waves.3
One odd thing about light is that it moves through outer space where there is essen-
tially no matter at all. But something must be out there in so-called empty space,
Uri Haber-Schaim
because without a medium to do the waving, you can’t have a wave. The medium
Figure 21 for light, then, must be nonmaterial—not made of atoms or other forms of matter.
You can see a light beam by allow- Nineteenth-century scientists devoted lots of effort to learning what kind of
ing it to reflect off dust particles in wave light is. It turns out, as we’ll see, that the answer is bound up with electricity.
the air. Suppose you pull a rubber comb through your hair, scuffing electrons from your
hair onto the comb. The charged comb then creates an electric field in the surround-
ing space, a field that can be detected by a rubbed (and hence electrically charged)
transparency held near the comb. If you quickly shake the comb once, up and back
down, the electric field in the surrounding space will shake too. This can be
detected by the transparency, which will shake in response to the comb’s motion.
The comb also creates a magnetic field during the brief time that it’s moving. This
temporary magnetic field could in principle (the force would be very small) be
detected as a brief shake of a magnet placed near the comb. In summary, the comb’s
motion causes changes in the electromagnetic field around the comb, changes that
can be detected by other charged objects and magnets (Figure 22).
There is an interesting question about this experiment, a question that many
nineteenth-century scientists asked: When will a distant detector feel the changes in
Figure 22 the field? Is the effect instantaneous? Suppose you shake the comb precisely at
If you shake a charged object such noon. Does the transparency shake precisely at noon, too, or a little later?
as a charged comb, other charged During the 1860s, British physicist James Clerk Maxwell (Figure 23) did some
objects will shake in response. hard thinking about electromagnetism, putting all that was then known about the
subject together into a single theory. Maxwell’s theory emphasized fields and
described how electrically charged objects create electromagnetic fields. Three
basic principles of the electromagnetic force were known at that time. Stating these
three principles in terms of fields, the electric force law says that charged objects
create electric fields, the magnetic force law says that moving charged objects cre-
ate magnetic fields, and Faraday’s law says that any change in a magnetic field must
create an electric field.
Maxwell, like most theoretical physicists, felt that a correct and fundamental
description of the natural world should also be fitting, balanced, symmetric, or, in a
word, beautiful. It seemed to him that the laws of electricity and magnetism should
treat electricity on the one hand, and magnetism on the other, symmetrically. The
three basic laws (electric force law, magnetic force law, Faraday’s law) seemed to be
missing something in this regard. The first two state that electric fields and magnetic
fields arise from charged objects and from moving charged objects, respectively.
Faraday’s law then states that electric fields can be created in a second way, namely by
a changing magnetic field. It seemed to Maxwell that there should then be a fourth
law, one that would balance Faraday’s law by providing a second way to create
magnetic fields. Such a fourth law should be symmetric to Faraday’s law; in other
words, it should state that magnetic fields can be created by a changing electric field.

3
Air is the medium for sound waves rather than for light waves. Since sound does not bear directly on the
major purposes of this text, we won’t discuss it further here.

236
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Then the theory would treat electric and magnetic fields symmetrically: Changes in
one field always create the other field. Maxwell’s invention, when combined with the
other three laws, led him to predict the existence of so-called “electromagnetic
waves” (see below) and to predict that light is a wave of this sort—predictions that are
now amply verified and that represent a stunning success for theoretical reasoning.
Once again we see the importance of beauty and symmetry in science.4
Maxwell’s theory, which he formulated in precise mathematical language, pre-
dicted a time delay for electromagnetic forces. The key ingredient was the way that
changes in one field created the other field. This meant that electric and magnetic
fields can create and re-create each other. Once the fields at one point in space are
changed—for instance, by giving a charged comb a single shake—Maxwell’s the-
ory implied that the change is transmitted outward as a change in the nearby fields
a short time later, and these changing fields in turn transmit the change farther out-
ward, and so forth. It follows from this that electric and magnetic forces are not
transmitted instantaneously. American Institute of Physics/
Maxwell’s analysis showed that if you disturb an electromagnetic field at one point, Emilio Segre Visual Archives
the disturbance will move outward through the field. This is exactly the kind of behav- Figure 23
ior that we called “wave motion” in Section 1. But this new type of wave is not a wave James Clerk Maxwell, the “Isaac
in a material (made of matter) medium such as water. Rather, the medium is the elec- Newton of electromagnetism.” He
tromagnetic field itself. Any such disturbance that moves through an electromagnetic cast the principles of electricity
field is called an electromagnetic wave. You can’t directly see electromagnetic waves and magnetism into the form of
in the way that you can see water waves, because the medium for electromagnetic four equations involving the elec-
tric and magnetic fields created by
waves is a nonmaterial electromagnetic field instead of a material substance such as
electric charges and electric cur-
water. Nevertheless, electromagnetic waves can be detected by other charged or mag-
rents. The theory led to a unifica-
netized objects at some distance from the source of the wave and at some later time tion of the electric with the
after the wave was sent out. Figure 24 pictures these invisible waves. magnetic force and to understand-
This was all worked out quantitatively in Maxwell’s theory. The theory predicted ing electromagnetic radiation,
not only a delay in the transmission of electromagnetic forces but also the speed of which underlies much modern
transmission. The predicted speed was about 300,000 km/s or 3 * 108 m>s. This technology including radio, televi-
particular speed had come up before, in experiments performed nearly two cen- sion, and lasers.
turies before Maxwell invented his theory. But these previous experiments seemed
entirely unrelated to the electromagnetic effects that Maxwell was studying. This
speed, 300,000 km/s, was the known speed at which light travels!

How do we know the speed of light? People once thought that light requires no
travel time—that its speed was infinite. Light certainly travels much faster than sound, as
you verify whenever you see lightning before you hear thunder. Galileo was one of the first
to try to measure the speed of light, or “lightspeed” as I will call it, by measuring the total
round-trip time for light to travel to a distant mountain and back. His experiment didn’t
work because the time turned out to be far too short to measure using Galileo’s timing
methods. Either greater timing accuracy or a greater travel distance was needed.
The first evidence for a finite, and not infinite, speed of light came from astronomical
observations several decades later. Pointing telescopes at a moon of Jupiter, astronomers

4
In 1894, physicist Pierre Curie suggested that the symmetry between electricity and magnetism exhibited
by Maxwell’s four laws would be complete if, in addition to electric charge, there existed in nature a pure
“magnetic charge” called a “monopole.” Every magnet ever observed has two poles, north and south. You
can’t isolate one from the other. A monopole would be a pure north, or pure south, pole, and would create
a magnetic field even when it was not moving. Although monopoles have never been observed, theorists
have never discarded the idea. Today, theorists searching for a “grand unified theory” of the fundamental
particles suggest that monopoles exist or at least that they once existed, during the early stages of the big
bang.

237
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Figure 24
When you shake a charged object, it sends out an electromagnetic wave in all directions.
This invisible wave is a disturbance in the charged object’s electromagnetic field.

found that the time they measured for this moon to orbit Jupiter didn’t remain constant.
This was weird. Why should a moon take longer for some orbits than for others? Earth’s
moon takes 27.3 days, every time. The astronomers found that these variations were not
caused by Jupiter’s moon at all but were instead related to Earth’s motion around the
sun. The variations were just what would be expected if the light from Jupiter’s moon
traveled at a finite, and not infinite, speed (see Figure 25 for the explanation). From the
measured variations in orbital time, lightspeed could be estimated.

Maxwell hypothesized that light might actually be an electromagnetic wave. But

scientists knew of no way to verify this tantalizing suggestion until two decades later,
when it became possible to check Maxwell’s theory directly by causing charged
objects to oscillate and observing the effects some distance away.

How do we know that electromagnetic waves exist? One way to verify Maxwell’s
theory would be to shake a charged object at the frequency of visible light, about a thousand
trillion Hz, to see whether the shaking created light. You’d have a hard time shaking your
hand that fast! Such high frequencies are hard to achieve in the laboratory, even today.
German physicist Heinrich Hertz (Figure 26)—the hertz is named for him—figured out how
to do an experiment of this sort, but at a frequency of “only” about a billion Hz. He con-
structed an electric circuit that contained a small open gap. Ordinarily, such a gap stops the
flow of electric charge, but Hertz built the endpoints of the gap in such a way that large
amounts of charge (excess electrons on one side, excess protons on the other) could build
up on them. After enough buildup, electrons were forced to jump across the gap. We
observe such charge jumping as a spark. Lightning is a spark of this sort. In Hertz’s circuit, a
jump of charge triggered a brief series of such jumps back and forth across the gap, at a rate
of a billion back-and-forths per second. If Maxwell was correct, these oscillations should cre-
ate electromagnetic waves with a frequency of a billion Hz.

238
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Earth, at two
different points
in its orbit
B
Jupiter’s moon, on two
successive orbits

Jupiter
Sun

Figure 25
It takes light from Jupiter’s moon about 35 minutes to reach point A, and 43 minutes
to reach point B. Thus, if Earth moves from point A to point B while Jupiter’s moon Hulton-Deutsch Collection/
is orbiting Jupiter one time, the orbital time as measured on Earth will be 8 minutes CORBIS
longer than the true orbital time, because of the extra 8 minutes that it takes light to
reach point B. This effect creates a variation in the measured orbital time that can be Figure 26
explained by assuming that light has a finite, not infinite, speed. Two decades after Maxwell pre-
dicted the existence of electromag-
netic waves, German physicist
At some distance from this predicted source of electromagnetic waves, Hertz placed a
Heinrich Hertz discovered them
second circuit. This circuit was entirely passive, with no battery or other internal source of
experimentally. Hertz’s waves were
electric current. If Maxwell’s theory was correct, electromagnetic waves from the first circuit
in the radio region of the electro-
should cause an electric current to oscillate in the second circuit, also at a billion hertz. The
magnetic spectrum, and provided
transmission from one circuit to the other should occur at lightspeed. Hertz’s results
the scientific basis for the radio and
entirely confirmed these predictions. Although Hertz’s waves were not light waves, his
television revolution.
work convinced scientists that electromagnetic waves really existed and that light is actu-
ally an electromagnetic wave. As a by-product, Hertz’s work came to the attention of an
ingenious Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi, launching the radio and television
revolution. Today, we know Hertz’s waves as radio waves.

It’s a stunning unification: Maxwell’s theory correctly describes electricity, mag-

netism, light, and radio. All these are different manifestations of one underlying
reality: electric charge. Summarizing:

Electromagnetic Wave Theory of Light

Every vibrating charged object creates a disturbance (wave) in its own electromag-
netic field. This disturbance spreads outward through the field at lightspeed,
300,000 km/s, or 3 * 108 m>s. Light is just such an electromagnetic wave.5

CONCEPT CHECK 7 Suppose you electrically charge a comb by running it through

your hair and then shake it back and forth at a frequency of 1 Hz. This will produce
(a) a sound wave having a frequency of 1 Hz and a speed of 300,000 km/s; (b) a sound
wave having a wavelength of 300,000 km and a speed of 300,000 km/s; (c) an electro-
magnetic field that vibrates at a frequency of 1 Hz, but no electromagnetic wave; (d) an
electromagnetic wave having a frequency of 1 Hz and a speed of 300,000 km/s.

5
More precisely, the speed of light, and all electromagnetic waves, is 299,792.458 km/s in a vacuum. When
traveling through matter, however, light is slower than this because it is continually absorbed and re-emitted
by atoms.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

CONCEPT CHECK 8 Hertz’s waves had a frequency of 109 hertz. Could a nor-
mal home radio receive waves of this type and frequency? (a) No, because radios
receive only sound waves, and Hertz created only electromagnetic waves. (b) No,
because these waves are neither in the AM radio frequency range nor the FM radio
frequency range. (c) Yes, these waves could be received by an AM radio. (d) Yes,
these waves could be received by an FM radio.

MAKI NG ESTI MATES About how long does it take light to get to your eyes
from a lightbulb in your room?

5 FIELDS ARE REAL

Since ancient Greek times, scientists have generally thought that the universe was
made of tiny material particles, atoms. As Democritus put it, there are only atoms and
empty space. It’s a view that is remarkably compatible with Newton’s physics, which
was once thought of as the rules according to which atoms move. This worldview—
atomic materialism coupled with Newtonian physics—dominated science during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
We now think of electric and When Faraday first proposed electromagnetic fields around 1830, most scien-
magnetic and gravitational fields tists thought of them as only a useful way to picture electromagnetic forces and not
as being as real as rocks and as real physical objects. Then Maxwell and Hertz showed that waves can travel in
people. Normally we are not
electromagnetic fields and that light is one example of these waves. So electromag-
aware of those fields, but you
can confirm that they are all netic fields were not just a useful fiction; they were physically real, as real as light.
around you by turning on a radio. The most convincing argument for the reality of electromagnetic fields comes
Gordon Kane, Particle Physicist, in His from conservation of energy. Suppose a radio transmitter sends a message (an elec-
Book Supersymmetry tromagnetic wave) to a receiver on Mars and that the message’s travel time is 20
minutes. Energy must travel from the sender to the receiver because it takes energy
to cause the receiver to respond. Where is this energy during the 20 minutes
between sending and receiving? Not in the sender. Not in the receiver. And energy
never just vanishes. So it must be in the space between sender and receiver, in the
electromagnetic field.
So electromagnetic fields contain energy. Philosophers might disagree about what
is “real,” but to a physicist nothing is more real than energy. Today we know that the
universe is filled with gravitational, electromagnetic, and other kinds of invisible, but
physically real, fields that are smoothly spread out in space and not made of tiny par-
ticles. This represents a real break with the Newtonian worldview. As Einstein put it,
We may say that, before Maxwell, Physical Reality, in so far as it was to represent the
processes of nature, was thought of as consisting in material particles. . . . Since
Maxwell’s time, Physical Reality has been thought of as represented by continuous
fields, . . . and not capable of any mechanical interpretation. This change in the concep-
tion of Reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced
since the time of Newton.6

6
A. Einstein, in James Clerk Maxwell, A Commemoration Volume. (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1931).

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES The travel time for light is the distance to the lightbulb divided by
lightspeed, 3 * 108 m>s. To make the arithmetic easy (remember that in estimates you want to choose approxi-
mate numbers that make the arithmetic easy), suppose the distance is 3 m: 3 m>(3 * 108 m>s) = 10-8 s, or a
hundredth of a millionth of a second.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

This is quite a far-reaching statement. Einstein is not saying that the universe is
made of some combination of material particles and fields, but rather that it’s made
only of fields.
Einstein’s view is beautifully confirmed by the development of physics since
about 1950, when a theory based on quantum physics and known as “quantum field
theory” came to dominate the way that physicists think about the structure of mat-
ter and energy. According to this extremely well-confirmed theory, the universe is
made entirely of fields. Atoms, for example, are made of several kinds of fields
known collectively as “matter fields,” and also of electromagnetic fields spread out
smoothly over distances the size of an atom or smaller.
Nineteenth-century physicists resisted giving up the Newtonian clockwork uni-
verse. So ingrained was the Newtonian worldview that scientists could not imagine
that energy might exist apart from tiny material particles. They developed the idea
that an extremely light gaslike material substance called ether filled all space. Ether
was assumed to be a form of matter but made of some unknown substance rather than
of the atoms that are familiar to us. Electromagnetic forces and other forces that act at
a distance were assumed to be transmitted by ether. Light and other electromagnetic
waves could then be explained mechanically, in terms of the motions of the material
ether and in keeping with the Newtonian tradition. Maxwell, Hertz, and others
accepted this ether theory of the electromagnetic force. After two centuries of the
Newtonian worldview, it was difficult to think in any other way.
Albert Einstein, early in the twentieth century, was one of the first to break out of
this mold. He showed that the ether theory had to be rejected. But surprisingly, this
had no effect on Maxwell’s theory or on the interpretation of light and radio as elec-
tromagnetic waves. It only affected the mechanistic interpretation of the electro-
magnetic field. After Einstein’s work, electromagnetic fields could no longer be
interpreted as properties of a material substance. So the electromagnetic field
turned out to be philosophically revolutionary, the first of many post-Newtonian
physical ideas. Apparently the universe is not made entirely of atoms, not made like
a mechanical clock. There is something else: fields.
Although the Newtonian worldview still dominates much popular culture and
even lies behind many scientists’ intuitive view of nature, the mechanical universe
began to unravel around 1900 and is by now seriously out of tune with much of con-
temporary physics. The two major modern theories, relativity theory and quantum
theory, contradict both the specific predictions and the conceptual underpinnings of
Newtonian physics. Physics is still in the middle of the post-Newtonian revolution,
and it is not clear what new scientific worldview will emerge.

6 THE COMPLETE SPECTRUM

The possible frequencies of light lie in a narrow range near 1015 Hz. We have seen that
Heinrich Hertz produced electromagnetic waves, now called radio waves, having a fre-
quency around 109 Hz. These are only two examples of the huge range or “spectrum”
of electromagnetic waves now known. We call this range the electromagnetic
spectrum (Figure 27). In the figure, wavelengths are arranged from the longest at
the bottom to the shortest at the top, with typical objects having the size of these
wavelengths listed for comparison. Frequencies are shown from the lowest (small-
est) at the bottom to the highest at the top, with typical sources of these frequen-
cies listed. In order to display a large range, Figure 27 shows wavelengths and

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Typical Sources Typical Object

Frequency, Hz
That Send out Waves Whose Size Is the
at This Frequency: Same as This
Wavelength:
Nucleus
1022 Gamma ray 1014
Processes by protons and
neutrons in atomic nuclei
1020 1012

X-ray
Electrons in atoms, 1018 1010 Atom
high-energy processes
Ultraviolet DNA molecule
Electrons in atoms, 1016 108
violet Amoeba
low-energy processes green
Thermal vibrations of 1014 yellow 106 Fine dust particle
red
molecules Visible
Microwave oven 1012 Infrared 104
Radar antenna Microwave Millimeter

1010 102 Centimeter

Cell phone Radar
TV, FM radio
FM radio, TV antenna 108 1 Meter

AM radio Soccer field

AM radio antenna 106 102
Radio Kilometer
104 104

60 Hz power-line 102 106

radiation Earth
1 108

Wavelength, m

Figure 27
The electromagnetic spectrum. There are no definite ends to the spectrum and no sharp
boundaries between the regions.

frequencies on a so-called “logarithmic scale” in which each increment is a factor

of 10: 1, 10, 100, 1000, and so forth. A “linear scale”—such as 10, 20, 30, 40, and
so forth—could not do justice to the entire range.
All these waves are the same phenomenon, namely, an electromagnetic field dis-
turbance that is created by a vibrating charged object and that travels at lightspeed
outward through the field. Energy from all these waves can be received by other
charged objects that the wave moves as the wave passes by. All can travel through
empty space. And all carry energy, known as radiant energy. Electromagnetic
waves are often called electromagnetic radiation because they “radiate” out in all
directions from charged objects. Since higher frequency means higher energy
(Section 1), energies increase as we move up the scale from bottom to top.
Let’s tour the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s useful to arrange it into the six regions
shown in Figure 27, regions that correspond to different ways of either sending or
receiving electromagnetic radiation. The longest wavelengths, down to about a mil-
limeter, form the radio waves, comprising AM and FM radio, TV, and microwaves.

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Humans can create and control these waves electronically by causing electrons to
vibrate in human-made electric circuits. Hertz’s waves fall into this category, and so
does a lot of modern technology. AM radio waves at around 1000 kilohertz (106 Hz),
FM radio and TV waves at around 100 megahertz (108 Hz), and cell phone transmis-
sion waves at around 1 gigahertz (109 Hz) are created by electrons moving back and
forth along a metal antenna that is part of an electric circuit. Radar and microwaves,
with frequencies up to a trillion (1012 ) hertz, also are created electronically.
Many natural processes also create radio waves. Radio astronomers use radio
receivers or “radio telescopes” pointed at stars or other astronomical objects to learn
about the universe. In fact, astronomical objects produce electromagnetic radiation in
all parts of the spectrum. During the past few decades, many new sorts of receivers,
stationed on or above Earth, have produced an explosion of astronomical knowledge.
Infrared radiation has wavelengths ranging from 1 millimeter to below 1/1000 of
a millimeter—the size of a fine particle of baby powder. Infrared is typically created
by the random thermal motion of molecules due to their thermal energy. Since all
objects have thermal energy, all objects produce infrared and hotter objects produce
more of it. Infrared detectors, such as certain infrared-sensitive chemicals, can detect
warmer objects against a cooler background, which is the basis for night-vision
devices and infrared photography. You cannot see infrared radiation but you can feel
it. Since it’s created by thermal motion, it’s not surprising that it has the proper fre-
quency to shake molecules into thermal motion—so it warms the objects it hits.
When you feel the warmth of a fire or a hot plate at some distance away, you are using
your skin as an infrared detector, “seeing” with your skin. Some animals have evolved
highly developed infrared sensors for nocturnal vision.
Many animals, including humans, have sensors that detect a narrow range of fre- Light beam
quencies just above infrared. This range of visible radiation or “light” has wave- focused on
retina
lengths centering on 5 * 107 m. This is smaller than the finest dust particles and
5000 times larger than an atom. Light is typically created by electrons moving within
individual atoms. The visible region’s defining characteristic is simply that the human
eye is sensitive to it. Light waves entering the pupil of the eye strike the retina at the
back (Figure 28). The retina is covered with light-sensitive cells that act like tiny
Lens
antennae to receive electromagnetic waves in the visible range. Some cells respond
differently to different wavelengths, and the brain interprets these as different colors. Light beam Retina
entering eye Optic
Suppose that you have a variable-frequency source of electromagnetic waves and nerve
that you set it to 6 * 1014 Hz—the frequency of green light. If you gradually decrease
the frequency, this green light will change to yellow, then orange, and finally red. As Figure 28
you continue decreasing the frequency, the red becomes deeper and darker until, at The human eye.
about 4 * 1014 Hz, the frequency is so low that your retina can no longer respond to it.
The source no longer emits visible light. The waves have crossed the boundary into
infra- (below) red. The source still radiates, but your eye cannot detect it.
Now go in the other direction. Beginning with 6 * 1014 Hz, increase the fre-
quency. The color changes from green to blue to violet. The violet light darkens
until, around 8 * 1014 Hz, your eye can no longer detect it. The waves have crossed
into the ultra- (above) violet region. Ultraviolet radiation is created in the same
way that light is created, by electrons moving within individual atoms. Although
similar to light, ultraviolet’s higher energy has important consequences. Ultraviolet
radiation has the proper frequency to shake many biological molecules, so it is
readily absorbed by living things. And it has enough energy to split molecules,
which can disrupt or kill living cells. If absorbed by a cell’s DNA, this can lead to
cancerous growth.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Heater X-ray radiation also comes from electrons in individual atoms, but only from the
highest-energy electron activities within atoms. X-ray wavelengths span a range
X-rays around 10–10 m—about the size of an individual atom. Humans make X-rays in high-
energy X-ray tubes, as described in the caption of Figure 29. X-rays have important
interactions with biological matter. They have enough energy to ionize molecules
within biological cells, that is, to knock the electrons right out of some molecules.
Electrons
Like ultraviolet, this radiation can cause cancers. Radiation energetic enough to ion-
ize biological matter is called ionizing radiation. X-rays and gamma rays are ioniz-

ing radiations, and so is the higher energy (higher frequency) portion of the ultraviolet
 region. Because X-rays are able to penetrate deeply into biological matter, they can be
High
put to the useful cause of examining the interior of the human body without surgery.
voltage There is a certain logic to our tour through the electromagnetic spectrum. As we
Collision with
metal plate move to smaller wavelengths, we move toward higher frequencies and hence higher-
creates energy radiation, which in turn implies higher-energy processes to create the radiation.
X-rays We also have progressed toward processes that occur in smaller and smaller regions of
space: Radio waves are created in macroscopic electric circuits, infrared is created in
Figure 29 molecules, and the next three (visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray) are created in atoms.
The operation of an X-ray tube. It should come as no surprise then that the shortest-wavelength radiation,
Electrons are boiled off a thin,
gamma radiation, carries the highest frequency and highest energy and comes
heated wire filament and are
accelerated toward a positively
from the highest-energy processes in the smallest regions of space. Gamma rays are
charged metal plate at the other created within atomic nuclei by high-energy nuclear processes involving the strong
end of the vacuum tube. When forces that hold the nucleus together. Gamma rays are created in radioactive materi-
the electrons smash into this als and in the nuclear reactions known as “fission” and “fusion.” Like X-rays,
plate, their rapid deceleration gamma rays are a form of ionizing radiation and can damage biological matter. But
causes them to emit X-rays, and this very feature is often put to use to destroy diseased cells and so cure some can-
the collision also causes the cers. Since gamma ray wavelengths are much smaller than individual atoms, atoms
plate’s atoms to emit X-rays. cannot readily respond to them, and so they penetrate deeply into matter.
The room you are in is full of electromagnetic waves. Hundreds of television and
radio broadcasts, radio pulsations from neutron stars, radio noise from millions of
normal stars, the faint background radiation from the big bang, possibly communi-
cations from extraterrestrial life, radiations from the sun and the center of our
galaxy, and much more are passing through your room right now. Your body is
equipped to receive directly only the tiny visible portion of the complete spectrum
of these waves. With the proper receiver, you could sense any of the other frequen-
cies. The universe would appear far different in other wavelength ranges and would
appear complex indeed if you could directly receive the entire spectrum. The reality
that meets your eye is only a tiny fraction of nature’s reality.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 When your radio is tuned to 100 on the FM dial, it is receiv-
ing (a) a 100 Hz sound wave; (b) a 108 Hz sound wave; (c) a 100 Hz electromagnetic
wave with a wavelength about the size of Earth; (d) a 106 Hz electromagnetic wave with
a wavelength of around 100 m; (e) a 108 Hz electromagnetic wave with a wavelength of
around 100 m; (f) a 108 Hz electromagnetic wave with a wavelength of around 1 m.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 In the preceding question, the sound coming from the
radio is (a) an electromagnetic wave traveling at 300,000 km/s; (b) an electromagnetic
wave that travels far more slowly than 300,000 km/s; (c) not an electromagnetic wave
of any kind, and travels far more slowly than 300,000 km/s.

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MAKI NG ESTI MATES In the following list, which of these waves have wave-
lengths much bigger than your room (a few meters), which have wavelengths
between a millimeter and a few meters, and which have wavelengths of less than a
millimeter: AM radio, light, electromagnetic waves from the alternating current that
oscillates 60 times each second in your house circuits, warming rays from a fire,
rays from a microwave oven, radar, electromagnetic radiation from shaking an elec-
trically charged blouse that you remove from the dryer?

7 SOLAR RADIATION: THE LIGHT FROM OUR STAR

The sun, “Sol,” transmits electromagnetic waves in every region of the spectrum.
Most of this solar radiation is in the visible, infrared, and ultraviolet parts of the
spectrum and is created at the sun’s visible surface. Other solar radiation is created in
the rarefied, very hot gas that surrounds the sun in the same way that Earth’s atmos-
phere surrounds Earth. Processes within the sun’s atmosphere create high-energy
X-rays and some gamma rays, along with radio waves. The intense radiation created
by high-energy processes deep within the sun is absorbed and altered within the sun,
and little of it escapes directly.
Figure 30 graphs the relative amounts of radiant energy emitted by the sun at dif-
ferent wavelengths. When you sit in the sunlight, your eyes detect the sun’s visible
radiation and your skin detects its infrared as warmth. Your skin also detects ultra-
violet but you don’t notice it until a little later, as the cellular damage known as
“sunburning.” The amount of solar energy reaching Earth is different at different
locations, in different seasons, in different weather conditions, and at different
times of the day. In the United States, an average 200 watts (200 joules every sec-
ond) strikes every square meter of the ground.

Figure 30
The relative amounts of energy at
different wavelengths in the solar
Relative amount of energy

spectrum. Most of the sun’s radiant

Ultra-
violet Visible Infrared energy is in the ultraviolet, visible,
and infrared portions of the elec-
tromagnetic spectrum.

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000

Wavelength, in nanometers (109m)

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES Use Figure 27. Much bigger than a few meters: AM radio, waves
from alternating current, waves from the blouse. One millimeter up to a few meters: microwaves, radar. Less
than 1 mm: warming rays, light.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

MAKI NG ESTI MATES Photovoltaic cells are devices that transform solar
energy into electric current. If such devices were 100% efficient, about how much
area would need to be covered by these cells in order to provide the average 1.3 kilo-
watts of electric power that a typical family home uses? Actual photovoltaic cells are
only about 15% (one-seventh) efficient. At this efficiency, how much area must be
covered? Could you put this on your roof ?

CONCEPT CHECK 11 When energy from the sun is absorbed by your skin (a)
it remains there as electromagnetic energy; (b) it remains there as radiant energy;
(c) it transforms into nuclear energy; (d) it transforms into kinetic energy; (e) it
transforms into thermal energy; (f ) it gives you the heebie-jeebies.

8 GLOBAL OZONE DEPLETION: A VULNERABLE PLANET7

This and the next section apply our knowledge of molecules, energy, and electro-
magnetic radiation to discuss two environmental issues: ozone depletion and global
warming. These represent a new kind of social issue: environmental effects that
cannot be contained locally and are truly global. As part of the dues that we all must
pay if Earth is to pull through its current experiment with powerful new technolo-
gies, we’d better think seriously about such issues.
An invisible trace of gas drifting 10 to 50 kilometers overhead protects life on
Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. This wispy “ozone layer” would be only
2 millimeters thick if compressed to normal atmospheric pressure, but without it
most life on Earth would soon cease. During the past century, humans using com-
mon household chemicals destroyed a large portion of this ozone. Belatedly realiz-
High-temperature
object such as ing what we had wrought, we all came together in the nick of time to agree to ban
your kitchen the offending chemicals. The story of ozone depletion demonstrates the threat of
global environmental destruction, shows that strong collective counter-action is
possible, and offers an encouraging lesson for these times.
ThermE The story begins in 1928 when the General Motors Corporation first synthesized
out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), molecules made from atoms of chlorine, fluorine,
and carbon, for its Frigidaire refrigerators. CFCs are chemically inert, meaning
Cooling
system Work From that they do not readily react with other substances. They normally form a gas but
ThermE
electric become liquid when put under high pressure. Being inert, they are nontoxic to
company
in humans, noncorrosive in mechanical devices, and nonflammable. Such a chemical
can have many uses, one of which is as a coolant. Refrigerators and air conditioners
operate like heat engines in reverse (Figure 31). Just as heat engines use hot gases as
Low-temperature the “working fluid” that does work while exhausting thermal energy, so refrigera-
object such as the
inside of your tors and air conditioners use a “coolant” that has work done on it while extracting
refrigerator thermal energy from a refrigerator or house.

Figure 31
Energy flow diagram for a refriger-
ator. Refrigerators operate like heat 7
The U.S. government maintains an informative Web page on this topic, at http://www.epa.gov. Click on
engines in reverse. An outside “index” and find “ozone.”
energy source does work to push
thermal energy “uphill,” from a SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES 1.3 kilowatts (1300 watts) of solar energy falls on 6.5 square meters
low to a high temperature. (1300/200) of surface. At an efficiency of one-seventh, it would take seven times this much area: 45 square
meters. If square-shaped, this would be about 7 m on a side and might fit on your roof.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

CFCs soon became a universal coolant. Production soared. In the 1940s, CFCs
were found to be useful as pressurized gases to propel aerosol sprays. In the 1950s,
they created the air-conditioning revolution that facilitated America’s shopping
malls, summer automobiling odysseys, and population shifts to Southwestern cities.
CFCs created lots of business and little fuss until 1974 when scientists began to ask
where all these inert gas molecules might be drifting. After all, being inert they were Nobelstiftelsen/The Nobel
nearly indestructible, so essentially all the CFCs manufactured since 1930 should still Foundation
be in the atmosphere. But where? And what became of them there? During the previ- Figure 32
ous four decades of profitable production, nobody had bothered to ask. Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina,
In 1974, two university chemists suggested an alarming possibility. Mario F. Sherwood Rowland. The theory of
Molina and Sherwood Rowland (Figure 32) discovered that because CFC molecules stratospheric ozone depletion by
are inert and gaseous, they are not chemically broken down or rained out in the means of human-made compounds
lower atmosphere. Instead, they drift slowly into the upper atmosphere or was recognized by the awarding of
stratosphere, 10 to 50 kilometers overhead, where they may remain intact for the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to
decades or centuries. Molina and Rowland theorized that high-energy solar ultravi- the three scientists who discovered it.
olet radiation should eventually split CFC molecules apart, releasing large quanti- Crutzen’s work involved nitrogen
compounds, while Molina and
ties of chlorine. This was alarming because chlorine reacts strongly with O3, known
Rowland’s work involved chlorine
as ozone. Ozone is one of a long list of trace gases in the atmosphere—gases that, compounds. The Nobel Committee
all together, make up far less than 1% of the atmosphere. Table 1 shows only a few commended them for having “con-
of these trace gases, namely those whose concentrations are one part per million tributed to our salvation from a global
(that is, one molecule per million atmospheric molecules) or larger. The list would environmental problem that could
be far longer if it were extended down to one part per billion! have catastrophic consequences.”
Here’s how chlorine destroys atmospheric ozone: Ozone is produced naturally in
the stratosphere from O2 when high-energy radiation from the sun breaks up O2 Table 1
molecules and the resulting oxygen atoms then combine with O2 to create O3. But Composition of the atmosphere
ozone can be easily broken down by this reaction with chlorine: Molecule Concentration

Cl + O3 : ClO + O2 Major constituents

N2 78.084 %
Under bombardment by the ultraviolet radiation at that altitude, a second reaction O2 20.946 %
then occurs: Ar 00.934 %
Total 99.964 %
ClO + ClO + sunlight : Cl + Cl + O2
Trace gasesa (in ppmb)
This second reaction releases the chlorine, which is then free to destroy more CO2 377
ozone. Scientists found that a single Cl atom destroyed about 100,000 ozone mole- H2O 20–20,000
cules. A little chlorine goes a long way. Ne 12
But stratospheric ozone is essential to most life on Earth.8 Because ozone mole- He 5
cules vibrate naturally at ultraviolet frequencies and so absorb much of the sun’s NO2 2
ultraviolet radiation, they protect us from this biologically harmful radiation. CH4 2
Unfortunately, ozone is easily altered by human activities because there is so little Xe 2
of it in the atmosphere. Out of every 10 million atmospheric molecules, only 3 are Kr 1
ozone! To get a feel for this, imagine a huge city of 10 million, in which just 3 peo- O3 <1
ple are labeled “ozone.” We see in ozone the potential importance of each of the H2 <1
many atmospheric trace gases (Table 1). NO <1
In 1974, most people regarded it as absurd to think that coolants and spray cans CO <1
could cause a catastrophe, because it violated the intuitive notion that human activities N2O <1
were far too puny to alter the global environment. But some were alarmed. A debate, of SO2 <1
NH3 <1
8 a
Ground-level ozone, on the other hand, is a toxic pollutant. It is a consequence of automobile exhaust and This list would be many times longer if it were
is the primary component of urban smog. extended to include gases present at only parts per
billion. The atmosphere is quite complex!
b
Parts per million.

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 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

For the first time in my life I saw a now-familiar type, ensued. The chemical industry argued that the theory was specula-
the horizon as a curved line. It tive and that there should be no economically damaging CFC restrictions until there was
was accentuated by a thin seam more evidence. Environmentalists, arguing that it was better to be safe than sorry, said
of dark blue light—our atmos-
we should not risk further delay. Pro-environment consumer pressures played a crucial
phere. Obviously this was not the
ocean of air I had been told it was role when a consumer boycott reduced the U.S. market for CFC-powered sprays by two-
so many times in my life. I was thirds, pressuring manufacturers to support CFC restrictions. In 1978, the United States
terrified by its fragile appearance. and a few other governments initiated a ban on the least essential CFC technology, spray
Ulf Merbold, German Astronaut propellants. It was the first time that a substance suspected of causing global harm had
been regulated before the effects had been fully demonstrated. This partial concession
to environmental concerns ended the debate, at least temporarily. But U.S. spray propel-
lants formed only 25% of the world’s CFCs, and other production continued to increase.
Now the scene shifts to Antarctica. It was fortunate that a British atmospheric sur-
vey team had been performing routine operations there since 1956. Beginning in
1977, the team observed a new trend: Ozone concentrations dropped every spring and
returned to normal in a few months. The decline was greater each year, plummeting
40% by 1984. The area involved was larger than the United States. These measure-
ments were so unbelievable that the scientists delayed publication for several years
while rechecking their work. Their report, in 1985, was greeted skeptically. Critics
suggested that the effect was part of a natural cycle and would soon vanish.
But U.S. chemist Susan Solomon (Figure 33) thought this question warranted fur-
ther investigation, and she organized an expedition to Antarctica. With the arrival of
the Antarctic spring in October, she found not only that ozone was now 50% below
normal but also that high levels of chlorine were present. There was indeed an
“ozone hole,” it was growing, and it seemed related to chlorine. It was entirely
unpredicted. Molina and Rowland had thought that the effects of CFCs would occur
only gradually. Although their predictions had been greeted with disbelief, reality
was proving to be even more extreme.
But did CFCs actually cause the ozone hole? Solomon offered a hypothesis involv-
ing the ice clouds that form high above Antarctica during the long, dark polar winter.
When the sun reappeared in the Antarctic springtime, solar energy caused chemical
reactions on the surfaces of the tiny ice particles forming these clouds. These reac-
tions released ClO into the stratosphere from CFCs that had been mixed in the ice
particles, sunlight then split the ClO molecule to free the chlorine, and the chlorine
attacked O3 molecules. It’s a subtle mechanism, not something that scientists could
Susan Solomon have predicted. A second expedition, in 1987, confirmed Solomon’s hypothesis.
Figure 33
Atmospheric chemist Susan How do we know that chlorine caused the ozone hole? Figure 34 shows the kind of
Solomon in Antarctica. She organ- evidence that implicated chlorine as the culprit. The two graphs show data recorded by air-
ized the first National Ozone craft flights into the Antarctic stratosphere on 23 August 1987 as the sun was reappearing,
Expedition in 1986 and devised the and three weeks later on 16 September. The graphs show the CIO concentration in parts per
theory that correctly explained the billion (ppb) and the ozone concentration in parts per million (ppm) at southern latitudes
destruction of ozone by chlorine from 63 degrees (just south of South America) to 70 degrees (inland over Antarctica). On
compounds in the stratosphere over 23 August, ClO existed in the stratosphere over Antarctica, south of 65 degrees, but had not
Antarctica. In 2000, she received yet begun to destroy ozone. By 16 September ozone had been mostly destroyed in the polar
the U.S. National Medal of Science regions. The correlation between the presence of ClO and the depletion of ozone in
and Technology for these studies. Figure 34(b) is exquisite: Ozone zigs precisely where CIO zags. This detailed correlation leaves
little doubt of a causal relationship between ClO buildup and ozone depletion.

The ozone hole continued deepening, with springtime depletions reaching 70%
and spreading across much of the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia.
Ozone destruction seems to have reached a maximum around 2005 and to have lev-
eled off, but it has not yet begun declining toward normal levels.

248
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

1.20 2.75 The concept is not obvious: a per-

fume spray in Paris helps to
0.72 3.6
destroy an invisible gas in the
0.96 2.25 stratosphere and thereby con-

Chlorine monoxide, ppb

Chlorine monoxide, ppb

tributes to skin cancer deaths and

species extinction half a world

Ozone, ppm
0.48 2.4 0.72 1.75

Ozone, ppm
away and several generations in
the future. Neither traditional
0.48 1.25 environmental law nor traditional
0.24 1.2 diplomacy offers guidelines for
confronting such situations.
0.24 0.75 Richard Benedick, Chief U.S. Negotiator
of the Montreal Ozone Treaty
0 0 0 0.25
63 65 67 69 64 66 68 70
Latitude, °S Latitude, °S
(a) (b)

Figure 34
ClO concentrations (black) and ozone concentrations (green) measured on (a) August 23,
1987, before the ozone had begun vanishing near the South Pole for that year, and
(b) September 16, 1987, after the ozone was depleted.

In 1987, in Montreal, Canada, 47 nations forged a unique treaty.9 The Ozone

Treaty, negotiated mostly before Solomon’s Antarctic expedition, was preventive
action based on scientific theories about what might occur but had not yet been
actually observed. The wisdom of this treaty, in which the United States played a
leading role, has now been amply confirmed. To have delayed the Ozone Treaty
until scientists obtained clear evidence of ozone depletion by CFCs would have
Without the courage of a handful
resulted in far greater environmental damage and human suffering. In recognition
of curious researchers in the mid-
of the science that led to this treaty, the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was con- 1970s, the world would have
ferred on Rowland and Molina for having “contributed to our salvation from a learned too late of the deadly,
global environmental problem that could have catastrophic consequences.” hidden dangers associated with
The Ozone Treaty was quite drastic. It called for ozone-destroying chemicals rapidly expanding use of CFCs.
(Table 2) to be essentially phased out by the year 2000. The restrictions were The now legendary hypotheses of
Sherwood Rowland and Mario
Molina .. . initially unleashed a
Table 2 firestorm of criticism and contro-
Ozone-destroying chemicals in the atmosphere in 1991 versy.... They were vindicated by
Average lifetime in Share of U.S. share of the 1995 Nobel Prize in
Chemical Uses atmosphere (yr) problem (%) use (%) Chemistry, but it is worth noting
that the first popular book on this
CFC-11 coolant, aerosol, foam 60 28 22
subject, published in 1978, was
CFC-12 coolant, aerosol, foam 130 47 30 entitled The Ozone War.
CFC-113 solvent 90 5 45 Richard Benedick

Carbon tetrachloride solvent 50 15 27

Methyl chloroform solvent 7 2 50
Halon 1211 coolant, foam 25 1 25
Halon 1301 fire extinguisher 110 2 50
Source: U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, 1991.

9
I heartily recommend U.S. chief negotiator Richard Benedick’s account, Ozone Diplomacy (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).

249
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

extraordinarily effective. The chemical industry, sensing an expanding new market for
ozone-friendly products, moved rapidly to develop replacements. Industries adopted
these so quickly that the phaseout moved faster than expected. CFC production plum-
meted during the 1990s and is now nearly stopped. The treaty offers an inspiring example
of global environmental protection. As we will learn in the next section, global warming
poses an even larger threat, and its solution won’t be easy. The ozone saga offers all sorts
of lessons for dealing with global warming, but the overarching lesson is this: Strong and
effective global action against global environmental problems is possible.
14
The verdict is now up to nature. Because ozone-destroying chemicals have long
Predicted future
concentrations if free
lifetimes (Table 2), that verdict will take a while. As the lower graph of Figure 35
12 shows, chlorine concentrations finally leveled off in 1998 but are not expected to
market had remained
in effect until 2010
fall to a safe level until 2050. For comparison, Figure 35 also shows the disastrous
10 chlorine concentrations that would have occurred if controls had been delayed until
Chlorine concentration, ppb

2010. As you can see, continued use of ozone-destroying chemicals was not “sus-
8 tainable.” A practice is said to be sustainable if it meets the needs of people today
without endangering the prospects of future generations.
6 What effects are likely? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates
Predicted future 12 million excess U.S. skin cancer cases, including 200,000 deaths, during
concentrations with
4
Ozone Treaty in effect 1987–2050. Other human effects include eye cataracts, suppression of immune sys-
2050: chlorine tem responses, and premature aging of the skin. Because some plants are sensitive
returns to
possibly “safe” to ultraviolet radiation, crop production is reduced. Microscopic organisms and fish
2 level of 2 ppb
Historical
living near the ocean’s surface may be depleted. The most affected region is
Antarctica. By 1996, measurements showed a 25% decline in the populations of
0
1950 2000 2050 2100 microscopic plants around Antarctica. Possible future scenarios include a collapse
Year of the entire Antarctic ecosystem.
Figure 35
The effect of the Ozone Treaty on CONCEPT CHECK 12 Refrigerators (Figure 31) cool the objects inside. How
atmospheric chlorine concentrations. do they affect your kitchen? (a) They cool it. (b) They warm it. (c) They don’t
The Antarctic ozone hole first affect the temperature.
became obvious when levels reached
2 ppb. If controls had been delayed CONCEPT CHECK 13 A key step in ozone destruction by CFCs is (a) CFCs
until 2010, chlorine levels would break down in the stratosphere to release chlorine; (b) CFCs break down in the strat-
have soared. Concentrations are in osphere to release carbon; (c) solar radiation breaks down O3; (d) CFCs directly com-
parts per billion. (Adapted from bine with stratospheric ozone; (e) carbon from industrial processes reacts with ozone.
Science, 5 January 1996, p. 32.)

When we build a bridge, we build

it to withstand much stronger 9 GLOBAL WARMING: PROVOKING THE BEAST10
pressures than it is ever likely to
confront. And yet, when it comes If you took Earth’s temperature from space, you would find it to be a chilly
to protecting the global atmos- –19°C(–2°F). The way you could take Earth’s temperature, if you were in space,
phere, where the stakes are so
would be by studying its electromagnetic radiation output. This would be like taking
much higher, the attitude of some
people seems to be equivalent to the approximate temperature of an electric hot plate by looking at its color: White
demanding certainty that the means very hot, bright red means hot, and dark red means less hot. A refinement of
bridge will collapse as a justifica- this method, using devices that measure the precise spectrum, can tell you the precise
tion for strengthening it. If we are temperature. Earth is not hot enough to glow visibly the way a hot plate or the sun
to err in designing measures to glows. Instead, Earth “glows infrared,” so infrared measuring devices are required.
protect the ozone layer, then let
us, conscious of our responsibility 10
The U.S. government maintains an informative Web page on this topic at http://www.epa.gov. Click on
to future generations, err on the “Index” and find “climate change.” You can be part of the solution to global warming by utilizing your
side of caution. own computer during idling times to assist scientists in making large-scale calculations of Earth’s climate.
Richard Benedick To learn how, go to http://www.climateprediction.net.

250
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Fortunately for us, Earth’s average surface temperature is +14°C, far warmer We are playing Russian roulette
than the –19°C detected from space. The extra 33 degrees is due to Earth’s sur- with our climate. . . . The Earth’s
rounding blanket of atmospheric gases; the –19°C infrared radiation that’s detected climate system is an angry beast
subject to unpredictable
from space comes from the top of this atmospheric blanket. This 33 degrees of
responses, and by adding carbon
warming is called the greenhouse effect. Surprisingly, the gases that create the dioxide to the atmosphere we
greenhouse effect are not the nitrogen and oxygen that form the bulk of Earth’s may be provoking the beast.
atmosphere. Rather, the effect is due to certain trace gases, mainly water vapor and Wallace Broecker, Newberry Professor of
carbon dioxide (Table 1). The distinguishing feature of these greenhouse gases is Earth and Environmental Sciences at
Columbia University
that they strongly absorb infrared radiation.11 We might expect such gases to be
important to Earth’s energy balance, since Earth radiates in the infrared. As in the
preceding section, we again see the importance of trace gases.
Like many of nature’s ways, the greenhouse effect is best understood in terms of
energy flows. For starters, let’s study the energy flow near the surface of an imaginary
Earth that has no greenhouse gases but has an otherwise normal atmosphere. Figure 36
diagrams that energy flow in “percentage units,” where 100% represents the total daily
incoming radiant energy from the sun. As the diagram indicates, 30% of this energy is
reflected and the remaining 70% is absorbed. The absorbed energy warms Earth, and
every warm object radiates energy, so Earth reradiates energy outward. But there is a cru-
cial difference between the incoming and outgoing radiation. Because Earth is far cooler
than the sun, Earth “glows”—reradiates—only in the infrared rather than, like the sun, in
the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared. If there were no greenhouse gases, this difference
would not affect the overall energy balance, because all of the reradiated energy would
simply pass through the atmosphere and into space. If there were no greenhouse gases,
the balance between these processes of absorbing and reradiating would cause Earth
—both its surface and its atmosphere—to have an overall average temperature of –19°C.
This balance is altered when we add the greenhouse gases (Figure 37). Earth’s Human alteration of Earth is sub-
reradiated infrared is now absorbed and reradiated by the greenhouse gases. stantial and growing. Between
Because the reradiation occurs in all directions, downward as well as upward, this one-third and one-half of the land
“recycling” of energy warms Earth’s surface. Greenhouse gases warm Earth the surface has been transformed by
human action; the carbon dioxide
way a blanket warms you by redirecting some of your radiated energy back toward
concentration in the atmosphere
you. The glass on a greenhouse warms the greenhouse in an analogous way. has increased by nearly 30%
Take a minute to compare Figures 36 and 37. Although the greenhouse gases form since the beginning of the
only a tiny fraction of one percent of the atmosphere, they cause an enormous difference Industrial Revolution; more
in the energy relationship between Earth and the sun, something like a tiny tail wagging atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by
an enormous dog. The huge energy loop on the right-hand side of Figure 37 is caused by humanity than by all natural ter-
a few whispy greenhouse gases, mostly water vapor and CO2. restrial sources combined; more
than half of all accessible surface
Nature has provided an interesting example of the greenhouse effect on three
fresh water is put to use by
planets. Mars, Earth, and Venus are similar in many ways but their greenhouse humanity; and about one-quarter
effects are quite different. Mars has little atmosphere of any kind, so its energy flow of the bird species on Earth have
diagram is like Figure 36, while Venus has a thick atmosphere that is mostly CO2, been driven to extinction. By
so its energy flow diagram is like Figure 37 but with a “greenhouse gas loop” that’s these and other standards, it is
on steroids. Chemical reactions involving the oceans have locked up most of Earth’s clear that we live on a human-
carbon in rocks on the ocean bottom, but Venus is close enough to the sun that its dominated planet.
P. M. Vitousek. H. A. Mooney, Jane
natural oceans evaporated, leaving its carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In agree- Lubchenco, J. M. Melillo, Introducing a
ment with these facts, observations show that the greenhouse effects on Mars, Special Segment on “Human
Domination of Earth’s Ecosystems,” in
Earth, and Venus are, respectively, zero, 33°C (as we’ve seen), and a whopping the Journal Science, 25 July 1997

11
Molecules such as H2O, and CO2, having three or more atoms, are efficient infrared absorbers because
they have many different ways of vibrating in response to radiation. The dominant atmospheric molecules,
N2 and O2, have only two atoms, and so each molecule has only one way it can vibrate (atoms moving
closer together and then farther apart).

251
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

503°C. Thus not only its nearness to the sun but more importantly its huge green-
house effect causes Venus to be far hotter than a pizza oven and too hot for life.
The natural greenhouse effect has warmed our planet for millions of years, but it
has been enhanced recently by human activities. Fossil-fuel combustion creates

Figure 36 Reflected Reflected

Energy flow near the surface of an by by Incoming Infrared radiation
surface atmosphere radiation (IR) from Earth
imaginary Earth that has no green-
from sun
house gases but that has an other-
5 25 100
wise normal atmosphere. The 70
numbers represent percentages, Space
relative to the radiant energy 19 C
received from the sun.
30

Atmosphere: normal
nitrogen and oxygen, but
without trace greenhouse
gases such as water
and carbon dioxide

70 70
Absorbed Reradiated
by surface as IR 19 C
Earth

Figure 37 Reflected Reflected

Energy flow near Earth’s surface. by by Incoming Infrared from
The huge difference between this surface atmosphere radiation Earth
and Figure 36 is due to trace from sun
amounts of greenhouse gases that 5 25 100
Space
have significant leverage over 70
19 C
Earth’s energy flows.
* Some of this energy is in the 30 Greenhouse
Atmosphere
form of evaporated water vapor 10 gases
60
and air currents. 20
Absorbed and
reradiated 80
by atmosphere 10

50
Absorbed Mostly IR*
14 C by surface
90
Earth
140

140
50

252
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

enormous quantities of carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. For hundreds

of thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution began around 1750, carbon
dioxide maintained a natural atmospheric concentration of 280 ppm or less. When
William Shakespeare took a breath, 280 molecules out of every million entering his
lungs were CO2. Each time you draw breath today, 388 molecules per million are
CO2, an increase of nearly 40% (Figure 38). This has warmed our planet during the
past century. Such human enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is called
global warming.

How do we know that the rise in CO2 concentrations since 1750 is caused by
humans? For one thing, the amount of CO2 build-up shown in Figure 38 agrees well with
human emissions since that date. But the most convincing evidence comes from a rare type
or “isotope” of carbon known as 14C. Unlike other carbon atoms, 14C is continually created in
high-energy atmospheric processes. These atoms are “radioactive,” meaning that they spon-
taneously change into other types of atoms (nitrogen) over a time period of several thou-
sand years. This means that there’s a distinct difference between the carbon found in fossil
fuels and in the atmosphere: Fossil carbon has been there for millions of years and so has
no remaining 14C, while atmospheric carbon contains a small amount of 14C. If fossil fuel
burning is what’s causing increased atmospheric CO2, then the fraction of atmospheric car-
bon that’s in the form of 14C must decrease over time as fossil carbon builds up. This predic-
tion can be checked by studying the carbon content of old trees; we should be able to
detect a declining fraction of 14C in more recent tree rings, as compared with tree rings that
are more than 250 years old. Sure enough, when scientists study tree ring data, they find
exactly the expected fall-off in 14C over time.

Water vapor is the biggest contributor to the natural greenhouse effect, followed
by CO2. However, water vapor cannot be a primary cause of human-caused global
warming because neither humans nor natural processes can appreciably change the
amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. The reason is that air can only hold a cer-
tain amount of water vapor, beyond which the vapor condenses and “rains out.”
Global warming caused by CO2 buildup has been predictable for many decades
and was in fact predicted during the nineteenth century but was not taken seriously as
long as it lay only in the future. The future has arrived. In 1990, 1995, 2001, and again
in 2007, thousands of scientists from some 100 nations evaluated tens of thousands of

Figure 38
400 Atmospheric concentration of car-
bon dioxide over the last
350 10,000 years (large panel) and
Carbon Dioxide (ppm)

350 since 1750 (smaller inset panel).

300
Note the sharp spike beginning
1800 1900 2000
around 1750. From the
Year
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, Fourth
300
Assessment Report, 2007.

250

10,000 5,000 0
Years before 2005

253
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

scientific papers and came to a broad consensus that global warming is happening
now and will increase. This effort, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC),12 represents our current understanding of global warming.
Because we’ve increased the CO2 content of the atmosphere by nearly 40% since
1750, and because CO2 is an important greenhouse gas, it’s natural to expect that
Earth is warming. And in fact Figure 39 shows that global temperatures rose by
about 0.75°C since 1900. Figure 40 shows that this rise is unusual over the past 1000
years. But will this rise continue? The industrial age could be thought of as a mas-
sive unplanned experiment to answer this question.

How do we know Earth’s temperature since 1000 A.D.? How can scientists recon-
struct the temperature since 1000 A.D., before there were thermometers (Figure 40)?
Several indirect methods are used. Two of them are tree rings and ice cores. The widths
and densities (mass per cubic centimeter) of tree rings are strongly dependent on the
temperature at the time the ring grew. The age of a ring can be determined by counting
the rings and also, for long-dead petrified trees, by radioactive carbon dating. Tree ring
data yield approximate temperatures extending as far back as 11,000 years. Ice cores
drilled deep into ancient ice in Greenland, Antarctica, and other places also reveal long-
term temperature records.

The complexity of Earth’s climate makes it difficult to understand or predict the

outcome of humankind’s global warming experiment. Scientists approach this prob-
lem as they approach other questions, with theories and observations. Detailed
climate models, assisted by computer calculations, are one important approach.
Modelers use accepted principles of physics and chemistry to predict the climate at
each point of a three-dimensional grid of points separated by several hundred kilome-
ters. Such calculations necessarily involve uncertainties. One inevitable uncertainty is
the amount of greenhouse gas that humans will put into the atmosphere in the future.
To separate this societal component from the scientific part, modelers assume several
plausible “scenarios” for future human behavior and make projections of future cli-
mate based on each scenario. The IPCC projections for 2000–2100 are based on
several such scenarios, characterized by differing amounts of economic growth, pop-
ulation growth, energy efficiency, fossil-fuel use, and non-fossil energy use. The

Figure 39 0.6
Variations in Earth’s surface tem-
perature from 1860 through 2005.
Global Temperatures
0.4
Departures from the 1960-1990

The data indicate a 0.75°C (1.35°F) Annual Average

temperature increase since 1900. Five Year Average
0.2
averages in °C

0.2

0.4

0.6
1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000

12
You can find the IPCC’s latest report at http://www.ipcc.ch/.

254
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

validity of the computer-based climate models has been checked many times, using
natural experiments. For example, when the 1991 Pinatubo volcano erupted, a com-
puter model predicted in advance the temporary cooling the volcano would produce,
with results that agreed well with the ensuing observations.
Figure 40 shows six temperature projections based on six scenarios for
2000–2100. The gray area represents the overall future uncertainty. As you can see,
it will get a lot warmer by 2100 under every scenario. The uppermost projection,
showing the greatest warming, assumes a “business as usual” scenario of high eco-
nomic growth and strong dependence on fossil fuels. The two lowermost projec-
tions assume quick replacement of fossil fuels with nonfossil energies. The range of
global warming temperature increases projected for 2100 runs from 1.7°C to 5.8°C.
Some people are understandably skeptical when they learn that the human impact
on our environment might lead to temperature increases of several degrees. There’s a
gut feeling that human actions are too puny to do this. And it’s true that the human
energy input to our environment is relatively tiny: Nearly all of Earth’s energy comes
from the sun, with less than 0.0075% from fossil fuels. The answer to this skepticism
is that the predicted temperature rise is not caused directly by the human energy
input, but by the human contribution to the greenhouse effect. Think of the atmos-
phere as a blanket that’s –19°C on top but +14°C on the bottom because of the green-
house effect that traps Earth’s infrared radiation, just as a blanket on your bed is cold
on top but warm on the bottom because it traps your body’s radiation. The “insula-
tion” in the greenhouse blanket is a thin trace of water vapor, CO2, and a few other
gases. Some 20% of the natural effect comes from CO2. As we’ve seen, human activ-
ities have already increased the CO2 by 40%, so overall we’ve increased the “green-
house insulation” in Earth’s blanket by 0.2 * 0.4 = 0.08, or 8%. Since the natural
greenhouse effect raises Earth’s temperature by 33°C, it’s not surprising that a
detailed calculation predicts a human-caused increase of a few degrees.

6.5 Figure 40
Variations of Earth’s surface tem-
6.0
Departures in temperatures ( C) from the 1961-1990 average

perature, 1000 to 2100. During

5.5 1000–1860, temperatures (solid
5.0 Shaded region encloses black curve) are determined from
the predictions of several tree rings and other indirect means.
4.5 different models
During 1860–2000, temperatures
4.0 are determined from recorded
instrument readings. Gray area
3.5
represents uncertainties in the data.
3.0 Projections after 2000 are based on
2.5
climate models and assumed sce-
narios as described in the text;
2.0 gray area represents uncertainties
1.5 Bars show in the projections.
the range
1.0 in 2100
produced
0.5 by several
models
0.0
0.5
1.0
1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 2100
Year

255
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

1.0 1.0 1.0

model model model

Temperature anomalies ( C)

Temperature anomalies ( C)
Temperature anomalies ( C)

observations observations observations

0.5 0.5 0.5

0.0 0.0 0.0

0.5 0.5 0.5

1.0 1.0 1.0

1850 1900 1950 2000 1850 1900 1950 2000 1850 1900 1950 2000
Year Year Year
(a) (b) (c)

Figure 41
Climate model predictions (gray) versus measurements (solid black) of the global tempera-
ture. The uncertainty ranges of the model predictions are shown in gray. (a) Climate model
based only on known natural variations such as solar variations and volcanic eruptions.
(b) Climate model based only on known human emissions of greenhouse gases and pollution.
(c) Climate model based on both natural variations and human emissions.

How do we know that global warming is caused by humans? Can the rising tem-
peratures of the past century be explained by natural changes such as solar variations and
volcanic activity? To answer this, scientists carried out three separate “predictions” of Earth’s
twentieth-century temperature variations (Figure 41). In the first, only natural variations were
fed into the model. The result differs significantly from the observations and does not repro-
duce the observed 0.75°C warming. In the second, only the known human emissions of
greenhouse gases and other pollutants were fed into the model. The results capture the
0.75°C warming but are still not a good fit to the observations. In the third test, both natural
variations and human emissions were fed into the model. The results were in good agree-
ment with the observations. Besides validating the climate models, these results show the
importance of both natural variations and human emissions.

Nitrous oxide, 6% Carbon dioxide is not the only problem. As Figure 42 shows, three other gases
contribute, including the CFCs that cause ozone depletion. In addition, because
CFCs, trees store CO2, deforestation causes about 20% of world wide CO2 emissions.
24% Global warming has already had a wide range of consequences. Sea level rose by
17 cm during the twentieth century due to melting ice and also thermal expansion
(arising from higher temperatures) of seawater. The rate of sea level rise is itself
increasing and will continue increasing due to partial melting of the kilometers-
Methane, thick Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets. Snow and ice cover have decreased.
15% For example, only 26 of the original 150 named glaciers in Glacier National Park,
Carbon dioxide, 55%
Montana, still remained in 2007, and it’s expected that they’ll all be gone by 2030.
Figure 42 The meters-thick layer of ice covering the Arctic Ocean is shrinking in both thick-
The main human-related green- ness and extent and could vanish in the summertime by 2030 (Figure 43). As
house gases and the contribu- expected with warming and the resulting observed increases in water vapor, the fre-
tion of each to global warming.
quency of heavy precipitation events has increased and further increase in extreme
weather events is likely. There’s been an increase in intense hurricanes in the North
Atlantic since about 1970. Excess CO2 absorbed by the oceans is measurably
increasing the acidity of all the oceans, making it difficult for key marine organisms
such as corals and plankton to maintain their external skeletons.
In the future, it’s expected that climate zones will shift some 500 km northward,
resulting in extinctions of 1.25 million plant and animal species, or 25% of all
species, by 2050. Flooding will increase in low-lying areas, and low-lying islands such
as the Maldives and the Marshalls will vanish. Agricultural effects will be mixed; tem-
perature increases of 1°C to 2°C would actually increase yields in temperate regions,

256
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

9 Figure 43
Decline in the area covered by
8.5
Arctic sea ice, based on satellite
8 measurements taken annually in
September. The straight line indi-
Extent (million sq km)

7.5
cates an average decline in ice area
7 of about 9% per decade.
6.5

5.5

4.5
4 2007
1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006
Year

while greater temperature increases would decrease yields everywhere. The southwest-
ern United States may be beginning a period of increased drought. Mosquitoes and
other disease vectors will thrive, and tropical diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow
fever, and sleeping sickness will spread northward. Already, the United Nations’ World
Health Organization estimates that 160,000 people die each year due to such global
warming effects as increased malaria and increased malnutrition. Due to the long life-
time of CO2 in the atmosphere, global warming will persist for centuries.
Many consequences have effects that further influence their original cause. Such In our view the challenge of cli-
feedbacks can be unpredictable and dramatic. For example, warming increases the mate change is now so serious
that it demands a degree of polit-
evaporation of water, which increases cloud cover, cooling Earth and reducing ical commitment which is virtually
global warming—a negative feedback. On the other hand, increased evaporation unprecedented. Whether the
also increases atmospheric water vapor, which enhances global warming because political leaders of the world are
water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas—a positive feedback. Positive feedbacks can up to the task remains to be
“run away” unpredictably. seen. Leadership on this issue
Several high-impact runaway events are possible. Arctic sea-ice could melt com- calls for something more than
pletely in the summers. Although this by itself cannot raise sea levels,13 it has an impor- pragmatism or posturing. It
requires qualities of courage,
tant feedback effect because it converts the Arctic from a white reflector of sunlight into determination and inspiration
a giant heat collector. This will increase the rate of Arctic warming and help melt the which are rare in peacetime.
Greenland ice sheet. Global warming of more than about 3°C would, if sustained, even- British House of Commons,
tually melt Greenland entirely, raising sea levels by an enormous seven meters. Similar Environmental Audit Committee, from
Their 2005 Report
feedbacks in the Antarctic could cause parts of the west Antarctic ice sheet to slide into
the water, raising sea levels by several meters. Many climate scientists conclude that
such large changes would amount to a new geologic state unknown in millions of years.
Other feedback effects: Warming will cause methane to be released from soils
and from permafrost, creating a strong positive feedback because methane is a
potent greenhouse gas. Also, it’s likely that warming will partially disrupt the ocean
currents that transport thermal energy around the globe. It’s thought that the abrupt
switching off and on of these currents initiated and ended past ice ages.
What can be done? To prevent atmospheric CO2 concentrations from rising
beyond their present high levels, there needs to be an estimated 80% reduction in

13
Unlike the Antarctic ice cap, the Arctic ice cap is floating in the ocean. If you allow a floating ice cube to
melt in a glass of water, the water level will not rise. Try it!

257
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Tapping the limited resources of emissions during the next few decades. But annual emissions have increased rapidly
our world—particularly those of since 1950 (Figure 44). To keep atmospheric concentrations from increasing, rising
the developing world—simply to emissions must be turned around and reduced sharply, to around 2 gigatons (billion
fuel consumerism, is disastrous. If
tons) per year. This won’t be easy, but the ozone story (previous section) shows that
it continues unchecked, eventu-
ally we all will suffer. We must humankind can apply radical measures to preserve the environment.
respect the delicate matrix of life Action on global warming has been much weaker than on ozone depletion for several
and allow it to replenish itself. reasons: Solutions have a larger economic impact; industry has presented greater opposi-
The Dalai Lama, Speaking at the 1992 tion to action on global warming than it did to action on ozone depletion; the required
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
lifestyle changes may be difficult; and the world’s leading economic power, the United
States, has lagged on this issue instead of leading as it did on ozone depletion. In a hope-
ful note, most of the industrialized nations agreed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce their
greenhouse emissions 5% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. Unfortunately, by 2006
global emissions were already 34% above 1990 levels. Furthermore, the hoped-for 5%
reduction by 2012 is only a small fraction of the 80% reduction needed to eventually
solve the problem.
The industrialized nations, and especially the United States, are the main culprits,
since they consume by far the lion’s share of fossil fuels (Figure 45). The United States
alone, with only 4.5% of the world’s population, emits 22% of the world’s
carbon. Other industrialized nations emit less than half as much carbon per person as
the United States. Developing nations contribute far less per person, although their
At its core, global climate change emissions are increasing rapidly due to population increase and rapid industrialization.
is not about economic theory or Reducing global CO2 emissions by 80% by mid-century is a tall order, but it can
political platforms, nor about par- be done. After all, humankind quickly solved a similar problem, namely ozone
tisan advantage or interest group depletion (Section 7), once it was clear that it actually was a problem. If govern-
pressures. It is about the future of ments, industry, scientists, and the people of the world get together and pull in the
God’s creation and the one
same direction, we can solve global warming too.
human family, it is about protect-
ing both “the human environ-
There are four types of solutions: Use less energy, use non-carbon sources of
ment” and the natural energy, capture and store carbon emissions underground, and end deforestation.
environment. It is about our We’ll need all of these. Using less energy includes energy efficiency measures such
human stewardship of God’s cre- as home insulation that save energy without sacrificing energy services such as a
ation and our responsibility to comfortable home temperature. It also includes lifestyle changes such as alterna-
those who come after us. tives to the automobile. Non-carbon sources of energy include renewable sources
U.S. Catholic Bishops, Global Climate
Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence,
such as wind, hydroelectric, and solar energies, and it also includes nuclear power.
and the Common Good

Figure 44 9
World annual carbon emissions
Annual carbon emissions, gigatons

8
from fossil-fuel burning,
1950–2006, in gigatons of carbon. 7
To prevent CO2 concentrations 6
(Figure 38) from rising far beyond
their present high levels, total 5
annual carbon emissions (including 4
deforestation, which adds another
3
2 gigatons per year to this graph in
2008) must be brought down to 2
about 2 gigatons. 1
0
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Year

258
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Tonnes per capita Figure 45

Per capita CO2 emissions from
Low income World High income
average average average 24 nations in 2002.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
United States
Saudi Arabia
Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Norway
Russian Federation
United Kingdom
Germany
Japan
South Africa
France
Sweden
Mexico
Turkey
Gabon
China
Uruguay
India
Guatemala
Yemen
Nigeria
Ethiopia
Uganda
Source : World Bank, online database, 2004.

Engineering professor Robert Socolow and ecology professor Stephen Pacala,

leaders of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University, have suggested
a list of 15 different specific measures that can be accomplished using present
technology, any 7 of which would suffice to stop the dangerous emissions increase
seen in Figure 44 and hold the emissions graph level until 2050. This will not by
itself solve the problem, but it at least gives us a good start. Application of addi-
tional measures, perhaps by accomplishing some of these measures several times
over, would then start us on the road to the required 80% reduction in annual emis-
sions. I’ll just list these measures (Table 3) without further comment; they are spe-
cific, they are doable, and they offer hope. Keep in mind that each of these is a task
not for the United States alone, but for the entire world.14

CONCEPT CHECK 14 How can scientists have learned that the visible surface
of the sun has a temperature of about 5400°C? (a) By sending a space probe to the
surface of the sun. (b) From knowledge of the chemical composition of the sun. (c)
By measuring the amount of radiation emitted at various frequencies.

CONCEPT CHECK 15 In Figure 37, verify that energy is conserved at each

“intersection” where the flow separates or joins together.

14
Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, “A plan to keep carbon in check,” Scientific American, September
2006, pp. 50–57.

259
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Table 3
Fifteen measures, doable using present technology, to combat rising greenhouse gas emissions. Any 7 of these measures
would level off the emissions graph (44). Additional measures (perhaps by accomplishing some measures several times
over) would then start reducing emissions toward a safe level of approximately 2 gigatons per year.

End-user efficiency and conservation:

1. Increase the fuel economy of two billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg.
2. Drive two billion cars not 10,000 but 5,000 miles per year (at 30 mpg).
3. Cut electricity use in homes, offices, and stores by 25%.
Power generation:

4. Raise efficiency at 1,600 large coal-fired plants from 40% up to 60%.

5. Replace 1,400 large coal-fired plants with gas-fired plants.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS):

6. Install CCS at 800 large coal-fired power plants.

7. Install CCS at coal plants that produce hydrogen for 1.5 billion vehicles.
8. Install CCS at plants that produce synthetic gas from coal.
Alternative energy sources:

9. Add twice today’s nuclear output to displace coal.

10. Increase wind power 40-fold to displace coal.
11. Increase solar power 700-fold to displace coal.
12. Increase wind power 80-fold to make hydrogen for cars.
13. Drive two billion cars on ethanol, using one-sixth of world cropland.

Agriculture and forestry:

14. Stop all deforestation.

15. Expand conservation tillage to 100% of cropland.

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

260
Waves, Light, and Climate Change
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions
A
WAVES
B
1. Describe the motion of the parts of the medium when a wave
travels along a rope, along a Slinky, and across the water.
2. What is the difference between wave motion and the motion
of a material object?
3. What does hertz mean? Very narrow
4. Waves A and B have the same wavespeed, but A’s wavelength is slits, shown here
longer. Which has the larger frequency, or are they the same? greatly enlarged.
5. Choose the correct answer(s): Two different continuous
waves on the surface of a pond would be expected to have Figure 18
roughly the same (wavespeeds, wavelengths, frequencies, The double-slit experiment with light:
energies, amplitudes, none of these).
the experimental setup and result.

INTERFERENCE
6. Two continuous water waves each have a 2 cm amplitude.
What is the water surface’s displacement (a) when a crest
meets a trough? (b) when crest meets crest? (c) when trough
meets trough? 16. In what way do electromagnetic waves violate the philosoph-
7. Give an example of (a) a one-dimensional medium, (b) a ical underpinnings of Newtonian physics?
two-dimensional medium, (c) a three-dimensional medium.
8. You tap one finger on the water’s surface on one side of a
rectangular pan of water. Describe the waves rolling into the THE COMPLETE SPECTRUM
far side. How will the wave pattern at the far side change if 17. List the six main regions of the spectrum, from longest to
you now begin tapping at the same rate, at two different shortest wavelength.
points, using one tapping finger at each point? 18. Describe a typical source of each: X-rays, infrared, gamma
rays, radio waves, and ultraviolet.
19. Describe physically how humans see.
LIGHT 20. List several practical applications of radio waves.
9. Describe the experimental evidence supporting the claim that 21. Which parts of the spectrum are ionizing radiations?
light is a wave. 22. Which three regions of the spectrum dominate solar radia-
10. How would the pattern on the screen in Figure 18 change if tion? Which single region dominates?
one of the slits were closed?
11. How do we know that the medium for light waves is not air?
GLOBAL OZONE DEPLETION
23. Where does ozone occur naturally on Earth, and what is its
ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES human significance?
12. Make a list of phenomena that are caused by electric charge. 24. What are CFCs? How have they been useful to humans?
13. What is an electromagnetic wave, and how fast does it go? 25. Outline the process by which CFCs destroy ozone.
14. Are electromagnetic fields physically real? Defend 26. List three atmospheric trace gases.
your answer. 27. What is the Ozone Treaty?
15. Describe the ether theory of light. 28. List some expected effects of ozone depletion.

From Chapter 9 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

261
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change: Problem Set

GLOBAL WARMING
29. What are the two major greenhouse gases, and what property
makes them greenhouse gases?
30. What would happen if we removed all the CO2 from the
atmosphere? All the ozone?
31. Explain the greenhouse effect.
32. Which would increase global warming, forestation or defor-
estation? Why? Would this also increase ozone depletion?
33. What is a feedback effect? Describe one feedback effect
related to global warming.
34. List three recommendations that have been made to combat
global warming.

Uri Haber-Schaim
Conceptual Exercises
Figure 12
Interference between continuous
WAVES surface waves spreading out from
1. Is a mountain stream rushing downhill an example of wave two sources: experimental results.
motion? Defend your answer. Crests (constructive interference)
2. A gust of wind moves across a wheat field, causing a notice- are bright, troughs (also construc-
able ripple that crosses the field. Is this ripple a wave? If not, tive interference) are dark, and flat
why not? If so, then what is the medium?
places (destructive interference)
3. When you send a brief wave down a rope or Slinky, it eventu-
ally dies out. What has become of the energy? are gray.
4. A cork floats on the water as a water wave passes by. What
happens to the cork? Will the cork’s vibrational frequency be
related to the water wave’s frequency, and if so, how? 8. What happens to the energy of the two waves in Figure 9
5. Most waves have fixed wavespeeds that are determined by when they interfere destructively, as shown in the second of
the properties of the medium through which the wave travels. the three sketches? Did the energy vanish? (Hint: What are
What about a sports wave—does it have a fixed, predeter- the parts of the rope doing as the wave moves? Which type of
mined wavespeed? Why or why not? energy is the wave carrying?)

INTERFERENCE
6. The two waves shown in Figure 46 are moving toward each
other along a string. Sketch the string during the interference Before
of the two waves.

During

After

Figure 9
Figure 46 Two waves meet and interfere
How will the two waves interfere? destructively.

7. Suppose the frequency of the waves in Figure 12 is 1 Hz. 9. Two small sources of water waves send out circular waves. Each
Describe the appearance of the water surface one-half second source produces waves whose amplitudes are 1.5 cm. What is
later (one-half second after the snapshot was taken). One sec- the water level (relative to the undisturbed level) at the point
ond later. where crest meets crest? Where trough meets trough? Where
trough meets crest?

262
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change: Problem Set

LIGHT 25. Light from the sun takes roughly 8 minutes to reach Earth,
10. Do waves of any sort travel to Earth from the moon? Explain. while light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest star beyond the
11. How do you know that light is not something that comes out sun, takes about 4 years. How many times farther is it to
of your eyes? Alpha Centauri than it is to the sun?
12. You shine two flashlights on a wall. Why don’t you see an 26. Using the data in the preceding exercise, about how far is it
interference pattern? to Alpha Centauri in kilometers?
13. Which of these objects are luminous (light sources) during
their normal operation: camera, polished chrome, firefly, THE COMPLETE SPECTRUM
electric stove heating element, camera flashbulb, mirror, dia-
27. Is there any physical difference between light and a radio
mond, sun, moon?
wave? Explain.
14. Can light travel through a vacuum? Cite evidence for
28. You can get a sunburn even on a cloudy day. Why?
your answer.
29. You do not get a sunburn, even on a sunny day, if you are
15. If you were on the moon and you exploded a firecracker
behind glass. Why?
there, would you hear the explosion? Would you see the flash
30. What kinds of animals might evolve on a planet orbiting a
of the explosion? (Note: The moon has no atmosphere.)
star whose radiation is mostly in the infrared?
16. Red light of wavelength 0.6 micrometer (micro means “mil-
31. Suppose you viewed Earth’s dark side from space. Could you
lionth”) shines from a stoplight to your eye, a distance of
“photograph” Earth using ultraviolet-sensitive film? Light-
10 m. How many wavelengths are contained in this distance?
sensitive film? Infrared-sensitive film? If so, what would you
17. MAKING ESTIMATES Estimate the number of wavelengths of
expect to see in the photo?
light in 1 millimeter.
32. What energy transformation occurs (from what type to what
type?) when solar radiation warms your skin? In a flashlight?
ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES When microwaves warm your food?
18. What evidence is there that the medium that carries light 33. Your radio is tuned to 92 on the FM dial. What frequency of
waves is not air? electromagnetic wave is your radio receiving? How fast is
19. Imagine a region of space that had no atoms and no sub- this wave traveling? About how long is one wave length?
atomic particles. Would it contain matter? Might it Does an electromagnetic wave actually reach your ear?
contain energy? What does reach your ear?
20. Which travels faster, light or radio waves? Which has a
longer wavelength? Which has a higher frequency? GLOBAL OZONE DEPLETION
21. It takes light 20 minutes to travel from Mars to Earth
34. Which of these worsens the ozone problem: coal-fired
(depending on where Mars and Earth are in their orbits).
power plants, gasoline engines, CFC coolants, nuclear
How might this affect a conversation between an astronaut on
power plants, hydroelectric power plants, solar heating of
Mars and people on Earth? Suppose an ultra-powerful tele-
homes, deforestation?
scope were used for visual communication. Would this speed
35. Why is it important that spray-can aerosols be propelled by
things up?
inert gases? Why does the inertness of CFCs lead to prob-
22. Are radio waves filling your room right now? Describe a
lems with stratospheric ozone?
simple experiment that could demonstrate your answer.
36. According to Table 2, which will be the first ozone-destroying
23. If your ears actually detected radio waves instead of sound
chemical to decrease to harmless levels, and how long will it
waves, what would your ears be “hearing” right now?
take? Which will be the last, and how long will it take?
24. List three characteristics that all electromagnetic waves have
in common.

Table 2
Ozone-destroying chemicals in the atmosphere in 1991
Average lifetime in Share of U.S. share of
Chemical Uses atmosphere (yr) problem (%) use (%)
CFC-11 coolant, aerosol, foam 60 28 22
CFC-12 coolant, aerosol, foam 130 47 30
CFC-113 solvent 90 5 45
Carbon tetrachloride solvent 50 15 27
Methyl chloroform solvent 7 2 50
Halon 1211 coolant, foam 25 1 25
Halon 1301 fire extinguisher 110 2 50
Source: U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, 1991.

263
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change: Problem Set

37. What was the chlorine concentration in 1950? Under the 44. What are some alternatives to burning fossil fuels? Consider
Ozone Treaty, what is the highest predicted level? When is electric power generation, transportation, home heating.
the level predicted to return to the 1975 level? What would 45. Will the Ozone Treaty help in solving global
the level be at that time if there were no Ozone Treaty? warming? Explain.
38. Which of the ozone-destroying chemicals has the longest 46. Which of these contributes to global warming: coal-fired
atmospheric lifetime? Which one forms the largest share of power plaints gasoline engines, CFC coolants, nuclear
the problem? power plants, hydroelectric power plants, solar heating of
39. Ozone, O3, typically “lives” for only 100 to 200 seconds in homes, deforestation?
the stratosphere before reacting with an O atom to form two 47. It has been suggested that global warming could affect the
molecules of O2. Since it is so short-lived, how can it offer CO2 concentration in the oceans. What evidence is there in
any protection from ultraviolet radiation? your everyday environment to show that CO2 can be dis-
40. The total quantity of energy that reaches Earth in the infrared solved in water? As the temperature is raised, would you
region is greater than that in the ultraviolet region. Why then expect the amount of dissolved CO2 to increase, decrease, or
are we more concerned about the direct health effects of UV remain the same?
than of IR? 48. Assuming that the CO2 emissions in Figure 45 are due only
41. One cubic centimeter of normal air at Earth’s surface con- to fossil-fuel use, how many joules of fossil energy are con-
tains about 2.7 * 1019 molecules. Working from Table 1, sumed by a typical American for each joule consumed by a
find the number of O2 molecules in 1 cm3 of air. Do the typical Japanese? How many joules are consumed by a typi-
same for ozone, O3, which has an atmospheric concentration cal Japanese for each joule consumed by a typical Indian?
of 0.3 ppm.
42. Following up on the preceding question, find the number of
CO2 molecules in 1 cm3 of air.
Problems
GLOBAL WARMING
WAVES
43. Which of these automobile fuels would not contribute to
global warming: natural gas, synthetic gasoline made from (You will need footnote 1 to solve several of these problems.)
coal, electricity from a solar power plant, electricity from a
coal power plant, electricity from a nuclear power plant, 1. If you doubled the wavelength of a wave without changing its
ethanol (grain alcohol) made from corn? wavespeed, what would happen to the frequency? What if
you halved the wavelength?

Tonnes per capita Figure 45

Per capita CO2 emissions from
Low income World High income
average average average 24 nations in 2002.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
United States
Saudi Arabia
Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Norway
Russian Federation
United Kingdom
Germany
Japan
South Africa
France
Sweden
Mexico
Turkey
Gabon
China
Uruguay
India
Guatemala
Yemen
Nigeria
Ethiopia
Uganda
Source : World Bank, online database, 2004.

264
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change: Problem Set

2. Typical AM radio wavelengths are about as long as a football 17. The wavelength of light from sodium vapor lamps is
field, while typical FM radio wavelengths are about a meter 589 nanometers. What is its frequency?
long. Which one then has the highest (largest) frequency? If 18. Find the wavelength of blue-green light having a frequency
an AM wavelength is 100 times longer than an FM radio of 6 * 1014 Hz. How does this wavelength compare with the
wavelength, then how do the frequencies compare? size of an atom, which is about 10–10 m?
3. Mary attaches one end of a long rope to a wall and sends
waves down the rope by shaking the other end at a steady rate
of four times every second (Figure 5). If the wavelength is OZONE DEPLETION AND GLOBAL WARMING
1.5 m, find the wavespeed. 19. To better understand the meaning of 1 ppm, consider kryp-
4. In the preceding question, suppose that Mary slows down to ton, which has an atmospheric concentration of 1 ppm. One
two times every second; assuming that the wavespeed is cubic centimeter of normal air at Earth’s surface contains
unchanged, find the new wavelength. about 2.7 * 1019 molecules. Find the number of krypton
5. You note that waves roll past your stationary boat at a rate of atoms in a cubic centimeter of normal air.
one wave every 3 seconds, and you estimate the distance 20. MAKING ESTIMATES The mass of 1 liter of gasoline is about
between waves to be 15 meters. What is the frequency of 0.7 kg, and the mass of 1 gallon is about 2.5 kg. Assuming
these waves? that gasoline is pure carbon (actually only about 85% of its
6. In the preceding question, how fast are the waves moving? mass is carbon), estimate the mass of carbon a typical auto-
7. By tapping his finger on the surface of a pond, Tom sends out mobile puts into the atmosphere each year. Compare with
waves at a frequency of 3 Hz. If the wavespeed is 2 m/s, find Figure 45.
the wavelength of these waves.
8. In the preceding question, suppose that Tom speeds up his
tapping to 4 Hz. Find the new wavelength, assuming that the
wavespeed is unchanged.
Answers to Concept Checks
9. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, 3 * 108 m>s. Find
the wavelength of an FM radio wave whose frequency is 1. (a) and (b)
100 MHz (1 MHz = 1 million hertz). 2. (c)
10. Find the wavelength of an AM radio wave whose frequency 3. (c)
is 1000 kHz (1 kHz = 1 kilohertz). 4. See the small x’s and o’s in Figure 14.
5. (a)
6. (d)
ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES 7. (d)
11. How long does it take a radio signal to travel from New York 8. 109 Hz = 1000 megahertz (MHz). This is not on any normal
to San Francisco, about 5000 km? radio dial, (b).
12. A radar transmitter pointed at the moon receives a reflection 9. The frequency is 100 MHz, or 108 Hz. According to Figure 27,
3 seconds after the signal is sent. How far is it to the moon? the related wavelength is around 1 m (more precisely, it happens
13. Find the radius of Earth’s orbit from the fact that light gets to be 3 m), (f ).
here from the sun in 8.3 minutes. 10. (c)
14. What is the time delay for a television signal that is sent via 11. (e)
satellite? Communications satellites orbit above the equator 12. Figure 31 says that energy from the electric company, and
in circles of radius 36,000 km (six times larger than Earth’s thermal energy removed from your refrigerator, transform
radius!). To simplify the problem, assume that the signal goes into thermal energy that warms your kitchen, (b).
straight up and straight down. 13. (a)
15. Use the formula s = f l to find the wavelength of 60 Hz 14. (c)
power-line radiation. 15. No answer.
16. Find the wavelength of microwaves from Figure 27 (see next
page).

Wavelength

Amplitude

Wavespeed

Figure 5
The meaning of wavelength and amplitude. The wavespeed is the speed at
which a crest or a trough moves down the rope.

265
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change: Problem Set

Typical Sources Typical Object

Frequency, Hz
That Send out Waves Whose Size Is the
at This Frequency: Same as This
Wavelength:
Nucleus
1022 Gamma ray 10⫺14
Processes by protons and
neutrons in atomic nuclei
1020 10⫺12

X-ray
Electrons in atoms, 1018 10⫺10 Atom
high-energy processes
Ultraviolet DNA molecule
Electrons in atoms, 1016 10⫺8
violet Amoeba
low-energy processes green
Thermal vibrations of 1014 yellow 10⫺6 Fine dust particle
red
molecules Visible
Microwave oven 1012 Infrared 10⫺4
Radar antenna Microwave Millimeter

1010 10⫺2 Centimeter

Cell phone Radar
TV, FM radio
FM radio, TV antenna 108 1 Meter

AM radio Soccer field

AM radio antenna 106 102
Radio Kilometer
104 104

60 Hz power-line 102 106

radiation Earth
1 108

Wavelength, m

Figure 27
The electromagnetic spectrum. There are no definite ends to the spectrum and no sharp
boundaries between the regions.

11. Because you cannot see in the dark, even though your eye
Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual is open.
Exercises and Problems 13. Firefly, heating element, flashbulb, sun.
15. You would not hear the explosion, but you would see it.
17. A typical wavelength for light is 0.5 * 10 - 6 m. 1 mm is
Conceptual Exercises
10 - 3 m. So the number of wavelengths of light in 1 mm is
1. No, because the water itself actually moves downhill.
about 10 - 3 m>0.5 * 10 - 6 m = 2000.
3. It must have transformed into thermal energy.
19. It contains no matter. But it might contain energy, in the
5. No. The speed depends on the reaction time of the crowd.
form of fields. If so, it is not really “empty,” because it con-
7. One-half second later, all the ripples will have moved out-
tains something that is physically real.
ward by 1/2 wavelength, so crests will be replaced by valleys
21. Each reply will be delayed by 20 minutes. The telescope
and valleys will be replaced by crests. One second later, the
would not speed things up.
surface will look just like it looks in the photo.
23. Your ears would “hear” all the radio waves that your radio
9. 3 cm, –3 cm (3 cm downward), 0 cm.
can receive, all at the same time.

266
 Waves, Light, and Climate Change: Problem Set

25. The distance ratio is the same as the time ratio for light 45. The Ozone Treaty will end the use of CFCs, which not only
beams: 4 years / 8 minutes. The number of minutes in destroy ozone but are also a greenhouse gas (see Figure 23).
4 years is 4 * 365 * 24 * 60, so the distance ratio is 47. Carbonated drinks. Raising the temperature causes the dis-
4 * 365 * 24 * 60>8 = 260,000 times farther. solved CO2 gas to rise to the surface and move into the air.
27. Their wavelengths and frequencies are different. Light’s This would be a positive feedback on global warming.
wavelength is much shorter than radio’s wavelength, and
Problems
light’s frequency is much higher.
1. Its frequency would halve, because it would take twice as
29. Because ultraviolet radiation does not penetrate glass.
long for each complete wavelength to pass. If you halved the
31. You would only see ultraviolet and visible light from unnatu-
wavelength, the frequency would double.
ral sources, such as streetlights. But you would see infrared
3. s = fl = 4 Hz * 1.5 m = 6 m>s.
from all over Earth, with warmer places appearing brighter.
5. f = 1>3 waves>s = 1>3 Hz.
7. Solving s = fl for l, l = s>f = 2 m>s > 3 Hz = 0.67 m.
33. 92 * 106 Hertz. 300,000 km/s. According to Figure 5, one
wavelength is on the order of one meter long (more precisely,
9. Solving s = fl for l,
l = s>f = 3 * 108 m>s > 108 Hz = 3 m.
about 3 meters long). Your ear is stimulated not by an electro-
magnetic wave, but by a sound wave.
11. (5000 km)>(300,000 km>s) = 0.017 s.
35. So they will not react chemically inside your body. This
inertness means that the gases do not react in the atmos- 13. 3 * 105 km>s * 8.3 min * 60 s>min = 1.5 * 108 km =
phere, so the gases float up to the upper atmosphere. 150 million km.
37. Less than 1 ppb in 1950. It reached the highest level around 15. Solving s = fl for l, we get l = s>f = (3 * 108 m>s)>60 =
the year 2000 CE. It will return to the 1975 level (about 5 * 106 m = 5000 km.
2 ppb) around 2050 CE. Without the Ozone Treaty, it would 17. Solving s = lf for f, we get f = s>l = (3 * 108 m>s)>
have been about 9 ppb in 2050 CE. 589 * 10 - 9 m = 5.09 * 1014 Hz.
39. Ozone is also continually created in the atmosphere, so it’s 19. 2.7 * 1019>106 = 2.7 * 1013 = 27 trillion. Even at “only”
present in the atmosphere at a relatively constant level. 1 ppm, there are still a lot of Krypton atoms in a cubic cen-
41. About 21% are O2: timeter of air!
0.21 * 2.7 * 1019 = 5.7 * 1018 O2 molecules.
0.3 out of every million (0.3>106) is an O3 molecule:
(0.3>106) * 2.7 * 1019 = 0.81 * 1013 = 8.1 * 1012, or
8.1 trillion.
43. Electricity from solar power, electricity from nuclear power,
and ethanol from corn (harvesting the corn releases the car-
bon that was absorbed when the corn was grown, so there is
no net carbon increase in the atmosphere except for the
emissions from high-technology agricultural practices—
fertilizer manufacturing, farm equipment, etc).

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of Relativity

From Chapter 10 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

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 The Special Theory
of Relativity

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:

God said, “Let Newton be” and all was light.
Alexander Pope

It did not last: the Devil, shouting “Ho

Let Einstein be” restored the status quo.
Sir John Collings Squire

P
hysics changed around 1900. Physicists began investigating phenomena far-
removed from the normal range of human experience, things like the structure of
atoms and the precise speed of a light beam. They found that Newtonian physics
and nineteenth-century electricity and magnetism were far off the mark in phenom-
ena involving very high speeds, very strong gravitational forces, large astronomical
regions, and the microscopic world. To deal with these new realms, they invented new
theories called special relativity (this chapter), general relativity, and quantum
physics.
All of these new theories reproduce, nearly exactly, the standard Newtonian pre-
dictions within the normal range of human perceptions. For example, special relativ-
ity correctly predicts new, non-Newtonian results for objects moving at speeds
comparable to lightspeed, but also correctly predicts the normal Newtonian results for
slower-moving objects such as cars and speeding bullets.
But despite this similarity within the normal range of human perception, the con-
cepts behind these new theories are quite unlike the concepts behind Newtonian
physics. For example, Newtonian physics describes the universe as a kind of giant
predictable clockwork mechanism. But you’ll find that, according to quantum
physics, the universe is nothing like a clock, quite non-mechanical, and far from pre-
dictable. The new theories represent the most accurate knowledge known about the
real physical universe, and they describe a different universe from what you would
have expected on the basis of Newtonian or pre-Newtonian concepts. So expect your
preconceptions about space, time, motion, gravity, matter, energy, and physical reality
to be assaulted. Each of these new theories has a non-intuitive oddness about it, as
might be expected since they deal with phenomena beyond your normal range of
perception.
In this chapter you’ll learn about some unexpected effects that happen when objects
move at high speeds, speeds comparable to lightspeed. You’ll also learn that space and
time aren’t quite what you thought they were, and you’ll learn something new and, for
most people, amazing about energy. Einstein’s “special theory of relativity” is based on

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two simple ideas and all of its odd conclusions are off-shoots of these. This theory has
a reputation for being difficult, but this comes really from its strangeness rather than
any inherent difficulty. Its conclusions violate common sense. The main requirement
for understanding this theory is not intelligence but mental flexibility.
Einstein created two related theories of relativity. The “special” theory of relativity,
discussed in this chapter, revolutionizes the way we think about space and time, and
this leads to a further revolution in our concepts of mass and energy. The “general”
theory of relativity revolutionizes our concepts of space and time even further, and
radically reformulates the way we look at gravity.
Following some historical context in Section 1, Section 2 discusses the older
“Galilean” way of viewing the phenomena with which Einstein was concerned.
Sections 3 and 4 cover the theory’s two key laws: the principle of relativity and the
principle of the constancy of lightspeed. Sections 5 and 6 present Einstein’s prediction
of the relativity of time. Section 7 presents two more predictions: the relativity of space
and the relativity of mass. Section 8 presents Einstein’s famous prediction of the equiv-
alence of energy and mass, the aspect of special relativity that Einstein himself thought
was most important, and discusses its profound significance.

1 EINSTEIN: REBEL WITH A CAUSE I thought of that while riding

my bicycle.
Einstein, on the Theory of Relativity, in
The Scottish mathematician and physicist Lord William Thomson Kelvin stated in the Quotable Cyclist.
an address to physicists at the British Association for the Advancement of Science in
1900 that “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is Common sense is nothing more
more and more precise measurement.” Many scientists1 of that day shared Kelvin’s than a deposit of prejudices laid
confidence that the known “grand unifying principles”—Newton’s laws and the laws down by the mind before you
of thermodynamics and electromagnetism—were complete and permanent. reach eighteen.
Einstein
But the world soon changed. In 1900, Max Planck introduced a revolutionary new
principle, the quantum of energy. And a scant five years later, in 1905, a quite differ-
My intellectual development was
ent but equally revolutionary theory was hatched in the brain of an obscure patent
retarded, as a result of which I
clerk in Bern, Switzerland: Albert Einstein (Figures 1 and 2). began to wonder about space
Einstein was a rebel in more ways than one. In his midteens he got fed up with and time (things which a normal
high school and dropped out. This surprised no one, for he had been a mediocre stu- adult has thought of as a child)
dent and a daydreamer since beginning elementary school. Before that he had been only when I had grown up.
a slow child, learning to speak only at 3 years of age. His high school teachers were Einstein

glad to see him go, one of them informing Einstein that he would “never amount to
anything” and another suggesting that he leave school because his presence If I were a young man again and
destroyed student discipline. Einstein was delighted to comply. He spent the next had to decide how to make a liv-
ing, I would not try to become a
few months as a model dropout, hiking and loafing around the Italian Alps.
scientist or scholar or teacher. I
After deciding to study engineering, he applied for admission to the Swiss would rather choose to be a
Federal Polytechnic University in Zurich, but he failed his entrance exams. It seems plumber or a peddler, in the hope
he had problems with biology and French. To prepare for another try, he spent a year of finding that modest degree of
at a Swiss high school, where he flourished in this particular school’s progressive independence still available
and democratic atmosphere. He recalled later that it was here that he had his first under present circumstances.
ideas leading to the theory of relativity. The university now admitted Einstein. He Einstein, in a remark made near the end
of his life.
was known as a charming but indifferent university student who attended cafes reg-
ularly (where he enjoyed discussing philosophy and science) and lectures sporadi-
cally (because he preferred to spend time in physics laboratories). He managed to

1
But perhaps not most scientists. Many physicists were dissatisfied with the theoretical foundations of
physics and rejected Newtonian mechanics as the basis for physics in favor of electromagnetism.

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

Lotte Jacobi Collection

UPI/Corbis/Bettmann
Figure 1 Figure 2
Never one to take himself too seri- Albert Einstein during his student
ously, Einstein stuck his tongue out days in Zurich, a few years before
when asked to smile on his seventy- he created his special theory
second birthday. of relativity.

Were I wrong, one professor pass the necessary exams and eventually graduate with the help of friends who
would have been quite enough. shared their systematic class notes with the nonconforming Einstein.
Einstein, when asked about a book in Following his graduation in 1900, Einstein applied for an assistantship to do
which 100 Nazi professors charged him
with scientific error. graduate study, but it went to someone else. After looking unsuccessfully for a
teaching position, in 1902 a friend helped him land a job as a patent examiner.
Einstein often referred to his seven years at this job as “a kind of salvation” that
paid the rent and occupied only 8 hours a day, leaving him the rest of the day to pon-
der nature. And ponder he did. One of the many remarkable aspects of the theory of
relativity is that it was invented nearly single-handedly.

2 GALILEAN RELATIVITY: RELATIVITY ACCORDING TO

NEWTONIAN PHYSICS
Here is a typical relativity question: Suppose that a train passenger, call her Velma,
throws a baseball toward the front of the train. Both she and Mortimer, who is
standing on the ground watching the passing train, measure the baseball’s speed
(Figure 3). Will they get the same answer? If not, how will their answers differ?
Think about it.
This question concerns two observers who are moving differently. We say that
Velma and Mort are in relative motion whenever they are moving at different speeds
or in different directions. A theory of relativity is any theory that works out answers
to questions concerning observers who are in relative motion. You can think of the
train as being Velma’s laboratory, or her reference frame, within which Velma
measures things like the speed of the ball. You can think of the ground beside the
tracks as a second reference frame, Mort’s reference frame, for his measurements.
The standard question that any theory of relativity asks is how measurements made
in one reference frame compare with those made in another. Scientists have thought
about questions like this since at least the time of Galileo.

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

Figure 3
Velma throwing a ball, observed by Mort.

To be more specific, suppose that the train moves at 70 meters per second (150 miles
per hour, a typical modern train speed). Suppose that Velma throws the baseball toward
the front of the train at 20 m/s “relative to Velma” (as measured on the train, using meter
sticks and clocks that are on the train). How fast does the baseball move “relative to
Mort” (as measured on the ground)?
…Think about that.
Well, during each second, the baseball moves 20 meters toward the front of the
train as measured by Velma. But as observed by Mort, the baseball moves an addi-
tional 70 meters during that same second, because the train itself moves 70 meters.
So the ball must move at 90 m/s relative to Mort. Right? Because Galileo would
have given the same answer four centuries ago, this straightforward and fairly intu-
itive form of relativity is called Galilean relativity.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 Velma’s normal ball-throwing speed is 20 m/s. She is in a

train moving eastward at 70 m/s and throws a ball toward the rear of the train. The
velocity of the ball relative to Velma is (a) 50 m/s eastward; (b) 50 m/s westward;
(c) 20 m/s eastward; (d) 20 m/s westward; (e) 70 m/s eastward; (f) 70 m/s westward.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 In the preceding question, the velocity of the ball relative to
Mort, who is standing beside the tracks, is (a) 50 m/s eastward; (b) 50 m/s westward;
(c) 20 m/s eastward; (d) 20 m/s westward; (e) 70 m/s eastward; (f) 70 m/s westward.

Let’s turn to a similar example involving light beams instead of baseballs. Light
is an electromagnetic wave moving at 300,000 km/s, a speed that I will symbolize
by the letter c. It’s difficult to imagine such a high speed. A light beam travels from
New York to Los Angeles in a hundredth of a second. Trains, jet planes, and even
Earth satellites moving at 8 km/s are slowpokes by comparison.
Imagine that Velma pilots a really fast rocket ship past Earth at 75,000 km/s, or
0.25c (25% of lightspeed), and that she holds a source of light—a flashlight or a
laser—pointed forward. Mort stands on Earth. What would be the speed of the light

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

Velma’s spaceship
moves past Mort
at a speed of 0.25c

Velma’s light beam

moves away from
Velma at speed c

Figure 4
How fast is Velma’s light beam moving, as observed by Mort?

beam—the moving tip of the beam—relative to Velma and relative to Mort? It

seems plausible that Velma measures the light beam to move at speed c, since she’s
holding the light source. In fact, experiments with light beams emitted by moving
sources show this to be true: Any light beam from a moving source moves at speed
c relative to the source.2 What speed would Mort measure for the same light beam
(Figure 4)? Following the logic of the baseball example, the sensible answer would
seem to be 1.25c. After all, the light beam travels 300,000 km in each second as
measured by Velma, and Velma travels 75,000 km in each second as measured by
Mort, so it seems sensible that the light beam would travel 300,000 km + 75,000 km
in each second, or 375,000 km/s, as measured by Mort.
This is the answer Galileo would have given, the answer given by Galilean rela-
tivity. It is the answer that all scientists would have given up through the end of the
nineteenth century. It is indeed a most sensible answer. Nevertheless, it’s experi-
mentally wrong. Nature does not always comply with our notion of what is sensible!
To see why there might be something wrong with this answer and to learn nature’s
answer, let’s turn in the next two sections to Einstein’s thoughts.

3 THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY

You ride in a smoothly moving unaccelerated jet airplane in level flight at unchang-
ing velocity. The flight attendant pours you a cup of coffee. Where should you hold
your cup: directly under the spout, or someplace else to take into account the motion
of the airplane? In other words, does the coffee pour straight downward relative to
the airplane? Try it sometime and see. Or try dropping a coin from one hand to the
other in a moving vehicle (but not when you are driving): Is the catching hand
directly beneath the dropping hand?
The answer is that the coffee pours straight downward relative to the plane.
You could experiment with many things, all within a smoothly moving reference
frame: a falling ball, frictionless air coasters, electric currents, magnets, and more.

2
Provided the source is not accelerating; see Section 4.

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

Just as for the poured coffee, you would find that the results are the same as when
the experiments are performed in a reference frame at rest on Earth.
Suppose you are a passenger on an airplane with no windows in the passenger
compartment. You fall asleep and awaken later to find yourself alone in the com-
partment. Can you tell, without receiving information from the outside world,3
whether your airplane is in level flight at unchanging velocity or parked on the
ground? The answer is no. You could throw a ball, do handstands, pick up nails with
magnets, and the like, and everything would be the same, regardless of whether
your plane was in flight or parked.
This is another example of a symmetry principle. It says that, no matter from
what nonaccelerating reference frame you view the universe, the laws of physics are
the same. I’ll summarize this as:

The Principle of Relativity

Every nonaccelerated observer observes the same laws of nature. In other words,
no experiment performed within a sealed room moving at an unchanging velocity
can tell you whether you are standing still or moving.

Unless you look outside, you can’t tell how fast you’re going. It’s a plausible idea
and was the key to Einstein’s thinking about relativity. It’s called the “principle of
relativity” because it says that all motion is just relative motion. When you say “the
car moves at 25 km/hr westward,” you really mean that “the car moves westward at
25 km/hr relative to the ground” or that “the car and the ground are in relative
motion at 25 km/hr.” You could just as well say that the car is standing still and the
ground is moving eastward at 25 km/hr. You could even say that the ground is mov-
ing eastward at 1600 km/hr (which it is, relative to Earth’s center, due to Earth’s
spin) and that the car is moving eastward at only 1575 km/hr. It is only the relative
speed, the 25 km/hr, that really counts.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 What about acceleration—can this be detected without

looking outside? (a) Yes, you can do simple experiments to tell you whether you are
accelerating. (b) Yes, but the experiments must involve light beams. (c) No.

4 THE CONSTANCY OF LIGHTSPEED: STRANGE

BUT TRUE
Have you ever asked yourself what it would be like if you could keep up with a light The Lord is subtle, but He is not
beam? Some people do. The 16-year-old Einstein did, and his reflections on this malicious.
question helped lead him to his theory of relativity. To Einstein, the possibility of Einstein

moving along with a light beam seemed paradoxical, contradictory. The reason is
that, to an observer moving along with a light beam, the light beam itself would be
at rest. To this observer, the light beam would appear as an electromagnetic “wave”
that was standing still! To Einstein, this seemed absurd. Here’s why.

3
Information from the pilot would be from the outside world, because the pilot’s information enters through
the cockpit window and through radio receivers.

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

You could see that Einstein was Our understanding of electromagnetic waves, such as light, is based on
motivated not by logic in the nar- Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic fields. Recall that Maxwell’s theory predicts
row sense of the word but by a that any disturbance in an electromagnetic field, such as a disturbance caused by
sense of beauty. He was always
the motion of an electrically charged object, must propagate as a wave moving out-
looking for beauty in his work.
Equally he was moved by a pro- ward through the field at speed c. This particular speed, 300,000 km/s, is built into
found religious sense fulfilled in Maxwell’s theory.
finding wonderful laws, simple Einstein believed that Maxwell’s theory should, like all other laws of nature, obey
laws in the universe. It was really the principle of relativity. So Maxwell’s predictions should be correct within every
a religious experience for him, of moving reference frame. Since speed c is built into Maxwell’s theory, Einstein con-
the most profound sort, even cluded that every observer ought to observe every light beam to move at speed c,
though he did not believe in a
regardless of the observer’s motion. No matter how fast you move, a light beam
personal god.
Banesh Hoffmann, Mathematician and
should always pass you at speed c, relative to you. If every observer sees every light
Author, in Some Strangeness in the beam move at speed c, then nobody can even begin to catch up with a light beam,
Proportion
much less move along with a light beam.
It’s a simple idea. But it’s also pretty crazy, which is why it took Einstein to think of
it. After all, if you run after a departing light beam, common sense tells you that from
your perspective the speed of the departing light must be less than 300,000 km/s. And
if you run toward an approaching light beam, common sense says that the speed of the
approaching light must be greater than 300,000 km/s. Einstein’s idea is so odd that
other turn-of-the-century physicists who might have discovered it did not. It’s the sec-
ond important principle underlying Einstein’s theory. I’ll summarize it as:

The Principle of the Constancy of Lightspeed

The speed of light (and of other electromagnetic radiation) in empty space is the
same for all nonaccelerated observers, regardless of the motion of the light source
or of the observer.

I don’t try to imagine a personal Like the principle of relativity, this principle is valid only for nonaccelerated
God; it suffices to stand in awe at observers. The reason is that Maxwell’s theory, like most laws of physics, is valid
the structure of the world, insofar only for nonaccelerated observers.
as it allows our inadequate To get a feel for it, we’ll apply this principle to several “thought experiments,”
senses to appreciate it.
impractical experiments that could in principle be performed. Each experiment
Einstein
involves a light beam, which we take to be a laser beam but which could just as well
be a flashlight beam.
Suppose Velma moves away from Mort at a quarter of lightspeed and holds a
laser pointed forward, as in Figure 4. As noted in Section 2, she observes the beam
to move away from her at speed c. What speed does Mort observe for the laser
beam? Galilean relativity and our intuitions answer 1.25c, or 375,000 km/s. But
Einstein’s relativity predicts that the answer is c, or 300,000 km/s!
Another example: Mort has the laser and he shines it in the direction of Velma
who is departing from him at a quarter of lightspeed (Figure 5). Mort observes the
beam to move away from him at speed c, but what does Velma observe? Galileo,
and common sense, now predict 0.75c, but Einstein predicts c.
To dramatize the oddness of this, imagine that Velma is moving away from Mort
at a speed of 0.999 999c, just a hair slower than lightspeed (Figure 6). Mort
switches on his laser and sees the light beam depart from him at speed c. As

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

Velma’s spaceship
moves away from Mort
at a speed of 0.25c

Mort’s light beam moves

away from Mort at speed c

Figure 5
What is the speed of Mort’s light beam relative to Velma?

Velma’s spaceship
moves past Mort
at a speed of
0.999,999c

Mort’s light beam moves away

from Mort at speed c.
According to Mort, Velma is
moving only 0.000,001c, or 300
m/s, slower than his light beam

Figure 6
Now how fast is Mort’s light beam moving, as observed by Velma?

observed by Mort, Velma moves only slightly slower than the light beam—he says
that she nearly keeps up with the light beam. Galilean relativity predicts that
Velma observes the light beam passing her at only 0.000 001c. This is just 300
m/s—the speed of fast jet airplanes. But Einstein’s relativity says that she sees the
light beam pass her at precisely 300,000 km/s, despite the fact that she is moving
away from the light source at nearly lightspeed!
Maybe you’ve noticed that we don’t allow Velma to have precisely speed c. If we
imagined that she moves right at speed c, we’d get into the difficulty that Einstein
noted: She would observe the light beam to be at rest. So an observer can move at
nearly, but not precisely, speed c relative to another observer. Later, we’ll see why.

How do we know that light goes the same speed for all observers? Strange
though the constancy of lightspeed may seem, it’s verified daily. However, most experi-
ments involve fast-moving microscopic particles rather than spaceships. In one especially
striking experiment in 1964, a subatomic particle moving at nearly lightspeed emitted

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

electromagnetic radiation both forward and backward. Galilean relativity predicts that the
forward-moving radiation should move much faster than c while the backward-moving
radiation should move much slower than c, as measured in the laboratory. But measure-
ment showed that both radiation beams move at speed c relative to the laboratory.

Maxwell and other nineteenth-century scientists had a more conventional view of

light beams. They believed that light was a wave in a material medium, just as water
waves are waves in water. They called this medium ether. Nobody had observed ether.
It couldn’t be made of ordinary atoms, because light waves travel through outer space
where there are essentially no atoms. Instead, ether was thought to be a continuous
material substance filling the entire universe and made of some unknown nonatomic
form of matter. The ether theory assumes that the “natural” speed of light, 300,000
km/s, is light’s speed relative to the ether. Observers moving through the ether should
then measure other speeds for light beams, speeds that should depend on the
observer’s speed through the ether. But as the principle of the constancy of lightspeed
states, and as experiment shows, all observers measure the same speed for all light-
beams, so the ether theory must be wrong. Since Einstein, electromagnetic waves
have been viewed as the vibrations of an electromagnetic field, which itself is not
made of any material substance. This contrasts sharply with the materialist worldview
of Newtonian physics.
The constancy of lightspeed is the key principle that gives the theory of relativ-
ity its odd quality. It’s natural to question this principle. How do we know it’s true?
The answer is simple but profound: It’s true because nature says so. Numerous
experiments show that every light beam moves at speed c, regardless of the motion
of the source or observer. Although this odd notion violates our preconceived
beliefs, it is observation of nature, rather than preconceived beliefs, that determines
truth in science. Our preconceived beliefs about motion are based on observations
of objects moving far slower than lightspeed and are very nearly correct at such
speeds. But at higher speeds, our preconceptions are radically incorrect.
The foundations of Einstein’s theory are the principle of relativity and the constancy
of lightspeed. Their role in the theory of relativity is identical to the role of Newton’s
laws in Newton’s theory of force and motion: They form the logical basis of the theory,
from which everything else is derived and which are themselves justified directly by
observation. Physicists call this theory the special theory of relativity. The word
special distinguishes this theory from another, related theory of Einstein’s called the
general theory of relativity. The distinguishing feature of the general theory of rela-
tivity is that it allows accelerated observers, while the special theory allows only non-
accelerated observers, so the general theory is a more general—broader—theory than
the special theory. Strictly speaking, Earth itself is an accelerated reference frame,
because it spins on its axis and because it rotates around the sun. But these accelera-
tions are so small that the predictions of the special theory are excellent approxima-
tions for any Earth-based observer.
The remainder of this chapter explores five of special relativity’s most important
predictions: the relativity of time, the relativity of space, the relativity of mass, c as
the speed limit, and E = mc2.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 Velma moves away from Mort at 0.75c. She turns on two
lasers, one pointed forward and the other backward. According to Galilean relativ-
ity, how fast should the forward and backward beams move, as observed by Mort?
(a) 0.25c and 1.75c. (b) 1.75c and 0.25c. (c) 0.25c and 0.75c. (d) 0.75c and 0.25c.
(e) c and c.

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CONCEPT CHECK 5 In the preceding question, Mort actually observes (a) 0.25c
and 1.75c; (b) 1.75c and 0.25c; (c) 0.25c and 0.75c; (d) 0.75c and 0.25c; (e) c and c.

5 THE RELATIVITY OF TIME

The constancy of lightspeed suggests something is amiss in our intuitive concep-
tions of space and time. After all, speed measures how far an object moves through
space divided by the time to move, so speed is intimately tied to space and time.
We feel that we understand what “time” is, but its meaning fades when we pon-
der it. Being enmeshed in time, we cannot study it from a distance, so our attempts
to define it are usually circular, implicitly using the concept of time in order to
define time. Einstein’s insight into time was that it’s physical—part of the physical
universe. Just as one can measure the properties of a stone or of a light beam, one
can measure the properties of time. And how should we measure the properties of
time? With clocks! This reply is more profound than it appears. The only way we
can measure time is with real, physical “clocks,” by which we mean any phenome-
non—a swinging pendulum, Earth’s rotation around the sun—that goes through
identical repetitions. Physically, the concept of a clock really defines time. So to
investigate the properties of time, we must investigate clocks. How do clocks really
behave? Einstein managed to predict the properties of clocks using as his starting
point only the two principles of the special theory of relativity.
An ordinary spring-wound or battery-driven clock would be hard to study based
only on Einstein’s two principles because these clocks are so complex, involving
springs, electric current, gears, and so forth. So Einstein invented a simple kind of
clock, a simple thought experiment, really. His light clock (Figure 7) involves no
mechanically moving parts; its only motion is the motion of a light beam. Two par- Mirrored 150,000
faces kilometers
allel mirrors face each other, one above the other, and a light beam bounces up and Tip of
down (reflects) between them. Although it’s not terribly practical for the clock light beam
maker, it’s convenient to imagine that the mirrors are separated by 150,000 kilo-
meters, because then the time for one complete round trip of the light beam is just
1 second. You know it’s 1 second because the constancy of lightspeed says all light
beams travel 300,000 kilometers in 1 second. We’ll assume this light clock ticks at
the end of each round-trip. Figure 7
We begin investigating the properties of time by installing one light clock in A light clock. A light beam
Velma’s spaceship moving eastward past Earth, and another in Mort’s laboratory on bounces up and down between two
Earth. Let’s think about Velma’s light clock. She sees her light beam bouncing mirrors. If the distance between
straight up and down, covering 300,000 km per tick [Figure 8(a)]. Simple enough. mirrors is 150,000 km, then 1 sec-
ond will elapse during one com-
But from Mort’s point of view, the tip of Velma’s light beam is not only moving up
plete round-trip up and back down.
and down, it’s also moving eastward because of Velma’s eastward motion. So the tip
of Velma’s light beam, as seen by Mort, moves along diagonal paths. Figure 8b
shows Mort’s observations of Velma’s spaceship at three instants: when the tip of
her light beam is at the bottom mirror, when it has moved up to the top mirror, and
when it is back at the bottom mirror.
Since the distance between the mirrors is 150,000 km, you can see from the fig-
ure that the distance along one of the two diagonals is greater than 150,000 km. This
means that the total round-trip distance traveled by Velma’s light beam, as measured
by Mort, is greater than 300,000 km. There is nothing surprising or subtle about this;
Galileo would have said the same thing. Now comes the part that Galileo (and our
intuitions) wouldn’t agree with: The constancy of lightspeed says that Mort observes

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(a) (b)

Mort’s light clock

Figure 8
(a) Velma in her spaceship, observing her light clock. (b) Velma’s spaceship and the light
beam on Velma’s light clock as observed by Mort using his own light clock. According to
Mort’s observations, the tip of Velma’s light beam moves along the diagonal path shown by
the dashed arrows.

Velma’s light beam to move at just 300,000 km/s (Galileo would say that Mort
observes Velma’s light beam to move faster than 300,000 km/s, because of Velma’s
motion). Since Mort observes the round-trip distance to be greater than 300,000 km,
it follows that according to Mort it takes more than 1 second for Velma’s light beam
to make the round-trip! So, as measured by Mort using his clock, more than 1 second
elapses between Velma’s ticks. According to Mort, Velma’s clock runs slow.
Velma’s second is different from Mort’s second. The two observers measure dif-
ferent time intervals for the same event (one round-trip of Velma’s light beam).
Time is relative to the observer. It’s simple, but hard to believe.
Let’s turn things around. How does Mort’s clock appear to the two observers? To
Mort, his own clock’s light beam travels 300,000 km in one round-trip and requires
1 second to do so. But from Velma’s viewpoint, Mort’s clock is moving westward,
so the tip of Mort’s light beam is moving along a diagonal and therefore the total
round-trip distance traveled by Mort’s light beam as observed by Velma is greater
than 300,000 km. But because Velma observes Mort’s light beam to move at
300,000 km/s, she must observe that more than 1 second elapses between Mort’s
ticks. According to Velma, it’s Mort’s clock that runs slow.
The rule is moving clocks run slow: Mort and Velma both observe that the other
person’s clock runs slow. This is not your normal situation caused by an inaccurate
clock, in which if my clock runs slow according to your clock, then your clock must
run fast according to my clock. This raises an interesting question: Whose clock is
really running slow, and whose is really accurate? The answer is that Velma and
Mort are both right! Velma observes that Mort’s clock is slow, and Mort observes
that Velma’s clock is slow, and both observations are correct. This situation is not
caused by inaccurate clocks; it is instead a property of time itself. There is no single
“real” time in the universe, no “universal time”; there is only Mort’s time and
Velma’s time and all the other possible observers’ times.

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As you might expect, there is a formula that quantitatively describes the relativity
of time.4 Table 1 gives a few of the numerical results that can be calculated from this
formula, and Figure 9 is a graph based on the same formula. As you can see from the
table, the effect is negligible even at orbiting satellite speeds (10 to 20 km/s). It’s not
until speeds of 0.1c—a speed that would get you around the world in 1 second—that
the effect amounts to even a half of 1%. But at large fractions of lightspeed, the effect
becomes quite large: At 99.9% of lightspeed (not shown on the graph), Mort and
Velma’s seconds will be more than 22 seconds long as measured by the other
observer. The relativity of time is also called time dilation, because a time interval of
1 second on a moving clock is expanded, or dilated, to more than 1 second as meas-
ured by an observer past whom the clock is moving.
Although we investigated the relativity of time by studying light clocks, the con-
clusion holds for every type of clock—every regularly repeating phenomenon. It requires a very unusual mind to
Einstein thought about light clocks only in order to learn what the two principles of undertake the analysis of the
obvious.
his theory implied about time. Every clock must behave the way a light clock
Alfred North Whitehead, Twentieth-
behaves because they all measure the same thing: time. And every phenomenon that Century Philosopher
occurs during an interval of time must also behave in this way. Think, for example,
of an ice-cream cone melting. Suppose you can make ice-cream cones that melt in
exactly 10 minutes and that both Velma and Mort have one of these cones. These
cones are a kind of clock, a clock that ticks in 10 minutes.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 Mort and Velma have identical 10-minute ice-cream

cones. Velma passes Mort at 75% of lightspeed. Use Table 1 to predict the times
measured by Mort for his and Velma’s cone to melt. (a) 10 minutes for Mort’s cone,
10 minutes for Velma’s cone. (b) 10.5 minutes and 10 minutes. (c) 10 minutes and
10.5 minutes. (d) 15 minutes and 10 minutes. (e) 10 minutes and 15 minutes.

3.0
2.9
2.8
2.7
2.6
2.5
2.4
Time in seconds

2.3
2.2
2.1
2.0
1.9
1.8
1.7
1.6
1.5
Figure 9
1.4 The relativity of time. The graph
1.3 shows the duration of one clock
1.2 tick (representing 1 second in the
1.1
clock’s reference frame) on a mov-
1.0
0 0.1c 0.2c 0.3c 0.4c 0.5c 0.6c 0.7c 0.8c 0.9c c ing clock, for various speeds of the
Speed clock relative to the observer.

4
This formula can be derived from Figure 8 by using the Pythagorean theorem, which states that a right tri-
angle’s short side lengths a and b are related to its diagonal length c by c2 = a2 + b2. The formula is
T = To> 2(1 - y2>c2), where y is the relative speed, To is the time between two of Velma’s ticks as
observed by Velma (To = 1 second), and T is the time between two of Velma’s ticks as observed by Mort.

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

Table 1
The relativity of time: some quantitative predictions
To give you a feel for these speeds: 0.3 km/s is a typical subsonic jet plane speed, 3 km/s is
twice the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet, at 3000 km/s you could cross the United States
in 1 second, and at 30,000 km/s you could circle the globe in 1 second. Clearly, relativistic
effects are small until the speed becomes very large!

Relative Relative speed Duration of one “tick” on a moving clock,

speed as a fraction as measured by an observer past whom
(km/s) of lightspeed (c) the clock is moving (s)
0.3 10–6 1.000 000 000 000 5

3 10 –5 1.000 000 000 5

30 10–4 1.000 000 005

300 0.001 1.000 000 5
3000 0.01 1.000 05
30,000 0.1 1.005
75,000 0.25 1.03
150,000 0.5 1.15
225,000 0.75 1.5
270,000 0.9 2.3
297,000 0.99 7.1
299,700 0.999 22.4

Instead of ice-cream cones, they could have frogs. Suppose your local biology
department hatches guaranteed 10-day frogs, having a 10-day lifetime. Biological
life occurs in time, too, so these frogs can be thought of as a kind of clock. So if
Velma passes Mort at 75% of lightspeed, he says that her frog lives 15 days but that
his frog lives only 10 days (see Concept Check 6). And she says that his frog lives
15 days but that her frog lives only 10 days. So each observes their own frog to die
first. And both observations are correct! Fantastic.
“But,” you may ask, “whose frog really dies first?” If you are tempted to ask this,
your unspoken belief is that there is one single, universal, “real” time. But there
isn’t. There is only Mort’s time, and Velma’s time, and every other individual
observer’s time.

How do we know that time flows differently for different observers? The relativity
of time has been verified repeatedly in laboratories, by observing fast-moving subatomic par-
ticles. One experiment, similar to the frog example, involved a type of subatomic particle
known as a “muon.” Muons, unlike most ordinary matter, are not permanent objects. Instead,
they have a “lifetime” after which they disintegrate spontaneously into other particles. The
lifetime of a muon is only 2.2 microseconds (2.2 millionths of a second), as measured by
you if the muon is at rest relative to you. But a muon moving rapidly past you lives much
longer as measured by you, because of time dilation. For example, at 99% of lightspeed
(muons often move this fast in high-energy physics labs), Table 1 says that its lifetime will be
lengthened by a factor of 7.1, so it will not disintegrate until 7.1 * 2.2 = 15.6 microseconds
have passed. This experiment has been done, and the moving muons were observed to
have lifetimes that were lengthened by just the predicted amount.

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6 TIME TRAVEL: YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN

As you might have suspected, the next step is to investigate the life spans of Velma and
Mort themselves. Suppose they are born at the same time5 and that they have 80-year
lifetimes. In other words, Velma observes her lifetime to be 80 years and Mort
observes his lifetime to be 80 years. If Velma and Mort spend their lives moving at
75% of lightspeed relative to each other, then Table 1 informs us that Mort’s descen-
dants observe that Velma lives for 120 years, as measured by Mort’s clocks. And
Velma’s descendants observe that Mort lives for 120 years, as measured by Velma’s
clocks. From Mort’s viewpoint, Velma ages slowly; she ages by just a year during each
of Mort’s 1.5 years; he dies after 80 of his years; and she dies after 120 of Mort’s years
but having the physical appearance of a person who is only 80. According to Velma, all
of this is reversed. And both of them are correct. Incredible.

CONCEPT CHECK 7 When Velma observes herself to be 60 years old, she will
observe Mort to be (a) 30; (b) 40; (c) 60; (d) 80; (e) 90.

This suggests a perplexing question. Suppose that Velma and Mort are born at
the same time on Earth, as twins perhaps, and Velma then boards a spaceship, takes
a fast trip to a far star, and returns to Earth. This scenario is different from the sce-
nario in the preceding paragraph, because now Velma and Mort begin and end in the
same reference frame. Once they are back together they must agree on who is older,
because there is only a single time in any single reference frame. Which twin will
be older, or will they be the same age?
Let’s think about that. Recall that the special theory of relativity applies only to The testimony of our common
sense is suspect at high velocities.
nonaccelerated observers. But in the scenario for the two twins, Velma leaves Earth,
Carl Sagan, Astronomer and Author
speeds up enormously, turns around to get back to Earth, and then comes to rest on
Earth. Since this trip necessarily involves three enormous accelerations, the special
theory of relativity does not apply to Velma’s observations. But the special theory does
apply to Mort’s observations, since he didn’t accelerate. As you have seen, the theory
predicts that he observes Velma to age slowly during her entire trip, because she is
moving relative to him. For example, if she moves at 0.75c, he should observe that 1.5
of his years elapse for every 1 of hers (Table 1). If Velma’s trip takes 60 years as meas-
ured by Mort, he observes that only 40 of her years elapse. So he observes that when
they get back together on Earth, he is 60 and she is 40! Her observations must agree
with this, since the two are now in the same reference frame. This is how you can get
to be 20 years younger than your twin brother.

How do we know that time travel is possible? This conclusion has been experimen-
tally verified, but in a less dramatic fashion. Atomic clocks were flown around the world on
commercial jet flights and compared to clocks that remained at rest on Earth. Although the
predicted time difference was only a fraction of a second, it was measurable using high-
accuracy clocks. As predicted, the clock that went on the trip came back younger (it hadn’t
ticked as many times) than the clock that stayed home. And the quantitative difference in
elapsed time was precisely as predicted. As you will see in a moment, such experiments
demonstrate that time travel is possible, but only into the future.

5
You might wonder what “at the same time” means, since we are assuming that Mort and Velma are in dif-
ferent reference frames. To simplify matters, suppose that Mort and Velma are just passing each other.
Then “at the same time” means that as either one comes into the world, he or she observes that the other is
coming into the world too.

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This suggests some astonishing possibilities. Suppose your mother leaves Earth
for the star Vega, a sunlike star lying relatively close to our sun and a possible can-
didate for a planetary system. The distance to Vega is 26 light-years, meaning that it
takes light 26 years to reach Vega from here. A light-year is the distance light trav-
els in 1 year.
Suppose mom’s spaceship averages a colossal 0.999c. She spends 3 years on a
planet that is orbiting Vega and returns home. Since she travels at nearly lightspeed,
each one-way trip takes slightly more than 26 years, as measured on Earth. So she is
gone for slightly more than 26 + 3 + 26 = 55 years, as measured on Earth. If you
were 5 and mom was 30 when she departed, you would be 60 when she returned. But
mom would no longer be 25 years older than you! Table 1 informs us that during the 52
“Earth-years” of space travel at 0.999c, she aged by only 1 year for every 22.4 years of
“Earth time.” So she aged by only 52>22.4 = 2.3 years during the 52 Earth-years.
Including the 3 years spent on Vega, she aged by only 5.3 years during the entire trip.
So mom is 35.3 years old when she returns, and you are 60! This is how you can get to
be older than your mother.
It’s a form of time travel. Your mother took a trip to Earth’s future. She could
travel much further into the future, hundreds or thousands of years into the future,
by moving faster, say at 0.9999c. But it’s a one-way trip. You can’t go home again to
the past from which you departed.
Time dilation suggests that humans might travel to distant stars within a human
lifetime. Suppose you travel to a star 200 light-years away, at 0.999c relative to Earth.
Even though the trip takes a little over 200 years as measured on Earth clocks, it takes
you only 200>22.4 = 9 years as measured in your spaceship. When you arrive at the
star, two centuries have elapsed on Earth. Even if you immediately hurry back to
Earth, you time-travel four Earth centuries into the future during the round-trip but
you age by only 18 years. On Earth, you will be a relic from four centuries earlier.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 It is physically possible for your mother to leave Earth after
you were born and return (a) before you were born; (b) before she was born; (c) younger
than you; (d) older than you; (e) younger than she was when she left; (f) older than she
was when she left.

7 THE RELATIVITY OF SPACE AND MASS

What is space? Just as time means “what is measured by clocks” (Section 5), space
means “what is measured by rulers.”
What operations should Mort perform to measure, say, the width of a window?
For a window at rest relative to Mort, the prescription is to place a measuring rod
along the window and compare the ends of the window with the marks on the rod.
If the window is moving past Mort, he should continue using a measuring rod that
is fixed in his own reference frame, because he wants to know the width of the mov-
ing window as measured in his own reference frame. If the width being measured
lies along the direction of motion, Mort must measure the positions of the two ends
simultaneously because otherwise the window will shift positions during the lag
between measurements and Mort won’t measure the true width.
In order to ensure that the front-end and back-end measurements are simultaneous,
Mort must use two clocks—one at each end. This means that the measurement of the
width of a moving object is mixed up with the measurement of time; time and space
are tangled up with each other! Since time is relative, it then comes as no surprise to

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learn that space is relative too. I won’t go through the argument that proves this result; 1m
it’s similar to the argument in Section 5 showing that moving clocks run slowly. More
specifically, Einstein’s theory predicts that Mort observes the window’s width along its
direction of motion to be shorter than does Velma who is traveling along with the win- 1m
dow (Figure 10). This effect is called length contraction. There is no length contraction
along directions perpendicular to the window’s direction of motion.
As with time dilation, length contraction works both ways: Just as Mort finds
that Velma’s window is contracted, Velma finds that Mort’s window is contracted.
A quantitative analysis leads to a formula, graphed in Figure 11.6 The figure graphs (a)
the predicted length of a 1-meter-long object such as a meter stick, held parallel to its
motion, for various speeds of the object. Like time dilation, length contraction is barely Less than 1 m
detectable for speeds below about 0.1c but becomes large at higher speeds.
Length contraction is not simply something that happens to meter sticks. Since
space is defined by meter sticks, it is space itself that is contracted. Just as Velma’s 1m
time flow is different from Mort’s time flow, we must speak of “Velma’s space” and
“Mort’s space” rather than a single, universal space. Space is different for different
observers. Space is relative.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 Velma measures her spaceship to be 100 m long and 10 m (b)
high. Is it possible for her spaceship to move fast enough past Mort for its length to
Figure 10
be equal to its height, as observed by Mort? (a) Yes, by moving at about 0.9c.
The window in Velma’s space-
(b) Yes, by moving at about 0.99c. (c) Yes, by moving at about 0.1c. (d) No, because
ship as measured by (a) Velma
she would have to move at precisely lightspeed to accomplish this. (e) No, because and (b) Mort.
objects do not change their shapes.

Einstein’s new principle, the constancy of lightspeed, affects nearly everything in

physics: time, space, and more, including Newton’s law of motion. This law states
that an object’s acceleration is equal to the net force exerted on the object divided
by the object’s mass, or in symbols
a = F>m

This implies that if you exert an unchanging force on an object, the object maintains an
unchanging acceleration. Eventually, the object will be going at lightspeed and still accel-
erating. An observer riding on such an object could catch up with and pass a light beam.

1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
Length, m

0.6 Figure 11
0.5 The relativity of space. The pre-
0.4 dicted length of a meter stick for
0.3
various speeds of the meter stick
0.2
0.1 relative to the observer.
0
0 0.1c 0.2c 0.3c 0.4c 0.5c 0.6c 0.7c 0.8c 0.9c c
Speed

6
The formula is L = L0 2(1 - y2>c2) where L0 is the object’s rest length (the length as measured by an
observer for whom the object is at rest), and L is the length of the object when it is moving at speed y.

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So Newton’s law of motion is not consistent with the theory of relativity!

Apparently, relativity alters Newton’s law in such a way as to prevent objects from
accelerating up to lightspeed. To describe this alteration of Newton’s law of motion,
let’s imagine that Mort and Velma (who is moving past Mort) have identical 1 kilo-
gram objects, 1 kilogram melons perhaps. If Mort pushes on his melon with, say, a
1 newton force, he will find that it accelerates at 1 m/s2, just as Newton’s law of
motion predicts. If he now pushes on Velma’s melon (which is moving past him)
with a 1 newton force, Newton’s law of motion predicts that Velma’s melon acceler-
ates at 1 m/s2, but relativity theory predicts7that Velma’s melon accelerates at less
than 1 m/s2. As was the case for other relativistic effects, this effect is negligibly
small at normal speeds but large at speeds comparable to lightspeed.
From Mort’s point of view, a 1 newton force applied to both melons produces a
smaller acceleration in Velma’s melon than in his own melon. From Mort’s point of
view, Velma’s melon has more inertia than does his own melon (recall that a body’s
inertia is its resistance to acceleration). But this is the same as saying that Velma’s
melon has more mass, because the fundamental meaning of mass is “amount of
inertia.” In other words, Mort measures Velma’s melon to have a larger mass than
his own melon, even though they are identical melons. As usual, the effect works
the other way around: Relative to Velma, her melon has a mass of 1 kg, but Mort’s
melon has a mass of more than 1 kg.
Thus, mass is relative: An object’s mass increases with its speed, so different
observers measure different masses for the same object. A quantitative analysis
leads to a formula that predicts an object’s mass for various speeds.8 Figure 12 is a
graph of this formula, along with the previous graphs for time dilation and length
contraction. The formulas for mass increase and time dilation have identical forms,
so their graphs have identical shapes.
In Newtonian physics, “mass” (or inertia) means the same thing as “quantity of mat-
ter.” But in relativity, an object’s mass increases with its speed while its quantity of matter
does not increase because it still contains the same atoms. So mass no longer means
“quantity of matter.” But we need a word for an object’s quantity of matter. That word is
rest-mass, the mass of an object as measured by an observer in a frame of reference in
which the object is at rest. For example, Velma’s and Mort’s melons both have rest-masses
of 1 kg, regardless of who observes them. This number, 1 kg, is a measure of its quantity
of matter. An object’s mass, however, is the amount of inertia it possesses and is different
for different observers. The mass and rest-mass of a slow-moving object are essentially the
same, but the mass of a high-speed object is significantly greater than its rest-mass.

How do we know that mass increases with speed? Relativistic mass increase is an
everyday fact of life in high-energy physics labs. A subatomic particle can be accelerated to
speeds so close to lightspeed that its mass is thousands of times greater than its rest-mass.
One way to check this prediction is to bend a high-speed particle’s path by applying electric
or magnetic forces and measure the curvature of the resulting path. If high-speed particles
really do have larger masses, their paths should curve less than they otherwise would,
because their larger inertia tends to keep them moving straight ahead. Measurements
show that such paths are less curved than they would be in the absence of relativistic mass
increase and that the amount of curvature agrees with Einstein’s predictions.

7
The reason is that accelerations of Velma’s melon, as viewed by Mort, are reduced because distances are
contracted and time intervals are expanded.
8
The formula is m = m0> 2(1 - y2>c2), where m0 is the object’s rest-mass (the mass as measured by an
observer for whom the object is at rest), and m is the mass of the object when it is moving at speed y.

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3.0
2.9
2.8
2.7
2.6
2.5
2.4
Time in seconds, length in meters, or mass in kilograms

2.3
2.2
2.1 Time dilation
2.0 and mass increase

1.9
1.8
1.7
1.6
1.5
1.4
1.3
1.2 Figure 12
1.1 Relativistic mass increase, length
1.0
contraction, and time dilation. The
0.9
0.8 graph shows the duration of one
0.7 clock tick (representing 1 second in
0.6 the clock’s reference frame) on a
Length
0.5 moving clock, the length of a mov-
contraction
0.4
0.3
ing meter stick, and the mass of a
0.2 moving standard kilogram, for vari-
0.1 ous speeds of the clock, meter
0 stick, and kilogram relative to
0 0.1c 0.2c 0.3c 0.4c 0.5c 0.6c 0.7c 0.8c 0.9c c
Speed the observer.

Time, space, and mass are relative, but not everything is relative. In fact, the two
basic principles of Einstein’s theory tell us that the speed of any light beam is the
same for every observer, and the same goes for the laws of physics.
Relativistic mass increase explains why you cannot accelerate objects up to light-
speed. At high speeds, an object’s mass becomes very large, increasing without limit as
the speed approaches c (Figure 12). Eventually, the force needed for further accelera-
tion becomes so large that the object’s surroundings cannot provide it. But there is
something that moves as fast as lightspeed: light itself. In fact, light never moves
slower than 300,000 km/s.9 When you turn on a lightbulb, the light does not accelerate
from zero up to lightspeed; instead, it moves at precisely lightspeed from the instant it
is created. Light is quite different from any material object. When you put a material
object down in front of you, it has rest-mass. Light beams must not have rest-mass,
because if they did, then relativistic mass increase would make their mass infinite
while moving at lightspeed. Anything that has no rest-mass and always moves at light-
speed, such as light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation, is classified as radi-
ation. It’s a useful distinction: Matter has rest-mass and always moves slower than
lightspeed, while radiation has no rest-mass and always moves at lightspeed.

9
However, light travels through material substances such as water or glass at an average speed that is some-
times far less than lightspeed. When moving through matter, light momentarily vanishes when absorbed by
an atom and is re-created when emitted by the atom. Whenever the light actually exists as light, it moves at
300,000 km/s.

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 The Special Theory of Relativity

CONCEPT CHECK 10 Which is a form of matter? (a) Red light. (b) invisi-
ble waves drawn (c) The invisible carbon dioxide gas emitted by automobiles.
(d) The electron beam that creates the picture on a TV tube. (e) A gamma ray.

8 E = mc2: ENERGY HAS MASS, AND MASS HAS ENERGY

As an object speeds up, its kinetic energy increases and, as you have just learned, its
mass increases. So, at least in the case of kinetic energy, energy increase and mass
increase go hand in hand. Working from the theory of relativity and the law of con-
S servation of energy, Einstein found that mass is connected to every form of energy
in this fashion. You can increase a system’s mass by simply lifting it (giving it grav-
itational energy), warming it (giving it thermal energy), stretching it (giving it elas-
N tic energy), or giving it any other form of energy.
S Does that surprise you? It surprises me. If you stretch a rubber band, you don’t
expect its mass to increase. It’s still the same rubber band, after all. This is a new
and surprising prediction: Any increase in a system’s energy increases its mass,
N regardless of what form that energy increase might take.
Einstein’s analysis yields a simple formula that quantitatively relates the change
in mass to the change in energy. The formula states that the change in mass equals
the change in energy divided by the square of lightspeed:
(a) Less energy
change in energy
change in mass =
square of lightspeed

In the standard metric units, mass and energy are in kilograms and joules, and
c = 3 * 108 m>s, so c2 = 9 * 1016 m2>s2. Note that, since the standard metric unit
S

for use in physics formulas is meters rather than kilometers, you need to use
N 3 * 108 m>s for “c” rather than 300,000 km/s.
Here’s an example. Suppose you stretch a large, strong rubber band by exerting an
average force of 300 N through a distance of 0.6 m. Since work equals force times dis-
tance, you’ve done 300 N * 0.6 m = 180 J of work on the band. So the work–energy
principle says you’ve added 180 J of energy to the band. This increases the band’s mass
by 180 > 9 * 1016 = 2 * 10 - 15 kg = 0.000 000 000 000 002 kg. Not much. The
S

increase is small because c2 is so large. This is why relativistic mass increase wasn’t
N noticed before Einstein: In ordinary situations, it’s too small to notice.
As a second example, suppose you have two bar magnets and that the north pole of
one is joined to the south pole of the other so that they cling together [Figure 13(a)].
Since it takes work to pull them apart, the separated magnets of Figure 13b must have
more energy than do the joined magnets. But more energy means more mass. So the
(b) More energy
total mass of the two combined magnets increases simply by pulling them apart! The
Figure 13 separation process creates a magnetic field in the space between the two magnets
The separated magnets of (b) have [Figure 13(b)]. The excess energy in the separated magnets resides in this invisible
more energy, and hence more and nonmaterial magnetic field. You encountered such “field energy” before, in the
mass, than do the two joined mag- energy of electromagnetic radiation. But now you can see that fields also have mass.
nets of (a). The excess energy and This mass is in the “empty” space between the magnets. The work done in separating
mass in (b) reside in the invisible the two magnets is only a few joules, so the mass difference is again tiny.
and nonmaterial magnetic field, Nevertheless, it’s extraordinary that nonmaterial fields in empty space have mass.
indicated by dashed lines.

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Turning to more dramatic examples, nuclear reactions entail nature’s strongest When I think of matter, I like to
forces, the forces acting within the atomic nucleus. For now, all you need to know think mostly of fields. We are
about nuclear reactions is that they are analogous to chemical reactions but they fields rather than particles.
Freeman Dyson, Physicist
involve changes in nuclear structure rather than changes in electron orbits. For
example, in nuclear power reactors and nuclear weapons, the element uranium
undergoes a nuclear reaction known as nuclear fission in which the nucleus of each
uranium atom is altered.10 Fission is a little like combustion, but the forces involved
are so strong that the thermal energy created is far larger than in any chemical reac-
tion. So the rest-mass loss, after removing the thermal energy, is far larger. If a kilo-
gram of uranium is fissioned, the rest-mass loss is about 0.001 kg (1 g), which is a
0.1% mass decrease and easily detected. This can be checked experimentally, and
the results agree with Einstein’s predictions.
Nineteenth-century scientists believed matter was indestructible, in other words,
that rest-mass was conserved in every physical process. This is certainly plausible.
Since the days of the early Greek materialists, most scientists have felt that matter is
indestructible—that although its form might change, its total amount cannot change.
Nineteenth-century chemists performing high-precision mass measurements con-
cluded that rest-mass is conserved even in highly energetic chemical reactions. But
Einstein’s relativity contradicts the conservation of matter. Matter—that is, rest-mass—
is not conserved in chemical reactions, in stretching a rubber band, and so forth. But
these changes in rest-mass are so small that they are experimentally undetectable. In
high-energy processes such as nuclear fission, however, the changes are easily
detected, and the results show clearly that matter is not conserved.
Now take this reasoning one step further: Einstein believed that this result extended
not just to changes in mass but to all of the mass of any system. In other words,

total energy of that system

total mass of any system =
c2
or, in symbols,
E
m =
c2
This implies Einstein’s famous formula,
total energy of any system = (system’s total mass) * (c2)
E = mc2
So all energy has mass, and all mass has energy. Since energy means the capacity
to do work, and mass means inertia, the practical meaning of E = mc2 is that any
system of mass m should be able to do mc2 units of work, and any system of energy
E has an inertia E/c2.

How do we know that E = mc2? If Einstein is right, there should be some physical If matter turns out in the end to
process by which mc2 units of work can be obtained from any object of mass m. Such be altogether ephemeral, what dif-
processes, known as matter–antimatter annihilation, have been discovered. Here’s ference can that make in the pain
how they work. you feel when you kick a rock?
In addition to the protons, neutrons, and electrons that form ordinary matter, physicists John A. Wheeler, Physicist

have discovered three other material particles, known as “antiprotons,” “antineutrons,” and

10
Each uranium nucleus splits to form two nuclei of various lighter-weight elements.

289
 The Special Theory of Relativity

“antielectrons.” If one of these “antiparticles” is brought close to its corresponding particle, the
The visible world is neither matter two particles vanish entirely, and high-energy radiation is created. It’s an extreme example of
nor spirit but the invisible organi- the nonconservation of matter: Matter entirely vanishes, to be replaced by radiation. So any
zation of energy. material object can be turned into radiation by annihilating all its protons, neutrons, and elec-
Heinz Pagels, Physicist trons—although it would be difficult to collect enough antiparticles to annihilate a macroscopic
object. The energy of this radiation can then be used to do work. Furthermore, when the radi-
ation’s energy is measured, it is found to equal the total mass of the particles times c2.

Science has found no “things,” E = mc2 is simple but subtle, and easy to misinterpret. Most of the confusion
only events. The universe has no arises from confusion between mass (inertia) and rest-mass (matter). Following are
nouns, only verbs. two common misconceptions about E = mc2.
R. Buckminster Fuller, Architect and It is sometimes said, incorrectly, that Einstein’s relation means that “mass is not
Futurist
always conserved.” It is true that matter (rest-mass) is not always conserved. But
mass (inertia) is always conserved, because mass equals energy divided by c2, and
There are no things, only energy is always conserved.
processes. It is sometimes said, incorrectly, that Einstein’s relation means that “mass can be
David Bohm, Physicist converted to energy.” It’s true that rest-mass—matter—can be converted to nonma-
terial forms of energy such as radiation. But you just saw that mass is always con-
served, so mass can never be converted to anything else! In proton-antiproton
annihilation, for example, the mass of the pair is precisely equal to the mass of the
created radiation. But rest-mass, or matter, is destroyed, and is converted to radia-
tion. One must be careful with the word mass.
To summarize:

The Principle of Mass–Energy Equivalence

Energy has mass; that is, energy has inertia. And mass has energy; that is, mass has
the ability to do work. The quantitative relation between the energy of any system
and the mass of that system is E = mc2.

Mass–energy equivalence represents another sharp break with the Newtonian

worldview, which follows the Greek materialists in believing that interactions
between indestructible atoms moving in empty space determine everything that hap-
pens in the physical universe. Let’s think about the mass–energy relationship at the
atomic level. Since all energy has mass, some of an atom’s mass must be due simply
to the kinetic energy of its parts (electrons, protons, and neutrons) and to the energy
of its various electromagnetic and nuclear force fields. This suggests an intriguing
question: Is that all there is? Are atoms made only of fields and motion? If so, atoms
are not only mostly empty space, they are entirely empty space, made only of fields
similar to the magnetic fields in Figure 13, and the motion of those fields!
High-energy physics has already provided part of the answer. It is now known that
protons and neutrons are made of three smaller particles called “quarks.” Because
quarks exert enormous forces on each other, the energy in their force fields is enor-
mous. In fact, calculations show that the energy of these fields is sufficient to explain
90% of the mass of the proton (or neutron)! Since essentially all of the mass of ordi-
nary matter comes from protons and neutrons, this result implies that some 90% of the
mass of ordinary matter comes from the nonmaterial energy of fields and motion!
The remaining 10% might arise in a similar way, although this is not yet confirmed.
Our most accurate theory of physics (the “standard model”) suggests the existence

290
 The Special Theory of Relativity

throughout the universe of a field called the “Higgs field.” If verified, the Higgs field
will explain the still-unexplained 10%.
The fundamental theories of contemporary physics known as “quantum field the-
ories” also suggest that all mass arises solely from nonmaterial fields. For example,
Steven Weinberg, a leading high-energy theorist, states the following:
[According to the physical theories developed during the 1920s] there was supposed to
be one field for each type of elementary particle. The inhabitants of the universe were
conceived to be a set of fields—an electron field, a proton field, an electromagnetic
field—and particles were reduced to mere epiphenomena. In its essentials, this point of
view has survived to the present day, and forms the central dogma of quantum field
theory: the essential reality is a set of fields [Weinberg’s emphasis] subject to the rules
of special relativity and quantum mechanics; all else is derived as a consequence of the
quantum dynamics of these fields.
In this field view of reality, there is no “there” there (to quote the poet Gertrude Stein),
no “things” at all. Electrons and other material particles are only non-material fields in
space, similar to the magnetic field in the space between the poles of a magnet. All mass
is due only to the energy of fields. Since fields are “possible forces,” and forces are inter- We are such stuff
actions, this view implies that every “thing,” everything, is interactions and motion. It’s the As dreams are made on
interactions and motion themselves that are fundamental rather than the material particles Shakespeare, The Tempest

that we had always supposed were doing the interacting and the moving. It’s a view that
stands Newtonian materialism on its head.

CONCEPT CHECK 11 In which of the following processes does the system’s

mass change? (a) A bullet that speeds up while moving down a gun barrel. (b) A
rubber band that is being stretched around a package. (c) Two positively charged
objects that are moved closer to each other and placed at rest. (d) An electron and an
antielectron, at rest, that spontaneously annihilate each other.

CONCEPT CHECK 12 In the preceding question, in which processes does the

system’s rest-mass change?
© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

291
292
The Special Theory of Relativity
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 15. One twin goes on a fast trip and returns. Does the special the-
ory of relativity apply to the observations of both twins?
Why, or why not?
GALILEAN RELATIVITY 16. One twin goes on a fast trip and returns. Have the two twins
aged differently during the trip? If so, how do their ages differ?
1. What is meant by relative motion, reference frame, a theory 17. Explain how you can travel to the future.
of relativity?
2. A train moves at 70 m/s. A ball is thrown toward the front of
the train at 20 m/s relative to the train. How fast does the ball THE RELATIVITY OF SPACE AND MASS
move relative to the tracks? What if the ball had instead been 18. What do we mean by “space” or “distance”?
thrown toward the rear of the train? 19. What does “space is relative” mean?
3. A spaceship moves at 0.25c relative to Earth. A light beam 20. Velma passes Mort at a high speed. Each of them holds a
passes the spaceship, in the forward direction, at speed c rela- meter stick parallel to the direction of motion. What does
tive to Earth. According to Galilean relativity, how fast does each observer say about Velma’s meter stick? What does each
the light beam move relative to the spaceship? Is this answer say about Mort’s meter stick?
experimentally correct? If not, then what answer is correct? 21. According to Einstein’s theory, which of these are relative:
time, lightspeed, rest-mass, length, mass?
THE PRINCIPLES OF RELATIVITY AND CONSTANCY 22. Velma passes Mort at a high speed. Both observers carry a
standard kilogram. What does Mort say about the mass of
OF LIGHTSPEED each of the standard kilograms? What does Velma say?
4. How does travel in a jet airplane illustrate the principle of 23. Mort exerts a 1 newton force on his standard kilogram. What
relativity? How must the airplane be moving in order to illus- acceleration does this give to the kilogram? What will he find
trate this principle? if he exerts the same force on Velma’s standard kilogram
5. State the principle of relativity in your own words. Does it while Velma is passing him at a high speed?
apply to every observer? Explain. 24. What is the distinction, if any, between rest-mass, mass, and
6. State the principle of the constancy of lightspeed in your own matter? Which ones increase with speed?
words. Does it apply to every observer? Explain. 25. What is the distinction between matter and radiation?
7. Use the principle of the constancy of lightspeed to explain 26. Why can’t material objects be sped up to lightspeed? Does
why no observer can move at precisely speed c relative to any anything move at lightspeed?
other observer.
8. What is the ether theory, and why did physicists ultimately E = mc 2
reject it?
9. In Galilean relativity, space and time are absolute and light- 27. What does E = mc2 mean? Does it mean that mass can be
speed is relative. What is the situation in Einstein’s relativity? converted to energy? Explain.
10. What distinguishes the special from the general theory 28. Is matter always conserved? Is mass always conserved? Is
of relativity? rest-mass always conserved? Is energy always conserved?
11. List the basic “laws” of the special theory of relativity. 29. According to Einstein’s relativity, is rest-mass precisely con-
served in chemical reactions?
30. Describe an experiment in which a system’s entire rest-mass
THE RELATIVITY OF TIME vanishes. Is matter conserved here? Mass? Energy?
12. How is time defined in physics?
13. Describe the light clock.
14. Velma passes Mort at a high speed. Both observers have Conceptual Exercises
clocks. What does each observer say about Velma’s clock? GALILEAN RELATIVITY
What do they each say about Mort’s clock? 1. Two bicyclers, on different streets in the same city, are
both moving directly north at 15 km/hr. Are they in
relative motion?

From Chapter 10 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

293
 The Special Theory of Relativity: Problem Set

2. According to the Galilean theory of relativity, does every beam move away from her? How fast does an Earth-based
observer measure the same speed for a light beam? observer see the beam approach Earth?
3. Velma moves toward Mort at half of lightspeed. Mort shines 19. A desperado riding on top of a freight-train car fires a laser
a searchlight toward Velma. What does Galilean relativity gun pointed forward. What is this gun’s “muzzle velocity”?
predict about the speed of the searchlight beam as observed Suppose the train is moving at 40 m/s (0.04 km/s). How fast
by Velma? does the tip of the laser beam move relative to the sheriff, who
4. Velma bicycles northward at 4 m/s. Mort, standing by the side is standing on the ground beside the train? What answer would
of the road, throws a ball northward at 10 m/s. What is the the Galilean theory of relativity have given to this question?
ball’s speed and direction of motion, relative to Velma? What
if Mort had instead thrown the ball southward at 10 m/s?
5. A desperado riding on top of a train car fires a gun toward THE RELATIVITY OF TIME
the front of the train. The gun’s muzzle speed (speed of the 20. Velma passes you at a high speed. According to you, she ages
bullet relative to the gun) is 500 m/s, and the train’s speed is slowly. How does she age according to her own observations?
40 m/s. What is the bullet’s speed and direction of motion as How do you age according to her?
observed by the sheriff standing beside the tracks? What does 21. Suppose you have a twin brother. What could be done to
a passenger on the train say about the bullet’s speed? What if make him older than you?
the desperado had instead pointed his gun toward the rear of 22. The center of our galaxy is about 26,000 light-years away.
the train? Could a person possibly travel there in less than 26,000 years
6. Velma is in a train moving eastward at 70 m/s. Mort, standing as measured on Earth? Could a person possibly travel there in
beside the tracks, throws a ball at 20 m/s eastward. What is less than 26,000 years of his or her own time? Explain.
the ball’s speed and direction relative to Velma? 23. A woman conceives a child while on a fast-moving space
7. Velma is in a train moving eastward at 70 m/s. Mort, standing colony moving toward a distant planetary system. How long
beside the tracks, throws a ball at 20 m/s westward. What is should it take before the baby is born, as measured by the
the ball’s speed and direction relative to Velma? woman? Would an Earth observer measure the same amount
of time?
24. A certain fast-moving particle is observed to have a lifetime
THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY of 2 seconds. If the same particle was at rest in the labora-
8. Does the principle of relativity require that every observer tory, would its lifetime still be 2 seconds, or would it be
observe the same laws of physics? Explain. more, or less, than 2 seconds?
9. If you were riding on a train moving at constant speed along 25. Does the special theory of relativity allow you to go on a trip
a straight track and you dropped a ball directly over a white and return older than your father?
dot on the floor, where would the ball land relative to the dot? 26. Does the special theory of relativity allow your father to go
10. Suppose that you drop a ball while riding on a train moving on a trip and return younger than you?
at constant speed along a straight track. If you measure the 27. Does the special theory of relativity allow you to go on a trip
ball’s acceleration, will your result be greater than, less than, and return younger than you were when you left?
or equal to, the usual acceleration due to gravity? 28. When you go on a very fast trip, must you always return
11. Think of several ways that you could determine from inside older than you were when you left?
an airplane whether the plane was flying smoothly or parked 29. A satellite orbits Earth at 8 km/s. Find its speed as a fraction
on the runway. Do each of these ways involve some direct or of lightspeed. Would an orbiting astronaut directly notice the
indirect contact with the world outside the airplane? effects of time dilation without using sophisticated measure-
12. How fast are you moving right now? What meaning does this ment techniques?
question have? 30. Velma passes Earth at 50% of lightspeed. On her video
13. If you drop a coin inside a car that is turning a corner to the player, she watches a taped video program that runs 1 hour.
right, where will the coin land? How long does the program run as measured by an Earth-
14. If you drop a coin inside a car that is slowing down, where based observer?
will the coin land? 31. Your fantastic rocketship moves at 30,000 km/s. If you took
off, moved at this speed for 24 hours as measured by you,
and returned to Earth, by how much time would your clock
THE CONSTANCY OF LIGHTSPEED differ from Earth-based clocks? Would you have aged more
15. Does every observer measure the same speed for a light than, or less than, people on Earth? By how much?
beam? Explain. 32. Answer the preceding question assuming that your extraordi-
16. A star headed toward Earth at 20% of lightspeed suddenly narily fantastic rocketship moves at 99% of lightspeed.
explodes as a bright supernova. With what speed does the 33. Mort and Velma have identical 10-minute ice-cream cones.
light from the explosion leave the star? With what speed (as Velma passes Mort at 75% of lightspeed. How long does
measured on Earth) does it approach Earth? Mort’s cone take to melt as measured by Velma?
17. Is it physically possible for a person to move past Earth at 34. How fast must Velma move in order for her 10-minute ice-
exactly lightspeed? Explain. cream cone to melt in 30 minutes as measured by Mort?
18. Velma’s spaceship approaches Earth at 0.75c. She turns on a
laser and beams it toward Earth. How fast does she see the

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 The Special Theory of Relativity: Problem Set

THE RELATIVITY OF SPACE AND MASS 49. An electron and an antielectron annihilate each other. In this
35. How fast must Velma move past Mort if Mort is to observe her process, is energy conserved? Is mass conserved? Is rest-
spaceship’s length to be reduced by 50%? If Velma is flying mass conserved?
east to west across the United States (about 5000 km wide) at 50. Two mousetraps are identical except that one of them is set to
this speed, how wide will she observe the United States to be? spring shut when the trigger is released, and the other is not
36. Mort’s swimming pool is 20 m long and 10 m wide. If Velma set. They are placed in identical vats of acid. After they are
flies lengthwise over the pool at 60% of lightspeed, how long completely dissolved, what, if any, are the differences
and how wide will she observe it to be? between the two vats? Will the masses differ?
37. Mort’s automobile is 4 m long as measured by Mort. What 51. In a physics laboratory, an electron is accelerated to nearly
length does Velma measure for Mort’s auto, as she passes lightspeed. If you were riding on the electron, would you
him at 90% of lightspeed? notice that the electron’s mass had increased? If you were
38. Velma, who is carrying a clock and a meter stick, passes standing in the laboratory, what would you notice concerning
Mort. Is it possible that Mort could observe length contrac- the electron’s mass and energy?
tion of Velma’s meter stick but observe no time dilation of
her clock? If so, how?
39. Velma, who is carrying a clock and a meter stick, passes Problems
Use the time-dilation formula T = T0 > 2(1 - y2>c2) (explained
Mort. Is it possible that Mort could observe time dilation of
Velma’s clock but observe no length contraction of her meter
stick? If so, how? in footnote 4) to answer questions 1–6.
40. Velma drives a really fast rocket train northward past Mort, 1. Time dilation depends on the quantity 2(1 - y2>c2), which
who is standing beside the tracks. Two posts are driven into in turn depends on the fraction y2>c2. Evaluate the fraction
the ground along the tracks. How does Mort’s measurement y2>c2 for each of the following speeds: 3 km/s (high-powered
of the distance between the posts compare with Velma’s: rifle bullet), 30 km/s (speed of Earth in its orbit around the
longer, shorter, or the same? sun), 3000 km/s (fast enough to cross the United States in
41. If Velma passes Mort at a high speed, Mort will find her about 1 second). Is time dilation a very significant, notice-
mass to be larger than normal. Will he also find her to be able effect at these speeds?
larger in size? 2. Time dilation depends on the factor 2(1 - y2>c2), Evaluate
42. Velma’s spaceship has a rest-mass of 10,000 kg, and she this factor for each of the following speeds: 30,000 km/s (fast
measures its length to be 100 m. She moves past Mort at enough to circle the globe in 1 second), 150,000 km/s.
0.8c. According to Mort’s measurements, what are the mass 3. Velma passes Mort at 30,000 km/s. What fraction of light-
and the length of her spaceship? speed is this? What is the duration of one of Velma’s seconds
43. How fast must Velma move past Mort if Mort is to observe (a time interval that Velma observes to be 1 second in dura-
her spaceship’s mass to be increased by 50%? How fast must tion) as observed by Mort?
she move if Mort is to observe her spaceship’s length to be 4. Velma passes Mort at 150,000 km/s. What fraction of light-
reduced by 50%? speed is this? What is the duration of one of Mort’s seconds
44. A meter stick with a rest-mass of 1 kg moves past you. Your (a time interval that Mort observes to be 1 second in dura-
measurements show it to have a mass of 2 kg and a length of tion) as observed by Velma?
1 m. What is the orientation of the stick, and how fast is 5. Velma passes Mort at a high speed. His clock, as observed by
it moving? her, runs at half of its normal speed—for example, his clock
45. Use Figure 12 to estimate how fast Velma must move, rela- advances by only 30 minutes during a time of 1 hour as
tive to Mort, for Mort to observe that her body’s mass is 50% recorded on her own clock. What must be the value of the
quantity 2(1 - y2>c2)? Find Velma’s speed relative to Mort.
larger than normal.
6. Velma passes Mort at a high speed. Her clock, as observed
E = mc 2 by him, runs at 25% of its normal speed—for example, her
46. When you throw a stone, does its mass increase, decrease, or clock advances by only 15 minutes during a time of 1 hour as
neither? Can this effect be detected? recorded on his own clock. What must be the value of the
47. A red-hot chunk of coal is placed in a large air-filled con- quantity 2(1 - y2>c2)? Find Velma’s speed relative to Mort.
tainer where it completely burns up. The container is a per- 7. You give 90 J of kinetic energy to a 1 kg stone when you
fect thermal insulator—in other words, thermal energy is throw it. By how much do you increase its mass?
unable to pass through the container’s walls. According to 8. A large nuclear power plant generates electric energy at the rate
E = mc2, does the total mass of the container and its con- of 1000 MW. How many joules of electricity does the plant
tents change during the burning process? If so, does the mass generate in one day? What is the mass of this much energy?
increase, or decrease? 9. If you had two shoes, an ordinary shoe and an “antishoe”
48. Referring to the previous question: Suppose that the con- made of antiparticles, and you annihilated them together, by
tainer is not a thermal insulator—in other words, thermal how far could you lift the U.S. population? Assume that each
energy passes through the walls. In this case, does the total person weighs 600 N, that each shoe’s rest-mass is 0.5 kg,
mass of the container and its contents change during the and that all the energy goes into lifting.
burning process? If so, does the mass increase, or decrease?

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 The Special Theory of Relativity: Problem Set

10. MAKING ESTIMATES Show that, if all the energy released

(transformed) in fissioning 1 kg of uranium were used to heat Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual
water, about 2 billion kg of water could be heated from freez-
ing up to boiling. (Assume that the uranium’s rest-mass is
Exercises and Problems
reduced by about 0.1%. Roughly 4 J of thermal energy is
Conceptual Exercises
needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C.)
1. No.
How many tonnes of water is this (a tonne is 1000 kg)? How
3. According to Galilean relativity, she observes the light beam
many large highway trucks, each loaded to about 30 tonnes,
to move at 1.5c.
would be needed to carry this much water?
5. 540 m/s as observed by the sheriff. 500 m/s as observed by
11. Solar radiation reaches Earth at the rate of 1400 watts for
the passenger. With the gun pointed toward the rear, the bul-
every square meter directly facing the sun. Using the formula
let moves at 460 m/s as observed by the sheriff, 500 m/s as
pR2 for the area of a circle of radius R, find the amount of
observed by the passenger.
solar energy entering Earth’s atmosphere every second.
7. 90 m/s west.
Earth’s radius is 6400 km.
9. The ball would land on the dot.
12. Use the answer to the preceding question to find how many
11. Look out the window, radio to the outside, ask the pilot to
kilograms of sunlight hit Earth every second.
look out of the window and tell you what he sees, stick your
hand out of the airplane, etc. All of these involve contact
Answers to Concept Checks with the outside world.
13. To your left.
15. No. Only non-accelerated observers measure the same speed
1. (d) for a light beam.
2. During every second, the ball moves 20 m closer to the rear 17. No. All material objects move slower than lightspeed.
of the train, while the train moves 70 m eastward. The net 19. 300,000 km/s. 300,000 km/s. 300,000.04 km/s.
result of these two motions is that the ball moves 50 m east- 21. If you go on a sufficiently long and fast trip and return, he
ward (relative to the ground). So the velocity observed by will then be older than you.
Mort is 50 m/s eastward, (a). 23. Nine months. An Earth observer would measure a
3. (a). For instance, you could pour a cup of coffee. If your longer time.
vehicle is speeding up, the coffee won’t pour straight down. 25. No, because you will age less than your father.
4. (b) 27. No. Time always goes forward, never backward.
5. (e) 29. (8 km>s)>300,000 km>s = 2.67 * 10 - 5. No.
6. Mort observes his own cone to melt in 10 minutes. Table 1 says 31. The speed is 0.1c, so Table 1 says that one of your seconds is
that when he observes Velma’s cone, the time dilation factor is observed on Earth as 1.005 s. So when you return you will
1.5, so he observes Velma’s cone to melt in 15 minutes, (e). have aged by 24 hours while people on Earth have aged by
7. She observes him to be younger, in the same ratio as in the 1.005 * 24 = 24.12 hr = 24 hr and 7.2 min. You have aged
other examples (1.5 to 1), so when she has aged by 60 years, less than people on Earth, by 7.2 minutes.
she observes him to have aged only by 40 years, (b). 33. Table 1 says that the time-dilation factor is 1.5, so Velma
8. She cannot go into the past, which rules out answers (a), (b), observes Mort’s cone to melt in 1.5 * 10 min = 15 min.
and (e). She can accomplish (c) by moving sufficiently fast. (Note that Mort moves at 75% of lightspeed relative to
She can accomplish (d) by moving slowly. Finally, (f) will be Velma.)
true regardless of how fast or how slow she moves. (c), (d), 35. According to Figure 12, the required speed is about 0.86c.
and (f). She will observe the United States to be
9. In order for 100 m to contract to 10 m, 1 m must contract to 0.5 * 5000 km = 2500 km wide.
0.1 m. Figure 11 tells us that this happens when the relative 37. 0.43 * 4 m = 1.8 m.
speed is about 99% of lightspeed, (b). 39. Yes. Velma could be holding her meter stick perpendicular to
10. (c), (d) the direction of motion.
11. Mass increases whenever energy increases. The bullet’s 41. No, in fact he observes her to be shorter as measured along
energy increases as it moves faster. The rubber band’s energy her direction of motion.
increases (because work must be done to stretch it). The two 43. Using Figure 12, Mort observes her spaceship’s mass to be
charged objects have more electrical energy after the move increased by 50% when she moves past him at a speed of
(because work must be done to move them closer). However, 0.75c. Mort observes the length to be reduced by 50% when
the electron–antielectron pair do not gain or lose energy she moves past him at 0.86c.
(even though they are annihilated), because of conservation 45. About 0.75 c.
of energy, (a), (b), (c). 47. No; since the total energy is unchanged, the total mass is
12. The bullet’s rest-mass is unchanged. The rubber band and also unchanged.
the two charged objects are left at rest, with greater energy 49. Yes. Yes. No; in fact, rest-mass is entirely destroyed.
and hence greater mass, so the rest-mass of these two sys- 51. No. If you were standing in the laboratory, you would notice
tems increases. The electron–antielectron pair lose all their that the electron’s mass and energy had both increased.
rest mass when they annihilate to create gamma radiation
(which has zero rest mass), (b), (c), (d).

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 The Special Theory of Relativity: Problem Set

Problems 9. mc2 = (1 kg) * (9 * 1016 m2>s2) = 9 * 1016 J. This much

1. y>c = (3 km>s)>300,000 km>s = 10 - 5, y2>c2 = 10 - 10. energy goes into lifting. The energy needed to lift a weight
Similarly, y >c = 10 when s = 30 km>s. y2>c2 = 10 - 4
2 2 -8
through a height is weight * height. The weight of the U.S.
when y = 3000 km>s. Time dilation is not very significant population is about (300 * 106 people) * (600 N>person)
at these speeds. = 1.8 * 1011 N. The height through which this mass could
3. This is 0.1 (or 10%) of lightspeed. y2>c2 = 0.01. be lifted is 9 * 1016 J>1.8 * 1011 N = 5 * 105 m =
2(1 - y2>c2) = 2(1 - 0.01) = 20.99 = 0.995 500 kilometers!
T = T0> 2(1 - y2>c2) = 1 s>0.995 = 1.005 s. 11. Since 1 watt = 1 joule/second, 1400 joules hit each square
5. From the given information, the time-dilation factor is 2, meter in each second. Earth’s area facing the sun (the
i.e., T = 2T0. Thus, cross-sectional area facing the sun) is pR2 = 3.14 *
1> 2(1 - y2>c2) = 2. (6.4 * 106 m)2 = 1.3 * 1014 m2. The energy hitting Earth
2(1 - y2>c2) = 1>2 each second is thus 1400 J>m2 * 1.3 * 1014 m2 =
1 - y2>c2 = 1>4 1.8 * 1017 J.
y2>c2 = 3>4, so y>c = 20.75 = 0.87. Velma moves at 87%
of lightspeed. Note that this answer agrees with Figure 10.
7. 90 J>c2 = 90 J>9 * 1016 m2>s2 = 10 - 15 kg, or
0.000,000,000,000,001 kg.

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Einstein’s Universe and the
New Cosmology
Einstein’s Pegasus
There’s Einstein riding on a ray of light,
In which he cannot see his face in flight
Because his jesting image, I now understand,
Won’t ever reach the mirror since its speed,
Too, is the speed of light. He rides, this fleeting day,
As if on Pegasus, immortal steed
Of bridled meditation, past the Milky Way,
Out to my mind’s Andromeda, where I,
Also transported, staring at a windless pool,
Watch his repaired reflection whizzing by.
Though he can’t see himself, this self-effacing fool
Who holds all motion steady in his head,
I won’t forget his facing what he cannot see
In thought that binds the living and the dead,
And ride with him, outfacing fixed eternity.
Robert Pack, Middlebury College, 1991

T
he special theory of relativity describes the observations of nonaccelerated
observers. What about accelerated observers? Einstein found a surprising con-
nection between acceleration and gravity, and between gravity and a feature
best described as “warps in spacetime.” Section 1 presents these key ideas.
I’ve devoted the remainder of the chapter to cosmology: the study of the origin,
structure, and evolution of the large-scale universe. The general theory of relativity is
science’s basic tool for such matters. You are living in the golden age of cosmology. It
started in 1992 when microwave receivers on orbiting satellites gathered the first
detailed image of the “cosmic microwave background” showing the earliest light
from the creation of the universe. It continues today with the search for dark matter,
dark energy, and an elusive microscopic particle known as the “Higgs boson.”
Cosmology is inspired by some of the oldest questions ever asked, and is perhaps the
oldest story ever told. For thousands and probably millions of years, humans have
looked for answers to questions such as: How did all this come to be? Where did
Earth come from? What is the layout of the universe? Where do humans fit in?
There’s been plenty of speculation about all this, but now for the first time we are
finding evidence-based answers, answers that have at least as much to do with physics
as with astronomy. I hope you’ll share in the excitement by pondering the discoveries
and concepts in this chapter.

From Chapter 11 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

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Section 2 presents the “big bang” that created our universe and evidence that it
actually occurred. Einstein’s connection between gravity and warped spacetime
leads to a new way of viewing, in Section 3, the overall structure and expansion of
the universe. Section 4 presents the recent microwave image of the big bang shortly
after it occurred and its implications for the overall shape of the universe. Section 5
presents a surprising and exciting development: The universe is filled with enor-
mous amounts of “dark matter” that doesn’t interact with light and so has not yet
been directly observed. Section 6 describes two additional completely unexpected
developments: the accelerating universe and the mysterious “dark energy” pushing
this acceleration. Section 7 presents a recent hypothesis on how, and perhaps even
why, the big bang banged. Because these results aren’t easy to believe, I’ve included
quite a few “How Do We Know” subsections.

A rocket ship in outer

1 EINSTEIN’S GRAVITY: THE GENERAL THEORY
space accelerates at OF RELATIVITY
9.8 m/s2 in this
direction The special theory of relativity begins with the principle that the laws of physics are
the same for all unaccelerated observers. What about accelerated observers? This is
the starting point for the general theory of relativity.
You’ve probably noticed, when riding in an elevator accelerating upward from a
building’s ground floor, that you felt squashed down, heavy, as though there were
more gravitational pull on you than usual. This connection between acceleration
and “apparent gravity” runs deeper than you might think. For example, imagine
Due to the being inside an accelerating rocket ship in outer space, far from all planets and stars
acceleration,
this occupant so that there are no gravitational forces [Figure 1(a)]. If the rocket’s acceleration is
feels a force 9.8 m/s2 or 1g (“one gee”), you will feel the same as you do when you are station-
by the floor ary on Earth [Figure 1(b)]. The reason is that, according to Newton’s law of motion,
against his
shoes. the rocket’s floor must push upward on the bottoms of your shoes in order to accel-
erate you at 1g. Because this push is quantitatively equal to your weight on Earth,
you feel the same force against your feet as you do at rest on Earth. So accelerations
mimic the effects of gravity.
If you were in a rocket accelerating smoothly at 1g through outer space, could
(a) you tell, without communicating with the world outside the rocket, that you were
actually in space and not at rest on Earth’s surface? Think about it. You might try
dropping a stone to see how it falls (Figure 2). But your rocket is accelerating at 1g
so the floor accelerates upward to meet the stone. From your point of view inside
Due to gravity, the rocket, the stone “falls” down to the floor with an acceleration of 1g.
this occupant
at rest on the Furthermore, Galileo’s law of falling is valid: A large-mass stone and a small-mass
ground feels a stone, released together, reach the floor (or rather, the floor reaches them) at the
force by the same time. You also could throw a stone horizontally (Figure 3). Because of the
floor against
his shoes. rocket’s upward acceleration, the stone gets closer to the floor as it moves across the
rocket. As you view it, the stone “falls” to the floor exactly as though it were thrown
horizontally on Earth.
It seems it’s not easy to perform an experiment inside your rocket ship that can
(b)
tell you whether you’re at rest on Earth’s surface or moving through space with a 1g
Figure 1 acceleration.
Acceleration is indistinguishable Einstein made this reasoning into a fundamental principle that’s similar to the
from gravity. The occupant cannot principle of relativity. The principle of relativity says that there is no way, from
tell the difference. within your own laboratory, to distinguish a state of rest from motion at constant

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 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology

Figure 2
If you release a stone inside an
accelerating rocket in outer space,
it will appear to you that the stone
falls “down” to the floor, just as
Rocket ship
accelerates at though you were on Earth and feel-
1g ing the effects of gravity.
Floor
accelerates
upward and
hits the stone

Observer
releases
stone

Stone’s path Figure 3

relative to If you throw a stone inside an
you
accelerating rocket in outer space,
it will appear to you that the stone
falls to the floor as though you
Rocket ship
accelerates at were on Earth and feeling the
1g effects of gravity.

Floor
accelerates
upward to meet
the stone

Observer
throws stone
horizontally

velocity. The new principle states that there is no way, from within your own labo-
ratory, to distinguish the effects of gravity from the effects of acceleration.
Because it says that gravity is equivalent to acceleration, we call this

The Equivalence Principle

No experiment performed inside a closed room can tell you whether you are at rest
in the presence of gravity or accelerating in the absence of gravity.

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 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology

Rocket ship Light beam’s

accelerates at path relative
1g to you

Floor accelerates
Observer upward toward
points the flashlight
flashlight beam
horizontally

Figure 4
If you turn on a flashlight inside an accelerating rocket in outer space, the light beam bends
relative to you.

Light beams play a central role in the general theory just as they do in the spe-
cial theory. How do accelerations affect light beams? If you accelerate through
outer space and you turn on a flashlight horizontally, the light beam must bend
downward relative to you (Figure 4), just like the path of a horizontally thrown
stone (Figure 3). The equivalence principle implies that this experiment must come
out the same way if performed in a stationary room in the presence of gravity. So
Distant Star’s apparent
star position as seen gravity must bend light.
from Earth
Starlight
bent by How do we know that gravity bends light? Earth’s gravity is too weak to bend light
sun’s very much. But the sun is massive enough to measurably bend the light from distant stars
gravity
as the light passes close to the sun. The first measurement of this effect was made dur-
ing a total eclipse of the sun in 1919, when astronomers could photograph the stars that
From Earth,
the star
appear near the edge of the sun (Figure 5). Measurements of these stars’ positions
appears to lie showed that the starlight does bend as it passes the sun and that the amount of curva-
in this
direction ture agrees with Einstein’s predictions.

Sun Recall that the constancy of lightspeed led Einstein to the surprising discovery
that time is relative. Similarly, the gravitational bending of light implies a surpris-
ing property of space, related to the concept of straightness. Just as time is a physi-
cal property of the universe that can be measured by a light clock, straightness is a
Earth
physical property that can be defined as the path followed by a light beam. In fact,
surveyors often use laser beams to determine straightness, and you use light beams
Figure 5 to determine straightness when you aim a gun by sighting along its barrel. But what
Because the sun bends light beams, can it mean to say that gravity bends light beams, when light beams themselves are
we can (during a total eclipse) see the definition of straightness? Just as the slowed ticking of moving light clocks
stars that are behind the sun. implies that time itself slows down, Einstein saw that the bending of light beams

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means that space itself is bent, or curved, or warped, by gravity. The path of a light
beam is best described as the “straightest possible” path. In a curved space, even the
straightest possible path must be curved.
Space is warped. It’s an odd concept. It took an Einstein to think of it, but it’s not
something that Einstein, or you or anybody else, can visualize. As Stephen
Hawking (Figure 6) remarked, “It is hard enough to visualize ordinary three-dimen-
sional space, let alone warped three-dimensional space.” The difficulty is that space
has only three dimensions (length, width, and height), so there is no higher dimen-
sionality from which to view the curvature of our three-dimensional space the way

UPI/M. Manni/Corbis/Bettmann
you can view, from your three-dimensional perspective, the bending of a two-
dimensional sheet of paper.
The best anybody can do is visualize analogies to this important idea of curved
space. For example, a flat tabletop is two-dimensional (the surface has length and
width only) and can be considered to be a “flat two-dimensional space” (Figure 7). If
we put a warp in it, a depression perhaps (Figure 8), the surface becomes a warped
two-dimensional space. For another example, the surface (not the inside) of a sphere
is a curved two-dimensional space. The two standard dimensions on the surface of a
globe, for example, are called longitude (angular distance east or west of a circle
running through the two poles and through Greenwich, England) and latitude (angu-
lar distance north or south of the equator). In this curved two-dimensional space, the
straightest possible lines (analogous to the paths of light beams in curved three- Figure 6
dimensional space) are the “great circles,” such as the equator and the circles of lon- Stephen Hawking has made
gitude running through the poles. remarkable contributions to astro-
Suppose you were a two-dimensional creature inhabiting a two-dimensional spher- physics and cosmology.
ical space, something like a flat ant crawling on the surface of a large globe. How
could you tell that your space was curved? You couldn’t stand outside or inside the Then I would have felt sorry
for the dear Lord, for the theory
globe’s surface, in the third dimension, to see that you are on a spherical surface,
is correct.
because there is no such third dimension in this two-dimensional analogy. One way Einstein’s reply when asked how he
you could learn that your space is curved is by performing geometry experiments. For would have felt if the 1919 Solar Eclipse
observations had disagreed with his
instance, two lines, beginning parallel and extending as straight lines (or straightest General Theory of Relativity.
lines, as perceived from our three-dimensional vantage point), should eventually meet
(Figure 9). Similarly, you cannot directly see the curvature of three-dimensional space,
but you can perform experiments to determine whether our space is curved. The 1919
experiment that measured the curvature of light near the sun was just such a geometry
experiment. It found that even the straightest path, the path of a light beam, bends
near the sun. We conclude that three-dimensional space itself is curved.

Figure 7 Figure 9
A flat tabletop is a flat two- Figure 8 In a two-dimensional spherical
dimensional space. If you warp a flat two-dimensional space, two lines that start out parallel
space, it becomes a curved two- and extend as “straight” (or straight-
dimensional space. est) lines will eventually meet.

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At this point, many students develop the misconception that there must be a
fourth spatial dimension into which three-dimensional space is curving. This is
wrong. Our two-dimensional analogy is meant to be imagined with no reference to
any “embedding” of those two dimensions in a third dimension; the real three-
dimensional space is curved despite the absence of a fourth spatial dimension into
which three-dimensional space is curving.

Spacecraft How do we know that space is curved? But does the bending of light really show
in orbit space to be curved or does it merely show that light beams bend in ordinary or “flat” three-
around Mars
dimensional space? The latter possibility was ruled out by an experiment in 1972 in which a
spacecraft orbiting Mars beamed back radar signals sent from Earth (Figure 10). The radar
beam’s travel time was measured at a time of year when the line of sight from Earth to Mars
passed near the sun. This travel-time measurement can tell whether the bent light beam
travels through a flat space or through a warped space. Here’s how.
It’s easy to use the observed curved path to predict the travel time in a flat space by
Radar beam from
making a scaled-down drawing of the curved path on a flat sheet of paper and seeing
Earth is reflected how much longer it is than a straight line. In the experiment, the answer was about 10 m,
back by spacecraft so if the radar beam was merely bending in a flat space, it should have been delayed by
about 30 billionths of a second, the time taken by light (and radar) to travel 10 m. But
you can’t use a flat sheet of paper to measure distances in a warped space, for the same
reason that you can’t determine the distance from Los Angeles to London by making
measurements on a flat map: The “scale” keeps changing because of the curvature.
Einstein’s formulas predict a delay of 200 millionths of a second, 7000 times longer than
the predicted delay in a flat space. The experiment confirmed Einstein’s prediction.
Sun
I have so far ignored one fact that I now must mention. Space and time are tan-
gled up with each other. For example, to measure the width of a moving window,
you need at least two clocks to ensure that you measure the two sides of the window
at precisely the same instant. So distance measurements involve time measure-
ments. In general relativity, this tangling of space and time means that any warping
of space must also distort time, causing clocks (in other words, time) to go slower in
Earth
stronger gravitational fields. It’s really space and time together, or spacetime, that
Figure 10 is distorted by masses. Spacetime is not an especially subtle or difficult idea. It’s
An experiment to measure the total not hard to imagine two or three of its dimensions, but impossible to imagine all
travel time for a radar beam to get four at once. For example, if you’ve ever graphed the position “x” of an object mov-
to Mars and back. ing along a straight line versus the object’s time of travel “t,” you’ve graphed the
motion of an object in spacetime.
The general theory of relativity revolutionized our view of gravity and of space
and time. Newtonian physics viewed space and time as a passive, unchanging back-
ground against which events unfolded, while modern physics views spacetime as an
active and changing physical participant in events. Spacetime forms a kind of fab-
ric that can be molded by masses (Figure 11), much as a hammer can bend a sheet of
metal. Spacetime has a shape, a shape that is molded by matter and that affects the
motion of matter and radiation through space.
For familiar situations on Earth such as the fall of a stone, general relativity’s
Figure 11 predictions are nearly identical to Newton’s.1 For exotic situations such as near a
Masses such as the sun cause space
to curve.
1
Even on Earth, the small differences from Newtonian predictions are important for practical applications
requiring extreme accuracy. For example, the global positioning system (GPS) depends on satellites to pro-
vide an accurate determination of the position of any GPS receiver on Earth. It’s crucial that all 24 GPS
satellites use the same time to a high degree of accuracy. For this, scientists must take the effects of both
special and general relativity into account.

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 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology

black hole or during the creation of the universe, general relativity’s predictions dif-
fer enormously from Newton’s. Conceptually, the two theories differ radically. In
Einstein’s theory, gravitational effects such as Earth’s circular motion around the
sun are not caused by forces at all but are instead due entirely to the curvature of
spacetime. Earth’s orbit is pulled into a circle not by the force of gravity, but rather
because the sun warps spacetime and Earth simply “falls” freely (experiencing no
force at all) along those warps. Earth must move along a curved path in spacetime,
because spacetime is curved. To ward off a common misconception, I’m not saying
here that space is curved into a circle around the sun and that Earth follows these
circles. Instead, spacetime is curved in such a way that Earth moves in a circle in the
spatial dimensions while moving toward increasing time in the time dimension,
producing a spiral in spacetime.

How do we know that general relativity is accurate? What with curved space, bend-
ing lightbeams, and spacetime, this theory introduces some unusual concepts. It would be
natural for you to question its validity. So it’s reassuring to know that scientists have checked
the theory frequently and carefully and it has not yet failed a single test. The most demand-
ing test was reported in 2006, and involved a pair of pulsating neutron stars that orbit each
other in our own galaxy at 2000 light-years from Earth. Imagine two stars, each more mas-
sive than the sun yet squeezed down by gravity to a diameter of only a few kilometers,
each containing a billion tonnes of material in every cubic centimeter, one star spinning an
incredible 44 times per second and the other at 3 seconds per revolution, each sending
out with each revolution a radio beep similar to a rotating lighthouse beacon, and separated
from each other by only about 3 times the distance from Earth to the moon—close enough
that each star affects the pulses of the other. The stars are converging at 7 mm per day, and
will merge in a galaxy-shaking collision in 85 million years. The enormous gravitational
fields created near these tiny but massive stars, the regularity of the stars’ motions and their
clocklike radio signals make this system a perfect “laboratory” for testing many quantitative
details of general relativity in a situation where spacetime is predicted to be strongly bent by
gravity, and where Newtonian gravity is far wrong. According to Ingrid Stairs, a member of
the team who reported the first measurements, “general relativity does a perfect job of
describing what we know of the system so far.” The results showed that, despite the
extreme gravity, the theory of general relativity is accurate to within the team’s measure-
ment uncertainty of 0.05%.
A similar but even more mind-blowing observation was reported in 2008 when scientists
discovered the largest known black hole at the center of a galaxy 3.5 billion light-years from
Earth. This black hole has the mass of 18 billion suns. To make matters even more interest-
ing, they found a smaller 100-million-sun black hole orbiting the larger black hole every 12
years. Again, this system is a perfect laboratory to observe general relativistic effects. These
observations have been done, and they fully agree with general relativity while ruling out
several competing theories that had been proposed as alternative theories of gravity. Like
the neutron stars, the two black holes are converging and will merge in about 10,000 years,
a collision that will literally shake spacetime in a manner that should be detectable here on
Earth, across 25% of the observable universe.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 Since accelerations can mimic the effects of gravity,

accelerations should be able to cancel gravity. Thus, a person could experience
weightlessness by (a) blasting off from Earth, straight upward, at an acceleration
of 1g; (b) falling from a high place such as a diving board or airplane (skydiving);
(c) orbiting Earth; (d) standing on the surface of the moon.

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CONCEPT CHECK 2 The equator is a “straightest possible” line on the sur-

face of a globe. Are the other east-west circles of latitude “straightest possible”
lines? (a) Yes. (b) No, they curve more than the equator’s curvature. (c) No, they
curve less than the equator’s curvature. (d) No, despite the fact that their curvature
is the same as the equator’s curvature.

2 THE BIG BANG

You don’t have to search far to You are living in the golden age of cosmology: the study of the origin, structure,
locate where the big bang and evolution of the large-scale universe. I will take full advantage of that fact by
occurred, for it took place where presenting some of the mind-blowing recent cosmological discoveries. The golden
you are now as well as every-
age began in 1992 when an observing satellite charted the first detailed map of the
where else; in the beginning, all
locations we now see as separate
early universe. The keys to the new cosmological discoveries are the wonderful new
were the same location. observing instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The key to understand-
String Theorist Brian Greene in The ing these discoveries is the general theory of relativity.
Elegant Universe When applied to the universe as a whole, general relativity predicts the possible
ways our three-dimensional universe could evolve throughout past and future time.
When supplemented with certain astronomical observations (described in the fol-
lowing discussion), general relativity leads to a striking description of the origin and
evolution of the universe: About 14 billion years ago,2 the universe began in a single
event called the big bang that created the different forms of energy and matter, caus-
ing the “observable” universe (the portion that can be observed with telescopes) to
expand from a much smaller initial size. The reality of the big bang is strongly con-
firmed by serval independent lines of observational evidence, but the theoretical
understanding of how and why this event occurred is just beginning (Section 7).

How do we know there was a big bang? Four independent lines of evidence sup-
port the big bang theory:
1. Astronomers first hypothesized the big bang in 1929 because they discovered evi-
dence that all the galaxies throughout the universe are receding from one another
just as if they had been driven apart by an explosion. Extrapolating backwards in time
from the speeds and distances we see today, the galaxies should have all been
together 14 billion years ago.
2. In 1964, radio astronomers first detected the cosmic microwave background, the
NASA Earth Observing System faint afterglow that still fills the universe from the hot initial explosion. The radiation
has now cooled all the way down to –270°C.3 This cold radiation has too little energy
Figure 12 to be visible and is observable today only as faint radio static in the microwave and
The Wilkinson Microwave radio regions of the spectrum. Its observed characteristics, such as its temperature,
Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) leav- agree with the big bang theory’s predictions.
ing the Earth/moon system, headed
3. In 1992 and again in 2003, observing satellites mapped the cosmic microwave back-
for a gravitational blance point in
ground arriving at Earth from all directions in space (Figure 12). The results
space known as “L2.” In 2003, this
(Figure 13) showed that this radiation contains subtle and highly complex “ripples” of
satellite looked nearly 14 billion
precisely the sort expected if the initial big bang did indeed develop into the structured
years back in time to observe our
universe of galaxies and clusters of galaxies that we see today. The existence of the radi-
universe when it was in its
ation mapped in Figure 13, and the close relationship between that radiation and the
infancy—about 400,000 years old.
universe we see around us today, are strong evidence for the big bang theory.
This is comparable to viewing a
baby picture of an 80-year-old man
taken when he was less than one 2
More precisely, 13.73 billion years with a surprisingly small 1% margin of error.
day old. WMAP used the moon to 3
This is just 3 degrees above absolute zero, the lowest possible temperature, the temperature at which all
gain velocity for a slingshot to L2. microscopic motion is the least it can be without violating the quantum uncertainty principle.

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 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe/NASA

Figure 13
First light: A “fossil” of the creation of the universe. This map, a portrait of the 14-billion-year-old microwave whisper that now remains
from the mighty flash of radiation that was released a mere 380,000 years after the big bang, shows the temperature differences in the
universe as it existed at the time the radiation was released; darker regions are slightly cooler, lighter regions are warmer. The map
shows every direction in space; think of horizontal and vertical axes going through the map’s center, with units in angular degrees
extending 360° along the horizontal axis and 180° along the vertical axis. Although the expansion of the universe has by now stretched
the fabric of space so much that the radiation has stretched into the microwave region of the spectrum, you are looking at a photograph
(“microwave-graph” actually) of the first light that traveled through the universe. Before this time, the universe was so hot that its atoms
were electrically charged, which prevented light from traveling through space. Thus, the cosmic microwave background acts like a light-
emitting curtain, beyond which we cannot see. It is the oldest, largest, and furthest observable structure known to science.

4. The fourth line of evidence concerns the creation of the universe’s first chemical ele-
ments. The earliest kinds of ordinary matter, formed during the first thousandth of a sec-
ond of the big bang, were protons, neutrons, and electrons. Conditions during just the
next 3 minutes were right for protons and neutrons to “fuse” together into more com-
plex nuclei. After these 3 minutes, the universe was too cool and too dilute for protons
and neutrons to continue fusing. Well-developed and highly reliable nuclear physics cal-
culations predict that at the end of these 3 minutes, 75% of the original protons still
remained, while 25% of the original protons had fused with neutrons to form four other
types of nuclei, labeled 21H, 32He, 42He, and 73Li . The remaining single protons are ordinary
hydrogen nuclei, labeled 11H. The universe was then made of two different types of
hydrogen, two types of helium, and one type of lithium, in the proportions stated in Table 1
Table 1. Predicted nuclear composition of
Astronomers have made measurements of the light or “spectra” from the oldest universe at about 3 minutes after
start of big bang. Current observa-
stars, stars that presumably formed from the original material created in the big bang
tions of the oldest material in the
and that have changed little since that time. These measurements show relative universe agree well with these
amounts of the five isotopes that are in excellent agreement with the theoretically pre- predictions.
dicted amounts of Table 1. This detailed quantitative agreement between observa-
Nuclear Relative
tions and the big bang theory’s predictions for five different nuclear types is strong
type concentration
evidence for the theory. The prediction and confirmation of 21H is especially com- by mass
pelling, because nuclear physics predicts that there is essentially no process anywhere 1
in the universe, other than the big bang, that could have made this material. 1H 75%
2
1H 5–10 parts in 100,000
The big bang is as real as the “snow,” or interference, that you can see on an old ana- 3
2He 2–5 parts in 100,000
log (pre-digital) TV screen when the power is on with no station tuned in. Cosmic 4
2He 25%
microwave background radiation causes some of this interference. The echo of the big 7
3Li 2–5 parts in 10 billion
bang is all around you!

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In the patterns of the subtle tem- The universe is still made mostly of hydrogen and helium, although heavier ele-
perature differences in the cosmic ments created since the big bang now contribute a small percentage. Nearly all the
microwave background in differ- hydrogen and helium can be traced back to the big bang. Although our bodies con-
ent directions we are learning to
tain no helium, the hydrogen forged 14 billion years ago in the big bang is one of
read the Genesis story of the
expanding universe. The resulting the most prevalent elements in your body and in all living organisms.
origin story will be the first ever
based on scientific evidence and CONCEPT CHECK 3 The gold nuclei in the universe were (a) all created in the
created by a collaboration of peo- big bang; (b) all created sometime after the big bang; (c) created partly during the
ple from different religions and big bang, and partly after.
races all around the world, all of
whose contributions are sub-
jected to the same standards of
verifiability.
3 THE POSSIBLE GEOMETRIES OF THE UNIVERSE
Nancy Ellen Abrams, Lawyer and Writer,
and Joel Primack, Astrophysical Theorist,
The expansion of the universe may be the most important fact ever discovered
Writing in the Journal Science about our origins. The key to understanding it is to not take the term “big bang” too
seriously. It was not like the explosion of a bomb that happened in time and space.
Rather, the big bang created time and space. Time and space are part of the uni-
verse, not the other way around. As the universe expands, it makes its own time and
space. The universe is expanding, but it is not expanding into anything because
there is no space “outside” of the universe. So space started small and has been get-
ing bigger ever since.
One of the predictions of general relativity is that three-dimensional space can’t
remain static but must always either expand or contract. It’s remarkable that even
space itself must continually change. Everything, it seems, is active and changing:
The stars are born and die, life on Earth evolves, you and I are born and will die,
and even space itself must always expand or contract.
Direct evidence for the expansion of the universe comes from astronomical
observations of other galaxies outside our Milky Way galaxy. Distant galaxies are
moving away from us, and the more distant galaxies move away faster. But the
galaxies are not just moving away from our particular galaxy; they are all moving
away from one another. Regardless of which galaxy you live in, you will observe
the other galaxies moving away from you. It’s like a loaf of raisin bread expanding
as it bakes: If you were standing on any one of the raisins observing the other
raisins, you would observe all of them moving away from you, and more distant
raisins would move away from you faster.
To visualize the expansion of our entire curved three-dimensional universe, we
Figure 14 must imagine a two-dimensional analogy as in Section 1. Imagine that the surface of
The two-dimensional surface of an a partially inflated balloon is a two-dimensional universe, similar to the ant and
expanding balloon is a two- globe analogy of Section 1. To represent the galaxies, imagine two-dimensional
dimensional representation of the (flat) raisins glued to the surface. Remember that, in this two-dimensional analogy,
expansion of the three-dimensional you must imagine that the inside and outside of the balloon don’t exist; only the two-
universe. As space, represented by dimensional surface of the balloon is supposed to exist.
the balloon’s surface, expands, the Now imagine that the balloon inflates (Figure 14), representing the expansion
galaxies, represented by flat raisins
of the universe. Note that, as the balloon expands, the distance between all the
glued to the balloon, move farther
raisins increases. No matter which raisin you are standing on, all the other
apart. Although this two-
dimensional analogy has the uni- raisins move away from you. No raisin is at the center of this balloon universe, in
verse expanding into the empty fact the surface of the balloon has no center. In agreement with the philosophy
space outside the balloon, there is of the Copernican revolution, this universe is, on average, the same all over.
no space outside the real three- Note that the galaxies are at rest relative to the balloon’s surface. It’s not really
dimensional universe. the raisins that are moving; instead, the space between the raisins is expanding. In

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the real three-dimensional universe, gravity holds each galaxy (also each star and
each planet) together in a relatively fixed size and shape, while the space between
the galaxies expands. Note also that no galaxy is at the edge of the balloon
universe, because the balloon universe has no edge. And neither does the real
three-dimensional universe.
According to general relativity, the possible shapes or geometries for the large-
scale structure of the three-dimensional universe fall into three categories. Figure 15
shows the two-dimensional analogs of these three-dimensional geometries. A closed
universe bends back on itself to form a sphere. If you lived in a closed universe, you
could detect this from the fact that straight (that is, straightest) lines that start out par- (a) Closed geometry
allel eventually meet (Figure 9), and the angles of a triangle add up to more than the
normal 180°, as you can see from Figure 15. Although a closed universe has only a
finite extent, the other two geometries have infinite total extents and so only a portion
of these surfaces can be shown in the figure. A flat universe has no overall large-scale
curvature (in all three geometries there will be smaller-scale warps caused by stars,
black holes, galaxies, and other objects) and has the normal Euclidean geometry with
which you are familiar—parallel lines remain parallel, and the angles of a triangle add
up to 180°. An open universe is analogous to a saddle-shaped surface; in such a uni-
verse, straight lines that start out parallel eventually diverge from each other, and the
angles of a triangle add up to less than 180°.
Regardless of which of the three geometries our actual universe might have, if (b) Flat geometry
you follow a straight (straightest) path, you will never come to an edge or to the cen-
ter of the universe. In the open and flat universes, this is because the universe is infi-
nite in extent. In the closed universe, it is because straight (straightest) lines simply
curve back to where they started. In such a universe, if you head in an absolutely
straight line for many billions of light-years, you will reach your starting point.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 The universe is expanding. Is everything in the universe

expanding? (a) Yes. (b) No, the distances between the galaxies are not expanding.
(c) No, the Milky Way galaxy is not expanding. (d) No, our solar system is not
expanding. (e) No, Earth is not expanding. (c) Open geometry

Figure 15
4 THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE Two-dimensional analogs of the pos-
sible large-scale geometries of the
The revolution in cosmology has been driven by a revolution in observational tech- three-dimensional universe, as pre-
niques. Until 1992, observations having cosmological significance were few and dicted by general relativity. A closed
far between and highly imprecise. Cosmology was of necessity highly theoretical universe bends back on itself to form
and conjectural. The age of precision cosmology began in 1992 with the first obser- a three-dimensional spherical space;
vation of the details of the cosmic microwave background, similar to the far more in such a universe, the angles of a tri-
detailed Figure 13. angle add up to more than the normal
Figure 13 is a “microwave photograph,” similar to an infrared photograph, show- 180° and the total volume is finite. A
ing the temperature variations in the background radiation emitted by the big bang. flat universe has no overall large-
scale curvature; it has the normal
The light regions are slightly warmer than the dark regions. This radiation was
Euclidean geometry where the angles
emitted just 400,000 years after the big bang. Before that time, the temperature of of a triangle add up to 180°, and an
the universe was so high that protons and electrons moved too rapidly to stick infinite total volume. An open uni-
together to form hydrogen atoms. The resulting mix of electrically charged protons verse is analogous to a saddle-shaped
and electrons immediately absorbed any radiation present. At 400,000 years, the uni- surface; in such a universe, the angles
verse had cooled enough for electrons to combine with protons to form neutral hydro- of a triangle add up to less than 180°
gen atoms, and radiation propagated through space for the first time. The microwaves and the total volume is infinite.

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 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology

that made Figure 13 traveled through nearly empty space for 14 billion years before
entering the microwave detectors that created this map. You are looking at the image
of the earliest light in the universe, a 14-billion-year-old “fossil.”
From this map, showing details of the waves of matter and energy (similar to
sound waves in air) that sloshed around in the early universe, scientists conclude
that the large-scale geometry of the universe is flat rather than closed or open
(Figure 15). Here’s how we know.

How do we know the shape of the universe? With their knowledge of the physical
nature of the hot, dense, and electrically charged early universe, scientists can predict the max-
imum distance that wavelike disturbances in this material could travel during the
400,000 years between the big bang and the release of the light seen in this map.
Astronomers can also directly observe this distance in the cosmic microwave background,
based on the average size of the observed hot or cool regions seen in the map (Figure 16).
However, such observations are distorted by the geometry of the space through which the
microwave radiation travels on its long journey to Earth, and this distortion enabled scientists to
If you’re religious, it’s like looking determine that geometry. As shown in Figure 16, a typical wavelike disturbance, as observed
at God. today from Earth, should make an angle of about 1° if the universe is flat, while a closed uni-
George Smoot, Leader of the Team verse would warp the radiation into an angle larger than 1° and an open universe would warp
That Announced in 1992 the Discovery
of the Ripples in the Cosmic Microwave
it into an angle smaller than 1°. The observed angle was about 1°—fairly conclusive evidence
Background that the overall geometry of the universe is flat or at least very close to it.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 Since there is evidence that the universe is flat, does this
mean that there is no such thing as curved or warped space? Defend your answer.
(a) Yes. (b) No.

Figure 16 A single typical disturbance—a region of hotter or cooler

A typical wavelike disturbance in temperature—in the nearly uniform early universe
the material of the early universe,
as observed today from Earth, Hot, dense, charged material
should make an angle of about 1° prior to 400,000 years
if the universe is flat. A closed uni- after the big bang
verse would warp the radiation into
an angle larger than 1°, while an
open universe would warp it into
an angle smaller than 1°. The
observed angle was about 1°—
strong evidence that the overall
geometry is flat. Distance that any single disturbance
could spread during 400,000 years
following the big bang

14 billion
light-years Angle of less than 1 (open geometry)

Angle of 1 (flat geometry)

Angle of more than 1 (closed geometry)

Observer

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11.5 DARK MATTER

We’re accustomed to thinking that the universe is made mostly of the visibly lumi-
nous (shining) stars and a few nonluminous objects such as planets. But we’ve
learned during the past 20 years that the universe is made of many more kinds of
things than this. First, an enormous amount of the hydrogen and helium created in
the big bang has neither gathered into stars nor collected within the visible galaxies
but instead lies in the vast regions between the galaxies where it is invisible and
nearly undetectable. Astronomers first detected it by observing how the light travel-
ing to Earth from distant objects is partly absorbed as it passes through intergalac-
tic space. The mass of this invisible intergalactic gas is now known to be 10 times
larger than the mass of all the stars, planets, and luminous gas in the universe!
Stars, planets, and intergalactic gas are made of atoms of ordinary matter, just
like your chair. But there are other kinds of matter, matter that is not formed into
atoms. One example is the neutrino. There are a vast number of individual neutrinos
flying through the universe with a total mass estimated at one-quarter of the total
mass of all the stars. Another kind of nonatomic matter is the black hole. Judging
from what’s known about the massive black holes at the centers of galaxies, these
are estimated to contribute a total mass about one-tenth as large as the mass of all
the stars.
That’s pretty fantastic, in my opinion. But there’s more. During the past few California Inst. of Technology/
decades, scientists have learned that there is another kind of matter, matter not made Palomar/Hale Observatory
of protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos, or any of the other particles currently
known. Nobody knows what it’s made of, although there are several hypotheses. It Figure 17
A galaxy, full of stars and gas and
doesn’t interact with electromagnetic radiation, so it can’t be detected by emitted light
dust, viewed “edge on.”
(like stars) or reflected light (like planets) or absorbed light (like intergalactic gas),
and nobody has yet detected it in the laboratory. But we know it’s there because of its
gravitational effects on the stars in galaxies, and we know there’s a lot of it. The total
mass of this so-called dark matter is 60 times larger than the mass of all the stars!

How do we know that dark matter exists? Several independent methods of obser-
vation show that most galaxies, including our own, are made mostly of dark matter. One
method is based on the fact that galaxies are rotating structures, with stars and gas orbit-
ing the center. Like planets orbiting the sun, the stars and gas are held into their roughly
circular orbits by the gravitational pull of the massive center of the galaxy. When
astronomers observe stars and gas clouds orbiting the centers of their galaxies, their
speeds turn out to be so high that the galaxies would fly apart unless held together by the
gravitational pull of many times more matter than we actually see. So galaxies must con-
tain invisible matter.
But how can astronomers measure orbital speeds around distant galaxies where it’s
difficult to pick out individual stars let alone measure their speeds? Looking at galaxies
that could be seen “edge on” (Figure 17) from Earth, Vera Rubin (Figure 18) compared John Irwin collection/AIP/Photo
the light coming from points on one side of the galaxy’s bright center with the light com- Researchers, Inc.
ing from points on the other side. Since the galaxy is rotating, the stars on one side were
moving toward Rubin’s telescope, and the stars on the other side were moving away. The Figure 18
frequency of the light coming from the stars moving toward the telescope was higher Vera Rubin. She made pioneering
than the frequency of the light moving away, for the same reason a police siren shifts to discoveries that contributed to
a higher pitch as the police car approaches you and then to a lower pitch as it recedes understanding the existence and
from you while you listen from the sidewalk. From the difference between the two fre- amount of dark matter by observing
quencies, Rubin was able to calculate the speeds of the stars. frequency shifts of stars in galaxies.

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In a second method of observation, light reaching Earth from distant galaxies is

warped as it passes through the gravitational fields of galaxies that lie in the path of the
light. By analyzing this bending, called “gravitational lensing” (Figure 19), astronomers
can deduce that the intervening galaxies contain far more matter than can be seen.
By the time you read these words, dark matter might be discovered in the laboratory.
The biggest particle accelerator in history is coming online in 2009 or 2010 at the European
Organization for Nuclear Research, or “CERN,” near Geneva, and physicists believe that it
will be able to spot the predicted candidates for dark matter, if they exist.

From such observations, we know that our galaxy, and most other galaxies, is
W. Couch/R. Ellis/NASA immersed in a giant spherical cloud of dark matter whose diameter is many times
Headquarters the diameter of the visible galaxy (Figure 20).
What, then, is this dark matter? No known form of matter can account for it.
Figure 19 Scientists expect that entirely new forms of matter will be discovered, and there
Warped light. To make this photo- have been several theoretical suggestions about what form it might take. It must
graph, the Hubble Space Telescope interact only weakly with ordinary matter, or we would have discovered it by now.
peered straight through the center
Whatever it is, it’s all around us: There are probably billions of dark matter particles
of a distant cluster of galaxies. The
passing through your body every second, but leaving no effect on your body. Dark
rounded objects in the photo are
galaxies in this cluster. The matter has inspired many searches among cosmic rays (particles from space) and in
stretched-looking objects are other high-energy physics experiments. A parallel situation existed during 1914 to 1955
galaxies lying at great distances when theory suggested that an unobserved particle was created during beta-decay,
behind the “foreground” cluster of but no such particle could be detected until 1955, when physicists discovered the
galaxies. The light from these more neutrino. The laboratory discovery of dark matter would be momentous.
distant galaxies is gravitationally
warped as it passes through the
foreground cluster. The warped
light in this photograph comes
from galaxies lying many billions
of light-years away; some of this
light originated when the universe Luminous matter
was barely a quarter of its present
age! A photograph such as this is Dark matter
direct visual evidence for the gen-
eral theory of relativity.

Figure 20
Dark matter forms a giant invisible spherical “cloud” around each visible galaxy. The small
object at the center of the figure is a spiral galaxy, like our Milky Way galaxy, seen edge-on
(compare Figure 17).

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CONCEPT CHECK 6 What’s so unusual about dark matter? (a) It exerts no

gravitational force. (b) Its gravitational force pushes (or repels) instead of pulling.
(c) It is made of material that has never been observed in our laboratories. (d) It
moves faster than lightspeed. (e) It does not interact with electromagnetic radiation.

6 THE ACCELERATING UNIVERSE AND DARK ENERGY

Will the universe expand forever, or will it eventually collapse back inward on itself? Not only are we not at the center
This is similar to asking what happens to an object that is thrown upward from Earth’s of the universe, we aren’t even
surface. If you throw a ball upward, it slows as it comes to a momentary stop at its made of the same stuff the uni-
verse is.
maximum height and then immediately accelerates downward to the ground. But if
Joel Primack, Astrophysical Theorist,
NASA “throws” a space vehicle upward faster than 11 km/s (25,000 mph), it slows as University of California
it rises but instead of returning to the ground it keeps rising and escapes from Earth.
Like the rising ball and the space vehicle, it stands to reason that the universe’s
expansion should be slowing down. Just as the ball and the space vehicle are slowed
by the backward pull of Earth’s gravity, the universe’s expansion should be slowed
by the inward gravitational pull of all the matter in the universe. It’s important to
quantitatively measure this deacceleration of the universe, because a sufficiently
large deacceleration would imply that the universe is like the upward-thrown ball in
that it will eventually stop expanding and then immediately begin collapsing on
itself in an ultimate “big crunch.” On the other hand, if the deacceleration is suffi-
ciently small, then the universe is like the upward-thrown space vehicle and will
continue expanding forever. But it’s difficult enough to measure the expansion rate
of the universe, let alone the rate at which that expansion rate is slowing down, so
for many decades cosmologists didn’t know whether the universe would eventually
collapse or would continue expanding forever.
During the 1990s, cosmologists managed to measure that deacceleration. The
result, in 1998, was a shocker: The universe’s expansion isn’t slowing at all. It’s
speeding up.

How do we know the universe is accelerating? First, let’s see how scientists meas-
ure the speeds at which the galaxies are moving apart. Light waves stretch as they travel
through the universe, because of the stretching of space during the time of travel. Thus,
light from distant galaxies arrives at Earth with a longer wavelength than it had when it left
its home galaxy; it is shifted toward the long wavelength or red end of the electromag-
netic spectrum. This redshift of the light from distant galaxies, first discovered during the
1920s, was the earliest evidence of the big bang and the expansion of the universe.
Scientists can measure the amount by which a galaxy’s light is redshifted and from this
deduce the galaxy’s speed.
But in order to use redshifts to confirm that the universe is expanding, one needs to
know that it actually is the more distant galaxies that are redshifted the most. Such dis-
tances are not easy to determine. You can’t just stretch a tape measure out to a distant
galaxy! Nevertheless, astronomers have for many years had methods for determining
such distances and have amply confirmed that more distant galaxies are more redshifted
in just the way expected in an expanding universe.
Recently, astronomers developed an especially powerful method of determining such
distances, along with speeds. Large modern telescopes can detect a particular type of
supernova explosion (an explosion of a star) in far-distant galaxies. These “Type 1a super-
novas” are bright enough to be seen even at distances greater than halfway across the
observable universe. Also, it’s known that all Type 1a supernovas are nearly identical, and
all shine with the same brightness during their roughly one-month period of maximum

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intensity following the explosion. Since they all have the same actual brightness, more
distant ones always appear dimmer from Earth, and from their observed brightness one
can deduce how far away they must be. Thus, Type 1a supernovas are our most accurate
markers for determining expansion speeds and distances across most of the universe.
They’re sufficiently accurate to determine not only the speeds but also the rate of change
of the speeds—the accelerations—of distant parts of the universe.
In 1998, these observations revealed that the expansion of the universe is actually
speeding up.

This was not expected. If you threw a silver dollar up into the air and, instead of
slowing and coming back down, it sped up until it rose out of sight, you’d say that’s a
pretty mysterious way to lose a dollar. You’d probably want to know what pushed it into
outer space. In the same way, the gravitational pull of all the matter in the universe
should slow the universe’s expansion. But it’s speeding up. What’s pushing on it?
Recall that the receding galaxies are not really moving at all, but are simply remain-
ing roughly at rest in space while space itself expands, like the raisins in our expanding
balloon analogy in Section 3. Since accelerations are caused by forces, the accelerating
expansion means that something is pushing outward on the fabric of space. What can
it be? It’s certainly not matter of either the ordinary or the dark type, because the force
of gravity from both ordinary and dark matter can only pull, not push. Scientists
believe that all of space, including even “empty” space or vacuum, must contain some
new form of nonmaterial energy that pushes outward. It’s called dark energy.
This astonishing new concept burst upon the physics community in 1998 with the
discovery of the acceleration of the universe. Nobody knows what dark energy is,
although some theories relate it to the energy of the field that “inflated” the universe
during the early moments of the big bang (next section). Dark energy is more myste-
rious than dark matter: We have evidence that it’s there, but little idea what it is.
Dark energy must influence the shape of the universe, because Einstein says that
all forms of energy have mass and because mass affects the curvature of space. It
happens that it’s possible to infer the amount of dark energy present in the universe
from the details of the cosmic microwave background. When the mass of this dark
energy is added to the masses of the luminous matter, nonluminous ordinary matter,
and dark matter in the universe, the total comes out to be precisely the amount
needed to flatten the overall geometry of the universe! Thus, the flatness of the uni-
verse, dark matter, the acceleration of the universe, and dark energy all fit together
in a beautifully consistent but totally unexpected picture of the universe.
All of this provides a new answer to the ancient question “What is the universe
made of?” Observations of the cosmic microwave background, and of the universe’s
acceleration show that it’s made mostly of dark energy! The other ingredient is mat-
ter, the great bulk of which is dark matter. In more detail, the universe is 73% dark
energy, 23% dark matter, nearly 4% nonluminous “ordinary” matter (including
intergalactic gas, neutrinos, and black holes), and only 0.4% (less than half a per-
cent) ordinary visible matter (Figure 21). The universe is stranger than you or I could
have imagined: 96% of it is made of completely unknown matter and energy, most
of the remaining 4% is invisible, and only a fraction of 1% is normal visible matter.
The universe we can see is only a tiny fraction of all that is!
To return to the question that began this section: If the universe continues its
accerating expansion, it will not only expand forever but will expand faster and
faster forever. But this assumes that the universe does keep accelerating, and, given
the surprises of the past few years, few cosmologists would bet much on any partic-
ular long-term scenario.

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Dark energy Figure 21

(identity unknown): 73% What is the universe made of?
These numbers show that, what-
ever may be the nature of the
Dark matter
(identity unknown): 23% unknown dark energy and dark
matter, the universe is not made
primarily of the same stuff that we
are made of!

Other nonluminous
components:
Luminous matter: intergalactic gas 3.6%
stars and luminous gas 0.4% neutrinos 0.1%
Supermassive BHs 0.04%

CONCEPT CHECK 7 Type 1a supernova explosions make excellent markers for

measuring the universe’s acceleration because (a) they all emit about the same
amount of light; (b) they are all the same distance away from us; (c) they can be seen
from immense distances; (d) they are all moving away from us at the same speed.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 Dark energy (a) is made of some unknown form of matter;
(b) has mass; (c) is made of invisible electromagnetic radiation; (d) pushes on space.

7 COSMIC INFLATION AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF

THE UNIVERSE
Alan Guth (Figure 22) bicycled hurriedly to the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Laboratory (SLAC) to start work on the morning of December 7, 1979, breaking
his personal speed record with a time of 9 minutes and 32 seconds. Working late the
previous night, he had begun to understand a new and extraordinary cosmological
phenomenon, and he was anxious to get back to thinking about it. He checked his
calculations from the night before and found them exactly on target. Several weeks
later the young physicist apprehensively presented his new idea to a packed audi-
ence at SLAC. The response was overwhelmingly favorable, exceeding Guth’s
wildest expectations. The hypothesis of cosmic inflation was born. Donna Coveney/Massachusetts
Guth had combined ideas from general relativity, quantum physics, and high- Institute of Technology News
energy physics to explain how the matter and energy in the universe could have Office
been created from nearly nothing by a high-energy submicroscopic event occurring
Figure 22
in nearly empty space. Guth’s hypothesis does not explain how the universe actually
In 1979, high-energy particle
got started, but it does explain how, starting from a tiny fragment of spacetime con-
physicist Alan Guth made a monu-
taining a minuscule amount of matter and energy, the universe expanded enor- mental cosmological discovery: the
mously while filling with matter and energy. idea of cosmic inflation. The
Briefly, Guth’s hypothesis says that the universe started out unimaginably small, hypothesis has significant experi-
far smaller than a proton, and immediately expanded. Very early, at a trillionth of a mental support in satellite observa-
trillionth of a trillionth (!) of a second after the beginning, the universe experienced tions of the cosmic background
an even more rapid period of expansion at speeds greatly exceeding lightspeed, dur- radiation and in other cosmological
ing which it stretched by a factor of 1025 during only 10–35 seconds. To see how observations. Cosmic inflation is
mind-boggling this is, try writing out these two numbers. This breakneck expansion the best scientific explanation to
is called, appropriately, “inflation” (recall Figure 14). date of the details of the first few
moments of time.

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Nowhere is the inherent unity of This sounds pretty bizarre, but it’s been receiving some observational confirma-
science better illustrated than in tion lately. One response to this hypothesis is “How can the universe expand at
the interplay between cosmology, faster than lightspeed, since special relativity predicts that nothing goes faster than
the study of the largest things in the
light?” We’ve already dealt with this in Section 3: Special relativity predicts that no
universe, and particle physics, the
study of the smallest things. object can move through space faster than light. But general relativity tells us that
Rocky Kolb, Physicist at Fermilab the expansion of the universe is an expansion of the fabric of space itself, and there
is no speed limit on this. The expansion carries galaxies and other objects along
with it while those objects remain at rest relative to the space around them.
According to Guth’s hypothesis, our universe started out so small that quantum
effects such as the uncertainty principle dominated. One implication of this princi-
ple is that in every region of space, the energy in the region fluctuates randomly (or
unpredictably) up and down around its average value, a little like the surface of a
small portion of a lake fluctuates up and down due to wind rippling its surface.
Even in supposedly “empty” space, such energy fluctuations are still required by
the uncertainty principle.
At extreme submicroscopic sizes, it’s thought that space and time do not exist as
we know them but are instead broken up or “quantized” into tiny separate fragments
having durations of about 10–49 s (that’s short!) and diameters of about 10–35 m
(that’s small!). According to the inflation hypothesis, an unusually large energy
fluctuation occurred in just such a fragment. This fluctuation had an energy of only
some 109 joules, about the energy of one automobile tank of gasoline. According to
E = mc2, the mass of this much energy is 0.01 milligrams—about as massive as a
grain of dust. This doesn’t sound like enough energy to start a universe, but amaz-
ing things can happen when it’s all crammed into such a tiny region. One of those
amazing things was that so much energy in such a small region created an enor-
mous temperature of some 1032 degrees (try writing it out). Our universe immedi-
ately began expanding simply because it was so hot (this is also the reason ordinary
explosions expand), and the expansion cooled it from its initial 1032 degrees down
to around 1028 degrees.
A major theme of modern physics, already encountered in our discussion of
Where the telescope ends, the gravitational and electromagnetic fields, is that the universe is made of just a few
microscope begins. Which of the kinds of fields that extend throughout all space and time. The cosmic inflation
two has the grander view?
hypothesis is based on a new type of field, not yet observed in nature, called the
Victor Hugo
inflation field. When our then-tiny universe had expanded and cooled to 1028
degrees, the inflation field developed something called a “false vacuum” that
amounts to a gravitational force that strongly repels instead of attracting like the
gravity that we know. This repulsive force sent the universe into a brief period of
rapidly accelerating expansion or “inflation” up to speeds far faster than lightspeed.
The expansion was actually “exponential”—that is, it had a fixed doubling time.
Exponential growth can be surprising. Although this inflationary period began at
10–36 s into the big bang and lasted only until 10–34 s into the big bang, the uni-
verse’s size doubled nearly 100 times, resulting in a universe that was about 1025
(10 trillion trillion) times larger than it was before inflation. Even after inflation our
universe was only a millimeter across but nevertheless the expansion was enor-
mous. Think of a balloon being filled by a fire hose.
Physicists believe that there are just four types of fundamental force fields: the
gravitational field, electromagnetic field, “weak force” field, and “strong force” field.
The last two are apparent only at the level of the atomic nucleus, in connection with
nuclear forces. But in the fires of the early universe, the four fundamental forces were
all “melted together” and indistinguishable. There was only one force, not four.

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Physicists say that the four forces had the same “symmetries” and so did not exist
individually. As the universe cooled, the gravitational force suddenly “froze out” of
the unified force; it lost the symmetry that had unified it with the other forces and
took on its own distinctive gravitational properties. This “symmetry breaking” is
analogous to the loss of symmetry when water freezes: All directions are equivalent
inside water, but ice crystals line up in specific directions—a loss of symmetry. As
the universe continued cooling, the strong force froze out and formed its own unique
patterns such as the quark-gluon plasma simulated in Figure 23. Finally, the weak
force and the electromagnetic force froze out also, leaving us with the four forces that
have their four distinct sets of properties that we observe today.
But where did all the mass and energy in the universe come from, if energy is con-
served and if everything developed from an energy fluctuation having the mass of a It is said that there’s no such
dust grain? Here’s where: The gravitational energy of any isolated lump of matter such thing as a free lunch. But the uni-
as a star, that is held together only by gravity, is negative (less than zero), because work verse is the ultimate free lunch.
Alan Guth, Originator of the “Inflation”
must be done on (rather than can be gotten from) the star in order to pull it apart into Idea That Explains How the Big Bang
separated pieces. In the same way, the gravitational energy of the entire universe, due Could Have Created Our Universe out
of a Vacuum
to the attraction between all its parts, is enormously negative. Inflation didn’t alter the
universe’s net energy, but instead created negative energy (gravitational) and positive
energy (kinetic, radiant, and the energy needed to create matter) in equal amounts. It’s
like a man who spends a lot of money by going into debt; he spends like a millionaire,
but his net financial balance remains zero. Thus the universe’s net energy remains very
close to zero, balanced between an enormous negative gravitational energy and a
slightly more enormous (by one gasoline tank) positive energy. The positive energy of
matter and motion that you see today was scavenged in the early universe from gravity.
As Alan Guth puts it, cosmic inflation is “the ultimate free lunch”: That gasoline
tank’s worth of energy was the seed for everything. It’s a powerful story of how
things came to be.
Figure 24 shows some of the details of the time sequence. The time line is plotted
in powers of 10, rather than simply in seconds, because a lot happens fast in the
early universe due to the high energies involved!

Figure 23
Simulated “snapshot” of two lead
nuclei colliding at very high
energy. The simulation portrays the
nuclei just 6 * 10 - 24 seconds after
impact, showing protons and neu-
trons in white. The smaller parti-
cles portrayed in darker hues are
“quarks,” the particles of which
protons and neutrons are made.
This is a simulation of a real
experiment that reproduced the
theoretically predicted “quark
plasma” that is believed to have
existed at 10 microseconds after
the big bang.

317
 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology

time in seconds
10⫺42 10⫺40 10⫺38 10⫺36 10⫺34 10⫺32 10⫺30 10⫺28 10⫺26 10⫺24

R ⫽ 10⫺35 m Gravity T ⫽ 1028 K T ⫽ 1026 K Strong force

This is the shortest “freezes out” R ⫽ 10⫺28 m R ⫽ 1 mm freezes out.
time, and the as a separate The universe Inflation ends,
smallest distance, force. begins universe
that can exist. “inflating” at resumes its
All forces unified, speeds far “normal”
dominated by quantum larger than c, expansion at
gravity. An energy doubling 100 speed c.
fluctuation of 109 J times and
having a mass of 0.01 becoming
milligrams occurs. 1025 times
larger.

10⫺22 10⫺20 10⫺18 10⫺16 10⫺14 10⫺12 10⫺10 10⫺8 10⫺6 10⫺4

T ⫽ 1015 K T ⫽ 1012 K
R ⫽ 3 centimeters R ⫽ 3 km
Weak forces freezes out It is now cool enough
from EM force, so that for quarks to form into
four separate forces are protons and neutrons
now apparent. EM force as shown in Figure 23.
dominates universe.

10⫺2 100 102 104 106 108 1010 1012 1014 1016 1018

T ⫽ 109 K T ⫽ 108 K 30,000 years 400,000 years 30 A few 9 14

R ⫽ 10 million R ⫽ 40 million km Gravity T ⫽ 3600 K. million hundred billion billion
km Nuclei in Table 1 amplifies the First atoms. years million years years
Universe is formed during the past lumpiness that Cosmic First years Sun, T ⫽ 3 K.
cool enough few minutes. Universe is was formed by background stars. First Earth, You
for protons now too cool and diffuse quantum radiation galaxies. planets are
and neutrons for further nuclei to form. fluctuations released: formed. born.
to form into prior to the first light in
nuclei. inflationary universe
expansion. (Fig. 13).

Figure 24
A really brief history of the universe. All numbers are only approximate, and the first millionth
of a second is hypothetical (not yet checked directly by observation)! Temperatures are in
degrees above absolute zero, or Kelvins, abbreviated K. The radius of the observable universe
is abbreviated as R. For all times after the end of inflation, the universe is 1025 (10 trillion
trillion) times larger than the observable universe, because the universe expanded far faster
than lightspeed during inflation so that nearly all of it is so far away that light cannot reach here
from there during the entire history of the universe.

How do we know that cosmic inflation occurred? Cosmic inflation has already
passed several observational tests. First, it provides a convincing explanation of the origin
of the large-scale gathering or “clumping” of stars into galaxies, of galaxies into clusters of
galaxies, and even of clusters into superclusters, seen in today’s universe. It’s not hard to
understand how any initial lumpiness would be amplified by gravitational forces into
today’s quite “lumpy” universe of stars and galaxies—just as gravity can create stars out of
diffuse clouds of gas and dust. But prior to the inflationary hypothesis, the big bang
model offered no clue as to what created the initial lumpiness. Cosmic inflation’s answer
is that quantum uncertainties during the big bang caused microscopic lumps that were
then stretched by the expansion of the universe. Without inflation, the amount of stretch-
ing would be far too small for quantum fluctuations to explain the vast lumps (clusters of

318
 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology

galaxies, etc.) seen today. Inflation resolves this problem: Inflationary expansion stretches
the initial quantum lumps enormously, and gravity works on these stretched lumps to
produce precisely the clumping observed today.
Second, Guth’s hypothesis predicts and explains the observed flatness of our universe.
The reason is simple: Inflationary expansion plus additional "normal" expansion since that
time stretched the universe so hugely that any overall curvature is now stretched flat, the
way that the surface of an expanding balloon gets flatter and flatter as perceived by an ant
on the balloon’s surface. It’s surprising that our universe should be flat, because a flat uni-
verse represents a delicate balance right at the borderline between the finite closed geome-
try and the infinite open geometry of Figure 15. Without inflation, there is no convincing
explanation for why the universe should be so delicately poised. Guth predicted a flat uni-
verse more than a decade before the first observation, in 1992, of the patterns in the cos-
mic microwave background suggested that the universe really is flat. In 2001, more accurate
observations of these patterns provided further confirmation of Guth’s prediction.

It appears that, without initial energy fluctuations and inflation, our universe
could not have developed the patterns seen today in the layout of the galaxies. The
great clusters of galaxies stretching across the universe still retain the microscopic
pattern of those initial quantum fluctuations occurring in an unimaginably tiny
lump of energy that started all of this. It all sounds too amazing to be true, but the
truly amazing thing is that it’s been checked in some detail by specific observations.
Just as ice crystals freeze along a direction that is previously undetermined or
random, so cosmic inflation predicts that the specific “direction” in which the infla-
tion field “froze” during the big bang was also random. But when I speak of “differ-
ent directions” of inflation-field freezing, I really mean different properties of the
various fundamental forces as they froze out of the preexisting symmetric unified
force. In this process, basic properties of our universe such as the masses and
charges of the fundamental particles might have been determined randomly. It’s
even possible that ours is just one of many universes created in similar processes,
each born in a new toss of the quantum dice and each characterized by different
physical properties.
According to the inflationary view, it’s possible that in our universe the numbers
turned out to have just those values that allowed intelligent animals to evolve. In
any other universe, in which these numbers were very different, life and intelli-
gence might have been physically impossible. Our own existence might turn out to
be the best explanation we have for these numbers having the values that they do
have. This idea, that our universe must be organized in the way that it is because any
other organization would not allow intelligent beings to be here to ask the question
in the first place, is called the anthropic principle.
And this outrageous but plausible connection between the big bang and our lives
on Earth is a good place to end our excursion into cosmology.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 Can anything go faster than light? (a) Yes, space can
expand at faster than lightspeed. (b) Yes, certain subatomic particles can move
through space at faster than lightspeed. (c) No, special relativity forbids it. (d) No,
general relativity forbids it.

319
 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

320
Einstein’s Universe and the New
Cosmology
Problem Set

Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE

17. What does the evidence tell us about the overall shape of the
universe?
EINSTEIN’S GRAVITY: THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY 18. List one piece of evidence showing that we live in a
1. List two experiments you could do in a spaceship accelerat- flat universe.
ing at 1g through outer space that might make you think you 19. What is the cosmic microwave background?
are at rest on Earth. 20. The big bang emitted lots of high-energy radiation. So why
2. According to the equivalence principle, to what is accelera- do we detect the big bang radiation primarily as low-energy
tion equivalent? microwaves?
3. In your own words, state the equivalence principle.
4. Give one piece of evidence showing that gravity bends light. DARK MATTER
5. As observed in an accelerating reference frame, does a light 21. Roughly what percentage of the universe’s total mass is made
beam bend? What does this tell us about the effect of gravity of ordinary matter?
on light beams? 22. Roughly what percentage of the universe’s total mass is made
6. According to Newton, gravity is a force exerted by material of dark matter?
objects on other material objects. What is gravity according 23. What is “dark matter”?
to Einstein? 24. Why is it called “dark” matter?
25. What led astronomers to hypothesize the existence of
THE BIG BANG dark matter?
7. About how old is the universe?
8. Describe two different pieces of evidence supporting the THE ACCELERATING UNIVERSE AND DARK ENERGY
big bang. 26. Is the universe’s expansion slowing down, speeding up, or
9. Of what element is the universe mostly made? maintaining an unchanging speed?
10. Following up on the preceding question, what is the second 27. Describe the observations that show that the universe is
most prevalent element in the universe? accelerating.
11. Name two elements that were not made in the big bang. 28. What is causing the universe’s expansion to speed up?
Name two that were. 29. Roughly what percentage of the universe is made of
dark energy?
THE GEOMETRY OF THE UNIVERSE
12. Give an example of a flat two-dimensional space, a curved COSMIC INFLATION AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
two-dimensional space, and a two-dimensional space of 30. What does the cosmic inflation hypothesis try to explain?
finite extent. 31. According to the cosmic inflation hypothesis, what started
13. How might we tell from inside our actual three-dimensional the big bang?
space whether space is curved? 32. Why do they call it “inflation”?
14. List the three possible large-scale geometries of the universe, 33. Since energy is conserved, and since the universe started from
and describe at least two of them. only a gasoline tank’s worth of energy, having a mass of only
15. In what fundamental way does the big bang differ from an 0.01 milligrams, how can the universe have possibly attained
ordinary explosion? the enormous amount of energy and mass that it has today?
16. Due to the expansion of the universe, are the galaxies moving 34. Give two pieces of evidence supporting the hypothesis of
through space? Explain. cosmic inflation.

From Chapter 11 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

321
 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology: Problem Set

Conceptual Exercises THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE

22. What important event happened at about 400,000 years after
the big bang?
EINSTEIN’S GRAVITY: THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY 23. About 400,000 years after the big bang, the cosmic back-
1. If you were in a rocket ship in space (far from all planets and ground radiation was released. How did the universe after
stars) accelerating at 2g, how heavy would you feel? this event differ from the universe before this event?
2. In the preceding question, what if your acceleration were 24. Imagine a huge triangle stretching across a large portion of
instead 0.5g? What if you were not accelerating at all? the observable universe. Will the three angles of this triangle
3. In what way is the general theory of relativity more “general” add up to the usual 180°, or will they add up to more than, or
than the special theory of relativity? less than, 180°?
4. Astronauts’ hearts and muscles weaken in space due to the 25. If a living observer could have been there to observe the uni-
prolonged weightlessness. How might artificial gravity be verse only 300,000 years after the big bang, would they have
installed in a space station to deal with this problem? seen anything? Explain.
5. If you were in a rocket ship in space (far from all planets and 26. Why couldn’t light travel through the early universe?
stars) accelerating at 2g and you dropped a ball, how would it 27. What does it mean to say that the universe is “flat”?
move as observed by you?
6. In the preceding question, what if your acceleration were DARK MATTER
instead 0.5g? What if you were not accelerating at all? 28. What evidence is there that our Milky Way galaxy might con-
7. In the equivalence principle, what is equivalent to what? tain “dark” matter?
8. Why don’t we notice the gravitational bending of light 29. According to current theories, is there dark matter in
on Earth? your room?
9. Does a high-speed bullet’s path bend more than a light beam 30. Why can’t you see the dark matter that is in your room?
bends? Why? 31. Since dark matter is invisible, what leads us to think it
10. A rifle barrel and a laser both point directly toward a target might exist?
some distance away. General relativity says that the bullet 32. Why would the laboratory discovery of dark matter be
and the light beam both experience the same downward momentous?
acceleration during their horizontal travel, yet the bullet hits 33. Does dark matter interact by means of the gravitational
the target well below the laser beam. Explain. force? How do we know?

THE BIG BANG THE ACCELERATING UNIVERSE AND DARK ENERGY

11. Where did your body’s hydrogen nuclei originate? 34. Since the universe is accelerating as it expands, is there any
12. Did your body’s oxygen nuclei originate in the big bang? doubt among cosmologists that the fate of the universe is to
13. The big bang has been described as the place where cosmol- expand forever? Explain.
ogy meets submicroscopic physics. Why? 35. Cosmologists did not expect to find that the universe is accel-
14. The big bang created just three chemical elements. Why erating. What did they expect?
didn’t it create more? 36. Why are type 1a supernovas such good markers for determin-
15. Suppose we could instantly reverse the expansion of the uni- ing the rate of expansion of the universe?
verse so that it becomes a contraction. If we then observed 37. What is the universe mostly made of?
distant galaxies, how would they appear? 38. Why do we think there is dark energy?
16. Is there a specific place in the present-day universe where the 39. Suppose that a certain galaxy, galaxy X, is so far from our
big bang happened? Explain. galaxy that the expansion of the universe causes it to move
away from our galaxy at half of lightspeed. Does this mean
THE GEOMETRY OF THE UNIVERSE that galaxy X is moving through space at half of
17. If we consider Earth’s surface to be a two-dimensional lightspeed? Explain.
“space,” the equator is one “straightest possible line” in this
space. Are there other such lines? COSMIC INFLATION AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
18. On Earth’s surface, are the north-south lines of longitude 40. In what ways was the emergence of the four different funda-
among the straightest possible lines? What about the east- mental forces during the big bang similar to the change of the
west lines of latitude? state of water from liquid to solid?
19. If you draw a triangle on the surface of a sphere, the sum of 41. If the theory of cosmic inflation is correct, then what is
its angles is greater than 180°. Is it possible to draw a triangle undoubtedly nature’s single most important example of quan-
on the surface of a sphere for which each angle is 90 degrees tum uncertainties?
so that the sum of the three angles is 270 degrees? Explain. 42. How could the large-scale structure we see in the universe
20. Is there a place in the present-day universe that is the center today have originated from tiny quantum fluctuations?
of the universe? Explain. 43. Is the total gravitational energy of an isolated star positive, or
21. Are there places in the present-day universe that are at the negative, or zero? Defend your answer.
edge of the universe? Explain.

322
 Einstein’s Universe and the New Cosmology: Problem Set

44. A huge amount of energy was needed to create all the matter 17. Yes. The lines (circles really) of longitude that run through
and all the motion that we see in today’s universe. According the North and South Poles are also “great circles” or straight-
to the cosmic inflation hypothesis, where did it come from? est possible lines. There are also many other such circles.
45. Cosmic inflation might sound far-fetched, but there is evi- 19. If you draw a triangle connecting the North Pole with a point
dence for it. Describe two pieces of evidence. A on the equator and with another point on the equator that
is 1/4 of the distance around Earth from point A, every angle
in the triangle will be a 90 degree angle. The sum of the
Answers to Concept Checks three angles is then 270 degrees.
21. No. There is no edge, just as there is no edge on the two-
1. (b), (c) dimensional surface of a three-dimensional sphere.
2. (b) 23. Before this event, light couldn’t travel through the universe.
3. (b) Everything was extremely murky.
4. (c), (d), (e) 25. This was before light was able to travel through the universe,
5. (b), galaxies, stars, and other specific objects warp small so they wouldn’t have been able to see anything.
portions of space within an overall flat universe. 27. It means that ordinary “Euclidian” geometry is obeyed:
6. (c), (e) Lines that are started parallel remain parallel, the angles of a
7. (a), (c) triangle add to 180 degrees, etc.
8. (b), (d) 29. Yes, dark matter probably exists everywhere in our galaxy.
9. (a) 31. Other galaxies have been observed to have dark matter,
because they are spinning so fast that they would fly apart
without the gravitational pull of dark matter to hold them
Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual together. Also, the bending of light as it travels through
space indicates that some of the bending is caused by dark
Exercises and Problems matter.
33. Yes. It pulls on stars as they rotate around their galaxy’s cen-
Conceptual Exercises ter, holding them into the center and keeping the galaxy
1. Twice as heavy as usual. from flying apart. This pull is due to gravity.
3. General relativity includes accelerating reference frames, 35. They expected a deacceleration due to the gravitational pull
while special relativity applies only to nonaccelerating refer- of matter in the universe.
ence frames. 37. Dark energy.
5. It would fall toward the rear with an acceleration of 2g, or 39. No, galaxy X is sitting approximately at rest relative to the
about 20 m>s2. space around it. It is space itself that is expanding, and
7. An acceleration is equivalent to the force of gravity. The galaxy X is simply going along for the ride.
effects of an accelerating reference frame cannot be distin- 41. The energy fluctuation that started the big bang.
guished from the effects of gravity. 43. Negative, because work (i.e., positive energy) is required to
9. Yes, because the bullet moves so much slower than light. separate an isolated star into its original parts.
11. In the big bang. 45. First, the large-scale structure of today’s universe of stars
13. The big bang began as a microscopic event. and galaxies is just what would be expected if the universe
15. Once the light from the reversed galaxies got to us, that light started from quantum fluctuations that were then expanded
would be shifted toward shorter wavelengths instead of rapidly. Second, the universe is flat, as predicted by inflation
longer ones, because the galaxies would be approaching us (which predicts that the universe has been stretched so much
instead of receding from us. that it is essentially flat today).

323
324
The Quantum Idea

Anyone who has not been shocked by quantum physics has not understood it.
Niels Bohr

W
e now present science’s most accurate and complete description of the
physical world: quantum physics—often called quantum mechanics
because it replaces Newtonian mechanics. As you will see, however, quan-
tum physics is anything but “mechanical.” Originating during 1900–1930 and still
under active development, quantum physics is the set of ideas and experiments that
scientists use to study the microscopic world. Its central notion is that, at the micro-
scopic level, some physical quantities such as energy are discontinuous or “quan-
tized,” rather than continuous. Using language from our computerized culture, the
microscopic world is “digital” rather than “analog.” Quantization represents a radi-
cal break with Newtonian physics, leading to fundamental new developments in
physics and its philosophical impacts.
Section 1 sets the stage with a broad description of the general nature, aims, and
cultural role of quantum physics. Section 2 takes a closer look at an old experiment,
Young’s double-slit interference experiment, to introduce the quantization of the elec-
tromagnetic field and the quantum theory of radiation. Section 3 discusses aspects of
the quantum theory of light, especially “uncertainty” and “nonlocality.” Section 4 pres-
ents another specific experiment, the double-slit experiment with electrons, which
requires us to introduce a second kind of quantized field called a matter field, leading
to a new way of looking at matter. Section 5 discusses the meaning of this theory.
Section 6 looks more carefully at quantum uncertainty for both matter and radiation.

1 THE QUANTUM REVOLUTION

The quantum idea slipped nearly unnoticed into physics in 1900. Although nobody
realized it at the time, it was the dawn of the post-Newtonian era. It’s remarkable
that a second revolutionary but entirely different post-Newtonian idea, Einstein’s
relativity, was announced only five years later. The special theory of relativity was
fairly complete when first announced in 1905, and its revolutionary nature was
already clear.

From Chapter 12 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

325
 The Quantum Idea

Quantum physics describes the nature and behavior of matter and radiation, par-
ticularly at the microscopic level. It developed slowly, but its impact ultimately went
far beyond special relativity’s impact, and today it is far from being a closed book.
Although the theory’s main principles had appeared by 1930, and despite the the-
ory’s wide testing and application, it’s still not clear what the theory really means.
Because it predicts such a wide variety of phenomena so accurately, quantum
physics is probably history’s most successful scientific theory. Its practical impact
extends to everything that depends on the details of the microscopic world: elec-
tronic devices such as transistors, silicon chips, and integrated circuits, and so all
the information and communication technologies such as television and computers;
most of modern chemistry and some of biology; lasers; our understanding of differ-
ent types of matter ranging from superconductors to neutron stars; and nuclear
physics, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons. Central to the entire high-tech world
is an elusive and highly non-Newtonian particle: the electron.
Perhaps more significant but certainly less appreciated is the philosophical
impact of quantum physics. Quantum physics represents a more radical undoing of
the Newtonian worldview than does relativity. I have emphasized throughout this
text that a scientific worldview is by no means a trivial academic matter. Newtonian
views are woven subtly into the entire fabric of Western civilization. The mechani-
cal worldview has dominated Western culture for centuries and has been assimi-
lated so deeply that it’s accepted without even realizing that it is a worldview.
You’ll discover that contrary to the Newtonian worldview, quantum physics
implies that randomness, or chance, is built into nature at the microscopic level.
Nature doesn’t know what she will do next! No longer can the universe be a pre-
dictable machine in which the future is “hard-wired” into the present. Quantum
physics also implies, contrary to the Newtonian worldview, that nature is deeply
interconnected, that such parts of nature as electrons, protons, and light waves can-
not be separated from their surroundings without fundamentally altering their char-
acter. No longer can the universe be viewed as a machine at all, even an
unpredictable one, for the most basic feature of the machine metaphor has always
been its separable parts.
Quantum physics holds that changes in nature occur discontinuously, rather than
continuously as Newtonian physics predicts. Here’s an example, at the macroscopic
level: Suppose you are swinging in a child’s swing, and that you then stop pumping
and let the swing die down to smaller and smaller oscillations. The process of dying
down is continuous, gradual, and this continuous process is exactly what
Newtonian physics predicts. It would be surprising if, without pumping, you main-
tained an amplitude (width of oscillation) of say 4 m for several oscillations and
then instantaneously “jumped” to an amplitude of only 2 m, where you remained
for several more oscillations without pumping, after which your swing suddenly
stopped. Such a discontinuous process is not predicted by Newtonian physics, and
it is not observed in the macroscopic world around us. But such discontinuous
The discovery of quantum processes are the norm at the microscopic level. For example, nature requires an
mechanics in the mid-1920s was atom to vibrate at only certain precise energies, just as our imaginary swing could
the most profound revolution in oscillate only at amplitudes of 4 m, 2 m, or 0 m. When an atom loses energy, it must
physical theory since the birth
do so in sudden jumps from one of its “allowed” energies to a lower one. In doing
of modern physics in the
seventeenth century.
so, it must release an instantaneous burst or quantity or “quantum” of energy. This
Steven Weinberg, in Dreams of a
is a central new feature of the theory, and it is the origin of the term quantum
Final Theory physics. The energy of a microscopic system is “digital” rather than “analog.”

326
 The Quantum Idea

2 RADIATION HAS WAVE AND PARTICLE PROPERTIES

Let’s review what you learned about light. The double-slit experiment with light
showed that light is a wave. In this experiment, light from a single source passes
through two narrow slits and then impacts a viewing screen.1 Figure 1 shows the
experimental setup, and Figure 2 shows the experimental result. Figure 2 is an inter-
ference pattern, caused by the wave-interference of light waves spreading out from
the two slits. The brightly lit lines in Figure 2 are places where the waves from the
two slits are exactly “in sync,” where wave crests from one slit meet crests from the
other, and valleys meet valleys, to create big light waves (bright light). The dark
lines in Figure 2 are places where crests from one slit meet valleys from the other,
so that the waves cancel. This alternating reinforcement and cancellation of light
shows that light is a wave phenomenon.
This led to the question of what’s doing the waving. The answer was that an
electromagnetic (EM) field is waving, an invisible force field that is created by
charged objects and exerts forces on other charged objects. An EM field is the
effect that every electrically charged object has on the space around it. The field
fills the space around electrically charged objects, the way that smoke fills a room,
and exists everywhere that a charged object would feel an EM force if a charged
object were present.
So much for our review. Now, I want to tell you something new about light: Light
is “quantized,” meaning that it comes in tiny parcels or bundles. First, I’ll present
the experimental evidence for this, and then I’ll discuss what it means.

A
B
Art Hobson

Very narrow
slits, shown here
greatly enlarged

Figure 1 Figure 2
The double-slit experiment with light: the The double-slit experiment with
experimental setup and result. light: experimental result.

1
The light must be single-frequency and synchronized.

327
 The Quantum Idea

How do we know light is quantized? Imagine performing the double-slit experiment

with extremely dim light. You might expect that the result would be just like Figure 2 only
a lot dimmer. But that’s not what happens. Figure 3 shows what happens. In sufficiently
dim light and with a short exposure time, light impacts only at a few tiny points on the
screen [Figure 3(a)]! There is no trace of an interference pattern. If we extend the expo-
sure time, we simply get more tiny impacts [Figure 3(b)] and still no trace of an interfer-
ence pattern. With a longer exposure, we get more impacts [Figure 3(c)] and we begin
to see an interference pattern in the pattern of individual impacts. Finally, with longer
exposure times, we see that the interference pattern is a consequence of a huge number
of individual tiny impacts [Figures 3(d) and 3(e)].
Figure 4 shows another example of the same phenomenon. Dim light and a short
exposure time allow us to see individual particle-like impacts in an ordinary photograph.
Figure 4 shows the photo emerging from these impacts.

So the wave-interference pattern of Figure 2 builds up from tiny individual parti-

cle-like impacts of light on the screen. The process is analogous to the way painters
of the pointillist school of impressionist painting made their pictures from tiny dots
of color. It’s natural to hypothesize, from the tiny impacts, that light is after all made
of tiny particles. But we’ve already seen that light is an extended wave in a spread-
out EM field that comes through both slits, so this hypothesis must be discarded.
After all, every impact must occur preferentially within the brightly lit lines of the
interference pattern. Such impacts cannot be made by particles traveling from the
light source to the viewing screen, because a single individual tiny particle
coming through one or the other slit cannot “know” that both slits are open and that
it is therefore supposed to hit preferentially within the brightly lit lines.
So just what is coming through the double slits? How can we explain the particle-like
impacts of light upon the screen? The answer has a long history, but rather than dwelling
on the history I’ll present the answer as it’s understood today. The answer is that no par-
ticles come through the slits; instead, a spread-out EM field comes through both slits
and interferes at the viewing screen. But EM fields are not quite what physicists had
thought they were during the nineteenth century. The new feature is that all EM fields
are quantized.
Like the rest of modern physics, this new concept is simple, but odd. A
quantized EM field is simply an EM field that, for reasons nobody understands, is
not allowed to have just any old quantity of energy. Instead, the field is allowed to
have just certain particular quantities of energy, and no others, just like the dying-
Wolfgang Rueckner down swing of Section 1. To make this concrete, let’s imagine pure yellow light
with a frequency of 5 * 1014 Hz. According to quantum physics, the EM field that
Figure 3
Close inspection using extremely
carries this yellow light is allowed to have only the following amounts of energy:
dim light with time-lapse photogra- 0J
phy shows that the double-slit - 19
3.2 * 10 J,
interference pattern of Figure 2 is
formed by light striking at individ- 6.4 * 10 - 19 J,
ual tiny points all over the screen. 9.6 * 10 - 19 J,
The five photos use exposures of 12.8 * 10 - 19 J, and so on
about 0.2 s (when about 30 tiny
impacts have occurred), 1 s (150 You can probably see the pattern in these energies.2 They are all simple multiples of
impacts), 5 s (800 impacts), 20 s 3.2 * 10 - 19 J. If we call this energy E, then the allowed energies are simply 0, E,
(3000 impacts), and 2 minutes
(20,000 impacts).
2
I’ve simplified the numbers a little to make it easier to follow. The lowest possible energy level should not be 0
joules, but should instead be 1.6 * 10 - 19 J, with the other levels all raised accordingly (by 1.6 * 10 - 19 J).
Electromagnetic fields are not allowed to have zero energy, but this fact will not be needed.

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 The Quantum Idea

2E, 3E, 4E, etc. No other energy is allowed for an EM field carrying pure yellow
light. For instance, 1.3E or 15.71E are not allowed.
This example illustrates the general rule: The total energy of an EM field carry-
ing radiation (it can be light, infrared, X-ray, etc.) must be a simple multiple of
some single energy value. The German physicist Max Planck (Figure 5) made the
(a) (b)
first and most important contribution toward the eventual discovery of this general
rule, and he found a formula for the allowed energy increment that we called E
above. The following statement gives this formula and summarizes the general rule:

The Quantum Theory of Radiation

All EM fields are quantized. More specifically, when carrying radiation of frequency f, (c) (d)
an EM field is allowed to have only the following particular values of total energy:
total energy = 0, hf , 2hf , 3hf, 4 hf, and so on

That is, the field’s energy must be a simple multiple of the energy increment E = hf,
where f is the frequency (in hertz) of the radiation, and h is a universal constant
called Planck’s constant: h = 6.6 * 10 - 34 joules per hertz.3 (e) (f)
Dr. Albert Rose/Art Hobson
So EM fields are “digitized”: They can’t have just any old energy, but must
Figure 4
instead have either 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on, units of the basic energy increment hf. A photo emerges from individual
Instead of “digitized,” physicists say that EM fields are “quantized” (restricted to particle-like impacts. Each photo in
particular quantities of energy). The smallest energy increment hf is referred to as the sequence has a longer exposure
one quantum (or quantity, or parcel) of energy. Here’s an analogy: If water were time. The approximate number of
quantized in 1 liter increments, then your bathtub would only be able to hold 0, 1, 2, impacts in each photo is (a) 3 * 103,
3, etc. liters of water. Just as the quantized water fills the tub from side to side, the (b) 104, (c) 105, (d) 8 * 105,
quantized EM field fills the entire region between source of light and the viewing (e) 4 * 106, and (f) 3 * 107.
screen, but it can only have a total energy of 0, hf, 2hf, 3hf, etc.
Armed with the key concept of the quantized EM field, let’s return to the double-
slit experiment. When radiation strikes the screen, the EM field transfers some of
its energy to the screen. But the field cannot transfer just any old amount of energy,
because quantization implies that the field’s energy can only change by a whole
number of quanta. The tiny impacts seen in Figures 3 and 4 are these individual
quanta of EM field energy. Let me explain.
Suppose the light is so extremely dim that the EM field can deposit, on average,
only a single quantum of EM field energy on the screen during a span of, say, 5 sec-
onds. The entire spread-out field comes through both slits and fills the region
between source and screen, but during the full 5-second time span it can transfer at
most one quantum of energy. This field must deposit its quantum of energy all at once,
in a single instant, because the field cannot carry some fraction of one quantum—it
must always contain either exactly one or exactly zero quanta. When the field
deposits its quantum on the viewing screen, the entire spread-out field must instan-
taneously lose this much energy. In our bathtub analogy, the entire spread-out body
of water would instantaneously reduce its volume by 1 liter.
This energy must be deposited at only a single point in the screen, because the
screen is made of atoms and these atoms are also quantized so that each one must
either absorb or not absorb one whole quantum of energy. An atom can’t absorb half

3
The unit “joules per hertz” (or, equivalently, joule-seconds) needs to be attached so that when multiplied
by a frequency measured in hertz, the result will be an energy measured in joules.

329
 The Quantum Idea

of an energy quantum. For example, each of the roughly 30 impacts seen in Figure
3a imparts one quantum of energy to an atom in the screen.
So that’s the explanation of the particle-like behavior of light observed in
Figures 3 and 4. Since the tiny impacts have energy, and occur at fairly precise points,
they have a particle-like nature even though they aren’t really particles but are simply
increments of the energy of the entire spread-out EM field. These energy quanta that act
like particles are called photons and are often thought of as microscopic particles of
light even though “particles” might be a misleading word. Insofar as it’s proper to think
of them as particles, photons are parcels of EM field that travel at lightspeed and carry
an energy (radiant energy, of course) hf, where f is the frequency of the oscillating EM
field that carries the radiation. Since they travel at speed c, relativity tells us that pho-
tons must have a rest-mass of zero. Notice that the energy of a photon increases with its
frequency—higher frequency implies higher energy, as expected from our general study
of waves.
It’s important to remember that photon’s aren’t really particles. A photon is sim-
ply an energy increment of a spread-out EM field, analgous to a spread-out liter of
water in a bathtub. Speaking precisely, there is no photon in the double-slit experi-
American Institute of Physics/
Emilio Segre Visual Archives ment until the instant an impact (on the screen, or on an airborne dust particle, or
anywhere else) occurs. Don’t imagine that individual particles move from the light
Figure 5 source, through the slits, to the screen. If an impact occurs at some point, don’t
Max Planck. His introduction of the imagine that a photon was approaching that point just a moment earlier. A photon is
formula E = hf at a meeting of the nothing like, say, a tiny fast-moving pea. What really happens is that the entire
German Physical Society on
space-filling EM field instantaneously loses one quantum of energy, and at the
December 14, 1900, is usually taken
as the birthdate of quantum physics.
same instant that quantum of energy shows up at a particular point on the screen.
In Planck’s theory, hf represented the Figure 6 will help you visualize this. The figure shows the emission, transmission,
smallest unit of exchange of thermal and impact of one quantum of light, at five different instants during the double-slit
energy into radiant energy, that is, experiment. At (a), a light source (a laser is used for this kind of experiment) has just
the smallest amount of energy that a emitted a small amount of light, or EM field, having hf joules of energy. At (b) this
microscopic particle could give up in
order to produce light. Slits, viewed Viewing
from above screen

A
Light Photon
source impact

(a) B

(b) (c) (d) (e)

Figure 6
The double-slit experiment for light, showing the EM field for a very low energy light
beam (a laser is used for this kind of experiment) at five different instants. The diagram
shows the experiment as viewed from above, with the openings at A and B representing
the narrow dimensions of the long narrow slits. The light beam is emitted at (a),
approaches the slits at (b), emerges from the slits at (c), approaches the viewing screen at
(d), and impacts the screen at a specific point at (e). The impact is referred to as “a pho-
ton.” At the instant of impact, the entire spread-out field vanishes.

330
 The Quantum Idea

field is approaching the double slits. At (c) a portion of the field has passed through the And these fifty years of conscious
slits (we don’t show the remaining portion that reflects from the partition). At (d) the brooding have brought me no
part that passed through the slits is approaching the viewing screen. At (e), a single nearer to the question of “What
are light quanta [photons]?”
impact—a photon—appears on the viewing screen. At the instant the photon appears,
Nowadays every clod thinks he
the entire spread-out field vanishes. Physicists often describe this as the “collapse” of knows it, but he is mistaken.
the field. But as you’ll see, the energy doesn’t collapse to a true mathematical point Einstein, Near the End of His Life
having zero volume. Quantum physics demands that it be spread out over at least a cer-
tain minimal volume, a volume that is usually of atomic dimensions.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 During the double-slit experiment with light, the region
between the slits and the screen contains (a) electrons; (b) an EM field; (c) photons;
(d) energy; (e) none of the above.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 Radiation made of yellow light, red light, and infrared
radiation enters your camera and strikes the photographic film. Which of the three
forms of radiation deposits the most energy per photon? (a) Yellow. (b) Red.
(c) Infrared. (d) All three deposit the same energy per photon.

3 QUANTUM RADIATION
Scientists don’t know why radiation is quantized, nor why Planck’s constant has the
particular value it does have. The small number h plays a role in quantum physics
that’s analogous to the role played by the large number c in relativity theory. The
universe would be quite different if either h or c had a very different value.
Although the patterns made by light waves are due to large numbers of photon
impacts, keep in mind that each photon “knows” about the entire spread-out field
because each photon represents an increment of energy of the entire field. As we
see in Figures 3 and 4, photons strike the screen fairly randomly, the first hitting in
one place, the second in quite another place, and so forth. But there’s a pattern in
this randomness: Photons strike preferentially in the regions that will emerge as
bright regions. The interference pattern is best described as a statistical pattern
formed by large numbers of individual impacts. Judging from Figure 3, the precise
impact point of any individual photon is unpredictable even though the emerging
statistical pattern is predictable. This reminds us of dice throws, or insurance statis-
tics, in which individual outcomes are unpredictable but the long-term statistics are
predictable. As we’ll see, this unpredictability or uncertainty within an overall pat-
tern is characteristic of quantum physics.
Besides quantization and uncertainty, another key characteristic of quantum
physics shows up in the double-slit experiment with light. One of this experiment’s
oddities is that at the precise instant a photon impacts the screen, the entire space-
filling EM field suddenly shifts its energy downward by hf. How can, for example,
the field in the vicinity of the two slits (Figure 1) suddenly lose energy precisely
when the photon impact occurs on the screen? After all, it’s some distance between
the screen and the slits. In principle, the distance could be interstellar, or intergalac-
tic. How can the field at the slits “know” instantaneously that the photon impact
occurred, when relativity says that lightspeed is the limiting velocity? This puzzling
situation relates to another general quantum phenomenon known as nonlocality.
One quantum is ridiculously small. For yellow light, it’s only 3.2 * 10 - 19 J, as you
can see by multiplying h and f together, with f = 5 * 1014 Hz for yellow light. For
example, a typical lightbulb emits around 10 J of light every second. Assuming that

331
 The Quantum Idea

all of this is yellow light, this amounts to more than 1019 (10 million trillion) photons
every second, as you can see by dividing 10 J by 3.2 * 10 - 19 J. So one quantum of
energy—a single photon—is really tiny. There’s no way you could tell the difference
between a bulb emitting 1019 photons every second and one emitting 1019 + 1. This
smallness of the typical quantum of energy is the reason scientists didn’t notice quan-
tization before 1900, and why you don’t notice it in your everybody life.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 If Planck’s constant were ten times larger than it is, quan-
tum effects would be (a) easier to detect; (b) more difficult to detect; (c) neither of
the above.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 Suppose the light source in Figure 1 is turned on so briefly

that only a single quantum of energy passes through the double slits. When it arrives
at the screen, this energy is deposited (a) all over the white bands in the drawing; (b)
at one small point within the white bands; (c) at one small point, which could be
anywhere on the screen; (d) at one small point on the screen, lying directly behind
the slit through which the energy passed.

M A K I N G EST I M AT ES On a clear day at noon, the sunlight striking each square

meter of ground during each second carries 1000 J of energy. Estimate the number of
photons striking 1 square meter during 1 second. Estimate the number of photons
striking your hand during 1 second when you hold your hand open to bright sunlight.

4 MATTER HAS WAVE AND PARTICLE PROPERTIES

Sections 2 and 3 presented the quantum theory of radiation. Now let’s turn to mat-
ter. Recall that radiation has no rest mass while matter has rest mass. The conven-
tional view until 1900 was that radiation is made of waves in an EM field while
matter is made of particles. But we’ve just learned that the EM field is quantized
and this means that, even though radiation is a wave, it behaves in some respects
like particles. What about matter?
Louis de Broglie (pronounced “de Broy”; Figure 7), a Ph.D. student at the
University of Paris in 1923, felt that there should be a kind of symmetry, or balance,
between radiation and matter. He thought it ugly that radiation should exhibit both
wave and particle properties while matter behaved always as particles and sug-
gested that matter should also have both wave and particle properties. This was
weird. Despite the lack of experimental evidence at that time to support it, he found
his weird idea so beautiful that he included it in his Ph.D. dissertation. De Broglie’s
Ph.D. committee didn’t know what to make of it and sent the dissertation to
Einstein for his opinion. Einstein was impressed and commented later that “it is a
first feeble ray of light on this worst of our physics enigmas.” The committee
American Institute of Physics/
approved de Broglie’s dissertation.
Emilio Segre Visual Archives Waves of matter? How could an individual particle of matter such as one electron
or one atom also be spatially extended waves? Nevertheless, de Broglie pursued his
Figure 7
Louis de Broglie. Feeling that SO LU T I O N TO M A K I N G EST I M AT ES Sunlight is made mainly of visible radiation with a frequency around
there should be symmetry between 1015 Hz. The energy of one photon of this radiation is (6.6 * 10 - 34) * 1015, or 6.6 * 10 - 19 joules, or about
matter and radiation, he predicted 10–18 joules. To get 1000 joules of energy, we would then need 1000>10 - 18 or 1021 photons. I measure my
that matter should display the same hand to be roughly 9 cm * 18 cm, or about 200 cm2. One square meter is 100 * 100 cm, or 10,000 cm2, in
area. So a hand is about 200>10 ,000 m2, or 0.02 m2, and the number of photons falling on a hand in 1 second
wave-particle nature as radiation.
is about 0.02 * 1021 or 2 * 1019 - 20,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons every second.

332
 The Quantum Idea

notion. Based on the symmetry that he envisioned between radiation and matter and
working from Planck’s formula E = hf that connects the wave and particle aspects
of radiation, he deduced a formula that predicted the wavelength of the wave associ-
ated with every material particle: [The double-slit experiment is] a
Planck’s constant phenomenon which is impossi-
wavelength of material particle = ble, absolutely impossible, to
(particle’s mass)(particle’s velocity) explain in any classical
[Newtonian] way, and which has
l = h>my
in it the heart of quantum
mechanics. In reality, it contains
This formula for these matter waves is analogous to the formula E = hf for
the only mystery. We cannot
quanta of radiation. Both connect a particle property to a wave property. Planck’s make the mystery go away by
constant plays an important role in both formulas. The smallness of h implies that explaining how it works.
the wavelength l of a material particle is very small, just as it implies that the Richard Feynman
energy E of a photon is very small. The smallness of l means that the wave aspects
of matter are difficult to detect, just as the smallness of E means that the particle
aspects of radiation are difficult to detect. That’s why we normally assume that mat-
ter is made of particles while radiation is made of waves.
If we apply de Broglie’s formula to a typical macroscopic object like a 1 kg base-
ball rolling across the floor at 1 m/s, we get a wavelength of
6.6 * 10 - 34 J/hz
l = = 6.6 * 10 - 34 m
(1 kg) * (1 m>s)
The baseball’s wavelength is about a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a
meter! This is far smaller than an atom and far too small to detect. It’s no wonder
that we have never noticed the wave aspects of baseballs.
The wavelengths of microscopic particles are much larger. Since mass shows up
in the denominator of de Broglie’s formula, the least massive material particles gen-
erally have the largest wavelengths. One of the least massive material particles is the
electron. Electrons typically move at velocities of 107 or 108 m/s. At these velocities,
de Broglie’s formula predicts an electron’s wavelength to be about 10–11 m. Although
this is very small—about one-tenth the size of a typical atom—it’s large enough to
be detected in careful experiments.
Note that de Broglie’s idea says every material particle has wave properties, not
just electrons but also protons, gold nuclei, molecules, and so on. At this point, you
might wonder what’s going on here. How can a single material particle have a wave-
length? An individual electron isn’t even spread out in space, while a wave requires
an extended medium, so how can one electron be a wave? Let’s turn to experiment
for guidance. We’re going to look at two experiments that answer these questions
and that confirm de Broglie’s ideas, but in a completely unexpected way.

How do we know matter has wave properties? Figure 8 shows the experimental
arrangement for a double-slit experiment that’s just like the double-slit experiment with
light but that uses matter instead of light. I will assume that the experiment uses elec-
trons, although any other material particles such as neutrons, protons, atoms, or mole-
cules could be used and the results would be similar. The apparatus on the left side of
the diagram represents an electron source plugged into a power supply. This source
could be a metal wire, enclosed in a vacuum tube, heated electrically until electrons “boil
off” of it; a similar electron source is central to TV picture tubes. We’ll call this setup the
double-slit experiment with electrons.
An “electron beam”—which you can think of for now as a fast-moving stream of bil-
lions of electrons per second—emerges from the electron source and spreads out as it

333
 The Quantum Idea

travels toward the double slits.4 When it gets to the two slits, marked A and B in the dia-
gram, a portion of the beam goes through each slit and the rest of the beam is stopped
by the partition. So a narrow electron beam emerges from each slit and travels on
toward the viewing screen at the right. What will we see on the screen?
Figure 9 shows the experimental outcome. Although this outcome had been pre-
dicted since de Broglie’s work in 1923, it’s not easy to actually make the experimental
setup because the slits must be extremely small, and so the experiment was not carried
out until 1974, by physicist Claus Jonsson working in Germany. Just to reinforce what
you’re looking at here, Figure 10 shows the experimental arrangement and the result.

The experimental outcome looks just like the outcome of the double-slit experiment
with light, Figures 1 and 2! The pattern seen on the screen is a wave-interference pat-
tern, showing that waves come through the two slits and interfere as they approach the
viewing screen. This certainly confirms de Broglie’s idea that electrons and other
material particles have wave properties, and in fact the quantitative results agree
entirely with de Broglie’s formula for the wavelength of these waves.

Figure 8 A
The double-slit experiment with B ?
electrons. The electron source is a
thin tungsten metal wire that is
heated electrically until electrons
“boil” off it. A similar electron Very narrow
slits, shown here
beam is central to TV picture greatly enlarged
tubes. In the experiment shown,
what will we see on the screen?

A
B
Claus Jonsson/Art Hobson

Figure 10
Outcome of the double-slit experiment with elec-
trons. The electron beam creates the white bands
Figure 9 shown on the screen. Compare this with the similar
A wave-interference pattern made experiment using photons (in other words, light)
by electrons. instead of electrons, Figure 1.

4
The electrons must all have the same velocity, in other words the same wavelength.

334
 The Quantum Idea

But it’s pretty puzzling. Probably as far back as grade school, you learned that
matter is made of particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons. Yet here is an
experiment that fires electrons through a couple of slits, and it turns out that they
must be waves! What’s going on? To answer this, we again ask nature.

How do we know matter has particle properties? Now we’re going to look at the
double-slit experiment with electrons again, but using a much lower-intensity electron
beam—you could call it a much “dimmer” beam (although we’re talking here about elec-
trons, not light). Physicists have predicted the outcome of this experiment since about
1930, but this difficult experiment wasn’t actually performed until A. Tonomura and his
Japanese colleagues performed it in 1989. With a dimmer electron beam, you might
expect the experimental result to look like Figure 9, only a lot dimmer. But that’s not
what happens. Figure 11 shows what does happen. With a sufficiently low-intensity elec-
tron beam and a short exposure time, the electron beam impacts only at a few tiny
points on the screen [Figure 11(a)]! There is no trace of an interference pattern. If we
extend the exposure time a little, we simply see more impact points and still no trace of
an interference pattern [Figure 11(b)]. But with longer exposure times we discover an
interference pattern showing up in the pattern of individual impacts. The interference
pattern is a consequence of a huge number of individual tiny impacts.

You might have already guessed the name given to these individual impacts.
They are electrons! And you might have noticed that the two experimental out-
comes in Figures 9 and 11 are just like the outcomes in Figures 2 and 3—except
that now we’re using an electron beam instead of a light beam so the impacts are
made by electrons, not photons.
To ward off a possible misconception, the interference pattern is not the result of
interactions between different electrons. This pattern shows up even for a beam so
dim that at most one electron at a time comes through the slits. Even if only one
electron came through per hour, the cumulative impacts over many hours would still
form an interference pattern.
The experiment shows that the wave-interference pattern of Figure 9 is built up
from tiny individual electron impacts on the screen. Notice carefully that, like the
double-slit interference experiment with light, each impact tends to occur only
within the brightly lit constructive interference part of the figure.5 This means that
each individual electron “knows” that it’s “supposed” to contribute to the double-
slit interference pattern—each electron “knows” that both slits are open. But we are
accustomed to thinking of electrons as tiny particles, much smaller than either slit,
particles that would necessarily come through either one slit or the other and cer-
tainly not both slits. How could a single tiny electron, coming through either one or
the other slit, “know” that the other slit is open and that it is therefore supposed to
contribute to the double-slit interference pattern? Akira Tonomura/Hitachi, Ltd.,
Quantum physics gives the same answer to this dilemma that it gave in Section 2 for Advanced Research Laboratory
the double-slit interference experiment with light: The explanation of the Figure 9 is that
Figure 11
a spread-out field comes through the two slits and interferes in the region between the The buildup of an interference
slits and the screen. But what kind of field? It cannot be an EM field as it was for light, pattern in the electron wave-
because an electron beam is not an EM wave. In fact, the experiment has basically noth- interference experiment by individ-
ing to do with electromagnetism, despite the fact that the electron is an electrically ual impacts of electrons. The five
charged particle. Even when this experiment is done with uncharged particles such as photos use exposures of 0.01 s
neutrons, the result is still a double-slit interference experiment pattern like Figure 9. The (when only 10 electrons have hit),
0.1 s (100 electrons), 3 s (3000
5 electrons), 20 s (20,000 electrons),
You might have noticed that the pattern seen in Figure 11(e) is not as simple as the pattern shown in
Figure 10. For instance, some impacts occur in the “dark” regions between the bright lines. This is because the and 70 s (70,000 electrons).
predicted pattern in Figure 10 is simplified. The actual predicted pattern is graphed in Figure 13.

335
 The Quantum Idea

field that comes through the two slits is something entirely new, something that nobody
knew existed until de Broglie and others discovered it during the 1920s. We’ll call it a
matter field.6 De Broglie’s matter waves are waves in a matter field, just as EM waves
are waves in an EM field. And just like EM fields, matter fields are quantized.
Since we’ve already discussed quantized EM fields, it’s not difficult to under-
stand a quantized matter field: First of all, like EM fields and gravitational fields,
a matter field fills up a region of space, such as the region between the slits and the
screen in Figure 10. When we say that matter fields are quantized, we mean that, for
reasons nobody understands, a matter field is not allowed to have just any old quan-
tity of energy. Instead, the field is allowed to have only certain particular quantities
of energy, and no others. For an electron beam, this energy can be mc2, 2mc2, 3mc2,
4mc2, and so on, where m means the mass of one electron. If m represents the mass
(i.e., the total inertia) of a motionless or moving electron, then mc2 is its total
energy (including kinetic energy). So when we say that the allowed energies of the
matter field are mc2, 2mc2, and so on, we’re simply saying that the matter field must
contain enough energy for one electron, or two electrons, or three electrons, and so
on, and nothing in-between.
Matter is quantized, just as radiation is quantized! Just as the quanta of the EM
field are called photons, the quanta of the matter field are called electrons. In other
words, electrons are not particles at all. They are not even remotely like a small pea,
not like a small “thing” held rigidly together that maintains a fixed shape and follows
a path from the electron source through the slits to the screen. An electron is simply
an increment of matter field energy that acts in a unified way. When the matter field
interacts with the viewing screen of Figure 11, one such increment instantly and
entirely absorbs into the screen and the entire matter field in the space outside the
screen reduces its energy by mc 2. Just as in the analogous EM field experiment, the
interaction point on the screen is not predictable, and the process is non-local
because the matter field loses energy everywhere at the instant of interaction.
As mentioned earlier, the same idea applies to all other material particles:
Protons, neutrons, atoms, and molecules are all matter field quanta, all parcels of a
For me, the main purpose of spread-out field energy, all capable of going through both slits in the double-slit
doing experiments is to show
experiment.7 There’s a beautiful symmetry here: Everything, all matter and all radi-
people how strange quantum
physics is. Most physicists are
ation, is made of spread-out fields, but these fields are quantized and this is why
very naive; most still believe in there are particle-like parcels of light (photons) and particle-like parcels of matter
real waves or particles. (electrons, protons, etc.)
Anton Zeilinger, Physicist I’ll summarize this idea as follows:

The Quantum Theory of Matter

A new type of field called a matter field exists in nature. Like EM fields, matter fields
are quantized. For example, the matter field for electrons is allowed to possess
enough energy for either 0 electrons, or 1 electron, or 2 electrons, and so on.
Electrons (and other material particles) exist because matter fields are quantized in
just these energy increments.

6
The matter field has a long history and goes by a variety of names: psi, wave function, electron field,
electron-positron field, and matter wave.
7
As the particles get more massive, it gets harder to demonstrate this experimentally. But in 2003, Austrian
physicist Anton Zeilinger demonstrated wave interference for C60 molecules, showing that these large mole-
cules (60 carbon atoms!) are quanta of a matter field.

336
 The Quantum Idea

CONCEPT CHECK 5 According to quantum physics, what’s really happening

when we say that an electron passes through the double-slit apparatus and hits the
viewing screen? (a) A single tiny particle passes through one or the other slit (not both)
and impacts the screen. (b) A single tiny particle passes through both slits and impacts
the screen. (c) A spread-out matter field passes through one or the other slit (not both)
and an increment of the field interacts with the screen. (d) A spread-out matter field
passes through both slits and an increment of the field interacts with the screen.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 Suppose the electron source in Figure 10 is turned on so

briefly that only a single quantum of energy passes through the double slits. When
it arrives at the screen, this energy (a) spreads out all over the white bands in the
drawing; (b) strikes at one small point within the white bands; (c) strikes at one
small point, which could be anywhere on the screen; (d) strikes at a small point on
the screen, lying directly behind the slit through which the energy passed.

5 QUANTUM MATTER
Figure 12 will help you visualize all this. The figure is analogous to Figure 6, but for
matter instead of EM radiation. The figure shows the emission, transmission, and
impact of a very low intensity matter wave, at five different instants. At (a), an elec-
tron source has just emitted a small amount of an electron beam, or matter field, hav-
ing just mc2 joules of energy, where m is the total inertial mass of one electron. This
field approaches the double slits, passes through the slits, and approaches the viewing
screen. At (e), a single impact—an electron—appears on the viewing screen. At the
instant the electron appears, the entire spread-out matter field vanishes.

Double Viewing
slits screen
⫹

⫺
A

Single
electron
impact
(a)
B

(b) (c) (d) (e)

Figure 12
The double-slit experiment with electrons, showing the matter field for a very low-intensity
electron beam at five different instants. The diagram shows the experiment as viewed from
above, with the openings at A and B representing the narrow dimensions of the long narrow
slits. The electron beam is emitted, approaches the slits, emerges from the slits, approaches the
viewing screen and, at (e), impacts the screen at a specific point. The impact is referred to as
“an electron.” At the instant of impact, the entire spread-out field vanishes.

337
 The Quantum Idea

In its mature form, the idea of To repeat some of the earlier remarks about light: Physicists view matter fields,
quantum field theory is that rather than electrons and protons and so on, as the fundamental entity. That is, a mat-
quantum fields are the basic ter field is physically real, just as an EM field is physically real. Just as photons are
ingredients of the universe, and
merely quanta of an EM field, electrons and so on are merely quanta of a matter field.
particles are just bundles of
energy and momentum of the The reason nature has a particle-like aspect is that it is made of quantized fields.
fields. Quantum field theory Although it’s legitimate to think of electrons, protons, and so on as particles, it’s
hence led to a more unified view important to remember that they are not particles in the simple Newtonian sense. An
of nature than the old dualistic electron is simply an energy increment of a spread-out matter field. When an impact
interpretation in terms of both occurs at some point, do not imagine that an electron was approaching that point just
fields and particles. a moment earlier. Before that time, there was only a spread-out matter field.
Steven Weinberg
You may have seen the narrow paths or “tracks” of electrons or other micro-
scopic particles made in high-energy physics experiments. Although these tracks
are convincing evidence that electrons exist, they do not invalidate the view that
only a matter field exists between impacts. The tracks are made by successive indi-
vidual interactions between a matter field and gas or water molecules. The matter
field collapses into a tiny electron impact each time it interacts with a molecule,
while spreading out as a matter field between impacts.
Keep in mind that, although an interference pattern such as Figure 9 is created by
billions of electrons impacting the viewing screen during every second, each
individual electron “knows” about the entire experimental arrangement because each
electron is simply an energy increment—a quantum—of an entire spread-out matter
field that comes through both slits. Note also the unpredictable nature of the individual
electron impacts, just like the unpredictable nature of photon impacts in the double-slit
experiment for light. We also see the characteristic nonlocality noted in the experiment
with light: At the instant the electron impact occurs, the entire spread-out matter field
instantaneously deposits an entire quantum of energy at the impact point.
Matter waves are exploited every day in such devices as the electron microscope.
Using electromagnetic fields instead of the glass lenses used by visible-light micro-
scopes, electron microscopes bend and focus the waves associated with electrons to
form electron images of microscopic phenomena. Since electron wavelengths can be
smaller than an individual atom, electron microscopes can form images of atoms,
something that visible-light microscopes cannot do because visible wavelengths are
thousands of times larger than an atom.
Recall the dilemma facing the Greek philosopher Democritus: Is matter continu-
ous, or discrete? Democritus answered that it’s discrete, made of tiny indivisible
particles that he called atoms. Today we define the word atom somewhat differently,
but we still regard ordinary matter as being made of atoms. Quantum physics, how-
ever, gives a whole new significance to atoms and the particles of which they’re
made. Such particles are made of spread-out matter fields, so in this sense matter is
continuous. But matter fields are quantized into parcels, or bundles, of spread-out
matter field energy, and these bundles can act separately, so in this sense matter is
discrete. So, in a wholly unexpected way, modern physics says that matter is both
continuous and discrete. More precisely, it’s made of discrete quanta of a continu-
ous matter field.

CONCEPT CHECK 7 How is an electron similar to a photon? (a) Both contain

electric charge. (b) Both move at lightspeed. (c) Both impact at a tiny point on a
viewing screen. (d) Both are quanta.

338
 The Quantum Idea

6 NATURE IS NONLOCAL AND UNCERTAIN

In the double-slit experiments with light and matter, we noted that the entire EM
field or matter field changed its character instantaneously when an impact appeared
on the screen, a behavior called quantum nonlocality. In addition, the position of
each individual impact on the screen was unpredictable, even though the overall pat-
tern was predictable. Unpredictability and nonlocality are two significant and char-
acteristic features of quantum physics.
In order for a pattern like Figure 9 to emerge from billions of tiny electron
impacts, different impacts must occur at different places. If you think in Newtonian
ways, you might suppose that electrons impact at different places because they
started out differently from the electron source. Could we then adjust the source so
as to prepare every electron identically in order to make them all hit the same point
on the screen? Experimentally, the answer is “no.” Even if we prepare the electron
source identically prior to every impact, the impacts still occur at different points
all over the interference pattern.
We expect—and Newtonian physics teaches us—that identical physical conditions
lead to identical outcomes. But this expectation, and Newtonian physics, are wrong. A philosopher once said “It is
Contrary to Newtonian physics, there is an inherent uncertainty in nature. Identical necessary for the very existence
causes can lead to different outcomes. The matter field is spread all over the interfer- of science that the same condi-
tions always produce the same
ence pattern, and the impact point—the point where the field deposits a quantum of
results.” Well, they don’t!
energy—can occur at any point within this pattern. There is no way of predicting the Richard Feynman
precise impact point, because even nature doesn’t know the precise point ahead of
time. Newtonian physics had it wrong: The future is not encoded in the present. And
this is not just a matter of microscopic physics; quantum uncertainties can be magni-
fied into big, easily observed impacts in the macroscopic world, impacts such as
radioactive decay. The universe even has quantum uncertainties imprinted on its large- I believe in the possibility of a the-
scale structure. ory which is able to give a com-
plete description of reality, the
A few physicists disagree with the notion that the future is undetermined, argu-
laws of which establish relations
ing instead that our current understanding (quantum physics) is simply not deep between the things themselves
enough to penetrate the true principles governing the microscopic world and that and not merely between their
these true principles would restore predictability to nature. Einstein argued force- probabilities. . . . Quantum
fully during the 1930s that “God does not play dice,” citing detailed examples to mechanics is very impressive. But
try to show that an irreducible uncertainty would be absurd. But quantum physics an inner voice tells me that it is
continues to have a perfect record of experimental success, and the quantum pre- not yet the real thing. The theory
produces a good deal but hardly
dictions that Einstein believed to be absurd have now been tested and found to
brings us closer to the secret of
actually occur. the Old One. I am at all events
Note that, despite the randomness of individual impacts, the overall double-slit convinced that He does not
interference pattern is predictable. We get the same interference pattern every play dice.
time we do the experiment. Since the pattern represents the overall statistics of Einstein. His Friend Niels Bohr Replied,
“Albert, Stop Telling God What to Do.”
billions of impacts, the overall statistics are predictable, even though individual
impacts are not. The precise pattern is not quite as simple as the one shown in
Figure 10. Figure 13 shows the observed overall statistical pattern in more detail; God not only plays dice. He also
the graph at the right shows the average number of impacts versus position on the sometimes throws the dice where
screen. The points marked “o” on the screen are the positions of the dark lines in they cannot be seen.
Figure 9, where no impacts occur. Stephen Hawking, Physicist

339
 The Quantum Idea

Position on the screen

A

(a) B

(b) (c) (d) Number

of impacts

Figure 13
The right side of this diagram shows a graph of the distribution of impacts after millions of
electrons have impacted the viewing screen. Figures 9 and 11 are photographs of this distribu-
American Institute of Physics/ tion of impacts. The points marked “o” are the positions of the dark lines in Figure 9.
Emilio Segre Visual Archives
In 1926, German physicist Max Born (Figure 14) was the first to conclude that
Figure 14
Max Born. He was the first to con- data such as the graph in Figure 13 give the probabilities for a single electron to
clude that the wave patterns strike at various points on the screen, in the same way that “50% probability of
observed in experiments involving heads and 50% probability of tails” gives the probabilities for the outcome of a sin-
microscopic material particles gle coin flip. More precisely, the intensity8 of the matter field at any particular
were probability patterns. point represents the probability that an electron impact will occur at that point if a
viewing screen or some other detecting device happens to be at that point. For
example, Figure 9 shows the intensity of the matter field at various points on the
screen, and this intensity (or brightness) represents the probability that any individ-
ual electron will impact at that point.
Probabilities were invented long before quantum physics and usually have nothing
to do with quantum physics. Probabilities are useful whenever the outcome of a partic-
ular experiment is uncertain but the overall statistics of many repetitions are pre-
dictable. A simple example, having nothing to do with quantum physics, is the flip of a
coin. What “50% probability of heads” means is that, in a long series of tosses, roughly
50% will be heads. This probability, 50% or 0.5, can be regarded as a statistic, a num-
ber representing the pattern that emerges in many repeated trials of the experiment.
But there is a difference between the probabilities observed in macroscopic
experiments such as coin flips and the probabilities referred to in quantum physics.
Because coin flips obey Newtonian physics to an excellent approximation, the out-
come is predictable in principle. That is, with enough information regarding the
tension in the flipper’s thumb, the initial height of the coin above the table, the elas-
tic properties of table and coin, and so forth, you can use Newtonian physics to pre-
dict the outcome. Our uncertainty about a coin flip arises only from ignorance of
the precise details. But quantum events are not predictable even in principle.
God rolls the dice every time a Quantum unpredictability arises from a fundamental uncertainty in nature, rather
quantum interaction takes place. than simply from our own inability to predict nature. Nature herself doesn’t know
Heinz Pagels, Physicist what she will do next.

8
Quantitatively, intensity means the square of the matter field’s amplitude.

340
 The Quantum Idea

The predictability of the statistical patterns shows that matter waves are
predictable, even though individual impacts are not. In 1926, Austrian physicist
Erwin Schroedinger (Figure 15) invented a method of predicting the motion of mat-
ter waves. Schroedinger began with a well-known formula that had been used to
describe waves in other situations not involving quantum physics. Into this wave
formula, he inserted de Broglie’s relation l = h>my, along with some judicious
guesswork. The result was a formula, now called Schroedinger’s equation, that
correctly describes the motion of the matter wave for electrons or any other material
particles in a wide variety of situations. Most important historically, Schroedinger
showed that his equation could be applied to electrons within atoms and that the
predicted results agree with atomic experiments.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 During the double-slit experiment using a beam of neutrons,

the region between the slits and the screen contains (a) a matter field;
(b) individual neutrons; (c) an EM field; (d) a stream of photons; (e) none of the above.

American Institute of Physics/

Emilio Segre Visual Archives

Figure 15
Erwin Schroedinger. He invented
the equation that predicts the sta-
tistical pattern, or matter wave, in a
wide variety of situations involving
microscopic material particles.
© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

341
342
The Quantum Idea
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 22. What do we mean when we say that matter fields are
quantized?

THE QUANTUM REVOLUTION QUANTUM UNCERTAINTY

1. What is quantum physics? 23. Describe an example in which identical causes do not result
2. Describe at least one way in which the philosophical in identical outcomes.
implications of quantum physics differ from those of 24. How does quantum uncertainty differ from the ordinary
Newtonian physics. uncertainty in the outcome of a coin flip?

QUANTUM RADIATION
3. Describe the double-slit experiment with light and its outcome.
Conceptual Exercises
4. What is an electromagnetic field?
5. If we perform the double-slit experiment with dim light and a THE QUANTUM REVOLUTION
short exposure time, what will we see on the screen?
6. Following up on the preceding question, what will we see 1. Name the two revolutionary physics theories of the first
after a longer exposure time? decade of the twentieth century.
7. What do we mean by a quantized electromagnetic field? 2. What are some practical ways in which quantum physics has
8. How big is the smallest allowed energy increment in a quan- impacted modern life?
tized EM field?
9. What do we mean by a quantum (or energy quantum) of the QUANTUM RADIATION
EM field? 3. How do we know light is quantized?
10. What is a photon? What is its speed? Its rest-mass? 4. In what sense are EM fields “digital” rather than “analog”?
11. Why don’t we normally notice that light is made of photons? 5. A photon impact appears on the screen in the double-slit
12. How does quantum uncertainty enter into the double-slit experiment with light. What happens to the EM field?
experiment with light? 6. We don’t ordinarily notice photons. Suppose that Planck’s
13. How does quantum nonlocality enter into the double-slit constant were much larger than it actually is. Would we then
experiment with light? be more likely, or less likely, to notice photons?
7. Which has higher energy: a photon of red light or a photon of
QUANTUM MATTER yellow light?
14. Can a single electron have a wavelength? 8. Which has lower energy: a photon of ultraviolet radiation, or
15. How do we know that material particles are associated with a photon of infrared radiation?
waves? 9. In the double-slit experiment with light, are tiny photons
16. What name do we give to the waves that are associated with actually coming through the slits? What is coming through
material particles? the slits?
17. Which detects the smallest objects: a visible light microscope 10. When we greatly dim the light used in a double-slit experi-
or an electron microscope? Why? ment, we don’t simply get a dimmer interference pattern.
18. Describe the double-slit experiment with electrons and its What do we get?
outcome. 11. Suppose a red light beam has a variable intensity, or bright-
19. If we perform the double-slit experiment with electrons using ness. As you increase the intensity, do the energies of the
a low intensity beam and a short exposure time, what will be individual photons increase, decrease, or remain the same?
see on the screen? 12. In the preceding question, does the number of photons emit-
20. Following up on the preceding question, what name do we ted each second increase, decrease, or remain the same?
give to the individual impacts? 13. As you increase the frequency of a light beam, does the color
21. What evidence is there that a field called a “matter change? Do the energies of the individual photons increase,
field” exists? decrease, or remain the same?

From Chapter 12 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

343
 The Quantum Idea: Problem Set

14. In the preceding question, do the speeds of the photons 27. Arrange these in order from shortest to longest wavelength,
change? assuming that they all have the same speed: helium atom,
15. What kind of waves are demonstrated by the experimental automobile, DNA molecule, electron, neutron, baseball.
result shown in Figure 2? Waves in what (what is the medium 28. If a “proton microscope” could be devised, how would you
called)? expect its wavelength to compare with the wavelength of an
electron microscope?
QUANTUM MATTER
16. What kind of waves are demonstrated by the experimental QUANTUM UNCERTAINTY
result shown in Figure 9? Waves in what? 29. When you flip a coin, the outcome is uncertain. Does this
17. Which has a shorter wavelength, an electron or a proton mov- arise from quantum uncertainty? Explain.
ing at the same speed? 30. What is the percentage probability of getting two heads in a
18. Which has a shorter wavelength, a slow electron or a fast row in fair coin tosses? How could you experimentally test
electron? this prediction?
19. Suppose we use a very low intensity beam in the double-slit 31. In the double-slit experiment with electrons, is the impact
experiment with electrons, so low that only one electron point predictable?
appears per minute. Will we see an interference pattern on 32. In the double-slit experiment with electrons, are there any
the screen? What will we see? points where we can predict that an electron will certainly
20. List some similarities between an electron beam and a not hit?
light beam. 33. What is predictable in the double-slit experiment with
21. List some similarities between an electron and a photon. electrons?
22. List some differences between an electron and a photon. 34. Would the answers to the preceding three questions be differ-
23. The impact point of each electron is unpredictable in the ent if we were talking about photons instead of electrons?
double-slit experiment with electrons. What is predictable? 35. List at least two differences between Newtonian physics and
24. If an electron traveling through a double-slit apparatus strikes quantum physics.
directly behind slit A, is it correct to say that the electron
came through slit A?
25. If electrons behaved only like particles and not like waves, Problems
would you observe an interference pattern in the double-slit
experiment?
26. You don’t notice the wave aspect of a pitched baseball. Is this QUANTUM RADIATION
because the baseball’s wavelength is very long or because it 1. A light source emits two colors simultaneously: orange and
is very short? violet. Which color has the higher energy per photon?
Claus Jonsson/Art Hobson
Art Hobson

Figure 2 Figure 9
The double-slit experiment with A wave-interference pattern made
light: experimental result. by electrons.

344
 The Quantum Idea: Problem Set

2. In the preceding problem, the frequencies are 5 * 1014 Hz 7. (c) and (d)
(orange) and 7 * 1014 Hz (violet). Find the energies of 8. (a)
the photons.
3. Which has greater energy, a microwave photon or a visible
photon? About how many times greater? Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual
4. You charge an object by rubbing it, and then shake it at
1 Hz, creating EM radiation. How much energy does each Exercises and Problems
photon carry?
5. How much energy does one photon of 1024 Hz gamma radia- Conceptual Exercises
tion carry? 1. Quantum physics, and the special theory of relativity.
6. MAKING ESTIMATES About how many visible photons would 3. When the light is dim enough, it makes tiny particle-like
be needed to have enough energy to lift a 1 newton (about impacts on a viewing screen.
1/4 pound) weight through 1 meter? 5. The EM field loses one quantum, or one increment, of energy.
7. MAKING ESTIMATES About 10 visible photons are needed to 7. Yellow, because its frequency is higher.
cause a single photosynthesis reaction in living plants. About 9. No. An EM field is coming through the slits.
how much energy is carried by these 10 photons? 11. The energies of individual photons remain the same because
8. MAKING ESTIMATES The human eye can detect as few as the frequency remains the same and the energy of each pho-
10,000 photons per second entering the pupil. About how ton is hf.
much energy is this per second? 13. Yes, the color is directly related to the frequency. The ener-
gies of individual photons increase because the energy of a
QUANTUM MATTER photon is hf.
15. Electromagnetic waves. The medium is the electromagnetic
9. If you double the speed of a proton, how does this affect its field.
wavelength? 17. A proton has the shorter wavelength because wavelength
10. How would the wavelength of a proton compare with the equals h/mv and the proton has the larger mass, m.
wavelength of a deuteron (a proton and neutron held together 19. After lots of minutes, the pattern of impacts will form an
by nuclear forces), assuming that both the proton and the interference pattern. However, if the visible effect of the
deuteron have the same speed? impacts lasts less than a minute, we’ll visually see only indi-
11. An electron and a proton are moving at the same speed. vidual impacts (adding up, over many minutes, to the inter-
Which has the longer wavelength? How much longer? ference pattern).
(Protons are about 1800 times more massive than electrons.) 21. Both are quanta of a field (EM field and matter field). Both
12. Suppose we fire a high-velocity pellet gun that accelerates impact a viewing screen or other surface as though they were
1 gram (10–3 kg) pellets to speeds of 1000 m/s (three times tiny particles.
the speed of sound). Find the wavelength of the pellet’s 23. The overall interference pattern formed by many electron
matter wave. impacts is predictable.
13. Find the wavelength of an electron that strikes the back of a 25. No, “pure” particles that come through one or the other slit
TV screen at a speed of 0.1c. The mass of an electron is would not give an interference pattern.
9.1 * 10 - 31 kg. 27. Automobile, baseball, DNA molecule, helium atom, neu-
14. Individual electrons have been slowed down to speeds as low tron, electron.
as several centimeters per second. The mass of an electron is 29. No, a coin flip obeys Newtonian physics (to a very good
9.1 * 10 - 31 kg. What is the wavelength of a single electron approximation), and so it is in principle predictable.
moving at 0.1 m/s (10 cm/s)? Express your answer in 31. No, it has built-in quantum uncertainties.
millimeters. 33. The shape of an overall interference pattern obtained after a
15. In a recent experiment, sodium atoms were cooled until they large number of impacts is predictable.
were moving at only a few meters per second. The mass of a 35. Newtonian: The future is predictable from the present, mat-
sodium atom is 38 * 10 - 27 kg. What is the wavelength of a ter is made of tiny particles, Newton’s laws of motion are
single sodium atom moving at 2 m/s? Express your answer in valid, the energy of a system varies smoothly over a continu-
millimeters. ous range. Quantum: The future is not predictable, matter is
made of fields, Newton’s laws are not valid (except for the
law of inertia), energy is quantized (it can assume only cer-
Answers to Concept Checks tain specific values).

1. (b) and (d) Problems

2. Yellow has the highest frequency, (a). 1. Violet, because E = hf and f is higher.
3. (a) 3. Visible. Microwaves have frequencies of about 1011 Hz and
4. Each photon must strike somewhere within the interference visible photons have frequencies of about 5 * 1014 Hz. The
pattern, even though that pattern has not yet been revealed ratio of these frequencies is 5 * 103, or 5000, so a visible
because only a single photon has struck the screen, (b). photon has about 5000 times more energy than a microwave
5. (d) photon.
6. The reasoning is the same as in Concept Check 4, (b).

345
 The Quantum Idea: Problem Set

5. E = hf = (6.6 * 10 - 34 J>Hz) * (1024 Hz) = 13. Speed = 0.1c = 3 * 107 m>s

6.6 * 10 - 10 J. l = h>my
7. Visible light has a frequency of around 1015 Hz, so the energy = (6.6 * 10 - 34 J>Hz)>(9.1 * 10 - 31 kg * 3 * 107 m>s)
of the 10 photons is about 10 hf = 10 * (6.6 * = 2.4 * 10 - 11 m
10 - 34 J>Hz) * (1015 Hz) = 6.6 * 10 - 18 J. 15. l = h>my
9. This halves its wavelength. = (6.6 * 10 - 34 J>Hz)>(38 * 10 - 27 kg * 2 m>s)
11. The electron has the smaller mass, so it has longer wave- = 8.7 * 10 - 9 m = 8.7 * 10 - 6 mm
length. About 1800 times longer. (a few millionths of a mm)

346
The Quantum Universe

From Chapter 13 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

347
 The Quantum Universe

In order to understand atomic structure, we must accept the idea that the future is
uncertain. It is uncertain to the extent that the future is actually created in every part of
the world by every atom and every living being. This point of view, which is the complete
opposite of machinelike determinism, is something that I believe should be realized
by everyone.
Edward Teller, Physicist

T
his chapter delves more deeply into quantum physics. Section 1 takes a closer
look at quantum uncertainties and presents the uncertainty principle. Section 2
discusses the surprising effect of macroscopic observation on the behavior of
microscopic systems. Section 3 takes a closer look at quantum nonlocality, which
could lay claim to being the oddest notion that has cropped up yet in physics. Sections
4 and 5 ponder the kind of reality that quantum physics describes and ask how quan-
tum physics affects, or might in the future affect, the Newtonian worldview that still
pervades modern culture. Finally, Sections 6 and 7 study perhaps the most significant
practical application of quantum physics: the quantum atom.

1 THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE: THE FUTURE IS NOT

DETERMINED BY THE PAST
One of quantum theory’s most characteristic features is the microworld’s inherent
quantum uncertainty. That is, identical physical conditions often give rise to vary-
ing and thus unpredictable observed outcomes. It’s a feature that’s radically at odds
with the predictably of nature according to Newtonian physics. You also saw that,
despite this uncertainty, the overall statistics of large numbers of outcomes follows
predictable patterns.
German physicist Werner Heisenberg (Figure 1) found, in 1927, that quantum uncer-
tainty can be quantified. To get a feel for Heisenberg’s argument, consider a quantized
matter field containing enough energy for just one electron, moving through empty
space along a direction that we will call the x-axis. As you know, the matter field’s inten-
sity at any particular point represents the probability that an electron will be found at
that point. Matter fields are spread out in space and generally have a wavelike character,

348
 The Quantum Universe

as shown in Figure 2. In quantum physics, this figure is the natural way to represent the
matter field for an individual particle such as an electron. I will call a matter wave such
as is shown in Figure 2 a wave packet. The range of possible positions is indicated in
the figure by the symbol ¢x (“delta x”).
Keep in mind that there is no tiny particle called “an electron” traveling with, or
in, the wave packet. Rather, the electron is the wave packet. The spread-out wave
packet is a single quantum, a single parcel of matter field energy. It contains the
total energy, and therefore the total inertial mass, as well as the other features such
as charge, of a moving electron. “Particles” such as “one electron” are not really
particles at all; they are quanta of spread-out fields, such as the wave packet shown.
It’s only when the wave packet interacts with another system (such as a viewing
screen) that the packet collapses to impart a tiny, particle-like impact. ¢x is the
range within which such an impact is likely to occur.
Quantum theory (the Schroedinger equation) predicts that a wave packet cannot
be at rest. Furthermore, a wave packet cannot just move at a single velocity; it must
instead move with a range of different velocities.1 This means that not only is an
electron’s position uncertain, its velocity is also uncertain. A particle’s range of pos-
sible velocities is abbreviated ¢v.
So a single moving electron (or any other material particle) has two kinds of uncer- American Institute of Physics/
tainties, ¢x and ¢v. Let’s compare one wave packet A with another wave packet B that Emilio Segre Visual Archives
has been squeezed into half of A’s length (Figure 3). As you can see, B’s wavelengths are
Figure 1
shorter. But de Broglie’s formula, l = h>mv, tells us that shorter wavelengths corre- Werner Heisenberg. Using the
spond to higher velocities. So wave packet B represents a higher-velocity electron than Schroedinger equation, he derived
does packet A. And it turns out that larger velocities mean a larger uncertainty in veloc- the famous uncertainty principle
ity and that in fact the halving of ¢x implies a doubling of ¢v.2 according to which every material
This illustrates a general feature of quantum physics: Whenever a particle’s ¢x is particle has inherent and irre-
squeezed by some amount, ¢v expands by the same amount, and vice versa: ducible uncertainties in position
Squeezing ¢v expands ¢x. Quantitatively, Heisenberg showed that the product of and velocity. Thus, in the micro-
¢x and ¢v remains unchanged. scopic world, the future is not
Working through these ideas in detail, Heisenberg found that this rule holds for entirely determined by the past.
every material particle (not just electrons) in every physical situation (not just when
moving freely). Here is his result:

The Uncertainty Principle

The position and velocity of every material particle are uncertain. Although either
uncertainty can take on any value, its product must approximately equal Planck’s
constant divided by the particle’s mass. In symbols,
(¢x) # (¢v) L h>m

where h is Planck’s constant and m is the particle’s mass.3

1
Here’s why: According to the branch of mathematics known as “Fourier analysis,” a wave packet is a
superposition of many different infinitely long waves, each having a definite wavelength. But de Broglie’s
formula l = h>mv tells us that different wavelengths correspond to different velocities. Thus, a wave
packet has a range of possible velocities.
2
Here’s why: Since B is squeezed to half of A’s length, B’s wavelengths are half as long as A’s. So B’s compo-
nent velocities are twice as big as A’s, because l = h>mv says that wavelength and velocity are inversely
proportional. So the range of velocities, ¢v, is twice as big for B as for A.
3
More precisely, (¢x) # (¢v) Ú h>4pm. The product can be greater than h>4pm but not less.

349
 The Quantum Universe

Figure 2 ⌬x
The matter wave representing a sin-
gle particle whose uncertainty in
position is ¢x, moving along the
x-axis. A matter wave like this, x-axis
which is spread out over only a
limited distance, is called a Direction of motion of wave packet
wave packet.

Figure 3 ⌬x
Two wave packets, having differ-
ent values of ¢x . Packet B can be
constructed by squeezing packet A
A to half its size. In this process,
all of A’s wavelengths get
⌬x
squeezed to half their original
length, which means that the
velocities and also the uncertainty
in velocity get doubled.
B

I remember discussions with Bohr We refer to a particle’s ¢x and ¢v as its uncertainty range. You can visualize a par-
which went through many hours ticle’s uncertainty range in a velocity-versus-position diagram (Figure 4). A single point
till very late at night and ended on such a diagram represents a precise position x and velocity v [Figure 4(a)].
almost in despair; and when at
Newtonian physics assumes that every object has a precise x and v. For example, the
the end of the discussion I went
alone for a walk in the neighbour-
location and motion of the center of a baseball can be described, according to
ing park I repeated to myself Newtonian physics, by a particular x and a particular v. Newton’s law of motion is basi-
again and again the question: cally a method for predicting an object’s future x and v from its present x and v. For
Can nature possibly be as absurd example, given the position and velocity of the center of a falling baseball at one time,
as it seemed? we can predict the center’s position and velocity at any later time during the fall.
Werner Heisenberg But microscopic particles do not have precise positions and velocities, for the
simple reason that the so-called “particles” are really quanta of a matter field,
spread out over a range of positions and velocities. Quantum theory demands that
an object’s position and velocity have uncertainties ¢x and ¢v whose product is
roughly h/m. In an x-versus-v diagram, this product is the area formed by the rec-
tangle whose sides are ¢x and ¢v, as shown in Figure 4(b). If for any reason ¢x is
reduced, then ¢v must expand to yield the same product ¢x # ¢v, as shown in
Figure 4(c). And if ¢v is reduced, ¢x must expand, as in Figure 4(d). Either x or v
can be as highly predictable as you like, but if one is highly predictable, the other
must be highly uncertain. You can think of these diagrams as rough pictures of a
particle’s matter field. Like other physical fields, a matter field is spread out over a
range of positions in space, and different parts of the field move at different veloc-
ities. An uncertainty range such as Figure 4(b) simply shows those ranges of posi-
tions and velocities.

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 The Quantum Universe

v
Particle’s speed v

⌬v

x x
Particle’s position x ⌬x
(a) A single point on an x-versus-v (b) An uncertainty range for a
diagram, such as the point shown single particle. According to
here, represents a precise value of quantum theory, the total area
both x and v. Quantum theory does of the shaded region, (⌬x)⭈(⌬v),
not allow such precise values. must be roughly equal to h/m.

v v

⌬v ⌬v

x x

⌬x ⌬x
(c) If for any reason ⌬x is (d) And if ⌬v is reduced, ⌬x
reduced, then ⌬v must expand to must expand. Figure 4
fill up an uncertainty range Position and velocity
having the same area. uncertainty ranges.

Since the uncertainty principle says that (¢x) # (¢v) L h>m, more massive parti- This again emphasizes a subjec-
tive element in the description of
cles have smaller uncertainty ranges. A proton, with a mass 2000 times larger than
atomic events, since the measur-
an electron’s mass, has an uncertainty range 2000 times smaller (in area) than does ing device has been constructed
an electron (Figure 5). Because x and v are both needed in order to predict an by the observer. . . . We have to
object’s future behavior, a proton is more predictable than an electron. And a base- remember that what we observe
ball, one million trillion trillion times more massive than an electron, is so pre- is not nature in itself but nature
dictable that quantum uncertainties are negligible (Figure 5). That’s why the exposed to our method
macroscopic world is Newtonian! Even a grain of sand is so massive (it contains of questioning.
Werner Heisenberg
some 1018 atoms) that quantum uncertainties are negligible. Macroscopic objects
such as baseballs and dust grains are predictable, but the atoms, electrons, and pro-
tons of which they are made are not predictable. The belief in an external world
Suppose a particle’s ¢x has been squeezed into a very small range. This parti- independent of the perceiving
cle must then have a large ¢v. But you can’t have a large ¢v without at the same subject is the basis of all
natural science.
time having a large v; for instance, if ¢v were 1000 km/s, the lowest (slowest)
Einstein
uncertainty range for v alone would be 0 to 1000 km/s, so the average v must be at

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 The Quantum Universe

Uncertainty
v range of the
center of a
baseball
(greatly enlarged)
Electron’s
Proton’s uncertainty
uncertainty range
range

Figure 5
More massive objects have smaller
uncertainties. That’s why quantum
uncertainties are negligible for such x
macroscopic objects as baseballs.

least 500 km/s. So when ¢v is large, v must be large too. This means that a highly
confined particle ( ¢x small) must move fast. The smaller the confinement, the
larger the velocity. The uncertainty principle will not permit the microscopic
world to sit still! For example, protons and neutrons in a nucleus must move at
some 10% of lightspeed because nuclear forces confine them to such a tiny
region within the atom.
Quantum uncertainties are of considerable practical importance. As you’ll see in
Section 3, they might someday be used to practical advantage in quantum comput-
ers. Quantum uncertainties lie at the heart of the nuclear phenomenon known as
radioactive decay and cause this process to be fundamentally unpredictable. When a
child is conceived, the DNA molecules of each parent are randomly combined in a
process in which quantum phenomena play a role. Thus, quantum uncertainty
played a role in your genetic inheritance. Microscopic quantum uncertainties dur-
ing the big bang formed the “seeds” for the later gravitational gathering of matter
into the great clusters of galaxies that you see today. The expansion of the universe
stretched these initially tiny seeds to astronomical sizes, and matter gravitated
toward these seeds. Today we see, forever imprinted on the overall layout of the uni-
verse, microscopic quantum uncertainties writ large.
We are, in these and many other subtle ways, in the hands of the god who
plays dice.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 Which of these has the largest quantum uncertainties?

(a) Proton. (b) Automobile. (c) Helium atom. (d) Water molecule.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 Just after the matter wave passes through the slits, its
uncertainty range (a) covers the entire range of positions from above slit A to below
slit B in the figure; (b) is broken into two separate pieces, one of them behind slit A
and the other behind slit B; (c) is located either behind slit A or behind slit B, but
not both.

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 The Quantum Universe

CONCEPT CHECK 3 A particle having a very precise velocity has a wave

packet that (a) occupies a wide region of the x-axis; (b) occupies only a narrow
region of the x-axis; (c) moves with a wide variety of velocities; (d) moves with a
narrow range of velocities.

2 THE EFFECT OF DETECTORS

Einstein was among those who found quantum theory too counterintuitive to The world thus appears as a com-
believe. He and two other physicists showed in 1935 that quantum theory predicts plicated tissue of events, in which
nonlocal phenomena that are, as he put it, so “spooky” that “no reasonable defini- connections of different kinds
alternate or overlap or combine
tion of reality could be expected to permit this.” Einstein and others took these pre-
and thereby determine the tex-
dictions as evidence that the theory needed repair. However, Einstein did not ture of the whole.
suggest a way to put quantum theory’s spooky predictions to an experimental test. Werner Heisenberg
Because quantum theory proved so gloriously successful in practice, few physi-
cists worried much about such untested objections. Among those who did worry
were David Bohm and John Bell (Figure 6). Bohm began publishing his analysis
during the 1950s. Working from Bohm’s ideas, Bell showed in 1964 that some of
quantum theory’s spooky predictions are experimentally testable. John Clauser Marvelous, what ideas the young
people have these days. But I
(Figure 6) carried out the first such test in 1972 and found that contrary to the
don’t believe a word of it.
expectations of Einstein and others, the spooky phenomena actually occur! In 1982, Einstein, After Heisenberg’s 1927 Lecture
Alain Aspect (Figure 6) refined Clauser’s test so as to leave little doubt that the real Enunciating the Uncertainty Principle
world is stranger than Einstein and others had thought.
The spooky predictions are related to sudden alterations in the quantized EM and
matter fields. Consider, for example, a single freely moving electron approaching a I cannot seriously believe in [the
viewing screen. As you’ve seen, up until the moment of impact the “electron” is quantum theory] because it can-
really a wave packet—a ripple in a matter field—approaching the screen; the not be reconciled with the idea
impact that we call “an electron” is really just the deposit of a quantum of energy that physics should represent a
reality in time and space, free
from the matter field to the atoms of the screen. The packet can be quite spread out,
from spooky actions at a distance.
stretching even over macroscopic distances. Einstein
Now think about what happens when this 1 cm wide wave packet for a single elec-
tron hits the viewing screen: The interaction between the packet and one of the atoms
of the screen causes a single “grain” (similar to a sand grain) of the screen to emit a
burst of light. At this instant, the entire spread-out wave packet suddenly alters radi-
cally because the entire energy of the quantized packet must be delivered to a single
atom. The electron’s uncertainty range is now confined to one atom within the grain
that emitted the burst of light, about a billionth of a meter in size. The packet suddenly
becomes 100 million times smaller. Such an instantaneous reduction in the size of a
wave packet upon detection of a particle is called collapse of the wave packet.
There has always been lots of controversy about this process and about other
cases in which microscopic particles interact with macroscopic devices such as
viewing screens. Such a process is called a measurement for obvious reasons, but
this term need not refer only to cases in which a human observer is actually present Attempts have been made to add
to record the measurement. It refers, rather, to any situation in which a microscopic laws to quantum mechanics to
eliminate uncertainty. Such
particle causes a macroscopic event such as a visible flash, whether or not a human attempts have not only been
is present to observe it. unsuccessful, they have not even
appeared to lead to any interest-
ing results.
Edward Teller

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 The Quantum Universe

Mark Edwards/Still Pictures/Whole Earth Photo Library; CERN/Photo Researchers, Inc.

Figure 6
Four explorers of quantum theory:
Clockwise from upper left: David
Bohm, John Bell, Alain Aspect
talking with Bell (r.) and physicist
Albert Messiah (l.), John Clauser.

Collapse of the wave packet can occur over large regions. For example, the EM field
for each wave packet from any very distant star is spread out over many kilometers by
the time it reaches Earth. British physicist Robert Hanbury Brown confirmed this pre-
diction in 1965 by measuring, for the light from an individual star, interference patterns
that were over 100 meters in diameter. Despite each photon wave packet’s large size, the
field for each photon instantaneously collapsed to atomic dimensions when the photon
hit a detector.
Collapse of the wave packet is controversial among physicists because of its
instantaneous and “nonlocal” character: The entire wave packet vanishes, simulta-
neously, over an extended region. I’ll discuss nonlocality further in the next section.
The double-slit experiment with electrons offers interesting examples of quan-
tum measurement issues. Based on Newtonian ways of thinking, one might suppose
that we could place a detector near one or both of the slits and thus detect individ-

354
 The Quantum Universe

ual electrons coming through one or the other slit. What will such a detector
observe, and what will be the pattern on the viewing screen?
Before answering these questions, we need to see what happens when we com-
pletely close either one or the other slit. With one slit closed, the wave packet for
each electron must obviously come through the other slit, either slit A or slit B.
Figure 7 shows each of these single-slit patterns: Part (a) is the pattern when only
slit A is open, and part (b) is the pattern when only slit B is open. Each pattern
shows the intensity of an individual electron’s wave packet (the intensity of the mat-
ter field, or the probability that the impact will occur at various points on the
screen) as the packet approaches the screen. There is no trace of interference.
Schroedinger’s equation predicts these patterns, and they can be observed experi-
mentally as the statistical result obtained after millions of electron impacts. Part (c)
is simply the sum of the first two graphs. It shows what would happen if each elec-
tron wave packet in the double-slit experiment actually came through one or the
other slit and not both. Finally, part (d) shows what actually happens when both slits
are open, but there is no detector to see which slit the electron goes through. What
actually happens is an interference pattern.
Now you’ll see what happens in the double-slit experiment when a detector deter-
mines the slit through which the electron came. Figure 8 shows the detector (it’s sup-
posed to look like an eye seen from the side) located at point D just behind slit B.
Such detectors are usually electromagnetic devices designed to have as little effect as
possible on the motion of the electron, allowing it to pass nearly unimpeded to the
viewing screen. As long as such a detector is switched off so that it cannot detect
electrons, the usual interference pattern appears on the screen [Figure 8(a)]. But
when the detector is switched on, it immediately begins indicating that about half of
the electrons are coming through slit B and half are not! This makes us think that

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 7
Results of different single-slit experiments with electrons. (a) The pattern of electron impacts
on the viewing screen for the case that slit A only is open and slit B is closed. (b) The pattern
for the case that slit B only is open and slit A is closed. (c) The patterns (a) and (b) added
together to show what would happen in the double-slit experiment if each electron wave
packet simply came through one or the other slit rather than through both slits. (d) The actual
result of the double-slit experiment.

355
 The Quantum Universe

Newtonian physics has it right after all: Electrons do come through one or the other
slit but not both. However, precisely when the switch is turned on, the interference
pattern vanishes and the “noninterference pattern” (b) appears on the screen. This is
precisely the pattern that we saw, in Figure 7(c), should be the net effect of electrons
coming through either slit A or slit B but not both! Apparently, detectors have
strong and instantaneous effects on matter waves: When the “slit detector” is turned
off, each electron comes through both slits; turning on the detector causes each
electron to come through one or the other (but not both) slits.
Can the effect of the detector be reduced? For example, researchers might
place the detector further from the slits (Figure 9). Again, the entire pattern shifts
from (a) to (b) as soon as the detector is switched on. Extremely fast switching
devices have even been devised to turn on the detector only after an electron must
have already come through the slits. And still, pattern (a) switches to pattern (b)

Figure 8
Merely switching on a particle
detector at a point such as D
causes the matter field to jump
A
from the interference pattern (a) to
the noninterference pattern (b).
⫹

⫺ B

(a) (b)

Figure 9
Even if the detector is placed far
behind the slits, near the screen,
the pattern still jumps from pattern
A
(a) to (b) whenever the detector
is activated.
⫹

⫺ B

D
(a) (b)

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 The Quantum Universe

as soon as the detector is switched on! The detection device causes the packet to
instantly shift from the interference pattern to the noninterference pattern after it
has already passed through the slits. This strange influence of the detector is actu-
ally predicted by the standard rules of quantum physics, and observed in experi-
ments.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 Suppose that, in Figure 8, two detectors were used, one
behind each slit. The pattern that the matter field makes on the screen would then
be (a) an interference pattern that is broken into two separate parts, one behind each
slit; (b) a noninterference pattern that is broken into two separate parts, one behind
each slit; (c) an interference pattern like the one shown in the figure; (d) a noninter-
ference pattern like the one shown in the figure.

3 QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT: SPOOKY ACTION AT

A DISTANCE
So far, we’ve discussed quantum uncertainty and nonlocality only in situations
involving separate particles that don’t interact with each other. Recall that
quantum nonlocality refers to the instantaneous alteration of an entire spread-
out EM field or matter field, even at some distance from the interaction (energy
exchange) that caused the alteration. Now we’re going to look at the conse-
quences of quantum uncertainty and nonlocality when applied to two or more par-
ticles. We’ll just consider two particles, but the same conclusions apply to any
number of particles. If two particles physically interact with each other, quantum
theory predicts that their matter fields (remember that a particle is its matter
field) usually become intimately connected and remain connected even after the
particles have separated. The two particles become a single quantum system with
a single shared matter field. Such particles are said to be entangled. Figure 10 is a
way to picture this. The figure shows wave packets for two particles. The two
packets are entirely separate initially, then they move close enough together to
interact, and then they separate. Quantum physics predicts that their matter waves
get mixed up with each other during the interaction so that, even after separation,
the two packets form a single two-particle wave packet. I’ve tried to indicate this
in Figure 10 by coloring the two initial packets black and green. When they sepa-
rate, part of each packet goes to the right and part of each packet goes upward.
After the interaction, both packets contain both black and green and are really
two “subpackets” of a single black-and-green packet, even though the two sub-
packets might be widely separated in space. Entangled particles are part of a sin-
gle quantum object, namely a two-particle wave packet. They form a single thing,
but in two different places.
Now suppose that one of the two entangled packets in Figure 10 impacts a view-
ing screen. This wave packet instantly collapses everywhere. But this would have to
affect the other wave packet because the two packets really form a single connected
packet. This instantly alters the other, second particle, even if the two particles are
light-years apart. This is the action at a distance that seemed so “spooky” to
Einstein. Experiments since 1972 have amply confirmed the reality of entangle-
ment at distances up to 144 kilometers.

357
 The Quantum Universe

Particles 1 and 2
entangled

Interaction
zone
Particle 1 Particles 1 and 2
before entangled
interaction

Figure 10
When two particles interact and
then separate, their matter fields Particle 2
usually become entangled. See the before interaction
text for explanation.

One is led to a new notion of How do we know that nature is nonlocal?4 In 1990, British physicists John Rarity
unbroken wholeness which denies and Paul Tapster performed an entanglement experiment based on double-slit interfer-
the classical idea of analyzability of ence. This experiment begins with the creation of two entangled photons (the experi-
the world into separately and ment would be harder to do with electrons, but quantum physics predicts that the
independently existing parts. We
result would be the same) whose wave packets then move directly away from each
have reversed the usual notion
other, as shown in Figure 11. The two packets then pass through separate double-slit
that the independent “elementary
apparatuses and, with the help of the mirroring devices shown, impact on separate
parts” of the world are the funda-
viewing screens. Rarity and Tapster observed the overall pattern formed by millions of
mental reality. Rather, we say that
the interconnectedness of the such entangled pairs.
whole universe is the fundamental As in the ordinary double-slit experiment, each particle’s wave packet goes through
reality, and that the “parts” are both slit A and slit B. If the two particles were not entangled, the left-hand screen and the
merely particular and contingent right-hand screen would each show the usual double-slit interference pattern.
forms within this whole. Because the two photons move in opposite directions, if they had been ordinary
David Bohm Newtonian particles they would have impacted at identical distances x below the mid-
point of the first screen, and y above the midpoint of the second screen (see the figure).
That is, x would have been equal to y. But, because of quantum uncertainties, y does not
necessarily equal x and the second impact point y can’t be predicted from knowledge of
the first point x. In fact, quantum physics predicts that the difference y – x should form a
typical interference pattern as shown in Figure 12.

4
This experiment was suggested in 1986 by Michael Horne and Anton Zeilinger; a similar experiment was
performed by Z. Y. Ou and Leonard Mandel.

358
 The Quantum Universe

Mirror Mirror

Particle 1 Particle 2
A A y

B B
x Particle 1 Particle 2

Detection Mirror Mirror Detection

screen for screen for
particle 1 Source of two particle 2
entangled particles

Figure 11
The position-entanglement experiment. Because of their entanglement, particles 1 and 2 coor-
dinate their impact points x and y instantaneously, regardless of the distance between them.
The wave packets shown are created at the “source” at the center of the figure. The mirrors
only reflect these wave packets and are introduced only to bring each packet back together.

According to Figure 12, the two photons must mutually correlate their impact points x y–x
and y so as to make y – x form an interference pattern, despite that fact that neither a
precise x nor a precise y even existed (because of the uncertainty principle) prior to
impact. Suppose that the experiment were altered slightly to allow the first photon to
impact its screen just before the second photon impacts its screen (this would not
change the experiment’s outcome). Despite the fact that a precise x doesn’t exist prior to
impact, as soon as the first photon impacts its screen at some point x, the second pho- 0
ton’s wave packet (which could be light-years away) must instantly alter itself to just “fit”
the first particle’s impact point, as shown in Figure 12. To see the significance of this, sup-
pose that the interference pattern of Figure 12 has high points that are 1 mm apart, so
that constructive interference occurs when y – x equals 0 mm, 1 mm, 2 mm,
3 mm, and so forth. Then, after photon 1 impacts at some particular point x, photon 2
must impact preferentially at a point y that differs from x by 0 mm, 1 mm, 2 mm, etc., Number of
and must avoid the points that differ from x by 0.5 mm, 1.5 mm, 2.5 mm, etc. How can 2-particle impacts
the second photon “know” which points to hit and which to avoid, when a specific
x didn’t even exist prior to the first photon’s impact, and when the two photons are some Figure 12
distance (even light-years) apart? The second photon instantaneously obtains “knowl- If, instead of studying x or y sepa-
edge” about the first photon’s impact point, and alters its wave packet accordingly, rately, we study the difference y – x
despite their separation. Spooky, indeed! between the two impact points on
the two screens, we get an interfer-
Maybe this cooperation between different particles across a distance is not ence pattern. How does the second
spooky. Maybe it’s merely an example of the following common type of correlation photon, impacting at some point y,
between separated events: Suppose I inform Mort in Paris and Velma in Beijing that “know” at which point x the first
I’ve mailed one of them a gold coin and the other a silver coin. Without further photon impacted? The second pho-
ton instantly coordinates its impact
information, neither one knows which coin they’ll receive. But as soon as Velma
pattern with the first photon’s
opens her envelope she knows immediately what kind of coin Mort received,
impact point, despite the fact that
because the two coins must be different. There’s nothing spooky about this correla- the uncertainty principle says that
tion between separated events; it’s due entirely to the prior information that I gave both impact points are uncertain
in advance.

359
 The Quantum Universe

to Mort and Velma. Furthermore, no real physical change occurred in Mort’s coin
when Velma opened her envelope. Mort’s coin did not, for example, suddenly
change from gold to silver.
Quantum entanglement is not like the gold and silver coins because there’s no
prior information. Precise positions x and y of the two photons didn’t even exist prior
to the impacts. Furthermore, an actual physical change in the second photon—a sud-
den alteration of its wave packet—occurs when the first photon hits the screen.
In 1964, John Bell analyzed this question in quantitative detail and proved
that the correlations between entangled particles are not of the ordinary gold-
and-silver-coin variety. It’s as though Velma’s receipt of a gold coin in Beijing
instantaneously caused Mort’s coin in Paris to turn into a silver coin, even
though his coin was neither gold nor silver before Velma observed her coin.
Here’s a summary of Bell’s conclusion:

The Nonlocality Principle

Non-locality means that we can- Quantum theory predicts that entangled particles exhibit behavior that can be
not discuss the different parts of explained only by the existence of real nonlocal (that is, instantaneous and distant)
space independently. correlations between the particles. That is, a physical change in one particle causes
John Bell instantaneous physical changes in all other particles that are entangled with that par-
ticle, no matter how far away those other particles may be.

Bell also discovered ways in which the quantum predictions about entanglement
could be experimentally tested. Clauser was the first to carry out such tests. Alain
Aspect was the first to show that the connection occurs at faster than lightspeed and
Entanglement is the essential
characteristic of quantum physics.
appears to be instantaneous, just as quantum theory predicts. The “two” particles lit-
Erwin Schroedinger
erally form a single unified object, described by some physicists as a “two-particle.”
Two entangled particles do not coordinate their actions by means of communication
between them; rather, their actions must be coordinated because they are a single
unified object, but in two different places. Such a conclusion might seem to contra-
For me it’s a dilemma. I think it’s dict relativity theory’s prohibition on faster-than-light motion. But relativity says
a deep dilemma, and the resolu- only that energy (matter or radiation) cannot travel faster than light. The connections
tion of it will not be trivial; it will referred to in Bell’s principle do not transfer energy, so Bell’s principle does not
require a substantial change in contradict relativity.
the way we look at things.
Quantum entanglement is quickly destroyed if one of the entangled particles
John Bell, Referring to the Implications of
Aspect’s Experiment Verifying Nonlocality contacts the external world. In the Rarity-Tapster experiment, for example, the
entanglement is destroyed when either particle hits a screen. Despite this fragility,
Danish physicists in 1999 proposed a practical method for entangling any number
of ions (electrically charged atoms) by trapping them in electromagnetic fields and
using lasers to create entanglements between them. This method was used in 2001
to entangle two tiny separated gas clouds, each containing a trillion cesium atoms.
The two clouds were only a few millimeters apart and were demonstrated to remain
entangled for only 0.0005 seconds, but larger distances and times are expected in
the future, perhaps using solid samples rather than gases.
Entanglement and uncertainty could lead to powerful quantum computers.
Conventional computers are built from many simple individual physical devices
such as electronic switches that can have two values, namely “on” and “off.” Such
physical devices are called bits and their two states are labeled “0” and “1.”
Quantum computers would be built from many individual quantum systems, such

360
 The Quantum Universe

as a single ion trapped in an electromagnetic field, that have two possible quantum The lesson to be learned from ...
states, such as a higher-energy state and a lower-energy state. Such a quantum sys- the origin of quantum mechanics
tem is called a qubit and, like ordinary bits, the two quantum states are labeled “0” is that ... somewhere in our doc-
trine is hidden a concept, unjusti-
and “1.” But qubits exploit the quantum nature of these states. To understand this,
fied by experience, which we must
let’s return to the double-slit experiment where we saw that quantum uncertainties eliminate to open up the road.
allow each individual electron to come through both slits. In this same sense, quan- Max Born
tum uncertainties allow a qubit (such as an ion) to be in both its possible states, 0
and 1, at the same time. Physical operations carried out on such a qubit then oper-
ate on both states simultaneously.
This doesn’t sound terribly impressive, until you begin to consider the implica-
tions of more than a single qubit. Consider two qubits. A conventional computer
built from two bits would have four possible states: 00, 01, 10, and 11. The com-
puter can be in only one of these states at any one time. But a quantum computer,
with each qubit in both the states 0 and 1, is in all four of its possible states simul-
taneously, and thus it can perform calculations on all four simultaneously instead of
one at a time. And three qubits can be in eight states simultaneously. The number of
simultaneous states increases enormously as the number of qubits increases, pro-
viding far more computational power.
Quantum computers would operate on the quantum states of their qubits by
employing “control” qubits that would be connected with the computational qubits
via quantum entanglement. If a quantum computer turns out to be feasible, it will
be the quintessential quantum device, depending crucially on the two characteristic
quantum phenomena: uncertainty and entanglement.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 How many simultaneous operations could a 10 qubit

quantum computer perform? (a) 10. (b) 100. (c) 8. (d) 64. (e) 512. (f) 1024.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 If two electrons are entangled then (a) if one of the parti-
cles suddenly alters its wave packet, the other must also; (b) they must exert forces
on each other; (c) they will become less entangled as they move farther apart;
(d) both are part of a single matter wave; (e) they will become more entangled as In a completely deterministic
they move farther apart. world, what we know as free will
in humans is reduced to a mere
illusion.... According to quantum
mechanics, we cannot exclude
4 WHAT DOES IT MEAN? QUANTUM REALITY the possibility that free will is a
part of the process by which the
Quantum physics has a well-deserved reputation for being odd. Quantum uncer- future is created.
tainty, nonlocality, and the surprising effect of detectors are about as far-removed as Edward Teller
you can get from the world described by Newtonian physics. The odd results come
from the non-Newtonian view that the world is made not of rigid, unchanging,
pointlike particles but rather of continuous fields, and that these fields come in uni-
fied parcels or “quanta” of energy.
The oddness of quantum physics has stimulated unfounded rumors that there is
something paradoxical or even mystical about quantum physics. The simultaneous
appearance of wave and particle properties, for example, leads some to believe that
it’s impossible to consistently describe what’s really going on in the microworld.
But you’ve seen that quantum physics is basically about fields, and that particle-
like aspects such as the tiny flashes seen on the screen are really fields spread out
over a ¢x of atomic dimensions. There’s no paradox here.

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 The Quantum Universe

As another example, one sometimes hears that quantum physics necessarily

involves human observation, especially in connection with the surprising effects of
detectors, as though some quantum phenomena couldn’t occur without humans
present to witness them. But the detector effect depends only on the interaction
between an inanimate macroscopic device called a detector and a microscopic sys-
tem such as an electron. It occurs perfectly well with no humans present to read the
detector. In fact, the detector could be any macroscopic object upon which a micro-
scopic object leaves a permanent mark. For instance, when a cosmic ray hits a moon
rock and leaves a permanent mark, a similar “detection” process occurs even
though no human is involved.
The quantum uncertainty of matter arises because each material quantum, an
electron for example, is spread out in both position and velocity simply because it’s
a field. When we say that an electron’s position is uncertain, we simply mean that its
matter field is spread out over a range ¢x of positions. The electron really has no
definite position.
In the double-slit experiment with electrons, for example, each electron (each
quantum) comes through both slits. Just after passing through the slits, the quantum
has two separated parts, one near each slit, yet the entire quantum acts as a single
unified object. When it arrives at the screen, its two parts form a spread-out inter-
ference pattern that’s seen in the overall pattern formed by many individual interac-
tions. But the quantized nature of the matter field demands that each individual
quantum’s energy transfer is “all or nothing,” so all its energy transfers to a single
atom. At the instant of the transfer, the entire spread-out quantum (it might be 1 cm
wide for example) instantaneously collapses to atomic dimensions. Electrons are
still spread-out quanta even after being absorbed by an atom, but with a ¢x that’s
now spread over a region of only atomic dimensions.
A similar collapse occurs whenever any detector measures the position of an
electron or any other particle. The electron wave packet interacts with an atom or
molecule in the detector, and thus the packet collapses to a small ¢x around that
location. The electron resided all over a much larger region just before the measure-
ment occurred, and the measurement created a position (to within a ¢x of atomic
dimensions) for the electron. Measurements partly create the properties they detect.
A position measurement creates an (approximate) position, and a velocity measure-
ment creates an (approximate) velocity (Figure 13).
The surprising effect of detectors, noted in connection with Figures 8 and 9, hap-
pens for reasons similar to the collapse of the wave packet in the double-slit experi-
ment. You’ll recall that each electron (each quantum) goes through both slits so long
as the detector is in the “off ” mode, but as soon as the detector is switched on, half the
electrons go through slit A and the other half go through slit B. This is because each
electron (each quantum) must either entirely interact, or not interact, with the
switched-on detector, and the interaction (or non-interaction) causes each quantum to
collapse to the vicinity of one or the other slit.
Non-locality is written all over these phenomena, even though this section so far
has related only to non-interacting particles. But when two or more particles inter-
act, non-locality can become quite explicit via quantum entanglement.
Entanglement means that two or more particles share a single wave packet. The two
must then behave as a single unified object. If something happens to one of them,
the entire two-particle wave packet collapses and so some other corresponding
thing must instantaneously happen to the other. This has been demonstrated with
pairs of photons.

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 The Quantum Universe

Velocity Particle’s range after

measurement of x: An
approximate position x has
been created.

Particle’s range after

measurement of v: An
approximate velocity v
Particle’s uncertainty range has been created.
before measurement: Both Figure 13
⌬x and ⌬v are large.
The effect of a position measure-
ment or of a velocity measurement
Position
is to create a position and velocity
for the measured particle.

Quantum physics predicts that any pair of particles that have ever, at anytime in
the past, interacted with each other are entangled with each other, although the There are two sorts of truth: trivial-
degree of entanglement might be tiny. In fact, if particles A and B are entangled, ities, where opposites are obvi-
and if another particle C then interacts with B, not only will B become entangled ously absurd, and profound truths,
with C but A will also become entangled with C. Thus the entire universe, which recognized by the fact that the
opposite is also a profound truth.
was created in a single microscopic event—just the sort of thing that creates entan-
Niels Bohr
gled particles—might be entangled with itself. But such a statement is hypothetical
to say the least, because it’s always dangerous to extrapolate the theories of physics
to the entire universe.
I think that what we will eventually make of all this is still anybody’s guess. We
haven’t yet worked out a “post-Newtonian viewpoint” of how the world works, a When it comes to atoms, lan-
guage can be used only as in
viewpoint having the philosophical grandeur of the Newtonian clock-like universe,
poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly
and maybe we don’t need such a viewpoint. There have been attempts to align these so concerned with describing
quantum phenomena with religious or psychological notions—efforts that have in facts as with creating images.
my opinion been interesting but dubious. In the next section, I’ll discuss a few Niels Bohr
notions that are directly tied to what we already know about quantum physics.

5 TOWARD A MODERN WORLDVIEW

Recall three key features of the Newtonian worldview:
Atomism Atoms form the fundamental reality. Newton called them “solid, massy,
hard, impenetrable particles” that “never wear or break in pieces.” We shall always be able to imag-
ine other [false] theories—like the
Predictability The future is hard-wired into the present. Once it got started, the
boring world of particles gov-
clockwork universe had to evolve precisely as it has evolved, right down to you erned by Newtonian mechanics.
scratching your nose just now. Steven Weinberg, Physicist, in Dreams
Analysis Science progresses by separating phenomena into their simplest com- of a Final Theory
ponents and studying those components. Thus we can understand the universe by
understanding its simplest component particles.

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 The Quantum Universe

Not exist—not exist! Why I can see Contemporary physics denies all three of these Newtonian principles:
the little beggars there in front of Atomism Atomism was first contradicted by the electromagnetic field, which is
me as plainly as I can see physically real but not made of atoms. The material world is made of matter fields,
that spoon!
and matter fields are certainly not made of atoms. In fact, material particles are
Ernest Rutherford around 1915, When
Asked over a Dinner Table Whether He merely quanta, or energy increments, of matter fields. Far from being solid, hard,
Believed That Atomic Nuclei Really Existed and impenetrable, atoms are entirely empty and made only of fields. Their rest-
mass is a consequence of the energy of these fields. Far from never wearing or
breaking, atoms can be entirely annihilated. Although energy is indestructible, mat-
ter can be destroyed and created. Atoms are not things in the same way that a pea,
even a very small pea, is a thing.
I don’t think there’s one unique Predictability Identical causes no longer lead to identical effects. A single
real universe.... Even the laws of radioactive decay, the flash of a photon, and chemical reactions such as those that
physics themselves may be some- determine a person’s genetic inheritance, are unpredictable quantum events. The
what observer dependent. universe is not like a predictable clock. But statistical patterns are predictable, even
Stephen Hawking
though single events are not.
Analysis The analytic process assumes that it’s possible to divide a phenomenon
into parts without changing it. This works well for macroscopic systems, but quantum
theory contradicts this notion. For instance, it’s useful to separate the solar system
into the sun, planets, and so forth and to consider the ways that each part interacts
with each other part. But quantum entanglement implies that we cannot always con-
sider a microscopic system to be made of separable parts. Two entangled particles are
so closely connected that it is not possible even to think of them as independent parti-
cles. There is a microscopic wholeness that is not obvious to our macroscopic eyes.
In short, the quantum worldview asserts that the universe is made of nonmate-
rial fields, the particles of the microscopic world are merely quantized increments
of these fields, the future is inherently unpredictable, and nature is deeply intercon-
nected and indivisible. This is radically different from the Newtonian view of the
world as a machine or a clock.
Despite more than a century of modern physics, a post-Newtonian worldview is
still not in sight, and the metaphor of the mechanical universe continues to deeply
and inappropriately influence our culture’s view of physical reality. Will we con-
struct a scientifically accurate and humane worldview that can sustain us in the
modern age? Humankind has barely scratched the surface of this task.

6 HOW DO WE KNOW? OBSERVING ATOMIC SPECTRA

So far, we have presented the fundamental principles of quantum physics and their
significance. Now let’s study perhaps the most significant practical example of
quantum physics: the quantum atom. I’ll begin by presenting what scientists know
experimentally, and how they know it.
The most accurate scientific measurements known are made with spectroscopes,
devices that measure the frequencies or wavelengths present in radiation. Figure 14 shows
how a spectroscope studies the visible radiation emitted by a light source such as a
heated, glowing gas. Radiation from the source passes through a single thin slit and
emerges as a narrow beam. This beam passes through a glass prism or other device that
can separate the light beam’s different frequencies (colors). Light beams bend when they
pass from one medium into another, such as from air into glass. You might have noticed
this effect in a pool of water, where partly submerged objects appear to bend at the
water’s surface. The reason a prism separates a light beam’s frequencies is that different

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Red

Narrow beam of
radiation containing Prism Yellow
various frequencies

Radiation source
such as a heated Violet
glowing gas Partition
with a thin
slit in it
Viewing screen
or photographic
film

Figure 14
One type of spectroscope.

frequencies bend by different amounts at each glass surface. This separation of frequen-
cies is also seen in a rainbow, where each raindrop acts like a small prism for sunlight.
By the time the light beam exits the far side of the prism, it has separated into
many beams, one for each frequency present in the original beam. A screen or pho-
tographic film intercepts all these light beams and displays their various colors.
Each beam’s frequency or wavelength can be determined by measuring the position
at which it strikes the screen. The set of frequencies measured in such an experi-
ment is called the spectrum of the source that emitted the radiation.
Different kinds of spectroscopes operate in every part of the electromagnetic
spectrum. For example, a radio receiver is a kind of spectroscope for separating and
detecting the frequencies of radio radiation present in a room. Spectral measure-
ments yield an enormous quantity and variety of information. For instance, by plac-
ing a spectroscope at the viewing end of a telescope, astronomers can infer
information about the mass, temperature, motion, chemical composition, and other
properties of stars and galaxies. Most of our data about the microscopic world come
from spectral measurements.
A glowing solid or liquid, such as a lightbulb’s metal filament heated to 3000°C,
emits a continuous spectrum, one that contains an unbroken range of visible fre-
quencies and spreads out in a continuous band of color. Rainbows show the contin-
uous spectrum of the sun. But surprisingly, if a dilute (low pressure) gas is heated
until it glows, it emits a spectrum that is not continuous. Instead, it is restricted to a
limited number of precise frequencies, each frequency appearing on the screen as a
narrow slit-shaped line (Figure 14). Such a collection of precise separated frequen-
cies is called a line spectrum. Figure 15 shows a continuous spectrum and four line
spectra from four different gases. As you can see, the line spectra for different gases
are different. Because each gas has its own characteristic spectrum, it’s possible for
spectroscopy to identify different gases. This is, for example, how we know the
chemical compositions of stars.

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 The Quantum Universe

Figure 15
The continuous spectrum created by
an incandescent bulb and the line
spectra produced by several differ-
ent kinds of gases: sodium (Na),
mercury (Hg), hydrogen (H), and
helium (He). Frequency increases
from left to right.

Heating is one way to excite a gas, in other words, to cause it to emit radiation.
Most gases glow once they reach temperatures above about 2000°C. Flames are
glowing gases of this sort, heated by combustion. The sun’s light comes from hot
gases on its visible surface, which has a temperature of 5500°C. A second way to
excite a gas is to send an electric current through it. This process, called electric
discharge, creates the light seen in neon tubes, mercury or sodium vapor bulbs,
sparks, and lightning strokes. Electric discharge tubes containing a dilute gas can
be used to study the gas’s spectrum (Figure 16).
How can we explain the observed spectra? As you know, when any substance is
heated, the random kinetic energy of its atoms increases. The Greek model of the
atom offers no reason why this should cause materials to glow, but the planetary
model of the atom does: Heating energizes the subatomic parts of the atom, some of
these parts are electrically charged, and these vibrating and orbiting charged parti-
cles should send out EM radiation. But why do gases emit line spectra rather than
continuous spectra? Why are only some wavelengths emitted, rather than all wave-
lengths? What determines which wavelengths are emitted? The planetary atom
offers no clue.
There is an even more glaring problem with the planetary atom. As explained in
Figure 17, an orbiting electron can be thought of as vibrating along two directions at
once. But you know that vibrating charged particles emit radiation, so an orbiting
electron should radiate electromagnetic energy all the time! But observation shows
that atoms do not radiate all the time. Worse yet, if an electron did radiate all the
time, it would have to continually lose energy, which would cause it to spiral into
Atoms are completely impossible
from the classical [Newtonian]
the nucleus and cease orbiting. So the planetary model predicts that atoms should
point of view. collapse! Something’s wrong.
Richard Feynman One can imagine a universe in which Newtonian physics would be correct even
down to the smallest sizes, but it would be a pretty boring place. Atoms could not
exist, so there would be no chemistry, so life would be impossible. The universe
would be a predictable, lifeless, machine.

CONCEPT CHECK 7 You might have noticed that as you heat a metal hot plate,
it first glows dark red and then becomes brighter and whiter. Just before it begins to
glow, we might expect such a hot plate to emit (a) ultraviolet radiation; (b) infrared
radiation; (c) no radiation at all.

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 The Quantum Universe

⫹ ⫺

Figure 16 Figure 17
An electric discharge tube containing a dilute An orbiting electron (black circle) can
gas. With a large enough charge on the two be thought of as making two vibrational
electrodes at the ends of the tube, the elec- motions: When viewed from below, it
trodes discharge by forcing electrons off the appears to be vibrating along the x-axis
negative electrode. These electrons excite (green circle), and when viewed from
atoms of the gas by colliding with them as the side, it appears to be vibrating
the electrons move through the tube toward along the y-axis (white circle).
the positive electrode. The gas atoms then
lose their energy of excitation by emitting
photons having the characteristic frequencies
of these atoms.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 As the hot plate in the preceding Concept Check goes
from dark red to white, its spectrum would (a) change from a spectrum containing
only red lines to one containing only white lines; (b) change from a spectrum con-
taining only red lines to one containing many different colors; (c) change from a
dim continuous red spectrum to an intense continuous white spectrum; (d) change
from a dim continuous red spectrum to an intense continuous spectrum that
included all the colors.

7 THE QUANTUM ATOM

To see how quantum physics describes atoms, we’ll examine only the simplest atom,
hydrogen, made of one proton and one electron. Because the electron is 2000 times
less massive than the proton, it does nearly all the moving, orbiting in the electro-
magnetic field of a nearly stationary proton. To a good approximation, you can
ignore the proton’s motion, treating it as a tiny material particle at rest. The
quantum model of the atom describes the electron’s matter field.
Imagine a hydrogen atom that’s been at rest and isolated for some period of time.
Since there is no reason for anything to be changing in such an atom, you would
expect the electron’s matter field to have a stationary, unchanging shape. A detailed
mathematical study of the Schroedinger equation for a hydrogen atom yields pre-
cise predictions as to the allowed shapes, or patterns, for the electron’s matter field.
There turn out to be many such allowed patterns. Figure 18 is one way of picturing a
few of these quantum states of the hydrogen atom. Each of the 10 patterns

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 The Quantum Universe
z

(a)
z

(c) (d)
(b)
z
z

(e) (g)
(f)
z

(j)

(h) (i)

Figure 18
Patterns of the microworld. Ten different allowed matter waves, or quantum states, for the
electron in a hydrogen atom. If the electron’s position were measured, it would have a greater
probability of being found in the darker regions where the matter field is more intense.

368
 The Quantum Universe

shown is an allowed pattern for the electron’s matter field. Darker regions are
regions of higher intensity, and unshaded regions are regions of low or zero inten-
sity. To visualize the full three-dimensional patterns, imagine rotating the two-
dimensional diagram around the vertical z-axis shown in each diagram.
Recall what the intensity of a matter field means. If you measure an electron’s
position sufficiently precisely, you’ll find it to be at some fairly precise point x within
the hydrogen atom. The intensity of an electron’s matter field at any particular point x
is the probability that, when a sufficiently precise measurement is made, the electron
will be found to be at that point x. Briefly, the electron is more likely to be found in
the darker regions of Figure 18 and less likely to be found in the lighter regions.
However, don’t let the language of the preceding sentence mislead you into thinking
that “the electron” was actually at point x before the measurement was made; as you
know, “the electron” is a field quantum and the position measurement creates a posi-
tion x for it. Before the measurement, the quantum had one of the shapes shown in
Figure 18.
Let’s discuss some of these shapes. State (a) occupies a smaller volume than
does any other state. In this state, the electron is highly likely to be found close to
the nucleus and is equally likely to be found in any direction out from the nucleus
(upward, downward, to the left, etc.).
State (b) is larger, so the electron is likely to be found farther from the nucleus
than is an electron in state (a). State (b) has an interesting gap partway out from the
nucleus, representing a distance from the nucleus at which the electron will never
be found. It is interesting that an electron in state (b) can be found inside or outside
this distance but never at this distance. How can an electron be sometimes inside
and sometimes outside this distance without sometimes being at this distance? The
answer is that a tiny particle-like electron is not present except when a position
measurement is made; between measurements, only the matter field shown in the
figure exists. State (e) is larger still. The electron is likely to be found still farther
from the nucleus and there are now two gaps where the electron will not be found.
Unlike states (a), (b), and (e), the remaining seven states shown are not the same
in every direction. State (d) is shaped like a fat doughnut circling the z-axis and is
reminiscent of the planetary model of the atom. State (c) is shaped like a dumbbell
(two spheres) along the z-axis. It is separated into two parts, between which the
electron is not found.
The figure shows 10 of the most common quantum states of hydrogen,
nature’s simplest atom. There are many more states, not shown in the figure.
Each pattern represents one state (or condition) in which a hydrogen atom can
exist.5 Atoms with more than one electron have more complex quantum states,
but they all are found by solving the Schroedinger equation in the form appropri-
ate to that particular atom.
In addition to predicting these states, the Schroedinger equation predicts that
each of them has just one specific energy. That is, the energy of each state shown
in Figure 18 has no quantum uncertainty. From the figure, we can even make edu-
cated guesses about the energy level (the amount of energy) of each state. Because
the force by the proton on the electron is attractive, one would have to do work to
pull an electron outward, away from the nucleus. So the electromagnetic energy of

5
A hydrogen atom can also exist in a combination of two or more of these allowed quantum states.

369
 The Quantum Universe

the atom increases as the electron gets farther from the nucleus. This is just like
gravitational energy: Because Earth exerts an attractive force on a rock, the rock’s
gravitational energy increases when the rock is lifted upward. So the smallest mat-
ter field, the one bunched most tightly around the nucleus, should have the lowest
energy. Judging from the figure, this is state (a). Because of the gravitational anal-
ogy, this is called the ground state. It is the state in which the electron is as close to
the nucleus as it can be. Recall that if the universe obeyed Newtonian physics,
atoms would collapse because orbiting electrons would radiate their energy away
and fall into the nuclei. In contrast to this, there is a smallest possible quantum state
of hydrogen, namely state (a). The atom cannot radiate energy when it is in this
state, simply because there are no states of lower energy. An atom in its ground state
is like a ball that’s rolled all the way downhill and can’t roll any lower. Quantum
physics prevents atoms from collapsing!
Other states are called excited states because they are more energetic than the
ground state. The precise energy of each quantum state can be calculated using
Schroedinger’s equation. Figure 19 shows the lowest five of these precise energies (but
without showing any actual numerical values). As expected, state (a) has the lowest
energy, labeled E1. States (b) (c) and (d) all happen to have the same energy, labeled
You surely must understand, E2. The remaining six states pictured in Figure 18 all happen to have the same energy,
Bohr, that the whole idea of labeled E3. Two further energy levels, labeled E4 and E5, corresponding to additional
quantum jumps necessarily leads quantum states, are shown. Notice that the energy levels get closer together as the
to nonsense.... If we are still going energy increases. An energy-level diagram like this Figure is a prime example of the
to have to put up with these quantum or “digital” nature of the microscopic world: If the energy of a hydrogen
damn quantum jumps, I am sorry
atom’s electron is measured, it will be found to have one of these energies and no
that I ever had anything to do
with quantum theory. other. For instance, it cannot have an energy between E1 and E2.
Schroedinger, during a Conversation Each of these quantum states represents an isolated hydrogen atom that isn’t
with Niels Bohr changing. What happens when something does change? What happens, for exam-
ple, when an atom emits radiation? As we know, radiation is quantized and so can
be observed only in energy bundles called photons. An atom must emit at least one
quantum of energy—one photon—whenever it radiates. This means that it must be
in an excited state to begin with, and it must transition to a lower-energy state. The
transition must be instantaneous, because the atom is not allowed to have any
energy other than the ones shown in Figure 19. Such an instantaneous transition of
an atom from one quantum state to another is called a quantum jump.

E5
E4
E3 States (e) through (j)

Figure 19
Energy

E2 States (b), (c), (d)

The lowest five energy levels for
the electron in a hydrogen atom.
When measured in joules, these
atomic energy levels are quite
small: The energy difference,
E2 - E1, between the lowest two
E1 State (a)
levels is only 1.6 * 10 - 18 joules.

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 The Quantum Universe

Figure 20 shows a common way of representing quantum jumps. The transition is

shown as an arrow on an energy-level diagram stretching from the initial to the final
energy. The diagram represents an atom making a transition from the E4 to the E2
energy level and also indicates that a single photon is emitted, carrying away
the energy. You can picture this by imagining that, in Figure 18, a state (not shown
in Figure 18) having energy E4 suddenly vanishes and is replaced by state (b), (c), or
(d). The hydrogen atom truly jumps from one pattern to another.
Now you can understand atomic spectra and the emission of radiation by an
atom. Atoms emit radiation when they quantum-jump to a lower energy level,
creating and emitting a photon in the process. Recall that a photon’s energy is hf,
where h is Planck’s constant and f is the photon’s frequency. Conservation of
energy tells us that the energy hf of the emitted photon must equal the energy dif-
ference in the quantum jump; that is,

hf = (energy of high-energy state) - (energy of low-energy state)

So if you know the energies E4 and E2, you can find the frequency of the photon
emitted in a quantum jump between these two levels. Physicists can calculate the
precise energy levels from the Schroedinger equation and then find the frequency of
the photon emitted in each possible quantum jump between pairs of energy levels.

How do we know Schroedinger’s equation is reliable? Figure 21 shows, on an

energy-level diagram, the 10 downward quantum jumps that are possible between the
lowest five energy levels for hydrogen. Since the photon’s energy is equal to the atom’s
energy change, the length of the arrow representing each quantum jump is proportional to
the frequency of the radiation emitted in that quantum jump. So a hydrogen atom can emit
10 different frequencies by quantum-jumping from the E2, E3, E4, or E5 levels downward
into one of the lower levels. Figure 22 shows these 10 frequencies quantitatively. Since
Schroedinger’s equation predicts the energy levels, it also predicts these frequencies.
When one uses a spectroscope to measure the spectrum of atomic hydrogen gas, the There is no part of chemistry
frequencies turn out to be precisely those indicated in Figure 22 and predicted by quantum that does not depend, in its
theory. Schroedinger’s equation first gained fame because Schroedinger was able to show fundamental theory, upon
that it correctly predicted these frequencies. For just one example, the Schroedinger equa- quantum principles.
tion predicts the wavelength (which can be calculated from the frequency) of the photon Linus Pauling, Chemist
emitted when a hydrogen atom quantum jumps from energy E2 to E1 to be
1.21568 * 10 - 7 meters. Actual measurement shows it to be 1.21566 * 10 - 7 meters

E5
E4
E3 States (e) through (j)
Photon
Energy

E2 States (b), (c), (d)

Figure 20
A symbolic representation of a
quantum jump from one quantum
state to another. A photon, carrying
energy E4 - E2, is emitted at the
E1 State (a)
instant the quantum jump occurs.

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 The Quantum Universe

E5
E4
E3

E2

Figure 21
The possible downward quantum
jumps between the lowest five
energy levels of the hydrogen atom. E1

Into Into Into the Four quantum jumps into the

E4 E3 E2 level E1 energy level

Figure 22
The frequencies of the photons that
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
are given off during the quantum
jumps shown in Figure 21. Frequency in trillions (1012) of Hz

plus or minus a small error. Many other hydrogen frequencies and wavelengths have been
predicted and measured with similarly accurate agreement. Physicists know that there must
be something right about any equation that can predict six-figure numbers.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 In three dimensions, the quantum state in Figure 18(h) is

best described as having the shape of (a) a dumbbell; (b) a doughnut; (c) two dumb-
bells oriented in different directions; (d) two doughnuts oriented in different direc-
tions; (e) a dumbbell and a doughnut.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 Among the 10 quantum jumps between the five energy
levels of hydrogen shown in Figure 21, the one that will create the photon with the
highest frequency is (a) E5 to E4; (b) E5 to E1; (c) E5 to E2; (d) E2 to E1.

CONCEPT CHECK 11 How many different frequencies can be created by quan-

tum jumps among only the lowest six energy levels of hydrogen? (a) 6. (b) 5. (c) 10.
(d) 14. (e) 15.

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© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

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Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 7. Give an example in which the switching on of a detector

causes a particle’s matter field to quantum-jump.
8. What is meant by a nonlocal effect?
THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT
1. Does the particle represented by the matter field of Figure 2
have a precise position? A precise velocity? 9. What is entanglement?
2. Which wave packet of Figure 3 has the more precise posi- 10. What does Bell’s principle tell us about entangled particles?
tion? The more precise velocity? 11. What does the Rarity-Tapster experiment demonstrate?
3. Does the uncertainty principle say that a particle must have a 12. Can the nonlocal connections described by Bell’s principle
¢x that is larger than some prescribed value? What does it say? transfer energy instantaneously?
4. Does a baseball have large quantum uncertainties or small
ones? Why? QUANTUM REALITY AND A MODERN WORLDVIEW
13. According to the standard interpretation of quantum theory,
THE EFFECT OF DETECTORS which of the following are actually inherent in nature: pre-
5. What happens to a particle’s wave packet when a position dictability, precise positions for microscopic particles such as
measurement is performed? electrons?
6. Is it possible for a single microscopic particle’s matter field 14. Describe at least two key ideas of the Newtonian worldview
to be spread out over macroscopic dimensions, such as sev- that are contradicted by quantum physics.
eral meters or larger? Give an example.

⌬x Figure 2
The matter wave representing a sin-
gle particle whose uncertainty in
position is ¢x, moving along the
x-axis x-axis. A matter wave like this,
which is spread out over only a
Direction of motion of wave packet limited distance, is called a
wave packet.

⌬x Figure 3
Two wave packets, having differ-
ent values of ¢x . Packet B can be
A
constructed by squeezing packet
A to half its size. In this process,
all of A’s wavelengths get
⌬x
squeezed to half their original
length, which means that the
velocities and also the uncertainty
in velocity get doubled.
B

From Chapter 13 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

375
 The Quantum Universe: Problem Set

OBSERVING ATOMIC SPECTRA you see that it is tails. What odds should you now assign to
15. What is the purpose of the prism in a spectroscope? heads? Does this sudden shift in the probabilities have any-
16. What is the purpose of the thin slit in a spectroscope? thing to do with quantum theory?
17. Exactly what is measured by a spectroscope? 9. Figure 8(a) shows the pattern formed by the matter wave on
18. Describe two ways to excite a gas. the screen in the double-slit experiment. Is this a graph of a
19. When we excite a gas, what happens to its atoms? single electron’s matter field just before or just after the elec-
20. Describe one way in which the planetary model disagrees tron hits the screen? What happens to the matter field when
with observations of atomic spectra. the electron hits the screen?
21. There’s a really huge problem with the planetary model of the
atom. What is it? QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT
10. How would the graph of Figure 12 look if the photons in the
THE QUANTUM ATOM Rarity-Tapster experiment behaved like ordinary Newtonian
22. Describe the three-dimensional shapes of some of the states particles?
in Figure 18. 11. Suppose that the Rarity-Tapster experiment could be per-
23. Exactly what does one of the states in Figure 18 represent? formed using electrons instead of photons. Would the out-
24. Which state(s) in Figure 18 has the lowest energy? come still be an interference pattern like Figure 12?
25. Which state(s) in Figure 18 is a ground state? Which are
excited states? QUANTUM REALITY AND A MODERN WORLDVIEW
26. Consider any one of the states in Figure 18. In this state, does 12. Electrons do not normally have precise positions. How can
the electron have a predictable energy? A predictable posi- you cause an electron to have a (fairly) precise position?
tion? A predictable velocity? 13. Electrons do not normally have precise velocities. How can
27. Describe the process by which atoms create radiation. you cause an electron to have a (fairly) precise velocity?
28. What is meant by a quantum jump in an atom? 14. List several general ways in which nature is non-Newtonian.
29. How many different frequencies are emitted in the quantum 15. List several specific experiments that show that nature is
jumps shown in Figure 21? non-Newtonian.
16. List several specific experiments that show that nature
is Newtonian.
Conceptual Exercises
OBSERVING ATOMIC SPECTRA
THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE 17. In what ways is your radio a type of spectroscope?
18. In what ways does a radio (preceding exercise) differ from
1. Arrange the following objects in order, beginning with the the spectroscope described in the text?
object having the largest uncertainty range and ending with 19. Why do spectroscopes use a thin slit (Figure 14) rather than,
the one having the smallest: proton, glucose molecule say, a round hole?
C6H 12O6, helium atom, baseball, electron, grain of dust, 20. Why, when different materials burn, do they often create
water molecule, automobile. flames of different colors?
2. If Planck’s constant were smaller than it is, how would the 21. How might the chemical composition of a burning substance
uncertainty principle be affected? What if Planck’s constant be determined?
were zero? 22. If you compared the spectra from two sodium vapor light-
3. How would it affect you if Planck’s constant were 1 J/Hz bulbs, would they be the same? What if you compared a
instead of 6.6 * 10 - 34 J>Hz? sodium vapor bulb with a mercury vapor bulb?
4. If Planck’s constant were smaller than it is, would this affect
the sizes of atoms? If so, how?
THE QUANTUM ATOM
THE EFFECT OF DETECTORS 23. Explain, in terms of inertia, why the electron does nearly all
the moving in a hydrogen atom.
5. Think of a few common situations, unrelated to quantum the- 24. Describe the three-dimensional shape of the quantum state
ory, in which observation changes reality. Would public opin- shown in Figure 18(f).
ion polls be an example? Would looking at the moon be 25. Describe the three-dimensional shape of the quantum state
an example? shown in Figure 18(g).
6. One everyday example in which a measurement disturbs the 26. Describe the three-dimensional shape of the quantum state
measured object is the measurement of the temperature of a shown in Figure 18(i).
pan of water using a thermometer. How does this disturb the 27. Describe the three-dimensional shape of the quantum state
temperature? Is this a quantum effect? shown in Figure 18(j).
7. What would happen to the wave packet of Figure 2 (see pre- 28. If a very accurate measurement of an atom’s mass could be
vous page) if an accurate velocity measurement were per- made in an excited state and in its ground state, would any
formed? How would the measurement affect ¢x and ¢v? difference be found? (Hint: Remember E = mc2.)
8. Your friend flips a coin but covers it up so that neither of you 29. What happens to an atom’s mass when it emits a photon?
can tell whether it is heads or tails. What odds (probability) (Hint: Remember E = mc2.)
would be fair to put on heads? Suppose he uncovers it and

376
 The Quantum Universe: Problem Set

(a)
z

(c) (d)
(b)
z
z

(e) (g)
(f)
z

(j)

(h) (i)

Figure 18
Patterns of the microworld. Ten different allowed matter waves, or quantum states, for the
electron in a hydrogen atom. If the electron’s position were measured, it would have a greater
probability of being found in the darker regions where the matter field is more intense.

377
 The Quantum Universe: Problem Set

y–x Figure 12
E5 If, instead of studying x or y sepa-
E4 rately, we study the difference y – x
E3 between the two impact points on
the two screens, we get an interfer-
ence pattern. How does the second
E2 0 photon, impacting at some point y,
“know” at which point x the first
photon impacted? The second pho-
ton instantly coordinates its impact
pattern with the first photon’s
impact point, despite the fact that
Number of the uncertainty principle says that
2-particle impacts both impact points are uncertain
in advance.

E1

Figure 21
The possible downward quantum jumps between
the lowest five energy levels of the hydrogen
atom.

⫺ B

(a) (b)

Figure 8
Merely switching on a particle detector at a point such as D causes the matter field to
jump from the interference pattern (a) to the noninterference pattern (b).

378
 The Quantum Universe: Problem Set

Red

Narrow beam of
radiation containing Prism Yellow
various frequencies

Radiation source
such as a heated Violet
glowing gas Partition
with a thin
slit in it
Viewing screen
or photographic
film

Figure 14
One type of spectroscope.

30. Among the 10 quantum jumps between the five energy levels hydrogen’s second energy level, E2. Which three of these
of hydrogen shown in Figure 21, which one creates the low- four lines are graphed in Figure 22?
est-frequency photon?
31. In Figure 21, which quantum jump creates the higher-
frequency photon, E4 to E3 or E4 to E2? Which of the two Problems
photons has the longer wavelength?
32. In Figure 21, which quantum jump creates the highest fre-
quency, E5 to E4, E4 to E3, E3 to E2, or E2 to E1? Which cre- THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
ates the longest wavelength? 1. An electron (mass = 9.1 * 10 - 31 kg) has a velocity uncer-
33. The four spectral lines of hydrogen photographed in tainty ¢y = 1 m>s. How large must its position uncertainty
Figure 15 have wavelengths and frequencies that agree be? Express your answer in millimeters.
precisely with the four lowest-energy transitions into

Figure 15
The continuous spectrum created by
an incandescent bulb and the line
spectra produced by several differ-
ent kinds of gases: sodium (Na),
mercury (Hg), hydrogen (H), and
helium (He). Frequency increases
from left to right.

Into Into Into the Four quantum jumps into the

E4 E3 E2 level E1 energy level

Figure 22
The frequencies of the photons that
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
are given off during the quantum
Frequency in trillions (1012) of Hz jumps shown in Figure 21.

379
 The Quantum Universe: Problem Set

2. A proton (mass = 1.7 * 10 - 27 kg) has a velocity uncer- 3. (a) and (d)
tainty ¢y = 1 m>s. How large must its position uncertainty 4. It takes only a single detector to determine through which slit
be? Express your answer in millimeters. If you worked the the electron came, so the additional detector is superfluous
preceding problem, then compare the two answers. and the matter field is identical with the matter field for one
3. MAKING ESTIMATES The electron in a ground-state hydrogen detector, (d).
atom remains within a sphere measuring roughly 10–10 5. Two multiplied by itself 10 times (in other words, 210) is
meters across. An electron’s mass is about 10–30 kilograms. 1024, (f ).
Use this data along with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to 6. (a) and (d)
estimate the velocity of this electron. (Hint: In the ground 7. The type of radiation that comes from heated but nonglow-
state, the electron’s velocity should be roughly equal to the ing objects is infrared, (b).
uncertainty in its velocity, in other words ¢y = y. What 8. Solids emit continuous spectra, so the spectrum would look
fraction of lightspeed is this? similar to a rainbow, (d).
9. When rotated about the z axis, the figure becomes a dumb-
THE QUANTUM ATOM bell along the z-axis plus a doughnut around the z-axis, (e).
10. (b)
4. For the hydrogen atom, the energy difference E2 - E1 between 11. In addition to the 10 quantum-jumps shown in Figure 21,
the lowest two levels (Figure 19) is 16 * 10 - 19 J. Find the there are 5 more quantum-jumps from level E6 into the other
frequency of the photon emitted when a hydrogen atom five levels. So the total is 15, (e).
quantum-jumps from state 2 to state 1. In which region of
the spectrum is this (Figure 27)?
Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual
Exercises and Problems
E5
E4 Conceptual Exercises
E3 States (e) through (j) 1. Electron, proton, helium atom, water molecule, glucose mol-
ecule, grain of dust, baseball, automobile.
3. Quantum indeterminacies would be very large and observ-
Energy

E2 States (b), (c), (d) able on the macroscopic level. Newtonian physics, including
predictability, would not be even approximately correct.
5. Public opinion polls that alter public opinion are one exam-
ple. Here are a few of the many other examples: A ther-
mometer slightly alters the temperature of the object it is
measuring, your own observation of your psychological
E1 responses can alter those responses, observation of another
State (a)
person might cause that person to become tense and thus
alter that person’s performance, the presence of a crowd at a
Figure 19 sporting event can affect the outcome of the event.
The lowest five energy levels for the electron in Observation of the moon is not an example.
a hydrogen atom. When measured in joules, 7. It would change into a much more spread-out wave, with a
these atomic energy levels are quite small: The larger ¢x and a smaller ¢y.
energy difference, E2 - E1, between the lowest 9. Before. When the electron hits the screen, the spread-out
two levels is only 1.6 * 10 - 18 joules. psi-wave collapses to a small point.
11. Yes.
13. Measure its velocity. Just after the measurement, its velocity
5. For the hydrogen atom, the energy difference E3 - E2
will be fairly precise.
between the second and third levels (Figure 19) is
15. The double-slit experiment with light, double-slit experi-
3 * 10 - 19 J. Find the frequency of the photon emitted when
ment with electrons or other forms of matter, Rarity Tapster
a hydrogen atom quantum-jumps from state 3 to state 2. In
experiment, other experiments referred to in the “How do we
which region of the spectrum is this (Figure 27)?
know” sections.
6. From the information given in the preceding two problems,
17. Your radio detects radiation of specific frequencies (namely,
find the energy difference E3 - E1 between the third and first
the frequency of your radio dial). So you can use a radio to
energy levels of the hydrogen atom. Find the frequency of the
detect the radio-range frequencies that are present.
photon emitted when a hydrogen atom quantum-jumps from
19. With a round hole, the spectrum would appear as a series of
state 3 to state 1. In which region of the spectrum is this?
circles instead of a series of lines. A slit works better
because two neighboring lines on the screen are more dis-
Answers to Concept Checks tinctly separated than are two neighboring circles.
21. You could determine the composition by determining the
spectrum of the light from the flame and matching it with
1. (a) the spectrum of some known chemical compound.
2. (b)

380
 The Quantum Universe: Problem Set

Typical Sources Typical Object

Frequency, Hz
That Send out Waves Whose Size Is the
at This Frequency: Same as This
Wavelength:
Nucleus
1022 Gamma ray 10⫺14
Processes by protons and
neutrons in atomic nuclei
1020 10⫺12

X-ray
Electrons in atoms, 1018 10⫺10 Atom
high-energy processes
Ultraviolet DNA molecule
Electrons in atoms, 1016 10⫺8
violet Amoeba
low-energy processes green
Thermal vibrations of 1014 yellow 10⫺6 Fine dust particle
red
molecules Visible
Microwave oven 1012 Infrared 10⫺4
Radar antenna Microwave Millimeter

1010 10⫺2 Centimeter

Cell phone Radar
TV, FM radio
FM radio, TV antenna 108 1 Meter

AM radio Soccer field

AM radio antenna 106 102
Radio Kilometer
104 104

60 Hz power-line 102 106

radiation Earth
1 108

Wavelength, m

Figure 27
The electromagnetic spectrum. There are no definite ends to the spectrum and no sharp
boundaries between the regions.

23. The electron is much lighter, so it has less inertia, so it can Problems
be set into motion much easier. 1. From ¢x¢y = h>m, we get
25. A small “doughnut” around the origin, surrounded (at a ¢x = h>m ¢y
larger distance from the origin) by a larger doughnut around = (6.6 * 10 - 34 J>Hz)>(9.1 * 10 - 31 kg * 1 m>s)
the origin. = 0.72 * 10 - 3 m = 0.72 mm
27. A single large “doughnut” around the z-axis. 3. (¢x) # (¢y) L h>m, where ¢x L 10 - 10 meters and
29. When an atom emits a photon, the atom loses energy, so it
m L 10 - 30 kg. So ¢y L (6.6 * 10 - 34)>(10 - 30)(10 - 10) =
loses mass.
31. Energy level 4 to 2. Longest wavelength energy level 4 to 3. 6.6 * 106 m>s. As explained in the hint, this is also the
33. According to Figure 21, the three lines graphed come from approximate speed of the electron. The ratio of this speed to
the following three quantum jumps: Energy levels 3 to 2, 4 lightspeed is 6.6 * 106>3 * 108 L 0.02. So the electron
to 2, and 5 to 2; they are the three longest wavelengths in moves at about 2% of lightspeed.
Figure 15 (the first three, counting from the left). The other line 5. E = hf, where the photon’s energy is E = E3 - E2, so
(red) must then come from the E6 to E2 quantum jump. f = (E3 - E2)>h = 3 * 10 - 19 J>6.6 * 10 - 34 J>Hz =
4.5 * 1014 Hz. This is in the visible region.

381
382
The Nucleus
and Radioactivity:
A New Force

From Chapter 14 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

383
 The Nucleus
and Radioactivity:
A New Force—

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking,
and we thus drift toward unparalleled disaster.
Einstein, Commenting On the Threat of Nuclear War

O
ne way that science has expanded human awareness is by expanding the range
of distances humans can comprehend. Prescientific cultures were aware of
what they could see, down to the smallest dust particles (10 - 5 m) and up to
the distance a person might see on Earth (100 km, or 105 m). Today, telescopes have
extended our awareness to the edge of the observed universe at some 1026 m, while
microscopes and giant accelerators have probed down to atoms (10 - 10 m in size), the
nucleus (10 - 14 m), and subnuclear particles (10 - 19 m and counting).
The nucleus is the star of this chapter. Although the nucleus might seem remote
from human concerns, technology has exploited it as a source of great power. Power
always has both dangers and opportunities; it’s up to all of us to see that when used,
it’s used wisely. So we study nuclear1 physics not only for its intellectual significance
but also because you and I must figure out how to use this powerful knowledge bene-
ficially and nondestructively.
This chapter explores the structure of the nucleus and the nuclear reaction known as
radioactive decay. Section 1 discusses the forces acting within the nucleus, and Section 2
explores the energetics of the nucleus, a topic crucial to our further discussions of nuclear
physics. Then I’ll present the physics of radioactive decay (Section 3), including the con-
cept of half-life (Section 4). The next two sections explore two radioactivity-related
cultural and social topics: radioactive dating and its implications for Earth’s history
(Section 5), and human exposure to radioactivity (Section 6). Section 7 expands on
Section 6 by studying technological risks more generally.

1
Many people advertise their scientific ignorance by mispronouncing this word. Please say “nuc-le-ar,” not
“nuc-u-lar.”

384
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

1 NUCLEAR FORCES: THE THIRD GLUE

Like detectives, scientists form hypotheses and deductions from observed clues.
Let’s do some nuclear detective work.
The nucleus occupies only a tiny region about 10 - 14 m across and is made of pro-
tons and neutrons.2 Figure 1 pictures a typical nucleus. Such a picture is highly simpli-
fied. Most importantly, it neglects quantum uncertainty. The matter fields of all the
nuclear particles overlap, with each particle’s matter field filling the entire nucleus.
Furthermore, protons and neutrons do not resemble the small spheres shown. Each
proton and neutron is made of three tiny pointlike “quarks.” Nevertheless, pictures
like Figure 1 are useful guides.
Since protons repel each other electrically and neutrons are electrically neutral,
there must be an attractive force between these nuclear particles to prevent the
nucleus from being blown apart by electrical repulsion. This attractive force must
be strong enough to overcome the enormous electrical repulsion between two pro-
tons only 10 - 15 m apart (between their centers). Gravity is always attractive. Could
it hold the nucleus together? As you might guess, gravity can’t do the job because
the proton’s and neutron’s small masses make gravitational forces between nuclear
particles insignificant compared with electric forces. Now recall that the forces
experienced in your daily life can be explained in terms of only two fundamental
forces: gravity and electricity. Since gravity is too small, and electricity is only
repulsive inside the nucleus, we deduce that there must be a third fundamental force
that holds the nucleus together.
This third force must strongly attract protons to one another when they are sepa-
rated by about 10 - 15 m. It must also attract neutrons to one another and to protons,
since otherwise neutrons would fall out of the nucleus. But despite its strength at
short separations, this force cannot extend very far. It certainly cannot extend from
one nucleus to the next in solid matter (about 10 - 10 m), because if it did, all the 10⫺14 m
nuclei would clump together. In fact, we could hypothesize (remember, this is a
detective story) that this force extends only far enough to hold the largest nuclei
together, because if it extended much farther, still larger nuclei would be possible
and would be observed in nature. As it turns out, experiments show that this “strong
nuclear force,” or simply strong force, extends only 10 - 15 m, about the distance
between adjacent nuclear particles (Figure 1).
So there are three kinds of “glue” that bind things together. At the nuclear level,
the strong force holds the nucleus together. At the atomic level, the electric force
binds orbital electrons to their nuclei, binds atoms into molecules, and holds solids
and liquids together. And at the astronomical level, the gravitational force holds
planets, stars, solar systems, and galaxies together and reaches across clustered
10⫺15 m
galaxies to determine the shape of the universe.
So far as scientists know, every force in nature can be reduced to the action of Figure 1
these three forces plus just one other: the “weak nuclear force,” or simply weak A schematic representation of a
force, that plays a role in radioactive beta decay (Section 3). Together, these four nucleus. The colored spheres
represent protons, and the white
spheres represent neutrons.
Diagrams like this, showing
subatomic particles as if they were
ordinary Newtonian objects, are
useful aids to thought, but they are
greatly simplified. Nature at this
2
Nuclear diameters range from about 3 * 10 - 15 (hydrogen) to 20 * 10 - 15 m (uranium). level is highly quantized.

385
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

fundamental forces determine the structure of our universe. Nobody knows why
they have the properties that they do, properties that make the universe such an inter-
esting and varied place. What if the properties of any one of them were different? For
example, what if the strong force had a longer range, or were weaker? What if the
electric or gravitational force were stronger or weaker than they actually are? What if
there were three kinds of electric charge, or only one? What if gravity were repulsive
instead of attractive? If any one of the four fundamental forces were altered by much,
the universe would be vastly different and life probably could not exist.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 Suppose that the strong force had a somewhat longer
range than it actually has. How would this affect the list of elements (the periodic
table)? (a) The periodic table would be shorter than it is. (b) The periodic table
would be longer than it is. (c) The periodic table would be left unchanged.

2 NUCLEAR ENERGY AND NUCLEAR STRUCTURE

Since the strong force is by far the strongest of the four fundamental forces, the
energy changes accompanying individual nuclear processes are large compared
with chemical processes (which are dominated by the electric force). That’s why
nuclear weapons explosions and nuclear reactors yield huge energies per kilogram
of material and why electromagnetic radiation from the nucleus lies in the highly
energetic gamma-ray region of the spectrum.
There’s a fundamental quantum reason why nuclear energies must be large.
Because the strong force has a short range, any nuclear particle is trapped in a small
region of space. The uncertainty principle tells us that any such well-localized par-
ticle must have a highly uncertain speed and its average speed must therefore be
large, so its kinetic energy is large. Quantitatively, any nuclear particle trapped in a
region as small as 10 - 14 m must have an average speed of at least 3 * 107 m>s, or
about 10% of lightspeed. This is about the speed at which relativistic phenomena
begin to be important. This is indicated in Figure 2. The x at the edge of the region
that is forbidden by the quantum uncertainty principle indicates a typical nuclear
size and speed.
A similar argument applies to entire atoms: Since the matter field for an electron
in an atom is about 10 - 10 m across, the uncertainty principle implies that atomic
electrons must move at about 0.5% of lightspeed. This is indicated in Figure 2 by
the point y.
Since nuclei are made of parts, you might suspect that it’s possible to alter their
structure. Any process that does so is called a nuclear reaction. The medieval
chemist-magicians known as “alchemists” went to fantastic lengths trying to trans-
form one chemical element into another, especially lead into gold (at a profit).
Neither their chemistry nor their magic produced any gold, but the dream has
turned out to be achievable. Although magic doesn’t help, chemical reactions are on
the right track. The problem is that ordinary chemical energies are far too low to do
the job. Today, nuclear chemists routinely turn one element into another. It’s even
possible to convert lead to gold, but you can’t make a profit because the needed
energy is worth much more than the gold.
Nuclear reactions are a little like chemical reactions. An atom’s chemical proper-
ties are determined by its number of orbital electrons, that is, by the element to
which the atom belongs, specified by its atomic number. The elements and their

386
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Speed

Forbidden by relativity
c

Typical size of a Quantum

nucleus and speed ⫹ Special
of a nuclear particle special relativity
relativity
General
relativity

0.1c x
Typical size of an
atom and speed of Quantum
an atomic electron Newtonian
y
Forbidden by
quantum theory 10⫺14 10⫺5 1022 Size or distance in meters

Figure 2
The domains of Newtonian, relativistic, and quantum physics. The numbers and boundaries are
only representative; there are no definite borders between the domains of the theories. As
shown on the diagram, atomic physics falls into the quantum domain, while nuclear physics
falls at the borderline between the quantum and the quantum relativistic domain.

atomic numbers are listed in the periodic table (inside back cover). The atomic
number is important to nuclear reactions, too, because it’s the number of protons in
the nucleus. But neutrons are also significant in determining nuclear behavior. Two
nuclei with identical numbers of both protons and neutrons are said to belong to the
same isotope. Just as atoms of a particular element have identical chemical proper-
ties, nuclei of a particular isotope have identical nuclear properties.
The numbering system for isotopes is only slightly more complicated than that
for elements. An isotope is numbered by its atomic number, its number of protons,
and also by its mass number, its total number of protons and neutrons—the total
number of particles in the nucleus. Because protons and neutrons have about the
same mass, the mass of the entire nucleus is nearly proportional to the mass num-
ber, hence the term “mass number.” For example, a nucleus with mass number 8 is
about twice as massive as a nucleus with mass number 4.
As an example, the element carbon has atomic number 6, so every carbon
nucleus has six protons. Because some carbon nuclei contain six neutrons, others
contain seven, and still others contain eight, there are three different isotopes of car-
bon. These three isotopes have identical chemical properties but different nuclear
properties. Their mass numbers are 12, 13, and 14. I’ll indicate specific isotopes by
their chemical symbol preceded by their atomic number as a subscript and their
mass number as a superscript. So the three isotopes of carbon are 126C, 136C, 146C. But
I’ll often drop the atomic number, because the chemical symbol actually specifies
it, and simply write 12C, 13C, 14C, pronounced “carbon-12, carbon-13, carbon-14.”

CONCEPT CHECK 2 Which fundamental forces come into play during chemi-
cal reactions? (a) Gravitational. (b) Electromagnetic. (c) Frictional. (d) Nuclear.

387
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

CONCEPT CHECK 3 The nuclei 3H and 3He have (a) identical atomic numbers
but different mass numbers; (b) different atomic numbers and different mass num-
bers; (c) different atomic numbers and identical mass numbers; (d) identical atomic
numbers and identical mass numbers.

3 RADIOACTIVE DECAY: SPONTANEOUS NUCLEAR

DISINTEGRATION
In 1896, French physicist Henri Becquerel finished his research for the week and
stored a certain uranium compound away in a drawer for the weekend. By chance,
an unexposed photographic plate was stored in the same drawer. When he returned
the following week, Becquerel found to his surprise that the film had been exposed,
despite having been kept in a dark drawer. A lesser scientist might have shrugged
his shoulders and tossed out the ruined film, but Becquerel suspected a connection
between the uranium and the exposure. He discovered that he could reproduce the
effect whenever he placed the uranium near photographic film. Apparently, the ura-
nium radiated something that could expose a photographic plate. The phenomenon
Marie Curie is, of all celebrated was called “radioactivity.” When Becquerel subjected the uranium to various chem-
beings, the only one whom fame ical treatments, they produced no change in the effect. So radioactivity had little to
has not corrupted. do with chemistry. Science had had its first brush with the nucleus, even though the
Albert Einstein’s Eulogy Upon the Death nucleus had not yet been discovered.
of Marie Curie in 1934
Two years later, the Polish physicist Marie Curie (Figure 3) and her husband Pierre
detected radioactivity in pitchblende, a tarry black substance. They were not surprised
at the radioactivity because pitchblende is a known ore of uranium, but they were sur-
prised to find that the radiation was more intense than the radiation from pure ura-
nium, even though the pitchblende contained only low concentrations of uranium.
Apparently some other substance, much more radioactive than uranium, was present
in pitchblende. The Curies took on the heroic task of chemically separating this sub-

Figure 3
Marie Curie shared, with Pierre Curie
and Henri Becquerel, the 1903 Nobel
American Institute of Physics/Emilio Segre Visual Archives

Prize for Physics. Pierre fell beneath

the wheels of a carriage and was
killed in 1906. Marie Curie continued
her research, confident of success
despite the widespread prejudice
against women in physical science.
She did succeed: She was the first
woman to teach at the Sorbonne in
Paris, the first person to receive two
Nobel prizes, and element 96 is
named in her honor. Her daughter
Iréne became a nuclear scientist,
winning the 1935 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry. One of Marie Curie’s
contributions was opening the doors
of science to other young women. In
1934 she developed cataracts and
lesions on her fingers and died of
radiation-induced leukemia. Iréne
Curie also died of leukemia.

388
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

stance from 8 tonnes of pitchblende. This involved some monumental detective work,
because the new substance and its chemical properties were unknown. They managed
to get only a bare powdery pinch, 0.01 grams, of the stuff. Like uranium, it radiated
spontaneously, but it gave off rays at a much higher rate than did an equal mass of ura-
nium. Because of its powerful radiation, they named the new element “radium.”
Since the discovery of uranium and radium, scientists have found lots of radioac-
tive substances. Every isotope whose atomic number is greater than 83 (bismuth) is
radioactive, and there are many radioactive isotopes of the lighter elements as
well. For example, among the three isotopes of carbon, 14C is radioactive, but 12C
and 13C are not. Experiments (Figure 4) show that radioactive materials emit three
distinct types of rays, known as alpha, beta, and gamma rays. The way these rays
respond to electric or magnetic fields shows that alpha rays are positively charged,
beta rays are negatively charged, and gamma rays are not charged. These rays come
from the nuclei of various isotopes.
Closer examination reveals that most nuclei are stable, meaning they will
remain forever unchanged unless outside influences disturb them. But some nuclei
are unstable or radioactive; they will eventually change their structure even if they
experience no outside disturbance. Such a spontaneous change in structure is called
radioactive decay. There are two main kinds of radioactive decay.3 In alpha decay,
a radioactive nucleus spits out a particle called an alpha particle that is identical
with the nucleus of helium, 42He—two protons and two neutrons bonded together by
the strong nuclear force (Figure 5). If the alpha particle gets into the air, collisions

Alpha Figure 4
rays An experiment showing that
Gamma
radioactive materials can emit
rays three different types of rays. The
Beta rays two metal plates create an electric
field in the space between the
plates. Because they are attracted
to the negative plate and repelled
by the positive plate, alpha rays
Metal plate Metal plate must carry a positive electric
carrying positive carrying negative charge. Similarly, beta rays are
electrical charge electrical charge
negatively charged, and gamma
⫹ ⫺ rays are not charged.

Lead
block

Radioactive
material
Battery

⫹ ⫺

3
In addition to the two types discussed here, there are other less common types of radioactive decay processes,
such as positron decay in which the nucleus creates and emits a positive electron or “positron.”

389
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

with air molecules will soon slow it down, after which it will pick up two electrons
from nearby atoms to become a normal atom of helium.
In beta decay, a radioactive nucleus spits out an electron (Figure 6). This is sur-
prising because there are no electrons in the nucleus! I’ll straighten out this mystery
later in this section. Once it gets into the air, the electron collides with air mole-
cules, slows down, and is captured by some nearby atom to become an ordinary
orbital electron. But when it’s emitted by a radioactive nucleus, it’s called a beta
Daughter nucleus after particle to indicate the process that created it.
radioactive decay
Most radioactive isotopes decay by only one of these two processes. For exam-
ple, uranium and radium are alpha emitters, and 14C is a beta emitter. Because alpha
and beta decay violently disturb the nucleus, both cause the nucleus to emit electro-
magnetic radiation, so most decays are accompanied by a gamma-ray photon. In
Alpha particle terms of quantum physics, the nucleus quantum-jumps into a more stable, lower-
breaks away energy state, emitting a gamma-ray photon in the process, just as an atom emits a
from the nucleus
visible photon when it quantum-jumps to a lower-energy state. Although alpha and
Figure 5
beta rays are often called “radiation” because they radiate outward from the
Alpha decay. nucleus, they are not electromagnetic radiations. They are, instead, streams of mate-
rial alpha or beta particles. Gamma rays, however, are a form of electromagnetic
radiation.
Radioactivity occurs because some nuclei don’t stick together so well. One source
An electron (also
called a beta of such instability is simply large size: A very large nucleus has a hard time sticking
particle) is created together because each proton tends to be pushed out of the nucleus by the long-range
in the nucleus and electrical repulsion of the many other protons while being held in by the short-range
immediately ejected.
nuclear attraction of only the nearest neighboring protons and neutrons. This is why
all nuclei having atomic numbers larger than 83 (bismuth) are radioactive.
In alpha decay, a small part of the nucleus is pushed out (Figure 7). Because the
alpha particle 42He, is one of nature’s most stable structures, it is this combination of
protons and neutrons that breaks away. Once separated from the nucleus, an alpha
particle is pushed strongly away by the long-range electric force from the protons in
the remaining nucleus, called the daughter nucleus.
Daughter nucleus after Whereas alpha decay is the sort of falling apart one might expect in an unstable
radioactive decay
nucleus, beta decay is more surprising. It’s caused by the weak force, which actually
Figure 6 causes a neutron to transform spontaneously into a proton while simultaneously creat-
Beta decay. ing a high-energy electron (Figure 8). When this process occurs within a nucleus, the
nucleus loses a neutron and gains a proton. Because electrons have such a small mass,
the uncertainty principle tells us that the uncertainty in position of the created electron
is quite large—much larger than the entire nucleus. In other words, the electron is not
confined within the nucleus and is ejected at high energy.4
The nucleus transforms into a different isotope during radioactive decay. It’s the
alchemist’s dream, and it’s been occurring spontaneously all the time! For example,
when 146C beta decays, it loses a neutron and gains a proton, so its atomic number
increases by 1 while its mass number remains unchanged. The daughter nucleus,
with atomic number 7 and mass number 14, is 147N. I’ll represent nuclear reactions
the way I have represented other processes: with an arrow from the initial to the
final situation. For example, the beta decay of 14C is
14
6C : 147N + beta

4
A tiny uncharged particle called a “neutrino” also flies out of the nucleus during beta decay.

390
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

As another example, 238

92U is an alpha emitter. Alpha decay reduces the atomic num- ⫹ ⫹ ⫹
ber by 2, from 92 to 90 (thorium), and reduces the mass number by 4, so this ⫹ ⫹
⫹ ⫹ ⫹
nuclear reaction is
⫹ ⫹ ⫹
⫹
238
: 234 ⫹ ⫹ ⫹
92U 90Th + alpha

It’s always enlightening to view processes in energy terms. What energy trans-
formation occurs in radioactive decay? (Pause, for thinking.) . . . Alpha and beta
particles carry microscopic kinetic energy (thermal energy) into the environment Alpha particle about
to break away
around the nucleus, and gamma photons carry radiant energy. These energies came
from the nuclear structure of the radioactive material. So the universe loses nuclear Figure 7
energy and gains thermal and radiant energies: During alpha decay, an alpha
particle becomes separated from
nuclear energy ¡ thermal energy + radiant energy the rest of the nucleus and is
pushed rapidly away by the
Radioactive decay is like a landslide, but caused by nuclear forces instead of repulsion from the protons in the
gravitational forces. In a landslide, gravity pulls part of a hill downward into a more daughter nucleus.
stable, compact configuration. The slide transforms the gravitational energy of the
elevated land into kinetic energy during the slide and finally into thermal energy. In
radioactive decay, the forces in the nucleus cause a similar spontaneous “sliding” of
the protons and neutrons in an unstable nucleus into a more stable configuration,
Before
causing the nucleus to fall apart instead of downhill. In the process, nuclear energy
(instead of gravitational energy) is converted to thermal and other forms.
Radioactive isotopes exist—or can be manufactured artificially in nuclear reac-
tors or particle accelerators—for nearly every chemical element. Because they
have chemical properties identical to the chemical properties of the stable isotopes ⫹
of the same element, radioactive isotopes have many medical and other uses, as
well as many health dangers (Section 6). Another significant application of After
radioactive isotopes is radioactive dating (Section 5). But first I must discuss
“half-life.”
Figure 8
CONCEPT CHECK 4 Which fundamental forces come into play during nuclear The details of beta decay: A neutron
reactions? (a) Gravitational. (b) Electromagnetic. (c) Frictional. (d) Strong or transforms into a proton and a
weak nuclear. fast-moving electron, and the
electron moves rapidly away.
Compare this with Figure 6.
CONCEPT CHECK 5 When radioactive iodine (131 53I) beta-decays, the daughter
127 132
nucleus is (a) 51Sb; (b) (c) 132
53I; 54Xe ; (d) 131
54Cs ; (e) 131
54Xe.

4 HALF-LIFE: WHEN DOES A NUCLEUS DECAY?

A central feature of quantum physics is that individual microscopic events are
unpredictable, but the statistics of these events are predictable. It’s like flipping
coins: You can’t predict the outcome of one coin flip, but you can predict that
you’ll get about 50% heads during many flips. The difference between a macro-
scopic process like a coin flip and a microscopic process is that “nature knows”
how the coin will fall. You could use Newtonian physics to predict the coin flip,
but microscopic processes are inherently unpredictable. Given the submicro-
scopic nature of the nucleus, it’s not surprising to learn that radioactive decay is
inherently unpredictable. It’s one of nature’s most prominent examples of quan-
tum uncertainties.

391
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

To be specific, consider the alpha decay of one uranium nucleus. Because of

⫹ ⫹ nature’s preference for the highly stable alpha particle, you can think of the surface
⫹
⫹
of a big nucleus like uranium as a collection of alpha particles that drift near the
⫹ ⫹
⫹ surface, attracted to the nucleus by the strong force but repelled by the nucleus’s
⫹
⫹ ⫹ ⫹ ⫹ ⫹ protons (Figure 9). Each alpha particle is really a quantum matter field of the same
⫹ sort that is responsible for the quantum properties of electrons. So there is always
⫹
⫹ ⫹ ⫹ ⫹ some probability that any particular alpha particle will find itself far enough out-
⫹ ⫹ ⫹ side the nucleus that the strong force (which, remember, has a short range) can no
⫹ ⫹ longer be felt. Such an alpha particle is immediately pushed out of the nucleus by
the long-range electric forces of all the protons.
Figure 9
Because of quantum uncertainties, nature “knows” only the chances that an
Think of the surface of a big alpha particle will be ejected, not when it will be ejected. A particular uranium
nucleus as a collection of alpha nucleus might alpha-decay in 1 second, in 1 year, or in 20 billion years. However,
particles drifting near the given a large number of uranium nuclei, it’s possible to predict roughly what frac-
surface. When, by chance, one of tion of them will decay in any particular period of time. It’s just like coin tosses:
these finds itself so far from the You can predict the statistics, but not the individual outcomes.
nucleus that it no longer feels the For any particular radioactive isotope, the most important statistic is the half-life,
inward pull of the short-range the time during which 50% of a large collection of nuclei decays. Because some
strong force by its neighbors, it’s radioactive nuclei are highly unstable and others are much more stable, different iso-
immediately pushed away by the
topes have widely different half-lives. A highly unstable nucleus is like a landslide
long-range electric forces of the
waiting to happen: Just as the waiting landslide will probably slide soon, the nucleus
other protons.
will probably decay soon. A more stable nucleus will probably take longer to decay.
Table 1 gives the half-lives of several radioactive isotopes.
For example, suppose you are given one gram of 14C, a radioactive isotope with a
6000-year half-life that beta-decays to 14N, the stable form of nitrogen. During the next
6000 years, 50% of the 14C nuclei will decay by transforming into nitrogen, and just
0.5 gram of 14C will remain. How much 14C is left after another 6000 years? (Pause....)
The answer is half of the half-gram, or 0.25 gram, because the half-life statistic still
applies. Six thousand years is the time during which 50% of any macroscopic amount
of 14C decays. So 0.50 grams of 14C remains after 6000 years, 0.25 grams after
12,000 years, 0.125 grams after 18,000 years, and so forth. Figure 10 graphs these val-
ues and connects them with a smooth curve showing the amount remaining at any
time. This is the decay curve for 14C. The decay curve for any radioactive isotope is
identical to that for 14C, only with a different half-life. Thus Figure 10, with the time
measured in half-lives instead of in years (bottom line along the horizontal axis), may
be used for any radioactive isotope.

Table 1
Half-life and decay process of several radioactive isotopes
Isotope Name of element Decay process Half-life (approx.)
14
6C carbon beta 6000 yr
90
38Sr strontium beta 30 yr
131
53I iodine beta 8 days
214
84Po polonium alpha 0.000 16 s
222
86Rn radon alpha 4 days
235
92U uranium alpha 0.7 * 109 yr
238
92U uranium alpha 4.5 * 109 yr
239
94Pu plutonium alpha 24,000 yr

392
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

1.00 Figure 10
Radioactive decay curve for 14C and
0.90 for any other radioactive isotope.

0.80

0.70
Fraction remaining

0.60
1/2
0.50

0.40

0.30
1/4
0.20
1/8
0.10
1/16
1/32

0 6000 12,000 18,000 24,000 30,000

Years (for 14C)
1 2 3 4 5
Number of half-lives (for any radioactive isotope)

MAKI NG ESTI MATES Starting with 100 pennies, suppose you toss all of them and
remove the ones that come up tails. You toss the remaining coins and again remove the
tails. If you continue the process, about how many tosses must you make before you get
down to a single remaining penny? Try it! What is the half-life of pennies in this game?

CONCEPT CHECK 6 Suppose that a radioactive substance has decayed until

only 1/64th of it remains. For how many half-lives has it been decaying? (a) 2. (b) 3.
(c) 4. (d) 5. (e) 6. (f) 7.

5 RADIOACTIVE DATING: WHEN DID WE COME FROM?

Radioactive decay is a kind of clock. If you know how much of a substance has
decayed, you can read the elapsed time from the decay curve (Figure 10). In all of us there is a hunger,
marrow deep, to know our
Carbon dating is one example of radioactive dating. Essentially all of Earth’s car- heritage, to know who we are,
bon is one of the two stable carbon isotopes, 12C and 13C. But in Earth’s atmosphere, where we have come from.
about one carbon atom in a trillion is the radioactive form, 14C. Since the half-life of 14C Without this enriching knowledge,
is only 6000 years and Earth is far older than 6000 years, you might wonder how any there is a hollow yearning. No
14 matter what our attainments in
C could still be in the atmosphere. The answer is that cosmic rays, high-energy parti-
cles that travel through outer space, continually replenish it. They occasionally enter the life, there is a vacuum, an
atmosphere and collide with atmospheric nitrogen, transforming the nitrogen into 14C. emptiness, and a most
disquieting loneliness.
Because the carbon in all biological organisms comes ultimately from the atmos-
Alex Haley, in Roots
phere, 14C is distributed throughout the biological world at one 14C atom per trillion

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES After one toss, you will on the average be down to 50 pennies. After
two tosses, 25 pennies. After three, 12.5 or about 12 pennies. After four, about 6 pennies. After five, about
3 pennies. After six, 1 or 2 pennies. After seven, 0 or 1 pennies. So the number of tosses is about six or
seven. The half-life of pennies is one toss.

393
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Table 2 carbon atoms, the same as the atmospheric ratio. This ratio is maintained until a liv-
Isotopes used for radioactive dating ing organism dies. Then the 14C gradually decays without being replenished. The
Isotope Comparison nucleus time elapsed since death can be determined by measuring the amount of 14C
238 206
remaining compared with the amount of stable carbon. For instance, if an old ax
U Pb
handle has only a quarter of the normal amount of 14C, the tree from which the ax
238 234
U U handle was made must have died two half-lives, or 12,000 years, ago.
235 207
U Pb Such a measurement can determine the time elapsed since death if one knows
234
U 230
Th how much 14C was present when the organism died. The usual assumption is that
187
Re 187
Os the fraction of 14C in the atmosphere in the past was nearly the same as it is today,
147
Sm 143
Nd
so the fraction in a long-dead tree when it died would have been one 14C atom in
87 87
every trillion carbon atoms, the same as today. But is this assumption correct? I’ll
Rb Sr
discuss this in a How Do We Know subsection following.
40 40
K Ar Depending on the type of object to be dated (wooden tools, rocks, fossils, etc.),
14
C total C on the radioactive materials available at any particular site, and on the age of the
10
Be total Be dated object, scientists use a variety of different radioactive decay processes.
Carbon dating, for example, works only on materials of biological origin, and only
for ages up to about 10 half-lives of 14C because after that time there is so little 14C
left that it cannot be accurately measured. Each method compares a radioactive iso-
tope with a second nucleus to determine what fraction of the radioactive isotope has
decayed and how long it has been decaying. Table 2 lists a few of these radioactive
nuclei and their comparison nuclei.
The world has been converted in There are also many nonradioactive ways of dating old objects, some providing
an instant of time from a wild
only relative ages and some providing highly accurate ages in years (Table 3). Some
natural one to one in which
humans . . . are consuming,
of these rely on changes that occur at a steady rate over long periods of time in the
wasting, or diverting an estimated crystal structure of rocks or in the structure of biological molecules. Others rely on
45% of the total net biological simply counting the annual rings in trees and annual ice deposits in long cylinders
productivity on land and using of ice removed by deep-drilling techniques from Greenland and Antarctica. Such
more than half of the renewable records extend surprisingly far backward in time: Tree ring dates extend as far back
fresh water. as 11,000 years (with the help of fossilized trees), and ice cores extend back
Peter Raven, American Association for
the Advancement of Science
800,000 years. Such a wide variety of independent dating methods provides strong
Presidential Address, 2002 cross-checks on the resulting dates.

Table 3
Nonradioactive dating methods
Method Property that is measured
Tree rings number of annual rings
Ice cores number of annual layers of ice deposited
Rock strata position and composition of sedimentary layers
Astronomical age of solar system from meteorites
age of stars from star type and location
age of universe from cosmic background radiation
Electron spin resonance radiation-induced changes in rocks
Thermoluminescence radiation-induced changes in rocks
Optical spin luminescence radiation-induced changes in rocks
Mitochondrial DNA number of mutations of DNA molecules
Amino acid analysis amount of change in amino acids
Y-chromosome number of mutations of Y-chromosome

394
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Table 4 shows some of the geological ages obtained for the biological and cul- The concept of the unity of life
tural evolution of life on Earth. To put these dates in perspective, the table’s third should be introduced in grade
column compresses Earth’s history into a single 24-hour day. This perspective can school . . . [and] be linked firmly
to an understanding of the way in
be an eye-opener (Figure 11). Throughout most of Earth’s history, the dominant life-
which the genome has gradually
forms have been simple organisms such as algae. On the 24-hour clock, complex changed over the more than
animals do not appear until nighttime; the earliest humans evolve at 2 minutes 3 billion years that life has been
before midnight; and our species evolves at 2 seconds before midnight. All of unfolding. The fascinating
human culture spans a fraction of a second. Great movements such as the spread of descriptive biology of diverse
agriculture, the human population explosion, the Industrial Revolution, and the organisms . . . can come later,
information revolution, dash across the world stage in the blink of an eye. As once there is a framework to
hang it on. That way, future
Norman Mailer put it, the itch has been to accelerate.
generations will be able to
In the past, many scientists and nonscientists believed that Earth was only a few appreciate the beauty of the Tree
thousand years old. For example, Kepler suggested that “God waited six thousand of Life without its form being
years” for an observer such as Tycho Brahe. Such estimates were based on counting obscured by the tangle of twigs
backward through the generations of the Old Testament and so calculating a date for and leaves.
Adam and Eve. Today, the hypothesis that Earth is only a few thousand years old Jennifer A. Marshall Graves, Research
School of Biological Sciences, Australian
conflicts with data and principles from astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, National University, in an Editorial for
biology, paleontology, archaeology, and history. Of course, this implies no criticism the Journal Science

of the Old Testament, which in the opinion of most scholars should be treated as a
spiritual work rather than a scientific text.

Table 4
When we came from: some approximate dates relevant to our species
Event Years before present On a 24-hour clock

Origin of solar system 4667 million

Origin of Earth 4557 million 00:00 (midnight)
Life
Chemical evidence of life 3800 million 04:00
First fossils (single cell) 3300 million 07:00
First vertebrates 500 million 21:30
First reptiles 300 million 22:30
First mammals 200 million 23:00
First primates 60 million 23:40
Humans seconds before 24:00
First hominidsa 6 million 120 s
Genus Homo 2.4 million 48 s
Use of stone tools 2 million 40 s
Homo erectus 1.9 million 38 s
Homo sapiens 100 thousand 2s
Culture
Invention of agriculture 10 thousand 0.2 s
First cities, earliest writing 5 thousand 0.1 s
Scientific age (Copernicus) 500 0.01 s
Industrial age 250 0.004 s
Twentieth century 100 0.002 s
a
Apemen that (unlike modern apes) walked upright and were direct human forebears.

395
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Figure 11 100 s before midnight

The “cosmic clock” compresses first hominids
23:40
Earth’s history into 24 hours. Homo first primates
sapiens does not appear until
2 seconds before midnight. A lot 23:00
first mammals 2 s before midnight
happens during these last first Homo sapiens
2 seconds: Agriculture is invented
24:00
at 0.2 s before midnight, followed 21:30
by cities, the scientific revolution, first animals 04:00
and the Industrial Revolution. with backbones first
life

18:00 06:00

12:00

How do we know that radioactive dating is reliable? Scientists continually cross-

check results such as Table 4 in a variety of independent ways. If several independent
methods, perhaps based on both radioactive and nonradioactive processes, all agree, our
confidence in all of them is increased. It would be amazing if they were all wrong in
exactly the same way; scientists tend not to believe in such amazing coincidences.
Because of this habit of cross-checking, science has been called a “web of consistency.”
Carbon dating furnishes us with a nice example of cross-checking, because there is
reason to expect errors in carbon-inferred dates: If the number of cosmic ray impacts on
the atmosphere was different in the past, the 14C content in the biological world would
have been different then than now. For this reason, scientists have extensively cross-
checked the carbon-based dates.
One method of cross-checking is by studying 14C in the annual growth rings of trees.
It’s easy to date living trees (up to 5000 years old) by simply counting these growth rings,
and scientists can date dead wood of unknown age by matching the growth patterns in
the rings of the dead wood (variations in ring thicknesses, caused by varying climate)
with the growth patterns in dated specimens. Tree specimens up to 10,000 years old can
be dated in this way. There is little reason to doubt these dates, for they are obtained by
simple counting. The results show that the older rings are as much as 15% older than is
indicated by their carbon dates.
Another method of cross-checking studies the 14C content in coral reefs. These reefs
can be dated by the carbon method and also by a uranium method that is thought to be
reliable to within 1%. Figure 12 shows the results of this cross-check (dots on the graph)
and also the tree-ring cross-check (crosses). The dots and crosses show the uranium or
tree-ring age (along the vertical axis) at which a given carbon-inferred age (horizontal
axis) occurs. If both dating methods were accurate, the dots and crosses would lie on the
straight line shown, along which the uranium or tree-ring age equals the carbon age.
Since tree-rings and uranium are regarded as highly accurate dating methods, Figure 12
is used to correct or “calibrate” the dates obtained by 14C dating. For example, the data
point circled shows that any object having a carbon age of 16,000 years is actually
19,000 years old.

396
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Figure 12
Age as determined Checking carbon dating by using
30 by uranium dating
(dots) or tree-ring the tree-ring method (crosses) and
dating (crosses), a uranium method (dots).
in thousands of years Apparently carbon dating gives
before the present ages that are a few thousand years
too young for objects that are
20
The two methods around 10,000 to 20,000 years old.
disagree to the
extent that the
points do not fall
on this line.
10

0
0 10 20 30
Age as determined by carbon dating, in
thousands of years before the present

CONCEPT CHECK 7 In a living person, the ratio of 14C to total carbon is 1 to

one trillion. The C>C ratio 6000 years (one half-life of 14C) after a person has died
14

is (a) 2 to one trillion; (b) 1 to one trillion; (c) 1 to two trillion; (d) 1 to four trillion.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 An archaeologist digs up a bone and measures an average

of one 14C decay per minute in 1 gram of the bone’s carbon. This is about 10% of
the decay rate in living organisms. This animal has been dead about (a) 6000 years;
(b) 13,000 years; (c) 19,000 years; (d) 60,000 years; (e) 600 years.

6 HUMAN EXPOSURE TO IONIZING RADIATION

The walls of your room, the air you breathe, and even your body are radioactive
(Concept Check 7). What are the effects? Are the effects different today than they
were before the nuclear age? What are the risks? Can or should anything be done to
prevent harmful effects?
The alpha, beta, and gamma particles emitted by radioactive materials damage
biological cells. The damage is done when these high-energy particles pass, like lit-
tle bullets,5 through a cell, ionizing (knocking electrons out of) some of the cell’s
molecules. Because they can do this, alpha, beta, and gamma rays are called
ionizing radiations. Since X-rays also have enough energy to ionize biological
material, they too are classified as ionizing radiation, even though they don’t come
from the nucleus. Ionization changes the cell’s chemistry. Any of the cell’s func-
tions can be altered, depending on which molecules are ionized. The most impor-
tant effects result from damage to a cell’s DNA molecules, because DNA carries the
biological information inherited by other cells.
The biological damage done in humans by ionizing radiation is measured in a unit
called the sievert. If a person receives ionizing radiation, the number of sieverts

5
Even though they are really only field quanta, alphas and betas and gammas carry energy and momentum
and so they act like particles when their fields interact with a human cell.

397
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

received is a direct measure of the number of damaged cells. A quantitative feel for
the sievert is best obtained by looking at examples.6 For instance, the amount of radi-
ation that an average person in the United States receives every year from all sources
is about 0.003 sieverts, or 3 millisieverts (mSv). At the other extreme, a sudden dose
of 6 sieverts causes death within 30 days.
There are three main types of biological damage to humans. The most immedi-
ately obvious is radiation sickness, caused by damage to the red blood–forming
cells of the bone marrow and to the cells that line the intestinal wall. A sudden dose
of 0.25 to 1 sievert to the whole body causes short-term changes in the blood that
the victim might not notice; 1 to 3 sieverts produces symptoms of radiation sick-
ness: fever, vomiting, damaged red blood cells, reduced white blood cells and
platelets, loss of hair, spontaneous bleeding, and small hemorrhages beneath the
skin; 3 to 5 sieverts produces 50% fatalities; 6 to 10 sieverts causes death within
30 days; and 100 sieverts causes death within hours.
Fortunately, humans have seldom experienced doses large enough to produce
acute effects. The most severe examples have resulted from the nuclear bombs
dropped in 1945 by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki (Figure 13), the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in Ukraine in the
former Soviet Union, and nuclear weapons tests during the 1950s in Kazakhstan in
the former Soviet Union. Most of our knowledge of radiation damage to humans
comes from these events and from medical uses of radiation.
The second form of radiation damage is mutation, an inheritable alteration of the
genetic material (DNA) in a sperm or egg cell. Mutations can produce successive
generations of altered offspring. They are almost always harmful, but occasionally a
mutation is advantageous, and this effect is in fact essential to biological evolution.
The only observed cases of radiation-induced mutations in humans occurred
downwind of Soviet nuclear weapons tests in Kazakhstan. Individuals exposed to
“fallout” (see the following discussion) from the tests experienced an 80% increase
in their mutation rate, and their children (born after the fallout occurred) experi-
enced a 50% increase. These mutations occurred in portions of the sperm or egg
DNA that did not, so far as researchers could determine, directly affect the physical
characteristics of the children.
The third form of damage is cancer in ordinary body cells. The rate of some can-
cers observed in nuclear bomb survivors has been far above normal. Among
Hiroshima survivors, the leukemia rate between 1950 and 1985 was four times the
normal rate. Many other forms of cancer occurred at double the normal rate. Based
on available statistics, the National Academy of Sciences estimates that a sudden
Masao Tsuzuki and Gon’ichi radiation dose of 0.5 sieverts produces about a 4% probability of eventual death by
Kimura/AP World Wide Photos
radiation-caused cancer. This means that out of every 100 people exposed to
Figure 13 0.5 sieverts, an average of 4 will ultimately die of radiation-caused cancer.
A victim of radiation sickness, Although ionizing radiation can cause cancer, it can also treat it. Cancer cells,
23 days after the Hiroshima because they grow rapidly, are especially susceptible to destruction by radiation. A
bombing. The spots on his face are narrow beam of gamma rays or X-rays is directed at the tumor. The radiation may
hemorrhages beneath the skin, come from a radioactive isotope such as 60Co, or from an X-ray machine. In some
caused by a weakness of the blood cases, a tiny radioactive source is inserted directly into the tumor. To treat thyroid
vessels and blood-clotting defects. cancer, radioactive 131I is injected into the blood. Because the thyroid gland absorbs
He died a few days later. These
acute, short-term effects are quite
different from the long-term 6
Here is the precise definition of the sievert: For gamma rays and X-rays, the sievert is the amount of radia-
effects, primarily cancer, caused by tion that would produce 1 joule of absorbed ionizing energy in 1 kilogram of biological material. The defi-
low levels of ionizing radiation. nition is a little more complicated for alpha and beta rays.

398
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

any iodine present in the bloodstream, the 131I becomes concentrated in the thyroid,
particularly in cells that are growing abnormally, killing the defective cells.
Radioactive isotopes are also put to beneficial use as tracers in medicine, agri-
culture, and industry. A given compound is chemically synthesized using a radioac-
tive isotope such as 14C or 3H. Radiation detectors then follow these “tagged”
molecules as the compound moves through the human body, through a living plant,
or through an industrial process. For example, the details of how a medical drug
distributes itself in the body can be traced in this way.
Until recently, there was lots of disagreement about the effects of low radiation
doses, comparable to the amounts people receive every day. Because the effects are
hard to observe, predictions are hard to check. Some scientists argued that even tiny
doses cause harm; while others argued that small doses are harmless or even bene-
ficial. In 2005, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded, based on exten-
sive data developed since 1990, that even tiny doses cause harm; even a single
microscopic decay process has a small probability of causing a cancer or mutation,
with the probability of harm being proportional to the amount of radiation received.
As an example, one cancer-causing isotope produced by nuclear weapons and
nuclear reactors is radioactive strontium, 90 38Sr. After a nuclear explosion,
90
Sr and
other radioactive isotopes attach themselves to atmospheric dust particles that even-
tually fall to Earth as radioactive fallout. As you can see from the periodic table,
strontium is chemically similar to calcium. If you breathe or eat 90Sr, it will do what
calcium does, namely, migrate to your bone marrow. Since the bone marrow is where
red blood cells are created, the connection between radioactivity and leukemia (a
blood condition) is not surprising. Radioactive isotopes such as 90Sr that are chemi-
cally active in the human body are especially dangerous, because once inside the body
they combine with other chemicals and stay there. Because of isotopes like 90Sr,
radioactivity is much more dangerous inside the body than outside it.
Table 5 shows what kinds of natural and artificial radiation most Americans
receive. As you can see, people generally receive about 3 mSv during each year of
life. Most of it is natural, from sources that have been present in nature for thousands
of years. Two widely discussed artificial sources, nuclear power and nuclear weapons
tests, contribute only a tiny fraction. By far the largest artificial source is medical.
Nearly half of the average dose comes from a single natural source, radon, which is
a daughter nucleus from the decay of radium in the ground. Because radon is a gas, it
escapes into the atmosphere shortly after being created underground. It’s not really
radon itself that is dangerous, because it’s chemically inert and is breathed in and right
back out before it can decay (its half-life is 4 days). But radon’s daughter nuclei are
both radioactive and chemically active, and they attach themselves to microscopic air-
borne particles, are breathed in, become lodged in the lungs, and can lead to lung can-
cer. Because radon collects inside closed houses, it is five times more concentrated in
the average home than in outdoor air. Most of the radon in homes enters through the
substructure. Radon levels vary widely among different houses, with some not much
above outdoor levels and others a hundred or a thousand times greater.
You can check your home’s radon level by buying a small device called a track
detector at a hardware store. Alpha particles emitted by radon leave a track as they
pass through the detector. After the detector has been in your house for a few
months, you can mail it to a laboratory where the tracks are counted and used to
calculate your home’s radon level. If your home has a high level, you might want to
seek professional assistance in reducing it. Sealing cracks doesn’t help much,
because air pressure differences suck air from the ground through the substructure

399
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Table 5
Ionizing radiation received by the U.S. population
Estimated annual effective dose received in one year from various sources, averaged
(per person) across the U.S. population.
Source Annual dose per person (mSv)
Natural
Radon from the ground 1.25
Cosmic rays 0.39
Rocks and soil 0.48
Internal consumption 0.28
Subtotal 2.40
Artificial
Medical and dental X-rays 0.31
Nuclear medicine 0.11
Consumer products 0.08
a 0.03
All other
Subtotal 0.53
Grand total 2.93
a
Occupational, nuclear weapons, nuclear power and its fuel cycle, and miscellaneous.
SOURCE: National Research Council’s seventh committee on the biological effects of ionizing radiation, 2005.

and up into the house, even in well-sealed houses. Simple ventilation can help,
though. The most effective solution is a blower inserted between the house’s con-
crete base and the gravel on which the concrete is laid to change the pressure sys-
tem beneath the house so that the house will no longer suck air from the ground.
You might have noticed that food irradiation is not in Table 5. In this process,
gamma rays from a radioactive isotope are passed through raw meat and other foods
in order to eliminate bacteria. These rays are of course not radioactive themselves,
and they create no radioactivity in the meat. So, although one can debate other side
effects of this process, food irradiation causes no radiation exposure to the consumer.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 Which of these are electromagnetic ionizing radiations?

(a) X-rays. (b) Infrared rays. (c) Alpha rays. (d) Beta rays. (e) Gamma rays.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 Which of these causes radiation damage in some of your cells?
(a) Medical X-rays. (b) Food irradiation. (c) Gamma rays passed through your body dur-
ing cancer treatment. (d) Ingesting a radioactive isotope during cancer treatment.

MAKI NG ESTI MATES How radioactive are you? The human body is 18% carbon
by weight. Biological material contains some 50 billion 14C atoms per gram of car-
bon, of which some 10 atoms decay every minute. Estimate the number of radioactive
carbon atoms in your body and the number inside you that decay during 1 minute.

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES If your body’s mass is 60 kg (130 pounds), it contains about 12 kg,
or 12,000 g, of C. The number of 14C atoms in your body is about (50 * 109) * (12,000) = 600 * 1012, or
600 trillion. The number of atoms that decay in 1 minute is 10 * 12,000 = 120.000. Your total radioactivity
is actually twice this large, owing to other radioactive isotopes in your body.

400
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

7 DEALING WITH TECHNOLOGICAL RISK

To live is to risk: There is risk in leaving your house (you could get hit by a car), and The health of the people is the
there is risk in staying home (you could breath radon). wealth of the country.
Inscription On an Enormous Sign Posted
The nuclear incident at Chernobyl provides a good starting point for thinking on a Now-Empty Medical Clinic in the
about risk. An explosion and fire in 1986 at the former Soviet Union’s (now Town of Pripyat, Near the Chernobyl
Power Plant. Pripyat was Evacauted
Ukraine’s) Chernobyl nuclear power plant threw massive amounts of radioactive During the Accident and Remains a
isotopes into the air. This contaminated vast areas of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus Ghost Town Today
and spewed a radioactive cloud over Europe carrying 100 times the amount of radi-
ation released in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Figure 14). It was
history’s worst nuclear power accident. The immediate toll was 237 cases of radia-
tion sickness, with 50 fatalities, among emergency workers. A haphazardly built
concrete and steel sarcophagus covers the ruined reactor, but it is leaking gas, con-
taminated water, and high radiation levels. The structure is believed to contain 66
tons of melted nuclear fuel, plus 37 tons of radioactive dust. Ukraine hopes to build
a new, airtight covering, but that will not entirely solve the problem. It will take sev-
eral more decades to develop and carry out an engineering decision on what to do
with the nuclear fuel.
The reactor operators were careless, to say the least. The reactor was of a type
that can suffer a runaway nuclear chain reaction that releases thermal energy rap-
idly enough to create a low-grade nuclear explosion, and this in fact happened at
Chernobyl. The reactor lacked a containment dome such as covers all U.S. nuclear
power reactors. The incident occurred during a safety test that was conducted in a
careless manner and that included some risky procedures such as disconnecting the
emergency cooling water that is held in reserve to keep the reactor from overheat-
ing in an accident.
It is difficult to determine the number of long-term cancer deaths caused by
Chernobyl during the succeeding several decades. Radioactive fallout spread over
much of Europe, producing the irregular pattern seen in Figure 14. Many Europeans
received total individual doses of more than 10 mSv during only the first four days
(compare Table 5). Fallout doses were much larger closer to Chernobyl. Over
100,000 people were evacuated from a 30-kilometer zone around the accident.
Significant effects persist today in Ukraine and Belarus. Pripyat City, a former
Soviet model city of 40,000 adjacent to the reactor, remains a ghost town now used
only as a laboratory for investigating the effects of a possible radioactive or “dirty
bomb” attack by terrorists. The region within 37 km around the accident has been
abandoned and won’t be safe for human habitation for centuries.
A study organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency reported in 2005 that
approximately 4000 excess cancer deaths have or will occur during the next 70 years in
Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the rest of Europe as a result of the accident. In the same
population, one might normally expect about 125 million cancer deaths. So, although
the number of excess deaths is large, they represent an increase in the cancer death rate
of only 4000>(125 * 106), or about 0.003%. This tiny percentage increase is unde-
tectable in the overall cancer statistics.
One way to make sense of such numbers is by making numerical comparisons
with other risks, a procedure known as quantitative risk assessment. For example,
the 4000 worldwide deaths during 70 years from Chernobyl are one-tenth the num-
ber killed by automobiles in only one year in the United States alone (over 40,000—
a number that I like to remember for comparison with other statistics in the news)
and one-fifth the number of murders per year in the United States (20,000).

401
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Figure 14
The spread of radiation following
the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
accident. The three shaded regions
represent three different levels of
exposure to 131I. During the first
four days following the accident,
people in the three gray areas
received the iodine radiation
exposures indicated.

10 mSv or more 1 to 10 mSv 0.1 to 1 mSv

Comparisons such as these can put abstract numbers into perspective. For another
example, radon exposure causes between 5000 and 20,000 (the number is highly
uncertain) U.S. lung cancer deaths per year, which is comparable to the murder rate.
Another way to make sense of such risks is to look at probabilities of death for
one person. For example, fallout from Chernobyl might kill 4000 out of a total
European and former Soviet Union population of about 750 million, representing a
fraction of 4000>(750 * 106), or about 5 * 10 - 6, or 5>106. One way to look at this
is that each of these people has on the average about 5 chances in a million of dying
from Chernobyl-caused cancer. That is, in a randomly chosen group of 1 million,
about 5 will die of this cause.
Scientists have used such methods to assess the risks to Earth from impacts of
comets or asteroids, such as the impact that destroyed 2000 square kilometers of
Siberian forest in 1908 or the much larger impact that made the dinosaurs extinct
65 million years ago. One conclusion: Taking all impact sizes into account, each
person has about 1 chance in 20,000 of being killed by such an impact. This is far
less than the car crash risk, but roughly the same as the risk of an average American
dying in an aircraft accident. Since America takes deadly aircraft accidents very
seriously indeed, it follows that the risk of such an impact should also be taken very
seriously—especially if something can be done to reduce this risk. In fact, much
can be done, by detecting and deflecting threatening comets in space. As a result of
this analysis, many nations now cooperate to address this problem.

402
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Table 6 is an unnerving example of quantitative risk assessment. The table lists

several activities that carry the same quantitative risk of death, 1 in 1 million. All
these risks are equivalent in the sense that if everybody in a population of 1 million
were to perform any one of the indicated activities, one of them (on the average)
would eventually die from it. Every time you perform one of these activities, there
is one chance in a million that it will kill you. It’s enough to keep you from getting
out of bed in the morning.
To say that everything has its risks is really another way of saying that we all
must die. In the long run, the total risk of death is 100%. It’s sad but true, and one
might as well try to deal with it sensibly. Many risks, such as radon exposure, are
impossible to reduce to negligible proportions, and few risks can be reduced to
zero. In fact, attempts to reduce risk can be counterproductive. For example, if you

Table 6
The risks of daily life: Activities carrying an average risk of death of one part in a million
Activity Cause(s) of death
Ionizing radiation
One chest X-ray at a good hospital Cancer from ionizing radiation
Cross-country round trip by jet Cancer from cosmic ionizing radiation
Living 1 week in a building Cancer from indoor radon
Living 5 weeks outdoors Cancer from outdoor radon
Living 2 months in Denver Cancer from cosmic ionizing radiation
Living 5 years next to a nuclear power plant Cancer from ionizing radiation
Living 50 years within 8 km of a nuclear power plant Accident
Internal consumption
Smoking 1.4 cigarettes Cancer and heart disease
Living 2 months with a cigarette smoker Cancer and heart disease
Drinking 0.5 liters of wine Cirrhosis of the liver
Normal consumption of tap water for 1 year Cancer from chloroform
Drinking 30 12-ounce cans of diet soda Cancer from saccharin
Eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter Liver cancer from aflatoxin B
Eating 100 charcoal broiled steaks Cancer from benzopyrene
Travel
5 km by motorcycle Accident
16 km by bicycle Accident
50 km by car Accident
1300 km by train Accident
1600 km by commercial airplane Accident
10,000 km (cross-country round trip) by jet Cancer from cosmic ionizing radiation
Work
Spending 1 hour in a coal mine Black lung disease
Spending 3 hours in a coal mine Accident
Other
Living 2 days in New York or Boston Air pollution
Adapted from Richard Wilson, “Comparing Risks,” Physics and Society, October 1990, pp. 3–5.

403
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

try to avoid radiation exposure by skipping a recommended chest X-ray, you might
die from tuberculosis. You could significantly reduce your radon risk by living out-
doors, but that would expose you to other risks. You could decide to do nothing that
is nonessential if it carried any risk, but then you would die of boredom.
Radiation safety specialists have thought a lot about radiation risk, and they offer
two general pieces of wisdom: First, every radiation dose may carry some risk, so no
exposure is permissible unless it carries a compensating benefit. Second, the dose to
any person should be kept as low as is reasonably possible, taking into consideration
all other factors (social, economic, and so forth). In other words, balance the risks
against the benefits, and be aware. Similar principles apply to all of life’s risks.
137
CONCEPT CHECK 11 Cs has a half-life of 30 years. The time after the
Chernobyl incident at which the radiation from this isotope decreases to 1% of its
original level is roughly (a) 60 years; (b) 100 years; (c) 200 years; (d) 500 years;
(e) 900 years.

CONCEPT CHECK 12 About how far would you have to travel by car in order to
have the same risk of death as traveling across the United States by train (4000 km)?
(a) 12,000 km. (b) 100,000 km. (c) 1000 km. (d) 250 km. (e) 150 km.

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

404
The Nucleus and Radioactivity
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 17. An ax handle has a 14C>C ratio that is only 1/32 of the ratio
found in living organisms. About how old is this ax handle?
18. According to science, about how old is Earth: a few thousand
NUCLEAR FORCES years, a few million years, a few hundred million years, a few
1. In what ways is the nucleus non-Newtonian? billion years, or a few trillion years? How about the human
2. Name the four fundamental forces, and describe the main race (hominids)?
function of each of the three that act as “glues” to hold 19. Describe at least one way to cross-check a particular dating
things together. method such as carbon dating.
3. Which of the four forces holds the nucleus together, and
which tends to push it apart? HUMAN EXPOSURE TO IONIZING RADIATION
4. What property of the strong force causes nuclei to be so 20. Which of the following are ionizing radiations: radio waves,
small? Why can’t much larger nuclei exist? ultraviolet radiation, gamma rays, alpha rays, X-rays?
21. What is a sievert?
NUCLEAR ENERGY AND NUCLEAR STRUCTURE 22. Name and describe the three main types of biological damage
5. Explain why nuclear particles must move rapidly and so must caused by ionizing radiation.
have high energy. 23. List two natural sources of ionizing radiation and one artifi-
6. How are nuclear reactions similar to alchemy? cial source.
7. What is an isotope, and what quantities need to be known in 24. List some useful applications of radioactive isotopes.
order to specify a particular isotope?
8. What are the differences among 126C, 146C, and 147N? Compare DEALING WITH TECHNOLOGICAL RISK
their numbers of protons, numbers of neutrons, chemistry, 25. What will be the long-term health effects of the Chernobyl
nuclear chemistry (behavior in nuclear reactions), numbers of accident?
orbital electrons in the neutral atom, and mass. 26. What is fallout, and where can it come from?
27. What is the meaning of a risk (of cancer, for example) of
RADIOACTIVE DECAY 3/1,000,000 per person?
9. What kinds of rays, or particles, are emitted by radioactive 28. Where might you find radon in your normal living environ-
nuclei? Describe each kind. ment? How does it get there?
10. What happens to the atomic number and mass number during
alpha decay?
11. What happens to the atomic number and mass number during Conceptual Exercises
beta decay?
12. What energy transformation occurs during radioactive decay? NUCLEAR FORCES AND STRUCTURE
1. Which force is stronger between two protons separated by
HALF-LIFE
10 - 15 m (the size of a small nucleus), the electric or the
13. In radioactive decay, what quantity cannot be predicted? Of strong force? What evidence do you have for your answer?
what basic principle is this an example? 2. Which force is stronger between two protons separated by
14. 131I has an 8-day half-life. If you start with 100 grams, how 10 - 10 m (the size of an atom), the electric or the strong
much will remain after 24 days? force? What evidence do you have for your answer?
15. If you started with 100 grams of 14C (6000-year half-life) and 3. How many protons and neutrons are there in these nuclei:
only 3 grams remain, about how much time has elapsed? 13 56
6C, 26Fe?
4. How many protons and neutrons are there in 90Sr? In 3H?
RADIOACTIVE DATING 5. How many protons and neutrons are in a nucleus of 235 92U, and
16. Explain how carbon dating works. On what kinds of objects of 238
92U?
does it work? From where does radioactive carbon come?

From Chapter 14 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

405
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: Problem Set

6. How do the masses of 1H, 2H, and 3H compare? How do their 22. Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Roughly how much 235U
charges compare? was there on the newly formed Earth as compared with
7. How do the masses of 3H and 3He compare? How do their today? (See Table 1.)
charges compare? 23. Starting with 2 grams of radon, how much will remain after
8. Suppose that the electric force were somewhat stronger than 12 days? (See Table 1.)
it actually is. Would this lengthen, or shorten, or leave 24. If you start with a gram of pure 14C, about how much will
unchanged, the periodic table? remain after 12,000 years?
9. Referring to Figure 1, how would the periodic table be 25. Starting with 100 atoms of radon, how many will remain
affected if the range of the strong nuclear force were only after 12 days? (See Table 1.) Is this a precise prediction?
10 - 16 m instead of 10 - 15 m? 26. Starting with 10 atoms of radon (half-life 4 days), about how
long would it take before all 10 had decayed? What funda-
RADIOACTIVE DECAY mental physical principle prevents you from making a precise
10. Why are radioactive materials often warm? prediction of this time?
11. What do you suppose heated the water in a naturally heated 27. Which of the isotopes in Table 1 is the most stable? Which is
hot spring? the least stable?
12. Radioactive materials often glow in the dark. But the gamma 28. If you had 1 gram of 235U and 1 gram of 238U. which would
radiation emitted by a nucleus during decay is not visually be more highly radioactive, that is, which would emit more
detectable, so where does the light come from? alpha particles per minute? (See Table 1.)
13. Which ray is most similar to X-rays: alpha, beta, or 29. You have only 100 atoms of a certain radioactive substance.
gamma rays? Approximately how many atoms will remain after four half-
14. Can a hydrogen nucleus emit an alpha particle? lives? Will you have precisely this many? Explain.
15. Can an element decay “forward” in the periodic table to a 30. You have only five atoms of 222Rn (half-life 4 days). What can
higher atomic number? you say about the number remaining after 4 days? After 8 days?
16. Use the periodic table to find the residual nucleus in each of After 8 days, might all five atoms still remain undecayed?
the following: beta decay of 3H, alpha decay of 222Rn.
17. Use the periodic table to find the residual nucleus in the beta RADIOACTIVE DATING
decay of 90Sr. 31. Can scientists carbon-date ordinary rocks? Why?
32. Would carbon dating be useful in dating the age of the earli-
HALF-LIFE est hominids? The earliest cities? (See Table 4.)
18. If a radioactive isotope has a 1-year half-life, what fraction 33. Suppose that the number of cosmic rays impacting the atmos-
will remain after 5 years? phere had been greater in the past than it is now. Would this
19. If a radioactive isotope has a 6-month half-life, what fraction affect our estimate, based on carbon dating, of an old ax han-
will remain after 5 years? dle’s age? Would it cause us to estimate an age that was too
20. Isotopes having atomic numbers larger than 92 (uranium) old, or would our estimate be too young?
don’t exist in nature because they have half-lives much shorter 34. Carbon dating was used to find the age of the Dead Sea
than Earth’s age and hence have decayed away. How then can Scrolls. Would this method have worked if the scrolls had
an isotope such as 226 been carved in stone?
88Ra, with a half-life of only 1600 years,
exist in nature? 35. Prior to the 1963 treaty banning nuclear weapons tests in the
21. Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Roughly how much 238U atmosphere, weapons testing created large amounts of radio-
was there on the newly formed Earth as compared with active isotopes in the atmosphere. One of these isotopes was
14
today? (See Table 1.) C, whose atmospheric concentration doubled as a result of
testing. How will this affect radioactive dating in the future?

Table 1
Half-life and decay process of several radioactive isotopes
Isotope Name of element Decay process Half-life (approx.)
14
6C carbon beta 6000 yr
90
38Sr strontium beta 30 yr
131
53I iodine beta 8 days
214
84Po polonium alpha 0.000 16 s
222
86Rn radon alpha 4 days
235
92U uranium alpha 0.7 * 109 yr
238
92U uranium alpha 4.5 * 109 yr
239
94Pu plutonium alpha 24,000 yr

406
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: Problem Set

Table 4
When we came from: some approximate dates relevant to our species
Event Years before present On a 24-hour clock

Origin of solar system 4667 million

Origin of Earth 4557 million 00:00 (midnight)
Life
Chemical evidence of life 3800 million 04:00
First fossils (single cell) 3300 million 07:00
First vertebrates 500 million 21:30
First reptiles 300 million 22:30
First mammals 200 million 23:00
First primates 60 million 23:40
Humans seconds before 24:00
First hominidsa 6 million 120 s
Genus Homo 2.4 million 48 s
Use of stone tools 2 million 40 s
Homo erectus 1.9 million 38 s
Homo sapiens 100 thousand 2s
Culture
Invention of agriculture 10 thousand 0.2 s
First cities, earliest writing 5 thousand 0.1 s
Scientific age (Copernicus) 500 0.01 s
Industrial age 250 0.004 s
Twentieth century 100 0.002 s
a
Apemen that (unlike modern apes) walked upright and were direct human forebears.

Will this affect the apparent age of an ax handle that was 42. You travel 3200 km by car. Use Table 6 to find your risk of
made in 1940? What about an ax handle made in 1990? death by accident, assuming you are an average driver.
36. Prior to the 1963 treaty banning nuclear weapons tests in the 43. Referring to the preceding exercise, if you had flown by jet,
atmosphere, weapons testing created large amounts of radio- what would have been your risk of death by accident or by
active isotopes in the atmosphere. One of these isotopes was cancer from the cosmic radiation at high altitudes?
14
C whose atmospheric concentration doubled as a result of 44. The number of people killed worldwide by volcanoes
testing. Will this cause an ax handle made in 1990 to appear increased from 315 per year in CE 1800 to 845 per year in the
younger, or will it appear older? mid–twentieth century. But population also increased during
that time, from 750 million to 3 billion. So did the yearly
DEALING WITH TECHNOLOGICAL RISK risk, per person, from volcanoes increase, or decrease?
37. Given that 131I has a half-life of 8 days, how much time must
pass after the Chernobyl accident before the radiation from
this isotope will have decreased to 1% of its original level? Problems
38. At a party, Edgar drinks half a liter of wine and smokes four
cigarettes. Which activity was riskier? How much riskier? HALF-LIFE
(Assume that Edgar doesn’t drink and drive.)
39. You travel 200 km by car. Would the trip have been safer by 1. You have one gram each of 131I and 234Th. Use Table 1 to
train? How much safer? predict how much of each you will have after 24 days.
40. How much safer is a car than a motorcycle? 2. You start with 5 grams of 131I. How long will it take the radia-
41. How much safer is a car than a bicycle? Since cars are safer, tion to get down to 5% of its original value? (Use Figure 10.)
why are so many more people killed in them every year than
are killed riding bicycles?

407
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: Problem Set

Table 6
The risks of daily life: Activities carrying an average risk of death of one part in a million
Activity Cause(s) of death
Ionizing radiation
One chest X-ray at a good hospital Cancer from ionizing radiation
Cross-country round trip by jet Cancer from cosmic ionizing radiation
Living 1 week in a building Cancer from indoor radon
Living 5 weeks outdoors Cancer from outdoor radon
Living 2 months in Denver Cancer from cosmic ionizing radiation
Living 5 years next to a nuclear power plant Cancer from ionizing radiation
Living 50 years within 8 km of a nuclear power plant Accident
Internal consumption
Smoking 1.4 cigarettes Cancer and heart disease
Living 2 months with a cigarette smoker Cancer and heart disease
Drinking 0.5 liters of wine Cirrhosis of the liver
Normal consumption of tap water for 1 year Cancer from chloroform
Drinking 30 12-ounce cans of diet soda Cancer from saccharin
Eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter Liver cancer from aflatoxin B
Eating 100 charcoal broiled steaks Cancer from benzopyrene
Travel
5 km by motorcycle Accident
16 km by bicycle Accident
50 km by car Accident
1300 km by train Accident
1600 km by commercial airplane Accident
10,000 km (cross-country round trip) by jet Cancer from cosmic ionizing radiation
Work
Spending 1 hour in a coal mine Black lung disease
Spending 3 hours in a coal mine Accident
Other
Living 2 days in New York or Boston Air pollution
Adapted from Richard Wilson, “Comparing Risks,” Physics and Society, October 1990, pp. 3–5.

RADIOACTIVE DATING 7. You suspect that a certain wooden spear dates from 50,000
3. You measure the carbon-radioactivity of an old wooden ax years ago. If you use carbon dating, how much radioactivity
handle to be only 20% of its original value. Estimate the age do you expect to find, as compared with that present in living
of the ax handle. organisms? Why might it be difficult to actually carry out
4. The 14C>C ratio in an old piece of cloth (made from natural this dating procedure?
fibers) is found to be 70% of the ratio in living organisms. 8. The oldest rocks on Earth are meteorites that fell from space
How old is this piece of cloth? relatively recently but are presumed to have solidified when
5. About what fraction of Earth’s original 238U, which was here our solar system formed. Examination of the uranium in these
when Earth was created, is still here? meteorites, and of the various daughter nuclei that come from
6. About what fraction of Earth’s original 235U, which was here uranium, shows that these rocks contain a little less than 1%
when Earth was created, is still here? of the 235U that they contained when they first crystallized.
Based on this data, about how old is our solar system?

408
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: Problem Set

1.00 Figure 10
Radioactive decay curve for 14C and
0.90 for any other radioactive isotope.

0.80

0.70
Fraction remaining

0.60
1/2
0.50

0.40

0.30
1/4
0.20
1/8
0.10
1/16
1/32

0 6000 12,000 18,000 24,000 30,000

Years (for 14C)
1 2 3 4 5
Number of half-lives (for any radioactive isotope)

RADIATION RISKS AND RISK ASSESSMENT 7. (c)

14
8. There must be only 10% as many C atoms as there were
9. MAKING ESTIMATES The average risk of daily life. Everybody
when the animal died. The number of 14C atoms is down to
dies precisely once. Average this one death over a typical life
10% after about 19,000 years.
of 70 years, and show that the average risk of death per day
9. (a) and (e)
from all causes is 1 chance in 25,000, or 0.000 04, or
10. (a), (c), (d)
40 chances in a million. (This average is not a good approxi-
11. Six to seven half-lives, or 180 to 210 years, (c).
mation to the actual day-to-day risk, because the daily risk
12. According to Table 6, the distance by car is only 50/1300, or
varies greatly from year to year. For instance, the risk of
1/26, as large as the distance by train. So traveling 4000 km
dying before the age of 1 and over the age of 65 are consider-
by train carries the same risk as traveling
ably higher than during the intervening years.)
4000>26 = 150 km by car, (e).
10. MAKING ESTIMATES The meaning of 1 in a million.
Table 6 says that there is a death risk of 10 - 6 in smoking
1.4 cigarettes. Suppose you smoke an average of 1.4 ciga-
rettes daily for 40 years. How large is your overall total
Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual
risk from smoking? What if it’s a pack (20 cigarettes) per
day instead?
Exercises and Problems
11. MAKING ESTIMATES The human body is about 18% carbon, Conceptual Exercises
by weight. Most of this carbon is in the form of the stable 1. The strong force. If the electric force were stronger, the
isotopes 12C and 13C, but about one carbon atom in a trillion nucleus would fly apart.
is radioactive 14C. About how many grams of 14C does a typi-
3. 136C: 6 protons, 7 neutrons
cal 70 kg living human contain? 56
26Fe: 26 protons, 30 neutrons
5. 235
92U : 92 protons, 143 neutrons
Answers to Concept Checks 238
92U : 92 protons, 146 neutrons
7. Masses are about the same. Charge is in the ratio of 1 to 2.
1. Larger nuclei could hold together, so the list would be 9. Protons and neutrons would lie 10 times closer to each other
longer, (b). in the nucleus, and nuclei would be 10 times smaller in
2. (b) diameter. This would increase the effect of the repulsive
3. (c) electromagnetic force between protons, because the electro-
4. (b) and (d) magnetic force is stronger at smaller distances. This would
5. (e) tend to destabilize the nucleus, so the periodic table would
6. (e) be shorter.

409
 The Nucleus and Radioactivity: Problem Set

11. Hot rock inside Earth; this rock is heated, at least indirectly, 41. As in Problem 39, the car is 50>16 L 3 times safer. More
by radioactivity inside Earth. people are killed in cars because so many more people ride
13. Gamma rays, because they are a form of electromagnetic in cars than on bicyles, and because bicycle riders ride only
radiation. a few hundred miles per year while car riders ride many
15. Yes, in beta decay the daughter nucleus has a higher atomic thousands of miles per year.
number. 43. The accident risk is 2 * 10 - 6. For the cancer risk, note that
90
17. 39Y . 3200>8000 = 0.4, so the risk is 0.4 * 10 - 6. Thus the total
19. Five years is 10 half-lives, so 1/1024 (about 0.001, or 0.1%) risk is 2.4 * 10 - 6.
of it will remain.
21. The half-life of 238U happens to also be 4.5 billion years. Problems
Thus there was twice as much here on the newly formed 1. 131I: 1/8 gram.
234
Earth as there is today. Th: 1/2 gram.
23. Radon’s half-life is 4 days. So 12 days is 3 half-lives. The 3. According to Figure 10, the radioactivity drops to 20% of its
amount remaining is 2 g * 1>8 = 2>8 = 1>4 g. original value after about 2.25 half-lives. Table 1 says that
25. Radon’s half-life is 4 days. So 12 days is 3 half-lives. The the half-life of 14C is about 6000 years, so the age of the ax
amount remaining is 100 atoms * 1>8 = 12.5 in other handle is about 6000 * 2.25 = 13,500 years.
words, about 12 or 13 atoms. This is not a precise prediction 5. The half-life of 238U is about the same as Earth’s age
because of statistical uncertainties when dealing with such a (Tables 1 and 2), so about half of the original 238U still
small number of atoms. remains.
27. Most stable: 238U (longest half-life). Least stable: 214Po 7. 14C half-life = 6000 years, so 50,000 years is a little more
(shortest half-life). than 8 half-lives, so the fraction remaining is only 1/256, or
29. (1>16) * 100 = 6.25, so there will be approximately 6 or 7 0.4%. This dating procedure would be difficult to carry out,
left. This answer is approximate because of the uncertainties because the amount of 14C radioactivity would be so small
involved in radioactive decay. that it would be hard to measure. In fact, 50,000 years is near
31. We cannot carbon-date rocks, because they contain no for- the upper limit of ages that are measurable by 14C
merly living material. radioactivity.
33. Yes, it would affect our estimate. It would cause us to esti- 9. The number of days in 70 years is 70 * 365 = 25,550, or
mate too young an age, because it would have caused a approximately 25,000 days. So the daily average risk is
larger amount of 14C to be deposited in the past. about 1 in 25,000. Expressed as a fraction, the daily proba-
35. This will cause future estimated ages to be younger than bility of death is 1>25,000 = 4 * 10 - 5 = 0.00004, or
they really are. This will not affect the apparent age of an ax 40 chances in a million.
handle made in 1940 (before nuclear testing), but it will 11. 0.18 * 70 kg = 12.6 kg of C in a typical body. One tril-
affect the apparent age of an ax handle made in 1990. lionth of this is 10 - 12 * 12.6 kg = 12.6 * 10 - 12 kg =
37. After 6 to 7 half-lives, the decay curve is down to about 1%. 12.6 * 10 - 9 grams, or about 13-billionths of a gram. Note:
For 131I, 6 to 7 half-lives is 48 to 56 days.
In this approximate calculation, we neglected the fact that
39. Yes. Since (from Table 6) 1300 km by train and 50 km by car
are equally risky, the train is 1300>50 = 26 times safer (per the three isotopes of carbon have different masses.
km traveled) than the car.

410
The Energy Challenge

Without energy there is no economy, without climate, there is no environment, and with-
out economy and environment, there’s no well-being, so we had better figure out how to
get this right.
John Holdren, President Obama’s Science Advisor, Former President of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, 30 April 2009

T
o physically change anything, you must exert a force through a distance—you
must do work. It isn’t surprising then that energy—the capacity to do work—is
basic to society, especially today when Earth’s human population is expanding
rapidly, technology is expanding rapidly, and so much is in flux. In fact, it’s difficult
to convey the extent to which modern society depends on an array of natural energy
resources outside of human muscular energy. As an exercise, list as many energy-
consuming items as you can think of that you used during the past week.
Time out, for listing.
Here are a few that I used: car, air conditioner, lightbulbs, refrigerator, TV, com-
puter, toaster, candle, fan, newspapers (paper, printing, delivery), foods (growing,
processing, packaging, transporting), clothes (manufacturing, transporting), hot
water, cold water (supply, wastewater treatment), and so forth. Our entire way of life
depends on the availability of energy resources at a reasonable price.
If people everywhere are to achieve greater prosperity, they will need adequate
energy supplies at an affordable price and at an affordable cost to the environment. As
John Holdren points out in the opening quote, climate issues are at the center of the
environmental problem and environment is at the center of human well-being, “so we
had better figure out how to get this right.” Although today’s energy is based largely
on fossil fuels, this will and must change. As world population grows, as more nations
develop powerful industries, as world fossil-fuel resources decline, and as global
warming heightens, humankind approaches the end of the fossil fuel age—whether
we like it or not. The question is not whether the fossil fuel age will soon end; the real
question is how it will end. Will we, through switching to sustainable energy
resources, purposely restraining fossil fuel use, and encouraging family planning to
limit overpopulation, make a rational transition to a world in which the United States
and other industrialized nations reduce their fossil fuel consumption to 10% or 20%
of current consumption? Or will we continue our joyride until fossil resources run
dry, global warming becomes global catastrophe, and the global economy declines?
It’s up to you, dear reader, and up to each one of us, to answer that question. I’ve
designed this chapter to help in that task by looking at the history and present status
of energy production and use, and studying how humankind might convert to more
sustainable sources of energy while using less of it.

From Chapter 16 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

411
 The Energy Challenge

Section 1 takes a long-term view and then a short-term view of the history of energy
use. Section 2 looks at today’s energy use and outlines tomorrow’s options. The next
three sections look at the nonrenewable resources, especially nuclear and coal. To what
extent can and should we continue using them? Section 3 describes how nuclear power
works, Section 4 considers some of the issues involved in the continued use of coal
power, and Section 5 looks at the issues involved in using nuclear power. Section 6
explores several renewable sources of energy. Section 7 looks at the physics, and a lit-
tle of the economics, of energy efficiency.
A personal note: Most students of energy issues have formed opinions about this
topic, and I’m no exception. However, I have made every effort to restrain my own opin-
ions and to present fairly all of the reasonable options. Do not, for example, assume that
the emphasis given to nuclear power means that I am either especially friendly, or espe-
cially hostile, to nuclear power. Rather, I’ve tried to emphasize those topics that are
important for our energy future and that have a strong physics component.1

1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF ENERGY

Before deciding where you want to go, it’s smart to know where you’ve been. Figure 1
graphs, highly schematically, 6 million years of human energy use, plotting the approx-
imate daily energy consumption per person (in megajoules) versus time. The differ-
ences between Stone Age culture and modern culture have everything to do with
different ways of organizing energy to do work. The earliest humans used only their
own muscular energy, obtained by respiration of food and oxygen. A typical person puts
some 2000 Calories, or 8 million joules (8 MJ), of bodily energy to work every day,
roughly equivalent to a continuously burning 100-watt bulb.
Although it’s not indicated in Figure 1, humans began using fire around 1 million
years ago. Some 10,000 years ago, humans began using the chemical energy of farm
animals to do work, helping to usher in the earliest agriculture. Farm animals and fire
might have increased the energy put to work by one person fivefold, to 40 MJ per day,
equivalent to five 100-watt bulbs.
Heat engines fueled by coal, the first fossil fuel, initiated the industrial age around
1750. Fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas, enabled people in industrialized
countries to increase their personal energy use by another factor of 5 to perhaps 200 MJ
every day, equivalent to twenty-five 100-watt bulbs. With the industrial age came many
kinds of pollution including the beginnings of global warming, although the resulting
temperature increase wasn’t noticeable until recent decades.
During the past six decades, the intense use of fossil-fueled heat engines
(mostly for transportation and electricity) has pushed industrialized nations’
energy use upward by yet another factor of 5, to 1000 MJ per person per day,
equivalent to 125 continuously burning 100-watt bulbs. To put it another way, if
this 1000 MJ were all put into lifting, they would lift a typical 600 newton (135
pound) person by 1700 kilometers! We Americans currently use an enormous
amount of energy in our daily lives, partly because we buy it phenomenally
cheaply. Eight cents buys 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity, enough energy to lift our
typical person from sea level to 6000 meters—nearly 20,000 feet!

1
One source of current energy information is the U.S. Department of Energy’s Information Agency, whose
Web site is http://www.eia.doe.gov.

412
 The Energy Challenge

1000 Petroleum age:

oil, gas, electricity,
internal combus-
Daily energy consumption per person

tion engine
800
(megajoules)

600
Industrial
age: coal,
400 steam
engine
Agricultural age:
farm animals and fire
200
40 MJ
Human energy from food, 8 MJ (2000 Calories)

6 million 8000 BCE 1750 CE 1950 now

years ago
6,000,000 10,000 250
years years years

Figure 1
A brief and approximate history of the use of energy resources: individual daily energy consumption versus the
approximate date. Note that the time axis is not drawn to scale: The preagricultural period is 600 times longer
than the agricultural period, which is in turn 40 times longer than the industrial period. Although it’s not shown
on this simplified graph, humans first began using fire around 1 million years ago.

Figure 2 graphs the shorter term picture in greater detail, for the United States
only. The graph shows annual U.S. energy consumption, in “exajoules” (1 exajoule
is 1018 joules), during 1840–2008. Each of the seven portions marked Biomass,
Hydro, New renewables, Coal, Oil, Gas, and Nuclear represents the energy pro-
vided by one particular resource, and the upper boundary represents the total
energy provided by all seven resources. Note the growth of the fossil fuels since
1880, the rapid growth of oil and gas since World War II (1945), and the huge rise
in energy consumption, a rise that continues despite the threat of global warming.
During the 168 years graphed, the nation’s population rose tenfold while per capita
energy consumption rose fivefold, for an overall fiftyfold increase in energy use.
Since the leading four energy resources graphed in Figure 2 are nonrenewable
(finite), and since the world must radically reduce its use of the three fossil fuels
because of global warming, it’s not surprising that most energy analysts expect the
trends shown in the figure to change before long.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 The combined energy from oil and natural gas began
to exceed that from coal in about the year (a) 1880; (b) 1910; (c) 1930; (d) 1950;
(e) 1970.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 During 1900 to 2000, U.S. energy consumption increased

by a factor of about (a) 4; (b) 8; (c) 15; (d) 50; (e) 100.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 About how much natural gas did the United States use
in 1960? (a) 15 * 1018 J. (b) 35 * 1018 J. (c) 50 * 1018 J. (d) 20 * 1018 J.

413
 The Energy Challenge

110

100
Nuclear

90

80 Natural gas
Annual U.S. energy consumption,

70
in units of 1018 joules

60

50 Oil

40

30

20 Coal

10 New renewables*
Hydro
0 Biomass
1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020
Year * Wind, Geothermal, Solar

Figure 2
History of U.S. energy use, 1840–2008: total annual U.S. energy consumption of various
resources. Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency, 2009.

MAKI NG ESTI MATES Use Figure 2 to check roughly the estimate shown in
Figure 1 for the year 2000, when the U.S. population was 275 million.

2 THE MAJOR RESOURCES, INCLUDING EFFICIENCY

Figures 3and 4 show how the United States uses energy today. Figure 3 shows how the
energy consumed today by the United States is divided among the seven primary
resources whose history is graphed in Figure 2. Fossil fuels provide nearly all of it, with
smaller contributions from nuclear, biomass, hydroelectric, and new renewables. Figure
4 is an energy flow diagram showing how the energy consumed by the United States

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES In 2000, total U.S. annual energy consumption was about
100 * 1018 J, so annual consumption per person was
100 * 1018 J
= 360 * 109 J
275 * 106
and daily consumption per person was about

360 * 109 J
L 109 J = 1000 MJ
365

414
 The Energy Challenge

flows through the economy, from the seven primary resources to the three broad eco- Biomass, 4% Hydro, 2.5%
nomic sectors (industry, residential/commercial, and transportation). More than one- New renewable, 1%
third of the energy goes into the generation of electricity that then goes to the three Nuclear, 8.5%
sectors, while the other two-thirds goes directly to the three sectors. Coal, nuclear, hydro-
electric, and new renewable resources go mainly to electric energy production, while oil, Coal, 23%
natural gas, and biomass go mainly to nonelectric uses.
Gas, 24%
Figure 4 reflects the two great principles of energy. You can see the law of conser-
vation of energy in the fact that the energy flows (the “pipe” widths and the numbers) Oil, 37%
match: Energy in always equals energy out. You can see the second law of thermody-
namics in the transformation of energy from 106 exajoules of high-quality energy
Fossil fuels, 86%
into 70 exajoules of waste thermal energy and only 36 exajoules of useful energy. The
second law’s rigorous restrictions on heat engine efficiencies also shows up in the Figure 3
lower efficiency of electric power generation and transportation, both powered mainly The U.S. energy mix today. Source:
by heat engines. U.S. Energy Information Agency,
The world is at a watershed in energy history. The patterns of Figures 3 and 4 will 2009.
soon change. Fossil fuel use, comprising about 85% of U.S. energy consumption, will
decline considerably over the next few decades due to resource depletion and environ-
mental problems, particularly global warming. What will take its place? To begin to
answer this crucial question, you need to know what’s available. Table 1 lists the major
energy resources—natural resources containing useful energy. We’ll survey these
resources and their availability in this section, and take a closer look at the most impor-
tant options in the remainder of this chapter.

1 New renewables
3 Hydro Lost in genera-
tion and trans- 24
24 mission, 24
Nuclear Electric
9 power
genera- Waste, 70
tion, 7 14
39 Residential
20
24 and
Coal
commercial,
4 8 29 8
Supply:
106 1
exajoules 22
of energy 15
resources 40 Industrial,
Oil 39 22
14 14
Nonelectric,
Useful work
67
and heating,
5 36
24
25
Gas 20
31 Transpor-
tation, 7
4 31
Biomass

Figure 4
Approximate energy flows in the U.S. economy in exajoules (1018 J) , in 2008. Source: U.S. Energy Information
Agency, 2009.

415
 The Energy Challenge

Fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas, store the chemical energy created by
hundreds of millions of years of accumulated layers of energy-rich plant and animal
remains. Time and pressure transformed these remains into great beds of coal, pools of
oil, and pockets of gas. It’s a telling commentary on humankind’s environmental impact
that, in only 250 years of fossil-fuel burning—one millionth of the time it took to store
the energy in the ground—we have sent much of the carbon in these fuels into the atmos-
phere as CO2.
Energy from nuclear fusion is Nuclear power, which obtains large-scale energy from the nucleus, supplies elec-
probably now 50 years away, but tricity today from uranium. The nuclear industry has been stagnant in the United
we won’t need it until then. We’ll States for 40 years, but has slowly grown worldwide. It could grow rapidly in the
need it then, though, for several
future, both in the United States and worldwide, driven by fossil-fuel shortages, ris-
reasons: its abundance and con-
centration, its freedom from car- ing energy demand, and global warming. In the future, it could come from plutonium
bon emissions, its low using breeder reactors or from hydrogen using fusion reactors (Section 3).
radioactivity, its freedom from Fossil and nuclear resources are finite or nonrenewable. How long will they
explosions, and its low risk of last? It’s not a simple question. In the real world, a nonrenewable resource never
nuclear proliferation. runs out completely. Instead, as the resource is depleted it becomes harder to
Robert Goldston, Princeton Plasma recover, making it more expensive, until it’s effectively phased out.
Physics Laboratory Director
So the important issue is when will a nonrenewable resource’s production begin to
decline? After this date, the resource’s price escalates rapidly because of continued
demand and declining supply, and its use declines. A nonrenewable resource reaches
its production peak and begins to decline when about half of the total resource that

Table 1
Natural energy resources
Fossil fuels
Coal
Oil
Natural gas
Nuclear fuels
Uranium for nuclear reactors
Plutonium for breeder reactors
Hydrogen for fusion reactors
Renewable resources
Hydroelectric
Biomass burning: wood and trash
Methanol from wood (also from coal and natural gas)
Ethanol from grains, grasses, sugar, trash
Wind
Photovoltaic (solar) cells
Solar-thermal electricity
Geothermal
Active solar heating
Passive solar heating
Conservation (not a natural resource, but acts like one)
Energy efficiency with no change in energy services
Lifestyle changes to reduce energy use

416
 The Energy Challenge

was originally in the ground has been removed. Table 2 records the estimated times Table 2
remaining until the production peaks of the major nonrenewable resources are Number of years until global pro-
reached. There is a wide range of estimates, because of uncertainties about how much duction rates of nonrenewable
of each resource remains in the ground and about the future growth of consumer energy resources begin to decline,
assuming a modest 1% to 2%
demand. As you can see, the production peaks of oil and gas could occur in the near
annual increase in consumption.
future, or even now in the case of oil. Many analysts predict major economic disloca- More precisely, this is the number
tions when oil, the fossil fuel in shortest supply but greatest demand worldwide, of years until the “production
reaches its production peak and begins to decline. peak” occurs, after which demand
will exceed supply and prices can
be expected to rise rapidly.
How do we know when oil production will peak? Unlike previous “how do we
know” queries, the short answer to this one is that we don’t know. Oil pessimists—mostly Resource Years
former oil company geologists who are now speaking their minds—expect oil production Coal 100
to peak soon, or now. They base their conclusions on rising worldwide demand led by
Oil 0–30
China and India, the inability of producers to meet that demand as evidenced by rising oil
prices, declining production in the oil-producing nations outside of the Persian Gulf, and Natural gas 10–50
signs that even the Persian Gulf may be nearing its production peak. If these oil pes- Uranium a 50–100
simist’s claims are true, then production will soon be unable to keep up with demand
a
and prices will rise swiftly, causing fundamental changes in our economy, including great Without breeder reactors.
changes in our transporation systems and our car-dependent living arrangements.
On the other hand, oil optimists—mostly economists who specialize in natural
resource issues—argue that oil production depends more on economics and politics than
on how much oil is actually in the ground. They believe that technological innovations,
such as new drilling techniques, drilling far off-shore, oil from tar sands, and oil from
shale, will intervene; that production will continue to rise; and that prices will remain rel-
atively steady. Even the optimists give oil only 30 or so years.
The bottom line is that, regardless of whether you believe the pessimists or the opti-
mists, and regardless of what is done about global warming and other environmental
challenges, the planet is at or near the end of the oil age.

Renewable resources (Section 6) are those that are replaced immediately or at

least within a human lifetime. Although they contribute only a small but signifi-
cant 7.5% of U.S. energy today, their use is rising and will continue rising because
of concerns about global warming, pollution, escalating fossil-fuel prices, and
international security problems associated with oil and natural gas. They include
two resources that have been widely used for decades: hydroelectric energy from
water raised up behind a dam, and biomass energy from burning wood and trash.
Other, more recent biomass fuels include methanol or wood alcohol made from
wood, and ethanol or grain alcohol made from corn, grasses, sugar, and trash.
Electricity can be generated from several “new renewables”: wind turbines (wind-
mills), photovoltaic (solar) cells, solar-thermal energy (the sun’s thermal energy), and
geothermal energy (underground thermal energy). Geothermal energy isn’t really
renewable, but there’s so much hot rock at drillable depths that it’s classified as renew-
able. Solar energy can also provide direct space heating or hot water heating, either
“actively” with the help of pumps and fans, or “passively” by just letting the sun shine in.
A transition from fossil to renewable energy will take decades. Some experts
predict this will require massive economic investment, but others predict that new
technology, energy efficiency, and the profit motive will reduce costs greatly and
might even make the net cost “negative” (that is, switching to renewable energy
might cost less than continuing to use fossil fuels).
Energy conservation—reduced energy consumption—is a key to solving the
energy-enviroment-economy puzzle. Many analysts think the United States could cut
its energy consumption by 50% without harming its economy. Such industrialized

417
 The Energy Challenge

nations as Germany, Britain, and Japan operate on about half as much energy—whether
measured per person or per dollar of gross national product—as America does. Although
not really an energy resource, conservation acts like an energy resource. Conservation
includes energy efficiency measures (Section 7) such as home insulation, energy-effi-
cient lighting, and energy-efficient automobiles that reduce energy consumption without
reducing energy services. Conservation also includes less energy-intensive lifestyles—
for example, using mass transit instead of cars, living in smaller homes, and building
more compact communities. Many studies show that energy consumption can be
reduced dramatically by efficiency alone, without controversial lifestyle changes.
Beginning in 1973, Americans began using energy far more efficiently. Figure 5 docu-
ments this important point. The curve marked “Total annual energy” traces total U.S.
energy consumption. The curve marked “U.S. annual inflation-adjusted GDP” traces the
nation’s annual gross domestic product, its annual output of goods and services. The dol-
lar GDP amounts are not shown. Instead, the scale of the GDP graph is chosen to make the
GDP and energy graphs coincide in 1950 so that the two graphs can be compared.
Since GDP measures the nation’s total economic output, which in turn depends on
the energy it consumes, it’s not surprising that U.S. energy consumption rose almost
exactly in step with GDP between 1950 and 1973. But then came a surprise: The first
international oil crisis, in 1973, broke this close connection between energy consump-
tion and industrial growth. Energy prices increased rapidly in response to decreased
foreign oil supplies, and Americans looked for ways to save money by using energy

200

180

160
Efficiency, 94

140
in exajoules, 1018 joules

U.S. annual inflation-adjusted

Annual energy use,

120 GDP, appropriately scaled

Total annual energy

100

80

60
Energy 106
40

20

0
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Year

Figure 5
History of total U.S. energy consumption and GDP, 1950–2008. GDP is one measure of the goods and serv-
ices provided by the economy. In order to compare the two graphs, GDP is scaled to match total energy in
1950. The two graphs are parallel until the 1973 energy crisis, after which higher energy prices encouraged
Americans to conserve. The wide gap that then opens up between the two graphs is a measure of the energy
saved by efficiency measures since 1973. Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency.

418
 The Energy Challenge

more efficiently. The effect of this crisis, and of the second oil crisis in 1979, is evi-
dent in the graph. Although GDP fell briefly following each crisis, it soon resumed its
upward trend. But total energy use declined after each crisis and did not resume its
rapid upward trend. Apparently the efficiency measures, promoted by increased
prices, became permanent. Rapid increases in energy efficiency supported a rapidly
increasing GDP while energy consumption increased much more slowly.
Without efficiency gains, energy consumption would have stayed in step with
GDP. So the difference between the two graphs is appropriately labeled
“Efficiency.” By 2008, efficiency contributed 94 exajoules to the nation’s energy
mix, nearly outstripping the 106 exajoules of real energy use. In other words, nearly
50% of America’s energy services now comes from efficiency improvements since
1973. Because efficiency is environmentally harmless and comes “at negative cost”
(at a savings), this is very nice. It also illustrates a crucial point: The right efficiency
measures make dramatic energy savings possible.

CONCEPT CHECK 4 According to Figure 4, the overall energy efficiency of

electric power generation is about (a) 20%; (b) 30%; (c) 40%; (d) 50%; (e) 60%.

CONCEPT CHECK 5 According to Figure 5, the amount of energy saved by

energy efficiency measures in 1985 was about (a) 100 exajoules; (b) 80 exajoules;
(c) 60 exajoules; (d) 40 exajoules; (e) 20 exajoules.

MAKI NG ESTI MATES According to Figure 1, the daily average energy consump-
tion per person in industrialized nations is about 1000 MJ. Use this figure to estimate
the average person’s power consumption, in watts. Express this in kilowatts. If all this
energy were in the form of electricity, how many 100 watt bulbs could it light up?

3 NUCLEAR POWER: HOW IT WORKS

Nuclear power currently comes from uranium that provides thermal energy for steam-
generated electricity. Most U.S. nuclear power reactors operate as shown schemati-
cally in Figure 6. Nuclear plants operate pretty much like every other steam-electric
generating plant. Thermal energy from the primary energy source (nuclear fission, in
this case) heats water to make high-temperature steam that turns a turbine that turns
an electric generator that makes electricity.
Three essentials in all power reactors are fuel to convert nuclear energy to thermal
energy, coolant to transfer thermal energy away from the fuel, and neutron-absorbing
control rods that can be moved in or out to stop, slow down, or speed up the chain
reaction. Most U.S. reactors are water cooled. As shown in Figure 6, high-pressure
water circulates through the center of the reactor to transfer thermal energy away
from the chain-reacting fuel rods. This thermal energy then creates steam.
The fuel in water-cooled reactors is uranium, slightly enriched from its natural 0.7%
235
U content to 3%. The energy comes only from the 3% fraction of nuclei that are 235U,
and not from the 97% that are nonfissionable 238U. A nonexplosive chain reaction is

SO LUTION TO MAKI NG ESTI MATES Power is energy consumed per second. Accordingly, divide the 1000
MJ of daily energy consumption by the number of seconds in a day:
1000 * 106 J>(60 * 60 * 24 s) L 12,000 watts, or 12 kilowatts—the equivalent of one hundred twenty
100-watt bulbs!

419
 The Energy Challenge

Electricity

Containment dome

Hot steam

Generator

Hot water
Control at high
rods pressure Turbine

Steam Cooler steam

generator
Cold water

Core
Condenser

Hot water
Fuel
rods
Water

Pump
Reactor
vessel
Pump Water

Lake or
cooling tower

Figure 6
Schematic diagram of a steam-electric generating plant powered by a nuclear reactor.

maintained in the uranium. Natural uranium won’t work in water-cooled reactors because
both 238U and 11H (in the water molecules) can absorb neutrons and this spoils the reaction.
Since power reactors use uranium that is only slightly enriched rather than highly enriched
(90%) bomb-grade uranium, a power reactor cannot explode the same way that a full-
fledged nuclear weapon would, and it is impossible to use the uranium in a bomb.
The uranium fuel is shaped into small cylindrical pellets and stacked in long, thin metal
tubes. Some 40,000 of these fuel rods, 100 tonnes of fuel, form the power-producing core
of the reactor. Interspersed with the fuel rods is a far smaller number of control rods, made
of a neutron-absorbing material such as cadmium or boron, which can be inserted

420
 The Energy Challenge

or withdrawn as needed. The core is enclosed in a heavy steel reactor vessel

designed to withstand high pressures and shield against radiation.
To separate the highly radioactive water that circulates through the core from the
rest of the plant’s operations, water circulates in two physically separated loops
(Figure 6). The first loop circulates through the core, removing heat from the fuel
rods. Although this water is heated to above 300°C, the high pressure maintained
inside the reactor vessel prevents bubbles from forming, keeping it from boiling.
This water circulates around to a “steam generator” where it heats the water in the
second loop, turning this “secondary water” into steam. Thermal energy is trans-
ferred without allowing the water in the two loops to mix. Because the chain reac-
tion causes the core, the reactor vessel, and the first water loop to become highly
radioactive, these elements are encased in thick concrete. For further shielding and
protection against accidents, a large airtight containment dome—made of steel-
reinforced concrete about a meter thick and built to absorb an impact as great as
that of a jetliner crash—surrounds the radioactive elements (Figure 7). Since the
secondary loop is not kept at high pressure, its water immediately turns to steam in
the steam generator. The rest of the operation (turbine, generator, condenser, lake or
cooling tower) is identical to every other steam–electric power plant.
Ever since the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in Pennsylvania in
1979 (see Section 5), new nuclear power plant construction has halted in America. But
this might now be changing. Because of global warming and growing electricity
demands, support for new nuclear plants is increasing in the United States and around
the world. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects up to 30 applications for
new reactors at 20 sites during the next few years, and new plants are opening in
China, India, Europe, and elsewhere. To guard against power plant accidents, most new
plants have enhanced safety features such as multiple independent systems to keep
reactor cores from overheating in an emergency, multiple backup power systems, and
“passive” systems (requiring no human or mechanical control mechanism) to open and
close valves automatically by gravity or water flow and thus avoid human error.
Some of the new reactors will be enhanced versions of existing ones, while others
will be next-generation designs such as the “pebble bed reactor” in which some half
million hollow tennis-ball-sized metal spheres are filled with low-enriched uranium
fuel and placed in the reactor’s core. This reactor is cooled with chemically inert helium

Figure 7
Nuclear power plant under con-
struction. This view shows a cool-
ing tower and a reactor containment
dome under construction.
EFDA-JET

421
 The Energy Challenge

gas instead of with water. It’s considered safer than existing reactors because it exploits
the tendency of the non-fissioning 238U, comprising 97% of the reactor’s uranium, to
absorb additional neutrons as it heats up. Thus, if the reactor’s temperature rises danger-
ously in an accident, the 238U will absorb more neutrons and passively shut down the
chain reaction. The pebble bed reactor also has the great advantage of not needing to be
shut down for re-fueling. Instead, a few “pebbles” (spheres) are removed from the bot-
tom of the reactor every day, checked to see that they still contain sufficient fissionable
235
U, and put back onto the top of the pile. Most of the spheres work their way through
the reactor from top to bottom several times before being permanently removed.
But there’s a problem. As you can see from Table 2, there’s only a finite supply of
uranium. If a large expansion of nuclear power occurs, as is recommended or pre-
dicted by many observers, uranium supplies could begin running out within a few
decades. Enter the breeder reactor, a possible solution to this problem. Recall that
while 235U nuclei fission inside a reactor, the much more numerous 238U nuclei
absorb neutrons and transform into plutonium. As you know, plutonium is a second
chain-reacting nucleus that can be used in a nuclear reactor. Breeder reactors are
designed to create more than one new Pu nucleus for every 235U nucleus fissioned.
So breeder reactors actually create more fuel (in the form of Pu) than they use (in the
form of 235U) and can convert much of the 238U in any country’s uranium resources
to fissionable plutonium, extending these resources enormously.
The United States and several other nations built experimental breeder reactors
during 1970–1990, but they were extremely costly, plagued by technical problems,
and raised concerns about contributing to the worldwide proliferation of nuclear
weapons (see the next section). Today, due to global warming and expanding elec-
tricity demands, a new generation of experimental breeder reactors is coming
online in China, India, and Russia, a retired breeder reactor in Japan is restarting,
and other nations are considering breeder reactors.
A more futuristic new direction in nuclear power is the fusion reactor, based on
the nuclear reaction that fuels a fusion bomb:
2
1H + 31H : 4
2He + neutron
In a fusion reactor this reaction would take place nonexplosively, yielding a continuous
source of thermal energy that could boil water to make power-plant steam. The 21H would
be extracted by isotope separation from ordinary water—about 1 hydrogen atom in 6000
is 21H and the remainder are 11H. 31H is a radioactive isotope that is not found naturally. It
would be “bred” during the fusion reaction itself, by surrounding the fusion chamber
with lithium and reacting the lithium with the neutrons created in the fusion reaction:
n + 63Li : 4
2He + 31H
It’s not easy to make a fusion reactor. One must heat the 2H and 3H to millions
of degrees in order to start a self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction. This would
be done by passing an electric current through the gaseous hydrogen fuel. To get
a “net energy gain” (more useful energy produced by the reaction than is put into
the reaction in order to maintain it), three conditions must be met: The fuel must
be sufficiently compressed, the temperature must be sufficiently high, and these
two conditions must be sustained for a sufficiently long time (more than a tenth of
a second). This is difficult. For instance, if the fuel touches the walls of its con-
tainer, the walls immediately cool the fuel far below the fusion temperature, so the
fuel must be held away from the walls by electromagnetic forces. Figure 8 shows
the interior of the Joint European Torus (JET) that has achieved 50% of the “break-
even” (or net energy gain) energy production. Inside the “torus” (doughnut)

422
 The Energy Challenge

Figure 8
Inside the JET experimental fusion
reactor. Within this “torus” config-
uration, hydrogen gases are heated
to over 100 million degrees by a
combination of electrically neutral
particles, radio waves, and electric
currents. If held at sufficiently
high temperatures and pressures
for a long enough time, the hydro-
gen will fuse to form helium and
release nuclear energy to both run
the reactor and provide energy to
the outside world.

Rollin Geppert
configuration shown, hydrogen gases are heated to over 100 million degrees with
beams of particles, radio waves, and electric currents.
The United States and five other nations agreed in 2005 to build an experimental
fusion reactor, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), in
Cadarache, France. Twice the size of JET, it’s designed to finally decide whether
taming the sun’s energy to generate electricity is even viable, and to exceed
breakeven sufficiently to achieve a tenfold energy gain. ITER, which will not be
used for commercial purposes, will be under construction until 2016. If it’s success-
ful, construction of a prototype fusion power plant might begin in 2022 and be com-
pleted by 2032. And if that plant is successful, the first commercial fusion power
plant might be built and go online by 2050. But those are big “ifs,” and some knowl-
edgeable physicists are skeptical that fusion will ever be a power source on Earth. At
any rate, there’s broad agreement that commercial nuclear fusion won’t be ready
before 2050, and that our current energy/environment dilemma must be resolved
well before that time, and hence that fusion can’t be the key to that solution.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 Which are possible fission-reactor fuels? (a) Uranium.

(b) Thorium. (c) Hydrogen. (d) Plutonium. (e) Hot dogs.

4 TRADE-OFFS: ISSUES FOR COAL POWER

We nuclear people have made a
The world faces big decisions regarding energy and the environment. The biggest Faustian bargain with society. On
the one hand, we offer an inex-
question is what to do about the fossil fuels that supply 84% of our energy but that
haustible source of energy. But
cause global warming and are increasingly in short supply. Energy efficiency is the price that we demand of soci-
one answer that nearly everybody supports; less-polluting renewable sources of ety for this magical energy source
energy are another widely supported answer. I’ll discuss these in Sections 7 and 6, is both a vigilance and a longevity
respectively. of our social institutions that we
Nuclear power is another potentially large energy source that’s widely mentioned are quite unaccustomed to.
as part of the solution because it doesn’t cause global warming and it has a strong Alvin Weinberg, Former Director of Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, 1972
resource base if breeder reactors are used. Nuclear power, supplying 23% of

423
 The Energy Challenge

America’s electricity, is useful only for generating electricity. The leading electric-
ity source, coal, supplies 51%. Together, these sources provide 74% of America’s
electricity and 31% of its total energy. Both provide a sizeable chunk of America’s
electricity, but both have significant drawbacks.
Expert and popular opinion can be found both for and against both coal and
nuclear power as big components of the energy future. Coal and nuclear power
stand at the heart of the energy/environment dilemma. Both deserve serious debate,
and they’ve been receiving it. I’ll provide food for this debate by discussing the pros
and cons of both in this and the next sections.

Europe must reduce its annual CONCEPT CHECK 7 The drawbacks of nuclear power include (a) land degrada-
per-capita greenhouse gas emis- tion from mining; (b) pollution from acid rain; (c) health problems among workers;
sions by 80 percent, or from 11 to
(d) global warming; (e) waste disposal; (f) proliferation (or spread) of weapons of
2.2 tons per person, India’s cur-
rent level, by 2050. The United
mass destruction.
States, which emits 27 tons per
person each year, must also CONCEPT CHECK 8 Which of the above are drawbacks of coal power?
decrease its emissions to these
levels if the world is to prevent a The big “pro” for both coal and nuclear power is that ample resources exist for
significant rise in temperatures. most of this century, although a major expansion of nuclear power would probably
David King, Britain’s Former Chief
Scientific Adviser, in 2008
require the widespread use of breeder reactors.
Now let’s consider the “cons.” For starters, please write down (at least in your
mind) all the “cons” of coal power and of nuclear power you can think of.
———— (a pause, for writing down)
Table 3 gives my lists. Because both resources generate electricity, the two lists
have a lot in common. In fact, there are parallel, but not identical, entries for all but
two problems: global warming and nuclear weapons proliferation. But the similarity
of problems does not necessarily mean that the evaluations will be similar. For exam-
ple, both cause land degradation, but coal degrades far more land than nuclear
because coal’s volume of fuel per unit of energy is so much greater. For another
example, nuclear power creates much more of a terrorism threat than does coal
power, because terrorists could release radiation, steal radioactive material, or even
(if it’s a breeder reactor) steal bomb material from a nuclear plant.
As you can see from the list, coal has all sorts of problems. Coal has made consider-
able progress in reducing them, for example, by installing devices known as “scrubbers”
that remove 98% of the acid-rain-causing sulfur from the stack emissions. However, the
cons list remains long and severe, and “clean coal” is a misnomer just as “clean nuclear
power” would be a misnomer as compared with efficiency and renewable energy
sources.
Coal’s biggest drawback is undoubtedly global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions,
mostly from fossil fuels, cause 55% of global warming. Coal is the worst fossil fuel in
this regard, releasing 24 kg of C per billion joules of energy as compared with oil at
19 kg and natural gas at 14 kg of C per billion joules. Table 4 indicates the molecular
basis of these facts: Most carbon-bearing compounds also contain hydrogen, and both
the C and the H atoms combust with oxygen to make CO2, H 2O, and thermal energy.
Only the CO2, and not the H 2O, contributes significantly to global warming.2 So fuels
with a higher ratio of H to C create less global warming per unit of energy.

2
Although water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, human activities have very little effect on its
concentration in the atmosphere because the atmosphere can hold just so much H 2O before the H 2O gas
condenses into water drops and “rains out.”

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 The Energy Challenge

Table 3
Pros and cons for coal and nuclear power
Coal power Nuclear power

Pros:
Abundant electricity Abundant electricity
Abundant resources Abundant resources (assuming breeder reactors)
Cons:
Land degradation from mining Land degradation from mining
Air pollution: acid rain, SO2, NO2, ash Nuclear waste: Radiation in environment
Workers’ health: black lung disease, etc. Workers’ health: radiation in mines and plants
Mining accidents Power plant accidents
Heating of lakes and rivers Heating of lakes and rivers
Solid waste: ash, sludge Used fuel rods, low-level radioactive waste
Costs: plant, fuel, operations, waste disposal Costs: plant, fuel, operations, waste disposal
Major source of global warming
Proliferation of nuclear weapons
Terrorism: electricity shutdown Terrorism: release of radiation, theft of bomb material

To reduce CO2 emissions, the coal industry and U.S. government are developing
carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. It’s a tall order: A typical coal plant
consumes 10,000 tonnes of coal every day, enough to fill a long “unit train” that
transports coal. When burned, this produces over 30,000 tonnes (every C atom com-
bines with two O atoms) of CO2 every day. And that’s just one plant. Most experts
agree that CCS is the key to getting through the transition from our reliance on fos-
sil fuels for 84% of our energy today to less than 20% by 2050 without in the mean-
time allowing atmospheric CO2 to reach dangerous levels. Here’s how it works.
The general idea is to capture CO2 at generating plants, compress it, and pipe it to a
facility where it can be safely stored for hundreds to thousands of years. All the steps
required to accomplish this have already been taken, but not at the large scales required
to help solve global warming, and they haven’t yet been integrated in a single facility.
In conventional coal plants, after the coal is burned the low-pressure post-combustion
gases pass through devices that remove particulates and gases of sulfur and nitrogen
before being exhausted via smokestacks into the air. CCS could be installed in such
plants, either as a retrofit to an existing plant or as part of a new conventional coal plant,
by extracting CO2 from the post-combustion gases after conventional pollutants are
removed but before reaching the smokestack. This means that CO2 would have to be

Table 4
Carbon released by several fuels
kg of C per 109 J Ratio of H to C combusted

Coal 24 1 H to 18 C
Oil 19 2 H to 1 C
Natural gas 14 4 H to 1 C
Hydrogen 0 H only

425
 The Energy Challenge

removed from enormous volumes of low-pressure exhaust gas, a process that would raise
the plant’s coal consumption by 30%, with a corresponding increase in price. The removed
CO2 would then be compressed (causing more expense) and piped to a storage facility.
A more effective approach is to design the plant from the start with CCS in mind.
The most likely design is the “integrated gasification combined cycle” (IGCC) plant.
Upon entering the plant, coal is mixed with water and oxygen to create a high-energy
gas called “synthesis gas” (this is the “gasification” stage). Conventional pollutants
(particulates and gases of sulfur and nitrogen) are then removed, and the synthesis
gas is chemically reacted with steam to create separate gas streams of hydrogen (H 2)
and CO2. The hydrogen then burns to turn both a gas turbine generator and then a
steam turbine generator in what is called a “combined cycle.” The IGCC process
consumes less coal, and is cheaper, than the conventional coal CCS process because
the extraction of CO2 from the high-pressure low-volume synthesis gas is much eas-
ier than extraction from a conventional plant’s post-combustion gases.
Three favorable places to store CO2 are depleted oil or gas reservoirs, unminable
coal beds, and underground natural saltwater aquifers. There’s some experience with
this: Oil companies have for decades injected high-pressure CO2 into old oil wells in
order to force out the last remaining oil; Norway has, since 1996, injected a million
tons of CO2 every year into the ground beneath the North Sea; a similar amount has
been injected into an Algerian gas field; and several storage projects are starting up in
Texas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that a toxic sud-
den release from a well-engineered facility is highly unlikely, and estimates that there’s
storage space worldwide for all of the twenty-first century’s CO2. The IPCC estimates
that appropriate reservoirs are likely to retain over 99% of their CO2 for more than
1000 years. This is important because even a small non-toxic leakage rate of, say, 1%
per year could, within a few decades, defeat the purpose of CCS by allowing large
amounts of CO2 to reach the atmosphere.
In order to limit CO2 emissions, the United States is soon likely to put a price on
emissions; this might have already happened by the time you read this. This will
probably happen by putting a “cap” on allowed emissions, but a simple carbon tax
is also possible, making renewable energy sources more competitive and providing
economic incentives for CCS and IGCC plants.
Many observers fear that humankind is fast approaching a climate tipping point
beyond which natural feedback mechanisms could start the irreversible melting of
large portions of Greenland or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, eventually raising
ocean levels by a catastrophic several meters and altering the face of the planet.
Human activity has already raised CO2 concentrations from their roughly 280 ppm
maximum of at least the past half million years to 388 ppm today, nearly a 40%
increase. The IPCC states that a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration, to 560
ppm, will cause a warming of about 3°C. The IPCC also states that temperatures
were raised by 3°C during the last interglacial (between the ice ages) period, about
125,000 years ago, and reductions in polar ice at that time raised ocean levels by 4
to 6 meters. For this and other reasons, many observers conclude that we’d better
keep warming to less than 2°C, and that to achieve this we’d better keep CO2 con-
centrations below 450 ppm.
If the surge of over 1000 new conventional coal-fired power plants currently on the
world’s drawing boards is built without CCS, CO2 concentrations will almost cer-
tainly climb to over 450 ppm. So CCS is a critical issue, with several possible out-
comes: (1) entirely stop building new coal plants; (2) halt new plant construction for
about 10 years until CCS can be installed; (3) continue building new plants but install
CCS as soon as possible; and (4) install new plants without bothering about CCS.

426
 The Energy Challenge

CCS development is still at an early stage. It’s likely that it will eventually be
successful, but it will be a few years before we know and perhaps 2018–2020
before it’s ready for commercial use. Global climate change. . . poses
The historical trend from coal to oil to natural gas to CCS (in which only hydro- dangers which may be very large.
The problem can be ameliorated
gen is burned) represents a decarbonization of the energy supply. Global warming
by reducing fossil fuel consump-
has caused decarbonization to be a policy aim of most nations today. Natural gas is tion through conservation and
often preferred over coal or oil for electricity generation, solar energy is growing expanded use of nuclear and
rapidly, and there is talk of a revival of nuclear power. In fact, Table 4 suggests that solar power. . . . The most obvious
this trend could lead to carbon-free energy based on hydrogen alone. Although most role for nuclear power is to
of the visible universe is made of hydrogen, hydrogen gas—H 2—doesn’t occur nat- replace coal in electricity genera-
urally on Earth today because it’s so light and fast-moving that it all escaped Earth tion. It could also replace all the
oil and much of the natural
billions of years ago. However, hydrogen can be produced by passing an electric
gas. . . . A program of this sort
current through water. If the electricity is generated from solar or nuclear energy, could be implemented over three
the process becomes carbon-free. The hydrogen gas can be piped to distant loca- or four decades, as existing fossil
tions much like natural gas and used for transportation, for home heating, and to fuel plants are retired.
generate electricity locally using fuel cells. Thus hydrogen will become more David Bodansky, Physicist and Energy
Specialist
important in the world’s energy future.

5 TRADE-OFFS: ISSUES FOR NUCLEAR POWER

Let’s turn now to nuclear power. The first commercial nuclear power plant opened in
1957. By 1975, with 54 plants providing 10% of the nation’s electricity, the nuclear
age seemed firmly established. But then the boom faded. The last new U.S. plant
order was placed in 1974, and it eventually became clear—especially following the
Three Mile Island accident in 1979 (see the following discussion)—that the first
nuclear power era peaked during the 1970s and ended soon thereafter (Figure 9). The
big issue for nuclear power today is, should there be a second nuclear power era? The attention was all on the front
Nuclear power has always attracted strong proponents and opponents. Proponents end of the fuel cycle and mostly
on the reactor itself. Here’s where
argue that global warming, fossil-fuel shortages, and the prospect of a safer generation
the jobs and the career opportuni-
of nuclear reactors call for a revival of nuclear power, a nonfossil resource that produces ties were. Here’s where the com-
large amounts of electricity and could expand to produce much more. Opponents con- mercial interest lay. Engineers
tend that safety concerns, waste disposal problems, high cost, and nuclear proliferation were not interested in dealing
make nuclear power unacceptable. Nearly all observers agree that, because of global with waste. It was not glamorous;
warming, it’s high time to begin decarbonizing our energy economy. there were no careers; it was
Of the nuclear power issues listed in Table 3, the most significant are nuclear waste, messy; nobody got brownie points
for caring about nuclear waste.
power plant accidents, and nuclear weapons proliferation. I’ll discuss these here.
The Atomic Energy Commission
Although lower-level nuclear waste poses some problems, the more serious neglected the problem. . . . It is a
problem is the intensely radioactive high-level nuclear waste in used fuel rods.3 little surprising that no group
Used fuel rods are currently stored in large pools of water inside the containment [pointed out] that if some critical
domes of the country’s 104 nuclear power plants, where they are subject to theft and part of the system were missing
sabotage. These pools were never intended for long-term storage and would eventu- perhaps the whole system would
ally leak radiation into the environment at all 104 sites if they were maintained for come to a grinding halt.
Carroll Wilson, General Manager of the
centuries (Figure 10). Because these wastes must be stored safely for thousands of U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from
years, a long-term solution is essential. Used fuel rods contain fission fragments and 1947 to 1951
other radioactive isotopes created during the chain reaction. Shorter-lived isotopes

3
To give you a feel for how radioactive the rods are, an unprotected person standing within a meter of a typ-
ical used fuel assembly—a bundle of about 250 rods—that had been in storage for 10 years would receive
a lethal dose of radiation within about 15 minutes. A “younger” fuel assembly, that had had less time to
radioactively decay, would be more radioactive.

427
 The Energy Challenge

180 180
Total
160 160

140 140

Thousands of megawatts of
generated electric power
120 120
Under active
construction
100 100

80 80

60 60

40 40
Operating
20 20

0 0
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Year

Figure 9
The U.S. commitment to nuclear power, 1960–2000: total megawatts installed and under construction.

dominate the radioactivity for the first few centuries, so that the waste’s radiation level
decreases by a factor of 300 during the first 10 years and by a factor of 100,000 during
the first 1000 years. Nevertheless, some isotopes remain potentially toxic for tens of
thousands to millions of years.
In 1987, Congress designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada (Figure 11) as the sole site to
be considered for waste burial. After two decades of controversy and $10 billion spent
examining this location, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2008 announced
that the Yucca Mountain facility would be required to guarantee that an average exposed
individual living and gathering food near the site should receive a maximum annual
United States Department of Energy exposure of only 0.15 mSv at any time during the next 10,000 years, and a maximum
annual exposure of only 1.0 mSv at any time during the period from 10,000 years to
Figure 10
1 million years. 0.15 mSv/year is only 6% of the natural background rate, and 1.0
Sites in the United States at which
spent nuclear fuel, surplus plutonium, mSv/year is 40% of the natural background rate. It’s also worth noting that 10,000 years
and other high-level radioactive waste is longer than recorded history, and 1 million years is some 10 times longer than the age
are stored at the surface; these include of our species, Homo sapiens. Also in 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy submitted an
the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants, application to construct and operate the Yucca Mountain site. The application was
whose used nuclear fuel rods are accompanied by an analysis indicating that the site would easily meet the EPA’s 10,000-
stored on-site. year and million-year standards. Nevertheless, in 2009 the U.S. government, prompted
by public sentiment (especially in Nevada), decided to nix the Yucca Mountain location.
But the government is still committed to finding a long-term nuclear waste site,
and is committed to nuclear power in general. As John Holdren, President Obama’s
science advisor, put it in 2009, “I think we are going to see more nuclear power
plants in this country. They’ll be of a new generation that will be characterized by
better safety characteristics. . . . We still have a problem in this country that there’s
no agreed upon approach for managing the radioactive waste in the long run, and
[we’re] going to be paying some attention to figuring out how we’re going to deal
with that.”

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 The Energy Challenge

United States Department of Energy

Figure 11
Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

The accident in 1979 at Three Mile Island illustrates how things can go wrong
in complex technologies. It began with a routine event: A pump failed in the outer
water loop that carries steam to the turbine (Figure 6). Control rods immediately
and automatically dropped into the reactor and fission ceased. But stopping fission
in a reactor doesn’t stop all the heating, because some 5% of a reactor’s power
comes not from fission, but from radioactivity. So water must be kept moving
through the reactor to prevent overheating.
So a backup pump took over. But a valve in this backup pump had been left
closed by mistake, and a warning light that should have alerted operators to the
closed valve was obscured by a tag, so this water didn’t get into the reactor for
another 8 minutes. During this time, the temperature and pressure rose, forcing a
pressure-relief valve on the steam generator (Figure 6) to open. The open valve
allowed steam to escape, flooding the containment building floor with radioactive
water. Some of this water was automatically pumped to an adjoining building,
releasing a relatively small amount of radioactivity to the environment.
Water in the overheated core evaporated and escaped. Because of the threat of
overheating, every reactor contains a tank of emergency cooling water. But the oper-
ators interpreted their control room dials to mean that there was too much water in
the core, rather than too little. So they shut off the emergency cooling water. The
water level dropped below the top of the fuel rods, and the fuel heated until much of
the core had melted, an event known as a meltdown. This permanently destroyed the

429
 The Energy Challenge

reactor. Only the dwindling water still in the bottom of the core prevented the entire
reactor vessel from melting and spilling molten fuel into the containment building.
Unusual chemical reactions in the hot reactor created hydrogen gas that remained
in the reactor for several days, causing concern that a hydrogen explosion might rip
open the reactor, releasing a large amount of radioactivity to the environment. There
were no immediate deaths, and few, if any, long-term cancer deaths are expected. The
accident cost the utility company $1 billion to clean up, plus the loss of the reactor.
This accident and the much worse accident at Chernobyl led to new safety proce-
dures and technologies, and it’s thought that new reactors will be more accident-
proof than previous reactors. Nevertheless, with nearly 500 nuclear power plants
either operating or under construction worldwide, there will always be some proba-
bility of a serious accident. But any serious consideration of nuclear power plant
accidents should compare the estimated 4000 deaths caused by the 1986 Chernobyl
meltdown with other accident tolls such as the 24,000 probable deaths caused every
year in the United States alone from coal power plant pollution.
Most energy experts agree that nuclear weapons proliferation is by far the most
serious issue for nuclear power, because a nuclear war would be much more cata-
strophic than any conceivable nuclear power plant accident or nuclear waste leakage.
So-called “peaceful” nuclear power programs have developed in tandem with
nuclear weapons programs, and provided cover for those weapons programs, in
India, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea, and perhaps Iran. Nuclear
power can provide knowledge and experience for nuclear weapons development.
Most nuclear power plants use low-enriched uranium fuel (a few percent 235U and
over 95% 238U), although a few use natural uranium (less than 1% 235U). Thus, most
nations having nuclear power plants can claim a need for uranium enrichment plants.
But enrichment plants are inherently dangerous facilities because any plant that can
enrich uranium up to a few percent can continue the process up to the high-enrichment
(over 90% 235U) needed for uranium fission bombs.
Furthermore, every nuclear power plant, including even those using non-
enriched fuel, is an inherently dangerous facility because they all produce 239Pu as
a “waste” product, and 239Pu can be used to fuel a plutonium fission bomb. In order
to make a plutonium bomb, the reactor fuel rods must first be reprocessed to
extract 239Pu, a challenging technical operation that’s feasible for a nation and not
feasible for a small terrorist organization. The United Kingdom, France, Japan,
Russia, and India reprocess used fuel rods to extract and “recycle” plutonium and
uranium as nuclear power fuel.
The United States halted reprocessing in 1977 due to proliferation concerns, espe-
cially India’s entry into the nuclear club in 1974. India followed the reprocessing
route to a fission bomb using supposedly peaceful U.S.-supplied reprocessing tech-
nology to obtain plutonium. Pakistan’s weapons program also benefited from nuclear
power technology when a Pakistani physicist-spy, working in a commercial uranium
enrichment plant in the Netherlands, copied the plant’s design to build a Pakistani
enrichment plant that then produced weapons-grade uranium for nuclear weapons.
Thus, the Pakistan–India nuclear arms race is intertwined with nuclear power issues.
To make matters much worse, Pakistan also proliferated its nuclear knowledge to
North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Helped by Pakistan's "assistance," North Korea entered
the nuclear weapons club by detonating nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009 using plu-
tonium from reprocessed fuel rods from its uranium-fueled nuclear reactor.
As noted in the preceding section, a large expansion of nuclear power will prob-
ably run into uranium supply problems and thus require breeder reactors. Even

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 The Energy Challenge

today, several new experimental breeder reactors are coming online around the
world. But there’s a problem with breeder reactors: They make the nuclear weapons
proliferation problem much worse. Breeder reactors exacerbate proliferation
because plutonium reactor fuel can also fuel a nuclear weapon, whereas uranium
reactor fuel cannot because it’s not highly enriched. Widespread breeder reactors
will create large amounts of pure plutonium to be stored, shipped to other reactors,
and used as reactor fuel. An expanded nuclear power industry could put more than
a million kilograms of plutonium into global commerce every year. Because only
10 kilograms are needed for a fission bomb, it might be difficult to keep significant
amounts from going into weapons. Despite these concerns, Japan, China, India, and
South Korea are developing breeder reactors as part of a rapid expansion of nuclear
power in Asia during the next few decades.
Breaking the link between nuclear power and nuclear proliferation will require
an effective system of international controls on the two crucial proliferation-prone
technologies, namely uranium enrichment and fuel rod reprocessing. The United
Nations-sponsored International Atomic Energy Agency performs this function as
best it can today, but it often lacks the information and the power to prevent enrich-
ment and reprocessing for nuclear weapons purposes. Many observers suggest con-
centrating all enrichment and reprocessing technology within just a few centralized
facilities under tight international controls.
In light of their problems, there’s a good case for shrinking or eliminating both
coal and nuclear power. The problem is that everybody wants more energy.
Rampant world population growth and increased standards of living have increased
this demand, and it’s not at all clear that renewables and efficiency alone can satisfy
it. Most observers agree that global warming requires a radical reduction in all fos-
sil fuels by at least 2050. So serious debaters tend to fall into two camps: those who
think nuclear power must be expanded as part of a program to reduce fossil fuels,
and those who think humankind can reduce both nuclear power and fossil fuels and
rely on efficiency and renewables alone.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 Which of the following has the largest mass? (Hint: Coal is
made mostly of carbon, with other elements present only as minor contaminants.) (a) The
waste fuel rods generated by a typical nuclear power plant during one year. (b) The car-
bon dioxide gas generated by a typical coal-fired power plant during one year. (c) The
sulfur dioxide gas generated by a typical coal-fired power plant during one year.

6 RENEWABLES
Although only hydroelectricity and biomass contribute much renewable energy
today, other renewables are expanding rapidly and could provide much more energy
in the future. Every energy resource has its drawbacks, but renewables have fewer
than fossil or nuclear resources. Either renewable or nuclear energy or both could
provide a decarbonized energy economy by generating hydrogen and electricity for
homes, industries, and transportation.
Hydroelectricity and biomass for burning contribute together nearly 7% of the
U.S. energy budget. Hydroelectric energy, the gravitational energy of water that
the sun’s warmth has raised by evaporation, goes entirely to centralized electricity.
Although more energy could be squeezed out, it’s close to its practical limit because
most of the dammable rivers in the United States are already dammed.

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 The Energy Challenge

Biomass energy, the chemical energy of wood, sugar, grains, and trash, is avail-
able from many sources and can be transformed into many forms. In the past most of
it has come from burning wood and trash for heat or power-plant steam. But since
2000 this has changed as biomass is increasingly processed to make transportation
No single technology will stop fuels, called biofuels. The explosion of biofuels since 2000 is driven by oil supply
global warming, but there is a sil- problems and global warming. Most biomass energy comes from agricultural prod-
ver bullet: a cap on carbon that ucts that consume atmospheric CO2 while growing and emit this CO2 back into the
will launch all these technology atmosphere when consumed, so they contribute zero net CO2 emissions except for
solutions into the mainstream.
their indirect effects. But these indirect effects are significant because mechanized
Fred Krupp, President of the
Environmental Defense Fund, and agriculture uses lots of fossil fuel for planting, harvesting, transportation, and fertil-
Miriam Horn, in Earth: the Sequel izer production, and because CO2-storing forests are often cleared to make room for
cropland. The use of food crops—especially corn-based ethanol—for fuel also
decreases global food supplies, driving up the cost of food and exacerbating poverty.
There are plans to enormously expand biomass consumption by replacing 30%
of U.S. oil consumption with biofuels by 2030. Today and for the next few years,
most of this would be ethanol, also known as grain alcohol, produced from corn. In
2008, Americans consumed 9 billion gallons of ethanol, largely for transportation,
replacing about 3% of U.S. oil consumption. But there are questions about how
much further expansion is desirable, because experts disagree on whether corn-
based ethanol really saves oil and really reduces CO2 emissions. Some studies show
that, when the indirect effects of agriculture are included, gasoline is better than
ethanol on both counts. Furthermore, studies show that corn-based ethanol drives
up food prices. Thus there’s a debate about whether any further expansion of food-
based biofuels is a good idea. There are suggestions, for example, to allow only
those biofuels known to actually reduce oil use and CO2 emissions to be marketed.
This situation will improve when scientists figure out how to cost-effectively
produce biofuels from nonedible cellulosic biomass such as grasses, paper prod-
ucts, wood, agricultural waste, and municipal solid waste. These energy sources
contain cellulose, the most common organic compound on Earth, constituting
about 1/3 of all plant matter. Cattle and other ruminant animals can digest cellu-
lose with the help of micro-organisms that live in their guts, but humans can’t.
Biofuels made from waste products could help solve waste disposal problems.
Grasses could be grown in large untended fields, without mechanized agriculture
and without fertilizer. So it’s not surprising that studies show cellulosic biofuels to
save both oil and global warming emissions as compared with gasoline. Scientists
can make cellulosic biofuels, but they’re too expensive and not expected to be
ready for the marketplace for several more years.
Geothermal energy, wind, photovoltaic cells, and solar-thermal energy generate
electricity. Together they contribute only about 1% of the world’s energy, but each
has much larger future potential. The remaining renewables in Table 1, active and
passive solar, can heat water, dry clothes, and heat buildings. The amount of energy
they provide isn’t usually tabulated, but it far exceeds the combined global contri-
butions of geothermal, wind, photovoltaic, and solar-thermal electricity, and it
could be increased enormously.
Geothermal energy, the thermal energy that radioactivity and pressure create
underground, provides 7000 megawatts of electricity worldwide—the equivalent of
seven large 1000 MW electric power plants. The easiest way to tap it is by drilling
to directly remove hot water or steam. But this “direct geothermal” is a very limited
resource. A nearly unlimited geothermal resource, amounting to many times more
energy than is contained in coal deposits, lies several kilometers underground in the

432
 The Energy Challenge

form of hot dry rock. Industry is just beginning to use the highly demanding Power
drilling and underground fracturing technology needed to recover this energy. plant
Figure 12 shows how it works. Because drilling this deep is expensive, this resource
will be much used only if the price of electricity generation is high.
Wind energy is the kinetic energy of air set into motion when the sun warms the Water
daylight side of Earth. Since antiquity, it has driven sailing ships and turned windmills reinjected Hot water
for grinding and pumping. Today, it also generates electricity by using wind turbines—
electrical generators coupled to wind-driven rotating machinery (Figure 13). This is a
proven decades-old technology. Wind has excellent near-term prospects for providing a Fractured
major fraction of the world’s electricity: Many large windy sites are available, wind is rock
already as cheap as coal for large-scale power, and new designs should reduce costs fur-
Granite
ther even as environmental costs push coal prices upward. However, wind is less reliable
than coal because of the wind’s unpredictability, and U.S. transmission lines do not cur-
A few
rently reach into the many remote locations where wind energy is most available. This kilometers
resource accounts for over 2% of the world’s electricity today and has been growing by
nearly 30% per year for more than a decade. Germany is the world leader, followed by
the United States, Spain, India, and China. Germany gets 7% of its electricity from
wind, the United States gets 2%, and Spain gets 10%. In 2007, the United States added
5 gigawatts of wind-generated electric power, equivalent to 5 large electric power plants,
and got 17 GW from wind. That same year, wind supplied 94 GW, equivalent to 94 large
electric power plants, worldwide. As an indication of future trends, wind generation
jumped 1500% during the past decade, while nuclear increased by 5% and coal
increased by 33%.
Photovoltaic (PV) cells exploit a fundamental quantum physics phenomenon
to create electric current (flowing electrons) directly from solar radiation shining Figure 12
on a metal surface. Here’s how. Light and other electromagnetic radiation is Thermal energy might someday be
quantized. This means that it must deposit its energy in tiny energy lumps called extracted from dry hot rocks by cir-
photons. Each of these concentrated lumps can be energetic enough to dislodge culating water through large cracks
created by hydraulic fracturing.

Figure 13
Construction of a wind turbine at
Carleton College in Minnesota.
Rated at 1.65 MW, it’s the first
commercial-scale wind turbine at a
U.S. college. It began operation in
2004 and supplies 40% of
Carleton’s electricity.

Tom Roster/Carleton College

433
 The Energy Challenge

an electron from its “parent” atom, allowing the electron to move freely along the
metal surface or perhaps be ejected from the metal. If the radiation didn’t deposit
its energy in lumps, calculations show that there would generally be too little
energy at any one atom to dislodge an electron. Thus, this photoelectric effect—
the ability of light to dislodge electrons from their parent atoms in metals—is
direct evidence for the quantization of light and in fact provided some of the ear-
liest evidence for quantum physics.
PV cells are made of semiconducting materials such as silicon, having electrical
properties midway between conductors that allow electrons to flow easily and insula-
tors that do not. Semiconductors normally behave like insulators, but if their electrons
are given a small amount of energy, the electrons can flow easily. These properties
make semiconductors the basis for modern electronic technology.
In PV cells, light provides the energy that puts electrons into the conducting state. A
typical cell is made of two thin layers of silicon constructed differently so as to have differ-
ent electrical properties, called “n-type” (negative) and “p-type” (positive) (Figure 14). The
difference is that nonsilicon “impurity” atoms of different types are introduced into the
two different layers. The n-type semiconductors contain impurity atoms that have more
semiconducting electrons (per atom) than does silicon, while p-type semiconductors con-
tain impurities that have fewer semiconducting electrons than does silicon.
Suppose the two layers are simply placed in contact in the dark, without any
external electrical contacts. Because of the impurities, microscopic electrical forces
acting within each layer cause electrons to quickly flow from the n-type (where there
were more electrons to begin with) to the p-type (where there were fewer). This cre-
ates an electric field at the p-n boundary (the junction between the two layers) that
stops the flow of electrons.
If light now shines on the two layers—still with no external electrical contacts—
the photoelectric effect will energize some of the electrons, causing some of them to
cross back across the p-n boundary from the p side to the n side. At this point, the n
side is like the negative terminal of a battery that is not connected to anything, and
the p side is like the positive terminal. Now suppose you electrically connect this
tiny “battery” to an external device, as shown in Figure 14. Then the energized elec-
trons that were pushed to the n side will flow through the wires and back around to
the p side. As electrons arrive at the p side, light continues to energize electrons to
move across the junction from the p side to the n side, creating a complete loop of
flowing electrons. The p-n junction acts like a battery energized by light.
PV energy is a good example of the contribution that sophisticated technology
can make to the world’s energy problems. Arrays of photovoltaic cells can provide
electricity for centralized electric power or they can power individual buildings or
appliances, especially in remote locations that are difficult to reach with central-
ized power (Figure 15). PV is not yet a large resource but it’s being intensely devel-
oped and is growing rapidly. Its total global capacity is now around 15 GW,
equivalent to 15 large electric power plants, a third of one percent of the world’s
4000 GW of electric generation capacity. Global production of PV cells has grown
by a factor of 2000 over the past 20 years; this growth is expected to continue, with
PV becoming a major contributor to power generation within 20 years. Larger pro-
duction and continuing research have driven down the cost of this resource to the
point that, assisted by a 30% federal tax credit for renewables, it now costs about
the same as natural gas. As PV costs decline and natural gas prices increase, PV’s
competitiveness as a utility option will increase.

434
 The Energy Challenge

Solar Figure 14
radiation This diagram shows how a PV cell
works. When light shines on it, the
Electrical n-type junction (the interface between the
Light bulb, hand connections semiconductor
calculator, etc. “p-type” and “n-type” semicon-
Electrons flow ductors) acts like a battery.
from n-type. Because of the differing micro-
scopic properties of the two semi-
conductors, electrons that are
energized by light cross the p-n
junction from the p to the n side.
These electrons can then flow
Electrons flow through an external circuit. The
into p-type. Electrons are p-type
energized by semiconductor junction acts like a battery. A typi-
light to move cal cell is only 1 mm thick.
across the p-n
junction.

Figure 15
A series of photovoltaic cells,
attached together, can provide a
large electric current. The photo
shows an experimental project.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Solar-thermal electricity is generated from thermal energy created by the sun. Least risk leads to the same con-
This resource generates the equivalent of one large power plant in the United States clusion as least cost. Energy com-
today, using two types of technologies. In the first, reflective solar collectors track the panies can afford only options
that are small, fast, cheap, and
sun and focus it on a liquid that is then piped to a central location where it produces modular. Efficiency, renewables,
steam to drive an electric generator (Figure 16). The second uses sun-tracking mirrors and some natural-gas technolo-
to reflect solar energy to a central boiler that produces steam (Figure 17). gies meet these tests. Coal and
Finally, solar energy can be used directly for solar heating. Figure 18 shows a nuclear generally don’t.
rooftop “flat-plate” collector where a pumped liquid is heated and then circulated back Amory Lovins
indoors to be used for space or water heating. Collectors using pumps are active forms
of solar heating; collectors based on natural flow are passive. The methods are older
than humankind (animals and plants seek the sun), as simple as the backyard clothes-
line, and as high tech as the latest triple-pane argon-filled multilayer-coated windows.
Figure 19 illustrates several passive concepts. Even in cold climates, these methods can
reduce heating needs by 60% to 80%, simply by letting the sun shine in.

435
 The Energy Challenge

Figure 16
Solar collectors for a solar-thermal
power plant. The mirrored faces
focus sunlight on a liquid in the
pipe running the length of the col-
lectors. The pipes transfer thermal
energy to a steam turbine coupled
with an electric generator.

Flirt Collection/Photolibrary

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Rear cover
Black metal and insulation
absorber
t
plate ou
id
with liquid liqu
tubes
ated
built in He

Figure 17
A 10 MW solar-thermal test facility in Barstow, California.
The mirrors reflect sunlight onto a boiler on top of the tower,
and the boiler makes steam for electricity generation.

Double-glass
cover
Economics has everything to do with the viability of these renewable resources. A
Cool liquid in primary advantage of many renewable resources is their low environmental impact. In
order to fully exploit this advantage and still maintain free markets, environmental
Figure 18 “costs” should be incorporated into the prices of energy resources. For example, in
A flat-plate solar collector that addition to its direct government subsidies, coal is effectively subsidized today by the
uses forced circulation of a liquid environment because its price does not reflect its full pollution and global warming
to collect and transfer solar- costs. This hidden subsidy distorts the market, leading to an irrational overuse of coal.
thermal energy.

436
 The Energy Challenge

Summer sunlight Insulation of

Overhanging eave all outside surfaces
to block summer
sunlight, permit
winter sunlight

Winter sunlight

Massive concrete,
rock, or water tanks
to store thermal
energy in the winter

Few
Deciduous trees to windows
block summer sun, on north
permit winter sun side
South Double- or
triple-paned
south-facing
glass

Massive concrete foundation in

contact with the ground for warmth
in winter, coolness in summer

Figure 19
Several passive solar-energy principles for keeping houses warm in cold weather and cool in hot weather.

Two methods have been suggested for incorporating one important environmental
cost, global warming, into the market. The first is a simple carbon tax on the carbon
content of all fuels. The second, more complicated, method is a carbon cap and
trade system in which a national maximum or “cap” would be placed on total car-
bon emissions, and “tradable permits” to emit a certain tonnage of carbon (adding up
to the allowed cap) would be issued to carbon-emitting companies. Companies could
buy and sell permits among themselves, allowing less efficient companies who need
additional permits to purchase them from more efficient companies who have per-
mits to spare. A carbon market would develop and provide incentives to obtain the
maximum emission reductions for the minimum cost. A quite successful sulfur
emissions cap and trade system was imposed during the 1990s on the U.S. coal
industry; it solved the serious problem of acid rain pollution in lakes and rivers. The
essential difference between the carbon tax and the cap and trade methods is that a
tax controls the emission rate by controlling carbon prices, whereas cap and trade
directly sets the emission rate and allows that rate to determine carbon prices.

437
 The Energy Challenge

CONCEPT CHECK 10 Which of the following are “heat engines”? (a)

Hydroelectric power plant. (b) Geothermal power plant. (c) Wind turbines. (d)
Solar-thermal electricity generation. (e) Photovoltaic cells.

7 USING LESS
Deficient building standards Efficiency contributes a giant 94 exajoules per year to the nation’s energy services
mean that more energy passes (Figure 5) but without the pollution, resource depletion, and expense that accompa-
through the windows of buildings
nies actual energy use. If the United States were still operating at the energy effi-
in the U.S. than flows through the
Alaska pipeline. ciency that existed up to the 1973 oil embargo, it would be using nearly twice as
William D. Ruckelshaus, First much energy as it is using. The saved energy reduces U.S. energy costs by nearly a
Administrator of the Environmental trillion dollars annually!
Protection Agency
Despite U.S. improvements in efficiency since the 1973 oil embargo, comparison
with other nations (Table 5) shows that Americans should be able to reduce their
Making major gains in energy effi- energy consumption to 50% or less of present levels without reducing standards of
ciency is one of the most economi- living or energy services. The average American consumes twice as much energy as
cal and effective ways our nation
do citizens of such prosperous (as measured by their gross domestic product per per-
can wean itself off its dependence
on foreign oil and reduce its emis- son) nations as France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.
sions of greenhouse gases. . . . One reason is that other nations waste less power plant thermal energy than we do.
Energy efficiency is one of America’s Take a good look at the next cooling tower or other power plant cooling apparatus you
great hidden energy reserves. We see. Enormous quantities of thermal energy flow out of such a tower, representing
should begin tapping it now. something like 50% of the energy of the fuel that was burned (or fissioned) to run the
From the Summary of the American plant. Think of the energy that would be saved if this thermal energy were put to use to
Physical Society’s Energy Efficiency
Report, 2008 heat homes or for industrial purposes. This is the thought behind combined heat and
power, also called co-generation. These terms refer to any use of thermal energy to
both generate electricity and provide useful heating, in either order. That is, exhaust
power plant thermal energy might also heat homes, or exhaust thermal energy from
high-temperature processes such as iron production might also run an electric generator.
Table 5
About 8% of the world’s electricity is co-generated. In contrast to the typical
Total energy consumption per
40% efficiency of a coal or nuclear generating plant, combined heat and power sys-
capita, for several nations and
groups of nations, for year 2005. tems run at efficiencies of 75% to 90%. Co-generation often provides heating to a
Units: gigajoules. compact group of residential or commercial buildings situated close to the electric
United States 331 generating plant so that the thermal energy (usually in the form of steam) needn’t
be piped far. For such “district heating” applications, the power plant cannot be
France 185 large or isolated as are most U.S. plants today. Thus co-generation is well suited to
Germany 176 small generating plants such as renewable energy plants running on wood waste or
biomass gas. For this warming planet, it can save a lot of CO2 emissions.
Japan 174
As just one among many examples of the energy savings that are possible when
United Kingdom 164 efficiency is taken seriously, let’s look at recent advances in efficient lighting.
Europe 159 Traditional incandescent bulbs create light by heating a thin wire until it glows.
As you might expect, this produces a lot more heat than light. Fluorescent bulbs
Switzerland 151
operate by a different principle, not involving heating. The bulb’s glass tube is filled
World 75 with dilute mercury vapor or some other gas. An electric current passes through the
China 55
tube, ionizing some of the mercury atoms by collision with the moving electrons
and putting many atoms into excited quantum states. The excited mercury atoms
India 21 radiate invisible ultraviolet photons that are absorbed by a powdery material called
Low Income 13 the phosphor that coats the inside of the glass tube, causing the phosphor to radiate
Countries visible light. These bulbs are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs, providing
Source: World Resources Institute. the same amount of lighting for one quarter as much energy.

438
 The Energy Challenge

The invention of compact fluorescent bulbs has further improved fluorescent

bulb efficiencies and has permitted them to be used in a wider variety of settings
than was possible with the older long, skinny bulbs. Here’s how. In household elec-
tric circuits, electrons don’t keep flowing in one direction but instead vibrate back
and forth 60 times per second. Older fluorescent bulbs operate at this 60 Hz fre-
quency. But both bulb quality and efficiencies would be higher if the frequency
within the bulb were much higher than 60 Hz. The reason is that at 60 Hz, electrons
and ions have a full 1/60th of a second for each back-and-forth motion—a long
time in the world of electrons and ions. This is time enough for large numbers of
electrons and ions to crash into the ends of the tube, creating heat and reducing bulb
life. Older bulbs were long and thin in order to reduce these “end effects.” New
electronically controlled bulbs cause the current to oscillate at up to 50,000 Hz.
This reduces energy losses by restricting electrons and ions to much smaller vibra-
tions and allows bulbs to be compact enough to screw into ordinary light sockets.
What are the consequences of this single efficiency improvement? For the con- Socialism collapsed because it
sumer, a typical $10 compact fluorescent bulb lasts 10 times as long as an incandes- did not allow the market to tell
cent and uses one-fourth the energy, for a net saving of $45 over the life of the bulb. the economic truth. Capitalism
For society, the 3.5 billion compact fluorescent bulbs in use worldwide in 2003 were may collapse because it does not
allow the market to tell the eco-
saving the electricity equivalent of 38 large 1000 MW power plants. Usage nearly
logical truth.
doubled during 2001 to 2003, so by today the number has surely doubled again to Ecologist Lester Brown, from His 2003
exceed 7 billion, but there is no data past 2003 to verify this. Sales growth of compact Book Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under
fluorescents has been enormous; for example, U.S. sales grew 343% between 2000 Stress

and 2004. Avoided electricity generation translates into pollution reduction. For
example, the 375 million compact fluorescents in use in North America in 2005 saved
about 9 million tons of carbon emissions and 175,000 tons of sulfur dioxide emssions
during the year. You are not going to get energy
Energy efficiency is entwined with economics. Energy efficiency usually saves innovation at scale when a barrel of
money, and when it does it’s possible for governments or companies to stimulate oil is cheaper than a barrel of water.
energy-saving programs that reward consumers financially. For example, some electric Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-
Winning Editorial Writer for the New
companies and some governments make large-volume, low-cost purchases of compact York Times, from His 2008 Book Hot,
fluorescent bulbs and sell them to consumers at below cost, with the difference recov- Flat, and Crowded

ered in increased electricity rates to those consumers. The consumers save money
because of reduced electricity consumption, which more than compensates for the
increased rates. Everybody wins: the company, the consumer, and the environment.
Because energy efficiency has been overlooked for so long, small investments can
produce dramatic savings. For example, a $7.5 million compact fluorescent bulb fac-
tory saves as much electricity as a $1 billion power plant generates, while also avoid-
ing the power plant’s fuel cost and pollution. A $10 million “superglass” factory
making windows that block heat but permit light can produce the comfort that would
be provided by the air conditioners run by $2 billion worth of generating stations.
Energy prices strongly affect the amount and types of energy consumed. The
lock-step link between GDP and energy growth was broken only when the 1973
Mideast oil embargo raised energy prices. Beginning in 1973, as energy efficiency
took hold, GDP grew but energy use did not (Figure 5). The higher energy prices
resulting from the oil embargo produced enormous energy and financial savings.
Many studies suggest energy taxes as an incentive for efficiency. Energy taxes
could be made “revenue neutral” by lowering other taxes in compensation, to discour-
age energy use while not increasing overall taxes. Incentives would encourage
energy-conscious shopping. Many observers suggest gas-guzzler taxes on inefficient
automobiles and gas-sipper rebates on efficient ones. An underlying view is that

439
 The Energy Challenge

Growth [in energy consumption] global warming, resource depletion, and other environmental concerns must be incor-
has declined primarily because porated into the costs of doing business and consuming goods if a market economy is
conservation turned out to be far to address such concerns. And if humankind doesn’t address such concerns, our econ-
less expensive than new supply—
omy, as well as our socity, will surely founder on the shoals of a ruined evironment.
3 to 5 times cheaper than new
power plants.
Arthur H. Rosenfeld, Physicist Who CONCEPT CHECK 11 If the entire world used energy at the same annual per
Provided the Energy Services of 28 capita rate as the United States, the world’s annual energy consumption would be
Large Generating Plants by Developing
High-Frequency Fluorescent Bulbs about (a) twice as large as it is; (b) three times as large as it is; (c) four times as
large as it is; or (d) six times as large as it is.

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

440
The Energy Challenge
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 5. In Figure 4, why is the residential sector of the economy so

much more energy-efficient than the transportation sector?
6. List the four broad categories of energy resources or energy
ENERGY HISTORY AND FUTURE options that will play a role in future U.S. energy policies.
7. Which yields more usable energy in the United States today:
1. Is it correct to say that this chapter studies the predicted fossil fuels, nuclear power, or renewable energy resources?
energy future? Suggest another, more accurate, phrase. 8. List the fossil fuels. Why are they called fossil fuels?
2. List the six main U.S. energy resources today. Which three 9. Explain why the gap between the GDP graph and the total
provide the most energy? energy graph in Figure 5 is labeled “efficiency.”
3. Which of the six main U.S. energy resources are renewable? 10. Explain why, in Figure 5, GDP and total energy coincide for
4. Which of the six main U.S. energy resources are primarily many years, and why they eventually separate.
used to generate electricity?

1 New renewables
3 Hydro Lost in genera-
tion and trans- 24
24 mission, 24
Nuclear Electric
9 power
genera- Waste, 70
tion, 7 14
39 Residential
20
24 and
Coal
commercial,
4 8 29 8
Supply:
106 1
exajoules 22
of energy 15
resources 40 Industrial,
Oil 39 22
14 14
Nonelectric,
Useful work
67
and heating,
5 36
24
25
Gas 20
31 Transpor-
tation, 7
4 31
Biomass

Figure 4
Approximate energy flows in the U.S. economy in exajoules (1018 J) , in 2008. Source: U.S. Energy Information
Agency, 2009.

From Chapter 16 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

441
 The Energy Challenge: Problem Set

200

180

160
Efficiency, 94

140
in exajoules, 1018 joules

U.S. annual inflation-adjusted

Annual energy use,

120 GDP, appropriately scaled

Total annual energy

100

80

60
Energy 106
40

20

0
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Year

Figure 5
History of total U.S. energy consumption and GDP, 1950–2008. GDP is one measure of the goods and serv-
ices provided by the economy. In order to compare the two graphs, GDP is scaled to match total energy in
1950. The two graphs are parallel until the 1973 energy crisis, after which higher energy prices encouraged
Americans to conserve. The wide gap that then opens up between the two graphs is a measure of the energy
saved by efficiency measures since 1973. Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency.

NUCLEAR POWER 20. Do most energy experts feel that coal use will continue rising
11. What is a nuclear reactor? over the long term? Why?
12. Which of the following is needed in a coal-fired power plant 21. What are high-level nuclear wastes, and where are they
but not in a nuclear power plant: condenser, cooling tower or stored today? What is the most likely long-term solution to
lake, turbine, stack, containment dome? this problem?
13. Which of the following is needed in a nuclear power plant 22. Describe in general terms what happened at Three Mile Island.
but not in a coal-fired power plant: condenser, cooling tower 23. Describe in general terms what happened at Chernobyl.
or lake, turbine, stack, containment dome? 24. What is a breeder reactor? How could it affect the uranium
14. List three essential components of a nuclear power reactor, resource problem?
and explain the function of each. 25. How could breeder reactors affect the nuclear proliferation
15. Is the enrichment of U.S. reactor fuel closest to 1%, 3%, problem?
10%, 50%, or 90%?
16. Is the enrichment of bomb-grade uranium fuel closest to 1%, RENEWABLES AND EFFICIENCY
3%, 10%, 50%, or 90%? 26. Which two renewable energy resources are in widest use today?
17. Where might a fusion reactor get its fuel? 27. List three renewable resources that could produce significant
amounts of electricity in the future, and describe briefly how
ASSESSING NUCLEAR AND COAL POWER each works.
18. List five problems with nuclear power and five problems 28. What are semiconductors, and what role do they play in pho-
with coal power. tovoltaic cells?
19. Of the four most-used nonrenewable energy resources, which 29. What is the difference between active and passive solar heat-
one does the United States possess in greatest abundance (most ing? Describe some of the techniques used in each.
years remaining at current rate of use)? In least abundance? 30. How does the per capita energy consumption of other nations
compare with that of the United States? What does this sug-

442
 The Energy Challenge: Problem Set

gest about the potential of further energy efficiencies in the 6. Use Figure 2 to estimate the amount of energy the United
United States? States got from coal in each of the following years: 1900,
31. How does a fluorescent bulb work? 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000.
32. Why are fluorescent bulbs more energy-efficient than incan- 7. Use Figure 2 to estimate the amount of energy the United
descent bulbs? States got from oil in each of the following years: 1900,
33. Describe a recent improvement in fluorescent bulbs that has 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000.
increased their usefulness. 8. Of the three major sectors, namely industrial, residential-
commercial, and transportation, which one is least efficient?
Why? (See Figure 4.)
Conceptual Exercises 9. Use Figure 4 to find the energy efficiency of the U.S. trans-
portation sector.
10. Use Figure 4 to find the energy efficiency of the U.S. resi-
ENERGY HISTORY AND FUTURE dential-commercial sector.
1. According to Figure 2, in approximately what year did the 11. Judging from the 70% efficiency of the U.S. residential-
United States begin getting as much, or more, energy from commercial sector (preceding exercise), what can you plausi-
fossil fuels as from wood? bly conclude regarding the use of heat engines by this sector?
2. By about what factor did the energy consumed in 1980 12. Which energy resource was dominant in the United States in
exceed that consumed 100 years earlier? 1860? 1880? 1900? 1920?
3. Which are renewables: wood, uranium, trash (as fuel), coal, 13. Which energy resource was dominant in the United States in
wind, natural gas, hydroelectric? 1940? 1960? 1980? 2000?
4. Which options listed in Table 1 contribute to global warming? 14. Use Figure 2 to estimate the percentage of U.S. energy resource
5. Which resources listed in Table 1 do not come ultimately consumption that came from coal in 1940 and in 1980.
from the sun? 15. Use Figure 2 to estimate the percentage of U.S. energy
resource consumption that came from oil in 1940 and in 1980.

110

100
Nuclear

90

80 Natural gas
Annual U.S. energy consumption,

70
in units of 1018 joules

60

50 Oil

40

30

20 Coal

10 New renewables*
Hydro
0 Biomass
1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020
Year * Wind, Geothermal, Solar

Figure 2
History of U.S. energy use, 1840–2008: total annual U.S. energy consumption of various
resources. Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency, 2009.

443
 The Energy Challenge: Problem Set

16. From Figure 4, find the approximate energy efficiency of the 24. Figure 6 shows that a nuclear power plant has a condenser.
overall U.S. economy. What is the function of this device? Do coal plants also have
17. According to Figure 4, what fraction of U.S. energy resources condensers?
goes into the generation of electricity? 25. Why is it important that a nuclear power plant have two sepa-
18. According to Figure 4, what fraction of coal energy goes into the rate water or steam loops to get hot steam to the turbine?
generation of electricity? What fraction of oil? Of natural gas? What could happen if there were only one loop?
19. From Figure 5, estimate the equivalent amount of energy 26. “Thermal pollution” is thermal energy put into a cooling lake
services (in exajoules) provided by post-1973 energy effi- or stream. If a coal plant and a nuclear plant operate at 40%
ciency measures in 1980 and also in 1990. Now estimate the efficiency, the one causing the most thermal pollution per
percentage of the nation’s total energy services provided by joule of electric energy is: the coal plant, the nuclear plant,
efficiency in each of these years. both the same.
20. Use Figure 5 to estimate the percentage increase in annual 27. Suppose the main water pipe breaks in a nuclear power plant,
U.S. energy use (actual energy—not energy services) during shutting off the water flow. If the control rods fall immedi-
1950–1970. Repeat for 1970–1990. ately into place, stopping the chain reaction, is there still a
problem? Why or why not? What safety feature should be
NUCLEAR POWER used in this case?
21. Every heat engine has a thermal energy input, a work output,
and a thermal energy output. At what places in Figure 6 does ASSESSING NUCLEAR AND COAL POWER
each of these occur? 28. List two advantages that coal has over nuclear power.
22. Figure 7 shows a tall tower. Is it analogous to a coal-fired 29. List two advantages that nuclear power has over coal.
plant’s stack? What is the function of this tower? Might coal 30. Since power plants fueled by natural gas create carbon diox-
plants have a tower like this? ide, why would it reduce global warming to switch from coal
23. Does a nuclear power plant have a “smoke” stack? Why or to natural gas power plants?
why not? 31. Are radioactive wastes hot? Why or why not?

Table 1
Natural energy resources
Fossil fuels
Coal
Oil
Natural gas
Nuclear fuels
Uranium for nuclear reactors
Plutonium for breeder reactors
Hydrogen for fusion reactors
Renewable resources
Hydroelectric
Biomass burning: wood and trash
Methanol from wood (also from coal and natural gas)
Ethanol from grains, grasses, sugar, trash
Wind
Photovoltaic (solar) cells
Solar-thermal electricity
Geothermal
Active solar heating
Passive solar heating
Conservation (not a natural resource, but acts like one)
Energy efficiency with no change in energy services
Lifestyle changes to reduce energy use

444
 The Energy Challenge: Problem Set

Figure 7
Nuclear power plant under con-
struction. This view shows a cool-
ing tower and a reactor containment
dome under construction.

Figure 6

EFDA-JET
Schematic diagram of a steam-elec-
tric generating plant powered by a
nuclear reactor.

Electricity

Containment dome

Hot steam

Generator

Hot water
Control at high
rods pressure Turbine

Steam Cooler steam

generator
Cold water

Core
Condenser

Hot water
Fuel
rods
Water

Pump
Reactor
vessel
Pump Water

Lake or
cooling tower

445
 The Energy Challenge: Problem Set

32. How can a breeder reactor create more fuel than it consumes? with temperatures in degrees Kelvin ( 0°C = 273 K).
Why doesn’t this violate the law of conservation of energy? Suppose that the actual energy efficiency is 40%. For every
33. How might a country’s nuclear power industry contribute to joule of electrical energy created by this plant, how many
developing a uranium bomb? joules of energy must be used?
34. How might a country’s nuclear power industry contribute to 5. A geothermal power plant uses 150°C steam and exhausts to
developing a plutonium bomb? the atmosphere at 25°C. Using the information from the pre-
ceding problem, find the maximum possible energy effi-
RENEWABLES ciency of this power plant. Suppose that the actual energy
35. Describe how hydroelectric energy is renewed. efficiency is 20%. For every joule of electrical energy created
36. List one possible disadvantage of each of the renewable by this plant, how many joules of energy must be used?
energy resources listed in Table 1.
37. What are some ways that solar energy is routinely used RENEWABLES AND EFFICIENCY
around the home? 6. MAKING ESTIMATES If you covered a football field with
38. Is renewable energy used today for any form of transporta- photovoltaic cells, for about how many households could it
tion? Explain. provide electricity? Use the following information: Solar
39. What energy transformation occurs for each of these ways of energy hits each square meter of Earth’s surface at a rate
making electricity: coal, uranium, hydroelectric, biomass? (averaged over day and night) of 200 watts, an average
40. What energy transformation occurs for each of these ways of household consumes electricity at a rate of 1 kilowatt, and
making electricity: geothermal, wind, solar-thermal, photovoltaic cells are 20% efficient.
photovoltaic? 7. MAKING ESTIMATES Use the information in the preceding
41. What energy transformation occurs when you hang your problem to show that about 10,000 square kilometers of land
wash outdoors to dry in the sun? area (3% of a sunny state such as Arizona), if covered with
photovoltaic cells, could provide all of the electricity for the
EFFICIENCY United States, which consumes electricity at an average rate
42. In what way was the oil crisis, caused by the 1973 Mideast of about 400 billion watts. What complications might arise if
oil embargo, a good thing for the United States? the nation tried to provide all its electricity this way?
43. Are there any industrialized nations in which the energy use per 8. A typical 18 watt compact fluorescent bulb costs $10, lasts
person is half, or less than half, what it is in the United States? 10,000 hours, and provides as much light as does a 75 watt
44. If the entire world used energy at the same annual per capita rate incandescent bulb that costs $1 and lasts 750 hours. How
as Great Britain, would the world’s annual energy consumption much does it cost for each type of bulb to provide 10,000
be larger or smaller than it is? How much larger or smaller? hours of light? Do not forget to include energy costs, at about
45. If the entire world used energy at the same annual per capita 8¢ per kilowatt-hour.
rate as China, would the world’s annual energy consumption 9. Using the information provided in the preceding problem,
be larger or smaller than it is? How much larger or smaller? calculate the “payback time” for a typical 18 watt compact
fluorescent bulb—in other words, the number of hours of
lighting required before the cost of the bulb is recovered in
Problems saved energy costs. How many months is this, assuming that
the bulb is lit 8 hours per day?

ENERGY HISTORY AND FUTURE

1. Energy consumption rose roughly exponentially in the United Answers to Concept Checks
States during 1880 to 1920. Use Figure 2 to estimate its dou-
bling time and its annual percentage increase. 1. (d)
2. Suppose that U.S. energy consumption had maintained a 2. (b)
3.5% increase after 1920. Would total consumption be larger 3. (a)
or smaller than the actual total consumption by the year 4. Of the 39 exajoules going into electric generation, 8 + 7 = 15
2000? How much larger or smaller? useful exajoules are generated: 15>39 = 38%, (c).
5. (b)
COAL AND NUCLEAR POWER 6. (a) and (d)
7. (a), (c), (e), (f )
3. Thermal pollution is thermal energy put into a cooling lake 8. (a), (b), (c), (d), (e)
or stream. Consider a power plant that is “cooled” by a lake 9. The amount of coal burned in a year is far more than the
(the waste heat goes into a lake), operating at 40% efficiency. amount of uranium fissioned, so (a) is ruled out. Since coal
How many joules of thermal pollution does the plant create, contains far more carbon than sulfur, combustion must pro-
per joule of electrical energy? duce far more CO2 than SO2, (b).
4. A power plant heats steam to 450°C and exhausts hot water 10. In both geothermal and solar thermal, thermal energy is used
into a lake at 80°C. Find the theoretical, or maximum possi- to generate electricity, (b) and (d).
ble, energy efficiency of this plant, using the formula
efficiency = (Tin - Tout)>Tin

446
 The Energy Challenge: Problem Set

11. The world annual rate is about 75 billion joules per person, while 37. Drying clothes, rain watering the lawn, helping to warm the
the U.S. rate is about 331 billion joules per person. house by day, keeping the house at a comfortable tempera-
331>75 = 4.4, (c). ture by opening and closing windows at appropriate times,
using sunlight for light to see by, sunbathing, growing plants
inside and outside the house, burning wood in a fireplace.
Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual 39. Coal, biomass: chemical to thermal to electric. Uranium:
nuclear to thermal to electric. Hydroelectric: gravitational to
Exercises and Problems electric.
41. Radiant to thermal.
Conceptual Exercises 43. Yes. According to Table 5, France, Germany, Japan, and the
1. Around 1880. United Kingdom use half or less than half as much energy,
3. Wood, trash, wind, hydroelectric. per person, as does the United States.
5. Uranium, plutonium, and hydrogen for nuclear power. 45. According to Table 5, China uses less energy, per person,
Geothermal energy. Also, conservation does not come from than does the world as a whole, so consumption would be
the sun—it comes from human ingenuity! smaller. The ratio of per-capita energy use for China and for
7. 0 in 1900, 1018 J in 1920, 4 * 1018 J in 1940, 18 * 1028 J in the world is 55>75 = 0.73 = 73%. So world energy con-
1960, 36 * 1018 J in 1980, 4 * 1018 J in 2000. sumption would drop to 73% of its present value.
9. 7>31 = 23%.
11. Heat engines are probably not very widespread in the Problems
residential-commercial sector, because their widespread use 1. Energy use roughly doubled during 1880–1900, and doubled
would lead to an overall efficiency less than 52%. again during 1900–1920, so the doubling time was 20 years.
13. From Figure 2: Coal in 1940, oil in 1960, oil in 1980, oil in P = 70>T = 70>20 = 3.5, so the annual percentage
2000. increase was 3.5%.
15. 1940: about 4>25 = 16%; 1980: about 36>85 = 42%. 3. Efficiency = useful output/total input, so total input = useful
17. 39>106 = 37%. output/efficiency. So, for 1 J of electrical energy,
19. In 1980: about 10 exaJ. total energy input = 1 J>0.4 = 2.5 J. Thus the exhausted
In 1990: about 40 exaJ. thermal energy (or thermal pollution) is 2.5 J - 1 J = 1.5 J.
In 1980: 10>90 = 11%. 5. The temperature difference is Tin - Tout = 125 K. The input
In 1990: 40>125 = 32%. temperature, in Kelvins, is 150 + 273 = 423 K. So, ideal
21. Thermal input: in the core of the reactor. Work output: at the efficiency = 125 K>423 K = 0.30 = 30%. Efficiency =
turbine. Thermal output: at the condenser. useful output/total input, so total input = useful output/effi-
23. Nuclear power plants do not have a stack because they do not ciency. So, for 1 J of electrical energy,
operate by combustion of fuel. total energy input = 1 J>0.2 = 5 J.
25. We do not want the radioactive water that goes through the 7. To provide 400 * 109 W at 20% efficiency, 2000 *
reactor to move outside of the containment dome. If there 109 W (2 * 1012 W) must be collected. This amount of solar
were only one loop, either radioactive water would have to power falls on an area 2 * 1012 W>(200 W>m2) = 1010 m2.
move outside the dome to reach the turbine, or the turbine But 1 km2 = 1000 m * 1000 m = 106 m2, so the land
and condenser would have to be moved inside the contain- required is 104 km2, or 10,000 km2. Complications: The sun
ment dome (which would pose great dangers for the workers is an intermittent source, so an energy storage method would
who must service the turbine and condenser). have to be found. Energy storage would make the process
27. Yes. Because the rods are radioactive, and this generates less efficient. It would be difficult to distribute the energy
thermal energy. A supply of cooling water is kept on hand to
from Arizona to the rest of the country; solar power plants
keep the reactor cool.
29. Does not contribute to global warming, much less trans- would need to be located in many less sunny regions in order
portation needed, less mining needed. to solve the distribution problem. There would be land-use
31. Yes. The alpha, beta, and gamma particles emitted by problems and materials problems (supply, disposal, resource
radioactive materials deposit their high energies in the sur- use, pollution).
rounding material, heating it. 9. In 1 hour, the money saved due to lower energy consumption
33. By building a uranium enrichment plant, and by training is $0.08 per kW # h * (0.075 - 0.018) kW * 1 hr =
nuclear scientists and technologists. $0.00456. So the number of hours needed to save $10 is
35. The sun’s radiation warms water, evaporating some of the $10> $0.00456 per hour = 2200 hours. (Note: This neglects
water. The evaporated water rains down on the land, and is the cost of the many incandescent bulbs that would be used.)
collected behind dams, where it provides the gravitational At 8 hours a day, the number of days is
energy needed to produce hydroelectric power. 2200>8 hr per day = 275 days, which is about 9 months.

447
448
Fusion and Fission

From Chapter 15 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

449
 Fusion and Fission
—and a New Energy

The Dark Ages may return on the gleaming wings of science.

Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister During World War II

P
eople get useful energy from each of the three fundamental “glues” that hold
things together: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force. For
example, we can get electric power from the gravitational forces acting on a
lake held up behind a hydroelectric dam and from the microscopic electric forces
that cause molecules to combust chemically in a coal-burning electric power plant.
As you will see, we can also get electric power from the strong nuclear force.
In the familiar macroscopic world, gravity is the most obvious, and the strong
nuclear force the least obvious, of the three. But this order is reversed in the micro-
scopic world. Acting between such subatomic particles as neighboring protons within
a nucleus, the strong nuclear force is by far the strongest of the three, the electric force
is next in strength, and gravity is by far the weakest. For example, acting between two
protons, gravity is a trillion trillion trillion times weaker than the electric force!
Because of the different strengths of the three forces, equal amounts of energy out-
put from each of the three require quite different amounts of fuel. A 1000 MW hydro-
electric power plant uses the gravitational energy of some 60,000 tonnes of water
every second, a 1000 MW coal-burning power plant requires 10,000 tonnes of coal
(150 truckloads or 1 trainload) every day, and a 1000 MW nuclear power plant uses
only some 100 tonnes of uranium (a few truckloads) every year. These three forces
also differ in their destructive power. Towns of a few thousand people have been lev-
eled by the gravitational energy of millions of tonnes of earth or water in a landslide
or flood. A town of this size can also be leveled by 1000 tonnes of explosive in several
hundred chemical bombs. But Hiroshima, a city of a quarter of a million people, was
leveled by one nuclear bomb carrying only 42 kilograms of explosive uranium.
The strongest of the three forces is the least understood. Humans have probably
had some intuitive understanding of gravity for millions of years. Electromagnetism
began to be understood in the eighteenth century. But scientists became aware of the
strong nuclear force only during the twentieth century and still lack a fundamental
understanding of it.
Fusion and fission are nuclear reactions—processes that alter the structure of one
or more nuclei. I’ll discuss these reactions primarily in terms of energy. Sections 1
and 2 continue the discussion of nuclear energy. Section 1 presents the energetics of
hydrogen fusion and why the stars shine. Section 2 discusses the energy present in the

450
 Fusion and Fission

various nuclei found in nature. Section 3 applies these ideas to tell the fascinating tale
of how the stars forged the atoms that form Earth and your body. Section 4 presents
the physics of fission, and Section 5 discusses the method, called a chain reaction, by
which fission is used to get useful energy from the nucleus. Unfortunately, the first
major application of nuclear knowledge was the nuclear bomb. Because the bomb
continues to be a threat, and because of its many lessons for our scientific age,
Sections 4, 5, and 6 discuss the fission bomb in the historical context of building the
world’s first nuclear weapon. Section 7 presents another product of nuclear knowl-
edge, the fusion bomb. Section 8 discusses the grim possibility of nuclear terrorism.
Later, I’ll discuss a more positive application of nuclear knowledge, namely, nuclear
power.

1 FUSION: FIRE OF THE SUN

My dictionary says that to “fuse” means to unite and to “fission” means to split.
Thus, nuclear fusion is the uniting of two nuclei to form a single larger nucleus,
and nuclear fission is the splitting of a single nucleus roughly in half to form two
smaller nuclei.
Continuing the nuclear detective story, let’s see what we can deduce about the
energetics of the simplest multiparticle nucleus, the hydrogen isotope 21H. Suppose
you tried to separate this nucleus into an isolated proton and neutron. Because the
proton and neutron are held together by the strong nuclear force, this would not be
easy (Figure 1).

CONCEPT CHECK 1 Compared with the 21H nucleus before separation, a sepa-
rated proton and neutron have (a) more energy; (b) less energy; (c) the same amount
of energy.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 Compared with the force exerted by the proton and neu-
tron on each other before the 21H nucleus is separated, the force between them after
separation is (a) greater; (b) less; (c) the same. Figure 1
You would have to do work to pull
The separated proton and neutron have more energy than the 21H nucleus. Since it apart the two particles in the
is due to nuclear forces, this excess energy is a form of nuclear energy. The energy nucleus of 2H.
relationship here is like that of two objects, such as Earth and a rock, that are
attracted by gravity: The gravitational energy is larger when the rock is farther from
Earth’s surface (Figure 2).
Now imagine putting a 21H nucleus together, instead of pulling it apart. This
process could be represented as

n + p : 21H

where n and p stand for neutron and proton. As you have seen, the left side of this
nuclear reaction has more nuclear energy than the right side. Since energy is always
conserved, this energy must show up in some other form after this process. In other
words, this reaction is one way to transform nuclear energy into other forms. It is, in
fact, one form of nuclear fusion. It occurs whenever neutrons and protons come
within range of each other’s strong force (recall that the strong force has a short
range). The strong force then pulls the two tightly together—like a stretched rubber

451
 Fusion and Fission

Figure 2
Nuclear energy is similar to gravi-
tational energy: Greater separation
means greater energy.

(a) In which case does the (b) Which has greater nuclear
system have greater gravitational energy: a proton and neutron that
energy: when the rock is at a are closer together or farther apart?
lower or a higher altitude?

band snapping together. When a large mass of neutrons and protons fuse in this
manner, this snapping together causes heating and the emission of high-energy
gamma radiation. So the energy transformation is

NuclE : ThermE + RadE

I’ll refer to any such transformation of nuclear energy to other forms as a release of
nuclear energy.
Essentially all the 21H in the universe was formed by neutron-proton fusion
13.7 billion years ago, during the first few minutes after the big bang. This reaction
occurs today during supernovae explosions.
A more significant fusion reaction today is the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei,
either 11H (a proton) or 21H. Again, nuclear energy is released when the two nuclei
come within range of each other’s nuclear force and snap together. In fact, the sun
and other stars are made mostly of hydrogen1 and get much of their energy from the
fusing of 11H with 21H.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 The isotope created by the fusion of 11H with 21H is (a) 31H;
3 2 3
(b) 2H; (c) 2He; (d) 1He; (e) 32He.

There’s an interesting catch to 1H + 2H fusion. Unlike the n + p reaction, the

electric force is involved in the 1H + 2H reaction because both nuclei are charged.
The two nuclei repel each other electrically at relatively great distances, much
greater than the nuclear distances at which their strong forces attract each other. So
it’s not easy to get the two nuclei close enough to feel each other’s strong force.
Stars solve this problem by first heating up to millions of degrees at their centers
during the star-formation process. At such temperatures, the nuclei are moving so
rapidly that they can push right through one another’s repulsive electric force fields
and get close enough to fuse.
So fusion will occur in a collection of hydrogen nuclei if you get them hot
enough. Remembering that the fusion reaction creates radiant and thermal energy,
we can summarize the energetics as

ThermEin + NuclE ¡ ThermEout + RadE

1 Astronomers once believed that stars were made of heavy elements. But astrophysicist Cecilia H. Payne,
working on her doctoral dissertation at Harvard University in 1925, applied spectroscopic methods to the
study of starlight to discover that stars are made mostly of hydrogen. Her dissertation, leading to the first
doctoral degree ever granted by Harvard’s astronomy department, is described by some as “the most bril-
liant Ph.D. thesis ever written.”

452
 Fusion and Fission

Quantitatively, the thermal energy output is far larger than the input needed to make
the reaction occur. So the reaction, once started, is self-sustaining. This is just like a
fire. It takes the thermal energy of a burning match to start paper burning, but once
started, the combustion reaction creates more thermal energy than is needed to
make the reaction occur, so it sustains itself. The difference between fusion and a
fire is that fusion involves nuclear forces while a fire involves chemical forces
(electromagnetic forces between atoms). Because of this central role of thermal
energy, a self-sustaining fusion reaction is called a thermonuclear reaction.

How do we know that E really does equal mc 2? Nuclear reactions are marvelous
examples of mass–energy equivalence, because the energies involved are large enough
to produce significant mass changes. Consider the 1H + 2H reaction. Since the 3He cre-
ated by this reaction has less nuclear energy than the separated 1H and 2H nuclei (recall
Figure 2), the principle of mass–energy equivalence predicts that the helium nucleus
should also have less mass (Figure 3).
The masses of all three nuclei are known from direct measurement:

mass of 11H = 1.6727 * 10 - 27 kg

mass of 21H = 3.3437 * 10 - 27 kg

mass of 32He = 5.0066 * 10 - 27 kg

The first two masses add up to 5.0164 * 10 - 27 kg, which is 0.0098 * 10 - 27 kg more Figure 3
than the mass of the helium nucleus. Just as Einstein predicted, the mass becomes less The mass of the whole does not
when the system loses energy. equal the sum of the masses of its
To check E = mc2 quantitatively, the energy loss during the reaction (the energy that parts: When 1H and 2H fuse to
is transformed into radiant and thermal energy) must be directly measured. This can be form 3He, the 3He has less total
done by using the transformed energy to warm up water and measuring the resulting energy when it is at rest, so it must
temperature change of the water. The measured energy released per individual fusion have less mass.
reaction turns out to be 8.815 * 10 - 13 joules. Let’s see if this does equal the known
mass difference times the square of lightspeed:

0.0098 * 10 - 27 * c2 = 0.0098 * 10 - 27 * 9 * 1016

= (0.0098 * 9) * (10 - 27 + 16)

= 0.08815 * 10 - 11
= 8.815 * 10 - 13 joules

It checks.

M A K I N G EST I M AT ES The sun’s total power output of 400 trillion trillion watts
(400 * 1024 joules per second) comes from three types of fusion reactions whose net
effect is to convert the sun’s hydrogen into 42He. About how much mass does the sun
lose every second? Despite this enormous mass loss, the sun will end its life 5 billion
years from now with only 0.06% less mass than it had 5 billion years ago when it
turned osn!

SO LU T I O N TO M A K I N G EST I M AT ES
mass in 1 s = E>c2 = 400 * 1024>9 * 1016 L 400 * 1024>1017 = 400 * 107 = 4 billion kg

453
 Fusion and Fission

2 THE NUCLEAR ENERGY CURVE

Many other nuclei, in addition to 1H and 2H, can fuse together to form larger nuclei.
Here are two examples:

CONCEPT CHECK 4 When two 42He nuclei fuse, they form an isotope of the
element (a) helium; (b) lithium; (c) beryllium; (d) boron. (Hint: Use the periodic
table on the inside back cover.)

CONCEPT CHECK 5 The fusion of 42He with 84Be creates (a) 12

6C; (b) 86C;
12 12 12
(c) 4C; (d) 6O; (e) 8N.

You can see from these examples that fusion builds heavier nuclei such as 84Be
and 126C out of lighter nuclei such as 42He. As you’ll see in the next section, this is
how many of the heavier nuclei were created in the universe. The energetics of these
transformations is similar to the energetics of the fusion of hydrogen with hydrogen
to make helium: The collection of nuclei must be hot in order to fuse, and the fusion
process yields additional thermal energy plus radiation:

ThermEin + NuclE ¡ ThermEout + RadE

But there is an important difference in the energetics of these different fusion

processes. As an example, let’s compare the fusion process 1H + 2H with
4
He + 4He. In the 4He + 4He process, the electric repulsion between the nuclei is
stronger than it is in the 1H + 2H process, because each He nucleus contains two
protons whereas each H nucleus contains only one proton. So a higher temperature
(faster nuclei) is needed for the He + He process than for the H + H process, requir-
ing a larger thermal energy input. As you can see from this example, fusing heavier
nuclei requires higher temperatures and thus larger thermal energy inputs.
It turns out that, as heavier and heavier nuclei fuse, they eventually come to a point
where the thermal energy input required to sustain the reaction becomes larger than
the thermal energy output, so the reaction can no longer be self-sustaining. This limit
happens to be reached for mass numbers in the range 56–62 (iron through nickel).
Nuclei lighter than this can be fused together in self-sustaining reactions, but the
favorable energy balance becomes unfavorable for heavier nuclei.
The nuclear energy curve, Figure 4, shows these points graphically. It graphs
nuclear energy (more precisely, the nuclear energy per nuclear particle) versus the
mass number (the number of nuclear particles) for all of the isotopes. The curve
shows two important features: First, the entire curve lies below the straight line repre-
senting the energy of the separated nuclear particles. This must be so, because it takes
work to separate any nucleus into its component protons and neutrons (Section 1).
Second, the curve decreases until mass numbers 56–62, where it roughly levels off,
after which it increases. The decreasing portion (mass numbers 1 to 56) tells us that for
nuclei lighter than iron, fusion converts nuclear energy to other forms such as thermal
energy and thus can be self-sustaining in energy. But the increasing portion (above 62)
tells us that for heavier nuclei, fusion results in an increase in nuclear energy and thus
a decrease in other forms such as thermal energy. Such a reaction can be maintained
only if there is an outside source to provide the required thermal energy. The turn-
around point occurs because of the large amount of thermal energy required to fuse
together two nuclei when either of them is very large, as described above.

454
 Fusion and Fission

Figure 4
The nuclear energy curve. The solid
curve shows the energy per nuclear
particle for nuclei of various mass
Nuclear energy of
an isolated nuclear numbers. Nuclei having mass num-
Nuclear energy per
nuclear particle

particle bers in the range 56–62 have the

least energy per particle, so they are
the most stable nuclei. Fusion can
be self-sustaining for mass numbers
below this range, and fission can be
self-sustaining for mass numbers
above this range.
56 – 62

1 50 100 150 200 250

Mass number

Although nuclear energy cannot be released by means of the fusion of heavy

nuclei, the shape of the nuclear energy curve suggests another possibility: If,
instead of fusing heavy nuclei, we began with a sufficiently heavy nucleus and
fissioned (split) it, there would be less nuclear energy after the fission process than
before. In other words, nuclear energy would be released. Such a process could be
self-sustaining in energy.
To emphasize this important point: Nuclear energy can be released not only by
the fusion of very light nuclei but also by the fission of very heavy nuclei.

3 THE ORIGIN OF THE ELEMENTS: WE’RE MADE OF STAR

STUFF
The universe began in a big bang some 14 billion years ago, an event that created
space and time themselves and that created the different forms of energy and mat-
ter. But the big bang created only three elements, mostly hydrogen and helium, plus
a trace of lithium. Even today, hydrogen and helium created in the big bang form
more than 99% of the ordinary matter in the universe, with all the other elements
forming less than 1%. Despite their scarcity, these elements heavier than helium are
crucial for life and modern technology. Where did they all come from?
The answer is that these elements are made in stars, and are spread throughout
the universe by the explosions of very massive stars. As you’ve seen, every star,
including our sun, gets most of its energy by converting hydrogen to helium
throughout most of its history. As they run out of hydrogen fuel at their centers,
stars partially collapse. The energy of this collapse heats them further, and this
ignites new higher-temperature, self-sustaining fusion processes such as

4
2He + 42He ¡ 84Be
4
2He + 84Be ¡ 12
6C

These reactions can create all the nuclei from helium up to mass number 56, which
happens to be iron, but they cannot go beyond that point because the nuclear energy

455
 Fusion and Fission

curve tells us that you can’t extract nuclear energy from iron.2 It’s like trying to
extract money from your Uncle Scrooge. Any attempt to fuse other elements with
iron could not be self-sustaining and would immediately fizzle out. Eventually, for
most stars, all possible self-sustaining fusion material is used up, fusion ceases,
gravity reasserts itself, and the star collapses all the way down to become a white
dwarf. Any new elements, such as beryllium, carbon, and oxygen, created by such a
star remain bound up in the white dwarf. So how did the elements heavier than
helium get spread throughout the universe, and how were the elements heavier than
iron created in the first place?
Those stars that happen to be much more massive than our sun do not settle
down to become slowly aging white dwarfs. Instead, they build up a large core of
solid iron at their center and, when the growing core becomes too heavy to stand up
against the pull of gravity, suddenly collapse, in just a single second, into a tiny neu-
tron star or black hole. Such a supernova is one of the universe’s most violent
events. Some 80% to 90% of the entire star is thrown out into space, while the
remainder collapses.
The ejected material includes not only all the elements up to iron but also ele-
ments heavier than iron that are created by the energy of the explosion. Scientists
don’t yet understand the details of the process that creates these heavier-than-iron
elements, but they appear to involve the “shock wave” (similar to the powerful audi-
ble “boom” created by a supersonic jet plane) from the collapse of the core. It’s
thought that as this shock wave travels through the ejected material, it creates enor-
mous numbers of neutrons in the ejected material. These neutrons combine with
larger nuclei so that many of the ejected nuclei become larger and larger through
the “capture” of more and more neutrons. These large nuclei then decay radioac-
tively to convert themselves into normal nuclei of heavier-than-iron elements such
as iodine, gold, and uranium (see Concept Check 6 below). The ejected material
eventually finds its way into the wider universe where it can become part of newly
forming stars and solar systems and, perhaps, part of you.
Supernovae are fairly rare events. Only five have been visible to the naked eye
during the past thousand years. One of these went off in a neighboring galaxy in
1987. Without these occasional supernovae, only the three elements that came
directly from the big bang could be spread throughout the universe. All planets
would be formed from that material and you and I wouldn’t be here to share this
story. Because our sun formed several billion years after our galaxy first formed,
our solar system incorporated heavier elements from supernovae that exploded
before the sun was born. You and I can thank our stars for the rare, ancient, and dis-
tant supernovae that sent their stardust—namely elements heavier than helium—to
places such as Earth.

CONCEPT CHECK 6 During a supernova, if an iron nucleus captured three neu-

trons and then beta-decayed twice, it would be transformed into (a) chromium;
(b) manganese; (c) cobalt; (d) nickel; (e) zinc. (Hint: Use the periodic table on the inside
back cover.) This is the type of process that created the elements heavier than iron.

2 More precisely, 62Ni is slightly lower on the nuclear energy curve than 56Fe (iron), so we’d expect it to be
formed by fusion in stars. However, another process, called “photodisintegration,” prevents the formation
of 62Ni in stars, leaving 56Fe as the heaviest nucleus that’s created in large amounts.

456
 Fusion and Fission

4 THE DISCOVERY OF FISSION: PASSAGE TO A

NEW AGE3
It’s been said that those who cannot learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
The saga of the discovery and first use of nuclear fission is a powerful lesson in sci-
ence and society, the kind of story that you and I must assimilate if we want to use
science and technology without destroying ourselves. It’s a heroic but tragic story
of a job that needed to be done in the face of a world-threatening enemy. Once these
events were set in motion in the early days of World War II, the story’s conclusion at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have become, like all high tragedy, inevitable.
Scientists discovered the first known nuclear reaction, radioactive decay, in
1896. During the next several decades, they studied the new phenomenon intensely.
Using a simple technique now common in high-energy physics, scientists bom-
barded nuclei by throwing other tiny things at them and observing what happened.
In 1933, Irène Joliot-Curie (Figure 5, daughter of Marie and Pierre) and her hus-
band, Frédéric Joliot, bombarded a thin aluminum foil with alpha particles. This
created a previously unknown isotope of phosphorus. Although natural phosphorus
is stable, the new isotope was radioactive. It was the first creation of a radioactive
isotope and, in the subsequent radioactive decay, the first artificial release of
nuclear energy. Joliot foresaw the potential consequences: “We are entitled to think
that scientists, building up or shattering elements at will, will be able to bring about
transmutations of an explosive type.... If such transmutations do succeed in spread-
ing in matter, the enormous liberation of useful energy can be imagined.”
At about the same time, scientists bombarded beryllium nuclei with alpha par-
ticles and detected a previously unknown particle that was ejected from the beryl-
lium during the collision. The new particle was electrically neutral. They had
discovered the neutron. The subtle new particle played a key role in the application
of nuclear energy. Being uncharged, neutrons can sneak into a nucleus without

Figure 5
Irène Joliot-Curie working with
her mother, Marie Curie. Irène and
her husband Frédéric Joliot, work-
ing at the Radium Institute in Paris
around 1935, created previously
unknown isotopes by bombarding
the nuclei of the elements with
alpha particles. The Radium
Institute was founded by Marie
Curie.
Acme/Corbis

3 I am indebted to Richard Rhodes’s definitive and beautiful book The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1986) for most of the historical details and quotations in Sections 4, 5, and 6.

457
 Fusion and Fission

having to overcome the electrical repulsion that protons feel when they approach
the positively charged nucleus. And unlike the electron, which does not feel the
strong force, the neutron interacts strongly once it gets inside.
Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard (Figure 6) was a visionary and a lifelong admirer
of another visionary, the author H. G. Wells. Wells’s 1914 novel The World Set Free
predicted nuclear energy, nuclear bombs, nuclear war, and world government.
Szilard was extremely inventive and quick to grasp the possibilities presented by
the neutron: Perhaps some energetically favorable nuclear reaction in some material
would emit neutrons; perhaps these neutrons could then bombard other nuclei in the
same material and create a whole series of similar reactions in a large mass of mate-
rial. In this way, neutrons might be the key to releasing useful amounts of nuclear
energy. But Szilard also realized that such a vision, if realized, would be a two-
edged sword, both hopeful and fearful.4
In 1934, Enrico Fermi (Figure 7) tried bombarding nuclei using the newly discov-
ered particle, the neutron, instead of using alpha particles as the Joliot-Curies had
Lotte Meitner-Graf/Leo Szilard
Biography

Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/American Institute of Physics/Emilio

Figure 6
Leo Szilard. This extremely inven-
tive physicist was the first to under-
stand that the neutron could be the
key to unlocking nuclear energy by
means of a chain reaction. He was
an activist both in promoting U.S.
development of nuclear weapons
during World War II and in promot-
ing world peace and banning
nuclear weapons after the war.

Figure 7
Enrico Fermi, in the middle, is talk-
ing physics with I. I. Rabi, as
Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the
“cyclotron” looks on. In 1938, he
received the Nobel prize for discov-
ering many new radioactive iso-
topes. He then immigrated from
Segre Visual Archives

fascist Italy to the United States

where, concerned that the Axis
powers would beat the Allied
powers to the development of
nuclear weapons, he played a key
role in the Manhattan Project.
Element 100 is named in his honor.

4 For a comprehensive biography of the life and times of this highly creative individual, read Genius in the
Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb, by William Lanouette with Bela Silard
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

458
 Fusion and Fission

been doing. He worked his way through the elements, creating 40 new radioactive
isotopes in the process. One element that Fermi bombarded was uranium, element
number 92 and the heaviest natural element. Fermi assumed that some uranium
nuclei would absorb one neutron, resulting in unstable nuclei that would then

Ullsteinbild/The Granger Collection

decay radioactively and thus transmute into one or more other elements lying near
uranium in the periodic table. But some of the nonuranium nuclei resulting from
this experiment seemed not to fit this description, and Fermi was unable to under-
stand why.
German chemist Ida Noddack (Figure 8) published an interpretation: “One could
assume ... that when neutrons are used to produce nuclear disintegrations, some dis-
tinctly new nuclear reactions take place which have not been observed previously....
[Perhaps] when heavy nuclei are bombarded by neutrons ... the nucleus breaks up into
several large fragments.” In 1934, her prophetic words were universally ignored.
In 1938, Irène Joliot-Curie reported that neutron bombardment of uranium had
produced a mysterious element that she could chemically separate from the ura-
nium target by using lanthanum (atomic number 57) as a “carrier” to pick up the
Figure 8
new element and carry it away. But the mysterious element was chemically insepa-
German chemist Ida Noddack was
rable from lanthanum. Surely it could not actually be lanthanum. How could the the first to predict the possibility
bombardment of uranium, element 92, create an element that was 35 places away of nuclear fission caused by neu-
from uranium in the periodic table? Otto Hahn, who led a uranium research group trons striking heavy nuclei.
in Berlin, was skeptical of such unusual results and accordingly directed his Although her words were ignored
research toward what he believed were needed corrections in Joliot-Curie’s work. in 1934, fission was discovered in
1938 was a fateful year. Austria was annexed by Hitler’s Germany, the Munich 1938, suggesting the possibility of
Agreement allowed Hitler to occupy part of Czechoslovakia, and anti-Jewish mobs new military weapons.
in Germany torched synagogues and beat Jewish families in the streets. Lise
Meitner (Figure 9), a physicist and an Austrian Jew, had been a colleague of Hahn’s
since 1907. She had been protected from German anti-Semitism by her Austrian
passport, but the annexation of Austria made her a German citizen. In July, with
Hahn’s help, daringly traveling on her now invalid Austrian passport, she fled from
Germany to Stockholm, Sweden.5
As the clouds of war gathered across Europe, Hahn and his coworkers in a labo-
ratory in a peaceful suburb of Berlin bombarded uranium with neutrons, trying to
find the error in Irène Joliot-Curie’s work. The mystery only increased. Not only

Bettmann/CORBIS
lanthanum but also a second element, barium (element 56), made a good carrier for
some of the radioactive isotopes created by the bombardment. Once again, it proved
impossible to separate chemically the mysterious isotope from its barium carrier.
Hahn communicated the results to Meitner in Stockholm. Far from exposing any
error in Joliot-Curie’s earlier work, Hahn’s results were similar to hers.
Meitner enjoyed frequent 10-mile hikes “to keep me young and alert.” On
Christmas Eve 1938, she and her nephew Otto Frisch took a long walk on cross- Figure 9
country skis through the Swedish countryside. Frisch was a colleague, a physicist, Lise Meitner (1878–1968). She did
and together they pondered Hahn’s data. Niels Bohr had suggested that a nucleus nuclear research on uranium in
could be viewed as a liquid drop. With this picture in their minds, they debated Berlin until 1938, when Germany’s
whether a neutron added to a uranium nucleus might cause the nucleus to oscillate anti-Semitism forced her to flee to
and elongate. Electric forces would then push the two ends away from each other, Stockholm, Sweden. There, she did
and two smaller nuclei would appear where the one had been before (Figure 10). It theoretical calculations showing
was like a drop of water that elongates and splits in two. One of the smaller nuclei that her previous group in Berlin
had, in fact, discovered an entirely
new nuclear process. She named it
5 For an excellent biography of her life and times, see Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, by Ruth Lewin Sime nuclear fission. Element 109 is
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996). named in her honor.

459
 Fusion and Fission

Figure 10 Neutron Fission

The fission of a U nucleus after fragment
Neutron
being struck by a neutron.

236U
235U Neutrons
(unstable)
Fission
fragment
(a) (b) (c) (d)

might be barium or lanthanum. Taking a cue from microbiology, they named the
hypothetical new process nuclear fission.
As the nuclear energy curve (Figure 4) shows, the final nuclear energy in this
process is less than the initial nuclear energy, so the process releases nuclear
energy. This nuclear energy transforms into the microscopic kinetic energy seen in
Figure 10d plus the energy of the radiation created by this process. Using the liquid
drop model, Meitner calculated that the nuclear energy consumed when electrical
Fission forces within the nucleus do work to push apart the two fission fragments should
235U
fragments, be about 3 * 10 - 11 joules. She then recalculated the energy in an entirely different
including the
neutrons created way, by applying Einstein’s E = mc2 to the experimentally known mass difference
during fission between uranium and the fragments (Figure 11). That mass difference was known to
be about one-fifth of a proton’s mass. Multiplying this mass by c2, she got about
3 * 10 - 11 joules. It checked.
Figure 11 Meitner’s calculations were solid evidence of fission. The nuclear age had begun.
The uranium nucleus is more mas-
sive than the pieces into which it
splits (see the nuclear energy CONCEPT CHECK 7 When the Joliot-Curies bombarded 27 13Al with alpha parti-
curve). According to Einstein, the cles, each aluminum nucleus absorbed an alpha particle and emitted one neutron.
mass difference multiplied by the The isotope created by this process was (a) 23 30 30 29 29
11Na; (b) 13Al; (c) 15P; (d) 15P; (e) 16S.
square of lightspeed should equal
the energy released during fission.
5 THE CHAIN REACTION: UNLOCKING
NUCLEAR FORCES
By 1939, leading scientists such as Einstein, Fermi, and Szilard had fled to the
United States from Hitler’s Europe. When Szilard heard that uranium could absorb a
Some recent work by Fermi and neutron and then break into two parts, he foresaw a way to realize H. G. Wells’s
Szilard leads me to expect that dream of nuclear energy. Because neutrons, being uncharged, are an especially good
the element uranium may be nuclear “glue,” heavier elements contain many more neutrons than protons. The
turned into a new and important lighter fragments formed when uranium splits should therefore have many more
source of energy Á . It may
become possible to set up a
neutrons than is normal for their atomic number. Consequently, individual neutrons
nuclear chain reaction in a large should split off during the reaction, which could then fission other uranium nuclei.
mass of uranium Á . This new As this chain reaction proceeded from one uranium nucleus to the next, a large
phenomenon would also lead to mass of uranium might be fissioned (Figure 12). The number of neutrons would mul-
the construction of bombs, and it tiply quickly as the chain reaction spread, causing the nuclei in several kilograms of
is conceivable, though much less uranium to fission in a few millionths of a second.
certain, that extremely powerful Szilard thought that if neutrons were in fact emitted during fission, this fact
bombs of a new type may thus
be constructed.
should be kept secret from the Germans.
Einstein, in his Letter to President
Within a week of the announcement of fission, Fermi and others had independ-
Roosevelt, August 1939 ently hit on the idea of a chain reaction using neutrons and were making estimates

460
 Fusion and Fission

of the energy that might be released. Once, standing at his Columbia University
office window overlooking the bustling streets of New York City, Fermi cupped his
hands as if he were holding an orange. “A little bomb like that,” he mused, “and it
would all disappear.”
Szilard devised a simple experiment to detect directly the neutrons that he sus-
pected were released when a neutron fissioned a uranium nucleus. From the results,
he estimated the average number of neutrons released per fission. A number larger
than 1 could be enough to allow a chain reaction to build up quickly and fission a
large mass of uranium. The number turned out to be about 2. Szilard immediately
telephoned a fellow Hungarian physicist now living in the United States, Edward
Teller. Szilard said only one thing: “I have found the neutrons.” That night there was
little doubt in Szilard’s mind that the world was headed for grief.
Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, starting World War II.
German scientists were aware of the weapons potential of nuclear fission.
Accordingly, the German government banned the sale of uranium and in 1939 started
a secret nuclear weapons program. It was the beginning of the international nuclear Key:
arms race.
Uranium nucleus
Physicists such as Szilard and Teller understood the possibilities. Fission bombs
could be winning weapons for Hitler if he were allowed to build them sooner than Neutron
the United States. They discussed their fears with Einstein, who agreed to lend his
prestige to an effort by scientists to alert the U.S. government to the problem. Figure 12
Together they drafted a letter from Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that A chain reaction. At the lower right,
they delivered in October 1939. Einstein suggested that the U.S. government stay a single neutron strikes a uranium
informed of further developments and financially support fission research. The nucleus. When the uranium nucleus
final paragraph noted, “Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from fissions, it emits two neutrons that
the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over,” and “in Berlin some of the then fission two other uranium
nuclei, and so forth. In this way, the
American work on uranium is now being repeated.”
nuclei in several kilograms of ura-
Einstein’s letter had little effect. There was a meeting and a committee report.
nium can be quickly fissioned.
Nothing more. America did not enter the war until December 1941, and in 1939
only Szilard, Einstein, and other knowledgeable physicists took nuclear dangers
seriously. In 1940, Germany invaded and occupied most of Europe and bombed
Britain in preparation for an invasion. Both sides began bombing cities, and mas-
sive civilian casualties became a reality of modern warfare.
Although the U.S. government declined an active role, U.S. uranium research
proceeded between 1939 and 1941. It gradually became clear that there was an
important difference between the two uranium isotopes, 235 238
92U and 92U. When a neu-
235 238
tron strikes uranium, only U has much chance of fissioning; U just absorbs the
neutron to become a new radioactive isotope, 239U. This means that a nuclear bomb
requires nearly pure 235U to sustain the rapid chain reaction needed to fission a
large mass of uranium. If much 238U is present, it will absorb most of the neutrons,
and the bomb will fizzle.
But natural uranium is less than 1% 235U. To make a bomb, this 1% must be sep-
arated from the 99% that is 238U (Figure 13). To many scientists, this appeared
essentially impossible. The problem was that two isotopes of the same element
behave identically in every chemical reaction, so chemistry cannot separate them.
The difficulties of extracting enough 235U to build a bomb seemed so great that
Niels Bohr insisted that “it can never be done unless you turn the United States into 235U

one huge factory.” Bohr believed that it would therefore not be done. His words
Figure 13
proved prophetic, although not in the way he imagined.
In natural uranium, only 1 atom in
140 is 235U. The others are 238U.

461
 Fusion and Fission

The fateful question of the In 1940, scientists created the first nonnatural chemical element, that is, one not
human species seems to me to found naturally on Earth. They found evidence that when 238 92U is bombarded with
be whether the cultural neutrons, it absorbs a neutron to become 239 U , which then quickly emits a beta par-
92
processes developed in it will
ticle to become element number 93. Its discoverers named the first element beyond
succeed in mastering the
derangements of communal life uranium “neptunium” for Neptune, the planet lying just beyond Uranus, the planet
caused by Á aggression and self- for which uranium was named.
destruction. In this connection, Like all elements heavier than lead, neptunium is radioactive. Because it is a
perhaps, the phase through beta emitter, it decays to a higher atomic number, creating yet another nonnatural
which we are at this moment element, number 94. Early in 1941, scientists detected the new element, which
passing deserves special interest. turned out to have an important property: Like 235U, element 94 fissions readily
Men have brought their powers
when struck by a neutron. Furthermore, the new element can be chemically sepa-
of subduing the forces of nature
to such a pitch that by using rated from the uranium in which it was created, thereby avoiding the difficulties of
them they could now very easily separating two isotopes of the same element. It was not until 1942 that its discov-
exterminate one another to the erers proposed a name for this new element that fissions like 235U but that can be
last man. They know this; hence chemically separated from uranium. They called it “plutonium” for the outermost
arises a great part of their current planet (now no longer deemed to be a planet), which had in turn been named for
unrest, their dejection, their Pluto, the Greek god of the underworld (Figure 14).
mood of apprehension.
In October 1941, scientists convinced President Roosevelt that fission weapons
Sigmund Freud, Written in 1930, Many
Years before the Discovery of Fission could work.
Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In 1942,
a U.S. nuclear weapons program, known as the Manhattan Project, began
in earnest.

CONCEPT CHECK 8 When a 235U nucleus is struck by a neutron, it splits into

two large fragments and emits two to four neutrons. Although the fragments are
different in different instances, one typical fragment is 142
56Ba . From the periodic
table, you can deduce that the other fragment in this particular fission process is
(a) argon; (b) krypton; (c) cesium; (d) rubidium; (e) strontium.

CONCEPT CHECK 9 The masses of one atom of each of the two uranium iso-
topes differ by about (a) 4%; (b) 3%; (c) 0.5%; (d) a little less than 1%; (e) a little
more than 1%.

Beta
Beta

92 protons 92 protons 93 protons 94 protons

146 neutrons 147 neutrons 146 neutrons 145 neutrons
Neutron

238U 239U (in 239Np (in 239Pu

an excited or an excited
high-energy state)
state)
(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 14
The creation of plutonium, element 94. After 238U absorbs a neutron, it beta-decays twice to become 239Pu.

462
 Fusion and Fission

6 THE MANHATTAN PROJECT AND FISSION WEAPONS

Constructed on a monumental scale, the U.S. project to build a fission bomb or Fundamentally, and in the long
“A-bomb”6 arose from U.S. fears about a German fission bomb. In December run, the problem which is posed
1942, a research group under Fermi at the University of Chicago created the first by the release of atomic energy is
a problem of the ability of the
self-sustaining chain reaction (Figure 15). To achieve this, Fermi’s group con-
human race to govern itself with-
structed the world’s first nuclear reactor, a device to transform, in a controlled way, out war.
nuclear energy into other energy forms. From a Report of the U.S. Secretary of
The world’s first reactor illustrates several facts about a chain reaction of a dif- State, January 1953
ferent kind: proliferation of nuclear weapons to countries around the world. Just
as Fermi’s reactor was a stepping-stone to a U.S. fission bomb, countries seeking to
build their own nuclear weapons are likely to begin by building a reactor. Although
the primary purpose of nuclear reactors today is to provide peaceful electric power,
reactors can also provide research and materials relevant to nuclear weapons. An
apparently peaceful nuclear power program can be used as cover for a secret
weapons program, as has been demonstrated by India, Israel, South Africa, Iraq,
Pakistan, North Korea, and, in the opinion of many, Iran.
Another problem is that reactors can produce militarily useful plutonium by con-
verting 238U to 239Pu, providing one possible path to a fission bomb. Since uranium

Chicago Historical Society

Figure 15
A painting of the opening ceremony, in 1942, of the world’s first nuclear reactor beneath the
football field (now removed) at the University of Chicago. Photographs were not allowed
because of wartime security. Note the “suicide squad” of three young physicists in the back;
they were holding jugs of neutron-absorbing liquid to pour into the reactor in case something
went wrong.

6 “Atomic bomb” or “A-bomb” is an inappropriate name, because the energy source is the nucleus rather
than the entire atom. The term “nuclear weapon” is appropriate, but I’ll use “fission bomb” and “fusion
bomb” to distinguish between these two.

463
 Fusion and Fission

is common in Earth’s crust, the 238U is easy to obtain. A reactor can create enough
plutonium for a fission bomb during just a few weeks of operation. Near Hanford,
Washington, the Manhattan Project engineers built three large natural-uranium
reactors for making plutonium.
235
U is the key to the nuclear era. Among all the naturally occurring isotopes, it
is essentially the only one that will chain-react.7 The other chain-reacting isotope
used in nuclear weapons is 239Pu, and chain reactions in 235U are essential to pro-
duce it. There is no obvious reason why there should be exactly one naturally occur-
ring chain-reacting nucleus rather than some other number, such as zero. In a sense,
this dangerous yet useful isotope just barely exists on Earth: Uranium is the last nat-
ural element in the periodic table, and less than 1% of it is 235U. It’s ironic that
nature provided us with this powerful isotope, as if it were some kind of test for the
human race. Without it, we probably couldn’t build nuclear weapons.
It was not very clear that the job Both uranium and plutonium offer a path to fission bombs. The Manhattan
of separating large amounts of Project pursued both paths. Along the uranium path, the key problem is to isolate
uranium 235 was one that could the 1% that is 235U from the 99% that is 238U. Because these isotopes are identical
be taken seriously.
chemically, any such isotope separation method must be based only on the tiny
Enrico Fermi
mass difference between the two. This is no simple matter.
The isotope separation technique that is most important today is centrifuge
separation. Any liquid or gas can be separated into heavier and lighter portions in
a high-speed centrifuge—a cylindrical container that spins rapidly around a vertical
axis through its center. Lighter material drifts toward the inside of the spinning con-
tainer while heavier material drifts toward the outside, for the same reason that your
body is “pulled” toward the outside of a curve when you ride in a rapidly moving
vehicle rounding a turn. The easiest way to understand this is based on Einstein’s
equivalence principle: The spinning container forms an accelerating reference
frame, with the acceleration directed inward toward the center of the circle. But
Einstein says that the effects of acceleration can’t be distinguished from those of
gravity. So an “artificial gravitational force” pulls heavier things “downward”
toward the outside of the container while lighter things float “upward,” toward the
inside.
In the separation process, natural uranium is put into a gaseous form that is spun
in a centrifuge until the material on the inside of the container is slightly enriched
in the lighter isotope, 235U. This enriched portion is extracted and fed into a second
centrifuge, which spins until the material on the inside of the container is further
This war, in contradistinction to enriched, then extracted, spun again in a third centrifuge, and so forth. After many
all previous wars, is a war in such centrifuge stages, requiring tens of thousands of extremely high-quality, high-
which pure and applied science
plays a conspicuous part.
speed centrifuges, highly enriched uranium—bomb-grade uranium—is obtained.
Sir William Ramsay in 1915,
The material is suitable for nuclear weapons once 90% enrichment is achieved
Commenting on World War I (90% 235U and 10% 238U).
It’s not easy to enrich uranium. Acquiring the tens of kilograms of highly
enriched uranium needed is the key obstacle to building a uranium bomb.
In October 1942, the U.S. Army selected physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer
(Figure 16) to direct the laboratory that would design and build the world’s first
nuclear weapons. It proved to be an inspired choice. Oppenheimer chose a high,
isolated desert mesa in New Mexico as the site of the new laboratory. They named
the place after the boys’ school that had been on the mesa: Los Alamos.

7 233U also chain-reacts but it occurs only in extremely small amounts in natural uranium and has never, so
far as is publicly known, been used for bomb material.

464
 Fusion and Fission

Figure 16
J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

the most brilliant U.S. physicists,

Institute of Physics/Emilio Segre Visual Archives

Ken Bainbridge/Bainbridge Collection/American
politically left-wing and controver-
sial, a wide-ranging intellectual and
sensitive man given to literary pur-
suits, and scientific director of the
laboratory that designed and built
the world’s first nuclear weapons.
(a) In the 1930s. (b) During the
Manhattan Project.

(a) (b)

A certain minimum amount of fissionable material is needed to sustain a chain

reaction. The reason is that, for very small amounts, too many of the neutrons created
during fission will simply pass right out through the surface without hitting anything,
(a)
so a chain reaction cannot be sustained (Figure 17). One of the first things that the Los
Alamos scientists did was calculate this critical mass needed to sustain a chain reac-
tion. For 235U, the critical mass is a cantaloupe-sized 25 kilograms. For 239Pu, it is 8
kilograms—the size of a (large) orange, as Fermi had guessed.
The design chosen for the world’s first uranium bomb was so straightforward that
there was no need to test it before use [Figure 18(a)]. High explosive simply slammed
one subcritical hunk of 235U into another subcritical hunk to equal or exceed a criti-
cal mass; simultaneously, neutrons showered this critical mass to start the chain reac-
tion. There is a proliferation lesson here: A country need not test a uranium bomb in
order to have one. If a group can make, buy, or steal enough highly enriched ura-
nium, building a crude but dependable bomb isn’t terribly difficult.
As I mentioned earlier, the Manhattan Project chose both the uranium and the plu-
tonium paths to a bomb. For a plutonium bomb, the simple design of Figure 18(a) (b)
won’t work because plutonium is touchy: It begins to spontaneously chain-react very
quickly once a critical mass is assembled, so quickly that spontaneous fission begins Figure 17
as soon as the two subcritical hunks approach each other, “spoiling” the explosion. The concept of critical mass. (a) If
Instead, a more technically difficult spherical design is needed in order to quickly the lump of fissionable material is
assemble the critical mass before it has time to prematurely explode [Figure 18(b)]. At too small, most neutrons emitted
during fission will escape through
the sphere’s center is a small subcritical sphere of plutonium. Although subcritical, it
the surface without striking any
contains enough plutonium to become critical if squeezed into a much smaller nuclei, and a chain reaction cannot
volume, because at the smaller volume the nuclei are so close together that neutrons be sustained. (b) But if the lump of
created by a fissioning nucleus are highly likely to fission other nuclei rather than material is large enough, most neu-
escape out the sides. trons will strike other nuclei before
The plutonium sphere is surrounded by heavy metal that briefly confines and they escape through the surface,
thus enhances the nuclear explosion, and this metal is surrounded by chemical triggering a chain reaction.

465
 Fusion and Fission

Shaped charge, Heavy

high explosive metal

Detonators

Explosive Subcritical Subcritical

propellant mass mass

(a)

(b) 239Pu

Figure 18
Schematic sketches of fission bomb designs. (a) In the gun-type bomb, dropped on Hiroshima,
a conventional explosive propellant rams one subcritical mass of 235U along a tube and into
another subcritical mass, forming a critical mass that then chain-reacts. (b) In the implosion
bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, conventional explosives press inward on a mass of 239Pu squeez-
ing it enough to cause a subcritical mass to become critical.

explosive. The chemical explosive detonates from the outside, and a wave of
exploding material moves inward, or “implodes,” squeezing the plutonium sphere
into a small enough volume to become critical. At this instant, a neutron source
releases neutrons at the center. Although this design is technologically demanding,
plutonium is much easier to obtain than the highly enriched uranium needed for a
uranium bomb. Plutonium is produced routinely in nuclear reactors, and reactors do
not require highly enriched uranium.
Highly enriched uranium began arriving at Los Alamos in late 1944, and by the fol-
lowing summer there was enough for one uranium bomb. By May 1945, enough pluto-
nium had arrived to allow final critical-mass experiments for the plutonium bomb.
I just could not understand why In May 1945, Germany surrendered. The United States learned then that Germany
our surroundings had changed so had tried throughout the war to develop nuclear weapons, but that it never got close to
greatly in one instant Á . I thought its goal. Even though the feared German bomb had motivated the U.S. bomb, the
it might have been Á the collapse
United States did not halt the Manhattan Project when Germany surrendered. There
of the Earth which it was said
would take place at the end of are some lessons here: Once scientists find that something can be done, there is often
the world. a drive, a technological imperative, to do it. And once a project is started, it often
Yoko Ota, Japanese Writer and develops a self-justifying technological momentum. On the other hand, there were
Hiroshima Survivor good reasons to continue nuclear bomb development: Japan remained a dedicated
enemy, and nuclear weapons might save lives while shortening the war.
Oppenheimer helped choose the test site for the plutonium bomb, in a barren
landscape south of Los Alamos. He code-named the site Trinity, referring to a line
by poet John Donne: “Batter my heart, three person’d God.” Just before dawn on
July 16, 1945, a burst of brilliant purple never seen before lit up the desert, and a
small part of Earth was brought to temperatures that were unprecedented within the
solar system, save at the center of the sun. The energy released was the same as
would be released by 18,000 tons, or 18 “kilotons,” of a chemical explosive such as

466
 Fusion and Fission

TNT. A kiloton is a unit of energy,8 the energy that would be released by 1000 tons We regarded dropping the bomb
of exploding TNT. For comparison, typical chemical bombs carry perhaps one- as exceedingly important. We had
just gone through a bitter experi-
quarter ton of explosives.
ence at Okinawa Á . It was
The untested uranium bomb was loaded onto a B-29 bomber on August 5. Most expected that resistance in Japan
Japanese cities had been firebombed to ashes by this time. But Hiroshima, an would be even more severe. We
industrial city with an army depot, an ocean port, and 400,000 people, was still had had the 100,000 people killed
untouched. The B-29 arrived over Hiroshima by 9 A.M. on August 6. As the world’s in Tokyo in one night of [conven-
first combat nuclear weapon fell toward its target, the airplane quickly turned and tional] bombs, and it had had
dove away to escape the blast. By the time its crew looked back, the city was hidden seemingly no effect whatsoever.
So it seemed quite necessary, if
by an awful cloud. The bomb released 12 kilotons of nuclear energy; 140,000 lay
we could, to shock them into
dead with an equal number wounded; and the city, 5 kilometers (3 miles) across, lay action. We had to end the war; we
in ruins (Figure 19). By 1950, the death toll had reached 200,000—50% of the city’s had to save American lives.
population. General George C. Marshall, Author of
The war continued. A debate raged among Japanese leaders about whether to the “Marshall Plan” of U.S. Aid to
Rebuild Postwar Europe
surrender. The Soviet Union, no longer fighting Germany, invaded Manchuria in
northeastern China and was poised to go to war against Japan. On August 9, just
three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, the United States dropped its plutonium
bomb on Nagasaki, a city somewhat smaller than Hiroshima. The bomb released
22 kilotons of nuclear energy and killed 70,000 outright and 140,000 all together by
1950—again, a death rate of 50%.
On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered.

CONCEPT CHECK 10 How many World War II heavy bombers (5-ton bomb
capacity) would be needed to carry enough high-explosive chemical bombs to
equal the explosive power of the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki? (a) Less than
1000. (b) Between 1000 and 2000. (c) Between 2000 and 4000. (d) Between 4000
and 6000. (e) More than 6000.

Figure 19
Hiroshima, August 1945. The bomb
released 12 kilotons of nuclear
energy; 140,000 people lay dead,
with an equal number wounded;
National Archives and Records Administration

and the entire city, 5 kilometers

(3 miles) across, lay in ruins. By
1950, the death toll had reached
200,000, 50% of the population.

8 One kiloton = 4.2 trillion joules .

467
 Fusion and Fission

7 FUSION WEAPONS: STAR FIRE ON EARTH

In some sort of crude sense World War II led, almost immediately, to a “cold war” between the United States
which no vulgarity, no humor, no and the Soviet Union. Like the rest of the scientific world, Soviet physicists learned
overstatement can quite extin- of fission in early 1939, and by 1940 they had concluded that a chain reaction could
guish, the physicists have known
sin; and this is a knowledge
be established in uranium. More than 50 Soviet scientists worked on isotope separa-
which they cannot lose. tion and uranium and plutonium bomb designs during the war; the Hiroshima and
J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1947 Nagasaki bombing only spurred their efforts. The Soviet Union achieved a chain
reaction in a reactor in 1946 and tested a fission bomb in 1949.
When you see something that is In 1941, Edward Teller began calculations about a bomb based on the energy
technically sweet, you go ahead released when hydrogen fuses to form helium. His fusion group expanded after the
and do it and you argue about war, and by 1949 it appeared that they might eventually succeed. But the United
what to do about it only after you
States had not yet decided to build a fusion weapon.
have had your technical success.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
The 1949 Soviet fission bomb test, coming as cold war tensions were building,
alarmed U.S. President Harry Truman. A small circle of officials and scientists
debated whether to proceed with an all-out U.S. effort to build a hydrogen bomb, or
fusion bomb. Their fear was similar to earlier fears about Germany: The Soviet
Union might build the winning weapon first. Believing that this would be intolera-
ble, Truman decided in 1950 to develop a fusion bomb. In 1950, the U.S. fusion
bomb project was, according to Oppenheimer, “a tortured thing that you could well
argue did not make a great deal of technical sense.” But during 1951, mathemati-
cian Stanislaw Ulam came up with a clever new idea that solved many of the pro-
ject’s problems. In a revealing comment on the allure of high technology,
Oppenheimer stated, “By 1951 the program was technically so sweet that you could
not argue about that.”
How well we meant. In October 1952, the United States exploded the world’s first thermonuclear
Title of 1983 Speech by Physicist fusion device. As occurs at the center of the sun, hydrogen nuclei were fused to
I. I. Rabi, at the Los Alamos Weapons
Laboratory on the Fortieth Anniversary form helium. In this and all other fusion weapons, the hydrogen isotopes used were
2
of its Founding H and the rare and radioactive isotope 3H because these isotopes fuse at a lower,
more attainable, temperature than do the 1H and 2H that are fused in the sun. You
might guess then that this reaction would create 5He but 5He is such an unstable iso-
tope that the reaction results instead in 4He plus a free neutron:
2
H + 3H ¡ 4He + n

Figure 20 sketches how it works. To bring the hydrogen fuel to the multimillion-
degree temperatures needed to ignite fusion, an implosion-type fission bomb is used

Figure 20 Heavy metal High explosive

The design of a fusion bomb.

239Pu and 235U

Hydrogen fuel
for fusion Natural uranium (fission trigger)
Natural uranium
reaction to protect fusion jacket (more fission)
fuel from trigger’s
blast (more fission)

468
 Fusion and Fission

as a “trigger.” High-temperature X-rays from the fission bomb quickly heat the
hydrogen to fusion temperatures. Ulam’s “technically sweet” idea was that this trig-
ger should be physically separated from the hydrogen fuel so that X-rays, traveling at
lightspeed, would reach the hydrogen and heat it to fusion temperatures during the
fraction of a second before the trigger’s blast could reach the hydrogen and blow it
apart. During the 10 years prior to Ulam’s contribution in 1951, the fission trigger
and the fusion fuel had been wrapped together in one big sphere that was likely to be
destroyed by the fission blast before fusion had a chance to get going. Inexpensive
natural uranium is used at several places in the design. Under the conditions that
exist while the hydrogen is fusing, even natural uranium can be made to fission,
yielding a larger blast that is also higher in radioactive fallout.
A fission bomb cannot be built with a larger-than-critical mass already assem-
bled in one piece, because this mass would quickly explode spontaneously. This
makes it difficult to design very large fission weapons. However, there is no natural
upper limit to a fusion weapon because the hydrogen fuel will not explode sponta-
neously. The yield of the world’s first fusion test explosion was 10,000 kilotons, or
10 megatons, equivalent to 10 million tons of TNT. This is a thousand times the
Hiroshima bomb’s energy, or about twice the total explosive energy released by all
combatants during all of World War II!
The success of the Soviet fission bomb test and reports that the U.S. government
was considering a fusion program spurred the Soviets to move ahead rapidly with
their own fusion program. In November 1955, the Soviet Union also tested a ther-
monuclear fusion weapon. You see here, once more, the action–reaction cycle.
This dangerous and expensive process is hard to control as long as nations feel
threatened.
The U.S.–Soviet nuclear arms race was, by any measure, extreme. By the mid-
1980s, each side possessed about 25,000 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the
other side as a functioning society hundreds of times over. Each side held its
weapons out of fear of what the other side might do if it had a significant advan-
tage. Each side designed its arsenal to deter the other side from attacking. Any sig-
nificant increase in either stockpile always produced an overcompensating
increase in the other. On the other hand, the policy of nuclear deterrence was suc- Concern for man himself and
cessful in helping ensure that neither conventional nor nuclear war broke out his fate must always form the
between the United States and the Soviet Union during the entire cold war period chief interest of all technical
endeavors Á in order that the
from about 1947 to 1989. And it’s notable that not a single nuclear weapon has
creations of our mind shall be a
been detonated as a weapon of war during the six decades since the destruction of blessing and not a curse to
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 2008 the United States and Russia each still possessed mankind. Never forget this in
over 5000 large, or “strategic,” nuclear weapons, most of them large enough to the midst of your diagrams and
destroy the center of a large city. equations.
Einstein

M A K I N G EST I M AT ES Estimate the number of large highway trucks (capacity

30 tons) needed to haul 1 megaton of TNT and the length of a single line of trucks
carrying such a load on the highway. What about 10 megatons?

1,000,000>30 = 33,000 trucks. A large highway truck is about 15 m

SO LU T I O N TO M A K I N G EST I M AT ES
long, so the length of 33,000 trucks is 500,000 m, or 500 km, with no spacing. If trucks are separated by one
truck length, the line is 1000 km long. For 10 megatons the line is 10,000 km long, or more than twice
across the United States.

469
 Fusion and Fission

8 NUCLEAR TERRORISM9
To possess the weapons that Weapons of mass destruction include nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
could counter those of the infi- Terrorists could employ any of the three. I’ll discuss only nuclear terrorism here and
dels is a religious duty. leave chemical and biological terrorism to your chemistry or biology class. In order
Osama Bin Laden, When Asked about
Reports that He Wanted Nuclear
for science to be used for human benefit and not for harm, topics such as this
Weapons should be included in all general science courses. If your other general science
courses don’t include such socially relevant topics, I hope you’ll encourage the
instructors to do so.
Could terrorists acquire and use nuclear devices? There are, unfortunately, four
routes by which this might happen. In decreasing order of destructiveness but
increasing order of plausibility, they are the following:
1. Seizing and detonating an intact nuclear weapon;
2. Seizing or purchasing weapons-grade uranium or plutonium leading to building
and detonating a crude nuclear weapon;
3. Sabotaging nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, releasing radioactivity;
4. Acquiring radioactive material leading to building and detonating a dirty
bomb—a bomb powered with conventional explosive but that does its damage
largely by the dispersal of radioactive material.

Seizing a bomb. There is no confirmed case of the theft of a nuclear weapon, but
with over 20,000 nuclear weapons currently spread around nine nations it’s possible
that a terrorist organization could buy or steal one of them. For example, although
Pakistan supports the U.S. war against terrorism, it’s impossible to know how many
secret terrorists exist inside the country’s military intelligence agencies, and what
access they might have to Pakistan’s roughly 50 nuclear weapons. Without such
“insider” help, a terrorist organization would find it extremely difficult under nor-
mal circumstances to seize a nuclear weapon. But terrorists could take advantage of
anarchy or revolutionary unrest in a failing nuclear state to gain control over a
nuclear weapon. For example, Soviet president Gorbachev reportedly lost control of
his country’s nuclear arsenal when his opponents cut off his communication links
during a coup attempt against him in 1991. Once they obtained a bomb, terrorists
would be faced with the further obstacles of overcoming the devices built into most
nuclear weapons to prevent unauthorized use, transporting the weapon to its target,
and figuring out how to trigger the device. As you know from the preceding two
sections, the bomb could flatten the center of a large city.

Seizing bomb fuel. There are 1700 tonnes of weapons-grade uranium and
500 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium at hundreds of sites around the world,
most of it in the United States or Russia. This is enough for 60,000 bombs of each
type. Perhaps as much as half of this weapons fuel is already in nuclear weapons
where it’s unlikely to be bought or stolen by terrorists (see above), but the non-
weaponized remainder is far harder to secure. There have been a number of cases
during the past decade involving illicit trafficking in small amounts of this mate-
rial. None has approached the 25 kg of highly enriched uranium or 8 kg of pluto-
nium needed for a bomb, but a terrorist organization could currently be in

9 I am indebted to The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism, by Charles D. Ferguson and William C. Potter
(Monterey Institute on International Studies, 2004), for much of the analysis of this section.

470
 Fusion and Fission

possession of this much material. Three plausible settings where terrorists might
obtain nuclear fuel are the following:
• Dozens of sites that are under inadequate security in Russia
• Pakistan, where terrorists could exploit political instability and uncertain loyalties
• Some 130 reactors employed for nuclear research that are fueled by highly
enriched uranium, located in Russia and 20 other nations and often supplied by
the United States.
The United States and other nations are trying to make these sites more secure,
for example, by phasing out the enriched-uranium research reactors. The pathways
by which a terrorist group might obtain weapons fuel are similar to the pathways for
obtaining an intact weapon: purchase or theft with government or insider assistance
and exploitation of unrest. Because it’s located in so many places, and is guarded
less securely than nuclear weapons, nuclear fuel would be easier for terrorists to
obtain than an intact nuclear weapon.
As you’ve learned earlier, the main barrier to building the simplest type of ura-
nium bomb [Figure 18(a)] is obtaining the roughly 50 kg of highly enriched ura-
nium needed for this design. It’s far more difficult to construct a plutonium bomb.
Once they have the uranium, technically competent terrorists would be able to con-
struct a simple uranium bomb. As at Hiroshima, this bomb could release as much
as 20 kilotons of energy and devastate the heart of a medium-sized U.S. city.

Nuclear power plant sabotage. Nuclear power plants cannot explode like a
nuclear bomb, because a highly explosive chain reaction cannot occur in their low-
enriched or nonenriched uranium fuel. The Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet
Union, where a low-grade nuclear explosion occurred, was a singular exception.
But nuclear power plants contain lots of highly radioactive materials within the
reactor itself and in their spent-fuel storage pools, and this could be released by a
terrorist attack. It’s not known whether the direct impact of a large fuel-laden air-
plane could breach these facilities. A waterborne attack could block vital water
intakes to the plant and cause a meltdown or at least a shutdown. A commando
attack could drive truck bombs into reactors and spent-fuel pools or fire multiple
rockets from tens of kilometers away. Nuclear power plants might also be vulnera-
ble to “cyberterrorism”—attacks on information and control systems by insider
sabotage or external computer hacking. Terrorists could drain a spent-fuel storage
pool, causing the highly radioactive fuel to heat up, ignite, and release radiation.
Safety and security measures that are in place at all U.S. reactors would tend to
thwart such plans, whereas collusion with sympathetic power plant insiders would
make such attacks more likely to succeed. A successful attack by any of these meth-
ods would cause a radiation release rivaling the Chernobyl accident.

Detonating a dirty bomb. As the most likely but least damaging form of nuclear
terrorism, a group or even a single individual could insert a harmful amount of
radioactive material into a conventional explosive device that would disperse this
material over a wide area. In fact, alleged al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla was
arrested in 2002 for planning a dirty bomb attack on the United States, although
his bomb would have dispersed only natural uranium, which has a long half-life
and therefore a very low level of radioactivity and would have caused little dam-
age. The most important “fallout” would have been the psychological effect on

471
 Fusion and Fission

the public. There are millions of radioactive sources all over the world and, unlike
Padilla’s uranium, many of them are sufficiently radioactive to constitute some dan-
ger. Al Qaeda and Russia’s Chechen rebels have shown an interest in such highly
radioactive material.
Radioactive material for a dirty bomb may be found or stolen, but the easiest
route is to simply purchase it legally as radioactive isotopes employed in thousands
of medical, academic, agricultural, and industrial settings. The most harmful mate-
rials also have the broadest commercial applications and are widely available.
The high radiation zone from a dirty bomb attack is unlikely to extend beyond
the area destroyed by the blast. Thus casualties would be comparable to those from
a conventional explosive device such as a car bomb, and few or no people would be
killed by the radiation. But the economic damage could be enormous because eco-
nomic activity would be suspended throughout a large area of less lethal low-level
radiation, because decontamination would be costly and could take years, and
because the attack could cause widespread panic even though the radiation danger
would be low.

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

472
Fusion and Fission
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 20. What would happen if a fission chain reaction were
attempted in a piece of 235U whose mass was below the criti-
cal mass? Explain why this would happen.
FUSION AND THE NUCLEAR ENERGY CURVE
FISSION AND FUSION WEAPONS
1. Give the reaction formula for at least one fusion reaction.
2. What isotope is created when 12C fuses with 4He? (Hint: Use 21. Can natural uranium fuel a fission weapon? Why?
the periodic table.) 22. What is enrichment? Describe one enrichment process.
3. What energy transformation occurs in radioactive decay? In 23. Name the two chain-reacting materials that can be used in
nuclear fusion of hydrogen? Nuclear fission of uranium? fission weapons.
4. Of the four fundamental forces, which are important inside 24. Explain how an implosion fission bomb works.
the nucleus? 25. How is a fusion bomb heated to fusion temperatures?
5. Which has more nuclear energy, a separated proton and neu- 26. What is meant by a “1-kiloton” nuclear weapon? 1 megaton?
tron or an 2H nucleus? How do you know? Which has greater
mass? How do you know? NUCLEAR TERRORISM
6. If you separate a nucleus into its individual protons and neu- 27. What is meant by a weapon of mass destruction?
trons, does its nuclear energy increase or decrease, or does 28. Describe the four ways by which nuclear terrorism could
the answer depend on which nucleus you started with? occur. Which of these would be most destructive? Which of
7. Suppose you separate a nucleus into two equally massive these would be most likely to occur?
parts. Does the system’s nuclear energy increase or decrease, 29. Could terrorists build a nuclear weapon? What special mate-
or does the answer depend on which nucleus you started with? rial might they need?
8. Sketch the nuclear energy curve. What does this curve tell us 30. What is a dirty bomb? Describe the amount of damage it is
about the possibilities of getting useful energy from fusion likely to do.
or fission?

ORIGIN OF THE ELEMENTS Conceptual Exercises

9. List two elements created in the big bang.
10. Where do stars get their energy?
11. What is a supernova?
FUSION AND THE NUCLEAR ENERGY CURVE
12. How were the elements up to iron in the periodic table cre- 1. Write out the reaction formula for the fusion of 11H and 21H.
ated? What about the elements beyond (heavier than) nickel? 2. Write out the reaction formula for the fusion of 42He and 84Be.
13. Referring to the preceding question: Why do iron and nickel 3. How does a nucleus’s mass compare with the sum of the
happen to play this special role in element creation? masses of its protons and neutrons? Does the answer depend
14. Where did the chemical elements that form your body on which nucleus you are considering?
come from? 4. Can matter be destroyed? If so, give an example. Can energy
be destroyed? If so, give an example.
FISSION AND THE CHAIN REACTION 5. An alpha particle is removed from 168O. Is this an example of
fusion or fission? Write down the nuclear reaction formula
15. Why do neutrons work better than protons in causing fission?
for this reaction. Which side of this reaction formula, the left
Why do neutrons work better than alpha particles? Why do
or the right, represents more nuclear energy?
neutrons work better than electrons?
6. An alpha particle is fused with 168O. Write down the nuclear
16. Describe what happens during a chain reaction.
reaction formula for this reaction. Which side of this reaction
17. When 23892U absorbs a neutron, what isotope does it become?
formula, the left or the right, represents more nuclear energy?
What new element is then created by a single beta decay of
7. Would fusion, or fission, or neither, release nuclear energy
this isotope?
from carbon? From gold? From iron?
18. Where does plutonium come from?
8. In which of the following processes is there a change in rest-
19. What is meant by “uranium enrichment”?
mass due to the mass–energy equivalence principle? In which

From Chapter 15 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

473
 Fusion and Fission: Problem Set

is the change in rest-mass actually measurable? (a) Warming 29. The hydrogen bomb’s fusion energy comes from the fusion of
a cup of coffee. (b) Explosion of a fusion bomb. (c) Lifting a 2
H with 3H. One of the reaction products is an alpha particle.
book. (d) Matter–antimatter annihilation ? Write out the complete nuclear reaction formula.
9. In which of the following processes is there a change in rest-
mass due to the mass–energy equivalence principle? In which NUCLEAR TERRORISM
is the change in rest-mass actually measurable? (a) Operation 30. What kind of nuclear bomb would terrorists be likely to build,
of a nuclear reactor. (b) Explosion of TNT. (c) Explosion of a and what kind of special material would they need to build it?
fission bomb. (d) Throwing a baseball. 31. Could terrorists make a nuclear power plant blow up like a
10. Which of the four fundamental forces holds the nucleus nuclear bomb? Explain.
together? Which one of the four forces tends to push the 32. What is the most likely kind of nuclear terrorism, and how
nucleus apart, that is, to separate it into pieces? much damage is it likely to do?
11. One of the forces operating inside the nucleus is the electro-
magnetic force. Does this force tend to assist nuclear fusion,
or oppose it? Problems
ORIGIN OF THE ELEMENTS
12. The fusion of helium nuclei into heavier nuclei occurs only FISSION AND THE CHAIN REACTION
during the later stages of a star’s history, when the star has 1. When 235U fissions, it loses about 1% of its rest-mass.
reached a higher temperature due to partial collapse. Why Suppose that 10 kg of 235U fissions. How much rest-mass is
does helium fusion occur only at higher temperatures than lost? How much nuclear energy is released?
those needed for hydrogen fusion? 2. MAKING ESTIMATES A large nuclear power plant supplies
13. In what sense have humans always been sustained by the energy at a rate of 1000 MW, or 109 joules/second. The
energy from nuclear fusion? energy comes from 235U. How much rest-mass vanishes in
14. The supernova seen in 1987 occurred in a galaxy one day?
180,000 light-years away. When did it actually occur? 3. In the preceding question, suppose that the energy came from
15. Before it exploded, the 1987 supernova fused many elements. a coal plant rather than a nuclear power plant, still at a rate of
In one reaction, 12C fused with 4He. What nucleus did this 1000 MW. Would this change the answer? Explain.
create? Did this reaction release nuclear energy?
16. Another reaction occurring before the 1987 supernova FISSION AND FUSION WEAPONS
exploded was the fusion of two 12C nuclei. What nucleus did 4. Since 1 kiloton = 4.2 * 1012 J, how much rest-mass vanishes
this create? Did this reaction release nuclear energy? when a 15-kiloton atomic bomb explodes? How much rest-
17. Could the atoms in your body have been created in the sun? mass vanishes when a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb explodes?
Explain. 5. How high could the energy of a 15-kiloton atomic bomb
18. Could the atoms in your body have been created by the North (preceding problem) lift the U.S. population, assuming a pop-
Star? Explain. ulation of 300 million with an average weight of 600 N (mass
of 60 kg) per person. How high could a 15-megaton hydro-
FISSION AND THE CHAIN REACTION gen bomb lift the U.S. population?
19. A neutron strikes a 235U nucleus and creates lanthanum. 6. MAKING ESTIMATES Suppose that all the energy released in a
What other element is created? 1-megaton (4.2 * 1015 J) fusion bomb were used to lift peo-
20. A neutron strikes a 239Pu nucleus and creates strontium. ple to a height of 1600 meters (about 1 mile). About how many
What other element is created? people could be lifted? What fraction of Earth’s population is
21. List at least one similarity between combustion and fission. this? (GravE = weight * height. You will need to estimate
List at least one difference. the weight, in newtons, of an average person).
22. List similarities and differences between a nuclear chain
reaction and igniting and burning a sheet of paper.
23. When a 235U nucleus is struck by a neutron, it splits into a Answers to Concept Checks
pair of large fragments and emits two to four neutrons. A typ-
ical pair of fragments is 142 91
56Ba and 36Kr. Write a reaction 1. Work must be done on the proton and neutron in order to
equation showing the isotopes and other particles that go into separate them, so energy is added to the system, (a).
and come out of this reaction. 2. (b)
24. Why does the chain reaction work in 235U but not in 238U? 3. (e)
25. Would you expect that a chain reaction would be able to pro- 4. The atomic number is 4, which is beryllium, (c).
ceed in natural uranium ore? Why or why not? 5. (a)
6. (d)
FISSION AND FUSION WEAPONS 7. The atomic mass increased by 3, and the atomic number
26. Is plutonium radioactive? Defend your answer. increased by 2, (c).
27. Can natural uranium metal spontaneously explode? Why? 8. The atomic number is 92 - 56 = 36, which is krypton, (b).
28. Is a chain reaction possible in a substance that emits no neu- 9. They differ by 3 parts (238–235) in 238, or 3/238, which is a
trons when it fissions? little more than 1%, (e).
10. 22,000 tons>5 tons = 4400, (d)

474
 Fusion and Fission: Problem Set

Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual 23. 235 142 91

92U + n : 56Ba + 36Kr + 3n , where “n” means “neu-
tron.” Note that in this particular reaction, three neutrons
Exercises and Problems must be present afterward in order to balance neutrons and
protons before and after the reaction.
Conceptual Exercises 25. No. Natural uranium contains only a small amount of the
1. 11H + 21H : 32He. chain-reacting isotope 235U, as compared to the large amount
3. The nucleus’s mass is smaller than the sum of the masses of of 238U.
its protons and neutrons. This is true for any nucleus, as you 27. No. The fraction of 235U (as compared to 238U) is too small
can see from the nuclear energy curve. to sustain a fission chain reaction.
2 3 4
5. Fission (note that this is not radioactive decay, because 16O 29. 1H + 1H : 2He + neutron .
is not radioactive). 168O : 42He + 126C. According to the 31. No, because a nuclear power plant’s uranium is either non-
nuclear energy curve, the right side represents the most enriched or only low-enriched, and not highly enriched as is
nuclear energy. needed for a bomb.
7. Use the nuclear energy curve. Carbon: fusion; gold: fission; Problems
iron: neither. 1. 1% of 10 kg is 0.1 kg, or 100 g. E = mc2 = (0.1 kg) *
9. Change in rest mass: (a), (b), (c), (d) (all four). But only (a) (3 * 108 m>s)2 = 9 * 1015 J.
and (c) are measurable. 3. The same amount of rest-mass would still have to vanish,
11. It opposes nuclear fusion. because the same amount of electrical energy would still
13. The sun’s energy comes from nuclear fusion. have to be created.
15. 16O. According to the nuclear energy curve, this released 5. The weight of the U.S. population is 300 * 106 *
nuclear energy. 600 N = 1.8 * 1011 N. The energy available for lifting is
17. No, because nearly all of the sun’s atoms are still in the sun.
15 * 4.2 * 1012 J = 6.3 * 1013 J. Thus, from GravE =
19. Lanthanum’s atomic number is 57, and uranium’s is 92.
92 - 57 = 35, which is bromine. weight * height, we get height =
21. The major similarity: Both convert microscopic forms of GravE>weight = 6.3 * 1013 J>1.8 * 1011 N = 350 m, or
energy (chemical and nuclear) into thermal energy. The 0.35 km. A 15 megaton bomb could do 1000 times as much
major difference: Burning is a chemical process involving lifting: 350 km!
the orbital electrons; fission is a nuclear process. Another
difference: Fission releases far more energy (per individual
reaction) than combustion.

475
476
Quantum Fields
Relativity Meets the Quantum

The basic ingredients of nature are fields; particles are derivative phenomena.
Steven Weinberg, Physicist, Winner of the Nobel Prize for His Theory of the Electroweak Force Field

S
pecial relativity and quantum physics extend Newtonian physics in different
directions. One extends it up to lightspeed, and the other extends it down to at
least the smallest dimensions yet measured, 10 - 19 meters, 10,000 times smaller
than an atomic nucleus. But there’s a problem with these two theories. Special rela-
tivity doesn’t contain the quantum principles so it doesn’t work at small sizes, and
quantum physics doesn’t contain the relativity principles so it doesn’t work at high
speeds. Thus neither theory describes small-scale high-speed phenomena. What’s
needed is a joining of relativity and quantum physics into a single theory covering
all sizes and all speeds.
Such a theory was developed during 1930–1950. It’s called quantum field theory.
One part of this theory, quantum electrodynamics, is the most accurate scientific the-
ory ever invented. Like most of modern physics, quantum field theory is basically
simple but takes some getting used to. Its underlying idea, and an enduring theme of
modern physics, is the field view of reality already discussed in connection with
Einstein’s mass–energy relation—the view that the universe is made entirely of fields.
In Section 1, we’ll further discuss what this means.
Section 1 presents the general idea of quantum field theory, and the remaining sec-
tions apply this idea to each of the four fundamental forces: electromagnetic
(Sections 2 and 3), weak (Section 4), strong (Section 5), and gravitational (Section 6).
Along the way, I’ll present several of the most remarkable topics in all of physics:
antimatter, creation and annihilation of matter, high-energy particle accelerators
(including the Large Hadron Collider), the furious activity occurring in so-called
“empty” space, neutrinos, quarks, gluons, the standard model of particle physics, the
Higgs field and its quantum particle, quantum gravity, and the string hypothesis.

1 QUANTIZED FIELDS: THE REASON THERE ARE

PARTICLES
A field (examples include gravitational, electromagnetic, and matter fields) is
spread out over a region of space. This region needn’t contain any matter or
“things” at all. A field is a condition of space itself, a kind of stress in space,
regardless of any matter that might be in it. For example, a magnetic field is the
possibility of a magnetic force, regardless of whether anything feels that possible

From Chapter 17 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

477
 Quantum Fields

The unexpected and the incredi- force. Recall also that fields, even when no matter is present, contain energy and
ble belong in this world. Only this implies that they are physically real and not mere mental constructions.
then is life whole. At the core of quantum field theory is the view that the universe is made only of
Carl Gustav Jung
fields. The table on which a book rests is simply a configuration of quivering force
fields, similar to the invisible force field surrounding a magnet, and so is the book.
The book doesn’t fall through the table, however, because the electric force fields in
the table repel the electric force fields in the book. And your eye (which is also just
fields) sees the book because the book’s force fields emit radiation.
It’s an odd idea. There is no truly solid or enduring “thing.” In this sense, there is
“nothing”: no thing. Only fields. But this doesn’t mean that everything is empty, or
nonexistent, or imaginary. Far from it. In fact, the relatively solid table at which you
are perhaps sitting right now is made of atoms that are in turn made of fields that
exert quite real forces on the atoms (which are also made of fields) in your elbows
which are perhaps leaning on the table. That’s why you don’t fall through the table.
Quantum field theory assumes that each field, such as the electromagnetic
(EM) field, obeys the principles of quantum physics and special relativity. You’ve
already studied the basics, although we called it “quantum physics” instead of
“quantum field theory.” Here’s a quick review of those basics: EM fields fill the
universe and are quantized in specific energy increments. Each time such a
quantized field interacts with, for example, a viewing screen or your eye, it must
gain or lose a whole energy increment, or quantum. Even though each quantum is
spread out over a region of space, these quanta of the EM field act somewhat like
particles and are called photons. The theory also asserts that matter fields fill the
universe and that these too are quantized. The quanta of these matter fields act
somewhat like particles and are called electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, and so
forth. In this chapter, we’ll learn that there are other kinds of radiation quanta,
similar to the photon, and other kinds of material quanta, similar to electrons and
protons.
The one part of today’s physics This view stands Newtonian thinking on its head. Newtonian physics regards the
that seems to me likely to survive universe as a vast collection of separate, unchanging particles whose motions and
unchanged in a final theory is interactions determine everything that happens. Quantum physics regards the uni-
quantum mechanics.
verse as made of just a few kinds of constantly changing spread-out fields whose
Steven Weinberg
motions and interactions are the source of everything that happens. Because these
fields are quantized, their interactions must occur in specific energy increments,
and these increments appear as photons, electrons, protons, etc. This view also
explains why all electrons must be identical, why all photons of a particular fre-
quency must be identical, etc. All electrons, for example, are just quantized bundles
of field energy of a single type of matter field, so they must be identical, in the
same way that 1 joule of energy in your gas tank is identical with any other joule of
energy in your gas tank.
So quantum field theory explains why nature exhibits itself as particles of just a
few fundamental types. The list of nature’s fundamental ingredients no longer needs
to include any particles at all—it needs to include only a few fields. This view puts
matter and radiation on an equal footing: Both material particles such as electrons
and radiation particles such as photons are quantized bundles of field energy. These
particles are subject to the usual quantum uncertainties, with the field’s intensity at
any point determining the probability that the corresponding particle will appear at
that point. The fields (and the associated particles) are also subject to the rules of
special relativity, namely, the principle of relativity and the constancy of lightspeed.
To summarize:

478
 Quantum Fields

The notion that reality is a set of

The Quantum Theory of Fields fields that give the probabilities
for finding their associated
The essential reality is a few fields, such as the EM field, that fill the universe and that quanta is the most important
obey the principles of quantum physics and special relativity. Everything that happens consequence of relativistic quan-
in nature is a result of changes in these fields. Quantization requires that, whenever tum field theory. It is the central
an interaction occurs, these fields must exhibit themselves as bundles or quanta of concept for the picture of reality.
field energy. All of nature’s particles of radiation and matter are quanta of this sort. Not only did the idea of matter
disappear into the field concept,
but the field specified the proba-
Why does quantum field theory obey the special theory of relativity rather than bility for finding quanta.
the more general and more correct (because it agrees with a wider range of observa- Heinz Pagels, Physicist
tions) general theory of relativity? It’s because nobody has yet figured out how to
make quantum physics jibe with general relativity. In other words, within the context
of special relativity, quantum field theory incorporates three of the four fundamental
forces: electromagnetic, weak, and strong. But nobody has been able to formulate
any of these three forces within the context of general relativity; such a theory would
have to encompass the fourth force, gravity. For some hypothetical stabs in this
direction, see Section 6.

2 QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS: THE STRANGE THEORY

OF ELECTRONS AND LIGHT
Quantum field theory emerged during the 1930s as the world was marching
toward war. Although nuclear physics flourished in the United States, quantum
physics had to wait. Nevertheless, Shin’ichiro Tomonaga (Figure 1), working in

Figure 1
University of Tsukuba, Tomonaga

Institute of Physics/Emilio Segre

Three who independently invented

the theory of quantum electrody-
Memorial Room/American

namics, a quantum theory of the

EM force. (a) Shin’ichiro
Tomonaga (gesturing from his
desk) in 1948, five years after pub-
Visual Archives

lishing his theory. (b) Richard

Feynman. He was known to jerk
his mind out of a rut by working at
a back table in a nightclub,
inspired by the blare of the sound
(a) system. (c) Julian Schwinger. A
Institute of Physics/Emilio Segre

solitary worker, he says that he

American Institute of Physics/

“became the night research staff ”

Emilio Segre Visual Archives

Segre Collection/American

at his wartime laboratory.

Visual Archives

(b) (c)

479
 Quantum Fields

wartime isolation in Japan, published a fundamental paper presenting a quantum

field theory of the EM force. His paper was not available in English until 1948.
After the war, in 1947, two New Yorkers in their 20s, Richard Feynman and Julian
Schwinger (Figure 1), completed quantum field theories of the EM force. The
three theories, known as quantum electrodynamics, were invented independ-
ently and look strikingly different, but all three say the same thing. I’ll present
Feynman’s more intuitive version.
Quantum electrodynamics is about the interactions between two kinds of quan-
tized fields: quantized EM fields, and quantized electron fields (matter fields for
electrons). From the particle point of view, the theory is about photons, the quanta
of the EM field, and electrons, the quanta of the electron field and the particles that
experience the EM force in its purest form. It sounds simple. But the requirement
that the EM field and electron field obey both relativity and quantum theory leads
to astonishing results.
Moving In Feynman’s theory, the old idea of a continual electric force between two elec-
electron trons is replaced with a quantized transfer of a “bundle” of force in the form of a
1
photon. Figure 2 pictures this. The diagram graphs the positions of two electrons at
various times and shows a single quantum interaction between the two electrons.
Initially, electron 2 is at rest (its position, shown along the vertical axis, isn’t chang-
Photon ing as time proceeds along the horizontal axis), and electron 1 is moving down-
ward. Then electron 2 radiates a photon that travels through space and time to
Position

2
Stationary electron 1, and then electron 1 absorbs this photon. When electron 2 emits the pho-
electron ton, electron 2 veers downward, and when electron 1 absorbs the photon, electron 1
Time veers upward. The electrons repel each other by means of photon exchange, much
as basketball players interact by passing a basketball back and forth. Surprisingly,
Figure 2 however, quantum electrodynamics allows two oppositely charged particles, such as
A schematic diagram showing a a proton and electron, to veer toward each other when a photon is exchanged.
single quantum interaction Every quantum event has quantum uncertainties. In Figure 2, the emission and
between two electrons. Diagrams absorption of the photon are uncertain. That is, it’s uncertain whether the emission
like this are known as “Feynman and absorption will occur in the first place, and if they do, it’s uncertain where and
diagrams.”
when they will occur. Quantum field theory replaces the deterministic electric force
law with a formula giving the probability of emission and absorption of a photon.
In this theory, for a particle to be electrically charged means that it has the ability
to emit and absorb photons.
This theory replaces the smooth, deterministic, Newtonian paths with jerky, non-
deterministic paths. If the force between the two electrons is small, then individual
photons have low energy and quantum theory predicts a fairly smooth, nearly
Newtonian, path [Figure 3(a)]. But when the forces are large, the quantum predic-
tions are decidedly non-Newtonian [Figure 3(b)].
So far, this is the kind of thing you might have expected from quantizing the
electric interaction: quantized force packages and randomness. But something rad-
ically new also emerges. In order for the theory to obey the special theory of rela-
tivity, a new type of material particle must exist in nature.
The argument that leads to this prediction is an interesting one and is typical of
modern physics. It’s based on symmetry, a concept that we’ve encountered several
times before. It turns out that, in order to obey special relativity, quantum field the-
ory must be “symmetric under time reversal.” In other words, if we imagine a uni-
verse precisely like ours, only with time running the other way, the laws of quantum

480
 Quantum Fields

1
1

2
Position

Position
Time
2
Time
(a) (b)

Figure 3
(a) A Feynman diagram for a series of interactions between two weakly interacting (i.e. only
low-energy photons are exchanged) electrons. The electrons’ paths approach smooth
Newtonian paths. (b) At stronger interactions (high-energy photons), the paths deviate con-
siderably from smooth paths, and Newtonian physics is no longer a good approximation.

field theory must be valid in that universe.1 Feynman found that an electron that is
imagined to move backward in time would have precisely the same observable
effects as would another particle just like the electron, only carrying a positive
charge and moving forward in time. In order for the laws of physics to be properly
symmetric under time reversal, this positive electron, or positron, had to exist.
The prediction of the positron illustrates the enormous scope of quantum field
theory: Earlier theories, whether Newtonian or relativistic or quantum, had
described only how things change in time. Quantum field theory goes well beyond
this extrapolation of the present into the future and the past by describing not only
how things move but also what kinds of things can exist.

How do we know that positrons and other strange new particles exist? A sub-
atomic particle’s path can be revealed by a device known as a cloud chamber. A con-
tainer or “chamber” is filled with air saturated with water vapor—gaseous H2O that is just
at the point of converting to droplets of liquid water. When a charged subatomic particle
such as an electron speeds through the chamber, it nudges some of the air molecules
along its path strongly enough to ionize them. Each ion causes a water droplet to form,
and the resulting trail of droplets reveals the particle’s path. Jet planes form similar vapor
trails in the atmosphere, revealing the plane’s path.
The cloud chamber was the workhorse of subatomic physics between 1930 and
1960. Its successor is the bubble chamber, based on the formation of tiny bubbles in a
liquid. According to scientific lore, its inventor, Donald Glaser, came up with this innova-
tion in a bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while watching the bubbles in a glass of beer. It won
him a Nobel Prize.
In 1932, Carl Anderson of the California Institute of Technology generated a strong
magnetic field in a cloud chamber. Recall that magnetic fields exert sideways forces on
moving charged particles. This sideways force makes electrons curve as they move
through magnetic fields. A moving particle’s speed and mass can be assessed from this
curvature because a particle’s path is straighter if it’s moving faster, and because if two
particles move at the same speed, the more massive one will have the straighter path.

1
This raises the intriguing question of why, if our most basic physical theory is symmetric in time, the for-
ward direction in time is different from the backward direction. For example, why aren’t as many people
growing younger as are growing older? The answer is not understood, but it’s connected to the second law
of thermodynamics and the big bang.

481
 Quantum Fields

In 1932, the only high-energy particles available for experiments came from space.
Allowing these “cosmic rays” to pass through his cloud chamber, Anderson found a sur-
prising number of fairly straight paths. Electrons and protons were the only charged parti-
cles known at that time. The paths appeared to be made by fast-moving electrons, but
the direction of their curvature was the reverse of what was expected, indicating that the
particles carried a positive charge. Anderson’s first hypothesis was that these paths were
made by electrons that were somehow moving upward through the cloud chamber,
despite the expectation that cosmic rays should move downward. He checked this
hypothesis by inserting a thin lead plate across the middle of the chamber. Although the
fast-moving particles passed easily through the lead, they slowed down in the process,
and so the path’s curvature increased after passing through. In Figure 4—the photograph
that won Anderson a Nobel Prize—the particle is clearly moving from top to bottom
because it curves more in the bottom half of the photo, so its curvature shows that it car-
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley ries a positive charge. Anderson had discovered the positron.
National Laboratory
In order to observe cosmic rays before they interact with much air, Anderson in 1936
Figure 4 built a new magnetic cloud chamber on Pike’s Peak in the Colorado Rockies. He found
The photo that won a Nobel Prize. curious tracks that didn’t fit protons or electrons, even positive ones. The paths were too
This photo alone established the curved for protons, yet the particles passed easily through lead plates that should have
existence of a positive electron. stopped any particle whose mass was as small as the electron’s. This new particle was
just like an electron but 200 times more massive. It was a real surprise. As Columbia
University physicist I. I. Rabi put it, “Who ordered that?” Today, we still do not know. This
particle is called a muon.

3 ANTIMATTER
The positron was science’s first encounter with antiparticles. Relativity’s require-
ment that quantum theory be symmetric under time reversal implies that for every
existing type of particle, there must be an antiparticle having the same mass but the
opposite charge. For example, the electron’s antiparticle is the positively charged
positron. Similarly, the proton’s antiparticle is the negatively charged antiproton,
and the neutron’s antiparticle is the uncharged antineutron. Although it carries no
overall charge, the antineutron does have magnetic properties that are the opposite
of the neutron’s.
One of the profound successes of quantum field theory and high-energy experi-
mental physics is the prediction and observation of the creation and annihilation
of matter. As you know, quantum field theory states that EM fields and electron
fields interact with other systems, such as the viewing screen in a double-slit exper-
iment, by exchanging quanta with the other system. The quanta of the EM field are
called photons, and the quanta of the electron field are called electrons and
positrons. Quantum field theory predicts what can happen when an EM field and an
Just as it is possible for a particle electron field interact with each other.
to be in a quantum state in which As one possibility, the EM field could give up one or more quanta (photons) to
it is neither definitely here nor the electron field, increasing the energy of the electron field. Normally, the observ-
there. . . so also it is possible to able consequences of this would simply be increased energy for any electrons that
have a particle in a state in which might be observed in, say, a cloud chamber. But if the EM field gives up sufficiently
it is neither definitely an electron
high-energy photons to the electron field, something new can happen: Additional
nor definitely a neutrino until we
measure some property that electron field quanta can be created. That is, electrons and positrons can be created.
would distinguish the two, like However, experiments show that, in any microscopic interaction, the total electric
the electric charge. charge is conserved, so it is always electron–positron pairs that are created.
Steven Weinberg Quantum electrodynamics gives the probabilities for this to occur.

482
 Quantum Fields

The other possibility is that the electron field could give up quanta to the EM
field. One way this can happen is for an electron and a positron to vanish from the
electron field while one or more high-energy photons appear in the EM field. Thus,
electron–positron pairs can annihilate each other as well as pop into existence.
So quantum electrodynamics predicts that a photon has a certain probability of ns
being observed as an electron–positron pair, or as more than one pair, and that such c tro
ele
a pair has a certain probability of being observed as one or more photons. Figure 5, a 2
Feynman diagram for part of a photon’s life history, conveys this notion. s
on

Position
This is a very non-Newtonian development. As Heisenberg commented: r
on sit
tr po
The discovery of particles and antiparticleshas changed our whole outlook on atomic ec 2
El
physics. . . As soon as one knows that one can create pairs, then one has to consider an n
ro
elementary particle as a compound system; because virtually it could be this particle sit
Po
plus a pair of particles plus two pairs and so on, and so all of a sudden the whole idea of on
ot
elementary particles has changed. Up to that time I think every physicist had thought of Ph
the elementary particles along the lines of the philosophy of Democritus [Chapter 2], Time
namely by considering them as unchangeable units which are just given in nature and
Figure 5
are always the same thing, they never change, they never can be transmuted into any-
thing else. They are not dynamical systems, they just exist in themselves. After this dis- A few moments in the life history
covery everything looked different, because one could ask, why should a photon not of a high-energy photon (which is
sometimes be a photon plus an electron–positron pair and so on?. . . Thereby the prob- an electron–positron pair during
lem of dividing matter had come into a different light. part of this history and two pairs
during another part).
Antiparticles imply the possibility of antimatter, similar to normal matter but
made of antiprotons, antineutrons, and positrons. Indeed, antiprotons were first
brought together with positrons in 1996 to form a few atoms of antihydrogen.
Although they’re still a long way from powering the antimatter drive of Captain
Kirk’s Enterprise, researchers today can create and study thousands of antihydrogen
atoms at a time at very low temperatures. These cold atoms are moving so slowly
that they interact with each other only weakly, enabling scientists to study antihy-
drogen’s spectrum and other properties and compare them with hydrogen’s proper-
ties. In one experiment, antihydrogen falling in Earth’s gravitational field is
compared with the fall of hydrogen. Another experiment seeks the antimatter coun-
terpart of the negative H ion (one proton orbited by two electrons), and the antimat-
ter counterpart of the positive H 2 ion (two separate protons orbited by one electron
that binds the protons into a single molecule). One goal is to trap large quantities of
antimatter at very low temperatures in a single container for long periods of time.
Large naturally occurring collections of antimatter, such as antigalaxies, are pos-
sible but are thought not to exist, because if they did we would observe high-energy
radiation from annihilation processes when a galaxy collides with an antigalaxy.
Because we observe many colliding galaxies but never observe such annihilation
processes, the universe is believed to contain very little antimatter.
But symmetry seems to suggest that the universe should be made of equal amounts
of both. Why so much matter and so little antimatter? Russian physicist Andrei
Sakharov suggested in 1967 that the big bang may have created equal amounts of
matter and antimatter and that certain rare symmetry-violating processes during the
first second gave rise to a slight excess—less than a part in a billion—of matter, and
then the rest of the matter and antimatter annihilated so that the tiny excess formed all
the matter that’s in the universe today. It’s a good thing for life in the universe, includ-
ing us, that things worked out this way. If it weren’t for that slight excess of matter
created during the universe’s the first second, the universe would be made nearly
entirely of radiation, and we wouldn’t be here to think about antimatter!

483
 Quantum Fields

How do we know that antimatter exists? Matter and antimatter are routinely cre-
ated and annihilated in high-energy physics labs when a high-energy particle enters a
bubble chamber and collides with the particles of liquid (Figure 6). This creates a shower
of new particles, including particle–antiparticle pairs. Carl Anderson got his high-energy
incoming particles from naturally occurring cosmic rays. Today the incoming particles are
first accelerated to high energies by EM forces in particle accelerators such as the Large
Hadron Collidor (Figure 7).

Physicists have always “thrown” tiny things at other tiny things in order to see
how they’re made. Rutherford’s 1911 experiment threw alpha particles at the atoms
in a piece of metal foil and discovered the atomic nucleus. Today, particle accelera-
tors use electromagnetic fields to speed up subatomic charged particles such as pro-
tons or electrons to high energies and smash them into other moving particles or into
fixed targets. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC, Figure 7), lying in a circular tun-
nel 27 km around and buried more than 100 m deep near Geneva, Switzerland, will
circulate two oppositely-moving beams of protons (a member of the class of parti-
cles known as “hadrons”) and allow some protons from each beam to collide with
each other at various locations around the ring. Please take a few seconds to compare
this “inner space observatory” with “outer space” observatories. Both figures are
prime examples of the human thirst for knowledge. These structures are in some
ways comparable to the cathedrals of old.
When the LHC runs at maximum energy, each proton will carry seven trillion
“electron volts” (eV) of kinetic energy. One eV is the amount of kinetic energy that
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley

Fermilab Visual Media Services

National Laboratory

(a) (b)

Figure 6
(a) A bubble-chamber photograph of electron–positron pair creations, caused by gamma-ray photons. In the event at the top,
a photon has struck an atomic electron and knocked it out of its atom (long curving line), and it simultaneously created an
electron–positron pair (tightly curling spirals). Why can’t you see the path of the photon? Toward the bottom, a different pho-
ton creates an electron–positron pair. How can you tell that each pair has two particles of opposite charge? Of the two pairs,
which pair has the highest energy and speed? (b) A high-energy particle striking a particle in a bubble chamber creates a
“spray” of particles of various sorts. The bright circle is part of the measuring device.

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 Quantum Fields

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

CERN

Figure 7
The LHC is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. (a) The main two
rings are shown drawn on an aerial photograph of the region. The two proton
beams, each one thinner than a human hair, circle in opposite directions and
cross at four points where they collide within four detectors named Atlas, Alice,
CMS, and LHCb. (b) An engineer inside the main ring. He leans on one of the
electromagnets, powered by superconducting electric currents, that bends the
beam into a circle. (c) Inside the Atlas detector, during construction. For compar-
ison, there’s a person standing in front. Atlas is half the size of the Notre Dame
cathedral in Paris. It will seek out Higgs bosons, microscopic black holes, extra
dimensions of space, and the dark matter particles that constitute most of the
matter in the universe. (d) The LHCb detector, under construction. It will look
for slight differences, or “asymmetries,” between matter and antimatter by study-
ing the bottom (or “b”) quark. This will help solve the mystery of why our uni-
verse is composed almost entirely of matter with little antimatter.

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 Quantum Fields

an electron (or a proton, since it has the same amount of electric charge) gains when
it’s allowed to “fall” freely through a voltage of one volt—for example, when an
electron is allowed to move freely (through empty space) from the negative to the
positive terminal of a one-volt battery. At the LHC’s maximum energy, each proton
will be moving at 0.99999998 (7 nines followed by an eight) times lightspeed and
have an inertial mass 7000 times larger than the proton’s normal rest mass (due to
relativistic mass increase)! When two LHC protons collide, the total collision
energy will be 14 * 1012 eV—equivalent to one proton “falling” through fourteen
trillion volts. This is about three million times larger than the energy of
Rutherford’s alpha particles. It’s a really large energy to put into two tiny protons,
but the total energy isn’t as large as you might think. For example, the total chemi-
cal energy released (turned into thermal energy) when you strike a match is around
1022 eV, about a billion times larger than the LHC’s collision energy but spread
among about a billion trillion atoms. In other words it’s easy to get energies this
large; it’s just hard to get it all into a couple of protons. The fourteen trillion eV col-
lision energy is seven times larger than the energy of the largest previous accelera-
tor at Fermilab near Chicago.
The energy of each proton–proton collision will be large enough to create the
rest-mass energy mc2 of all sorts of other particles. Physicists think there’s a good
chance that some of these other particles will be new, never directly observed
before. You’ll be learning about some of these possible new particles in the remain-
der of this chapter.
Although the LHC will create conditions resembling the first moments of the big
bang, and it’s hoped that it will create microscopic black holes, there’s no chance of
an unforeseen catastrophe such as another big bang. Cosmic rays from outer space,
most of them protons, have been striking other protons in Earth’s atmosphere for bil-
lions of years at far higher energies and much larger numbers than the LHC can pro-
duce. And such high-energy proton–proton collisions have been occurring all over
the universe throughout time. There have been no catastrophes from any of this.
No point is more central than Quantum field theory paints an odd new view of “empty” space—space that is
this, that empty space is not devoid of matter, commonly called vacuum. As you know, EM fields and other
empty. It is the seat of the most fields extend even into regions containing no matter. Quantum uncertainties require
violent physics.
that the energies of all these fields at any point in space fluctuate, over short time-
John Wheeler
spans, around its long-time average value. In Section 6, I’ll further discuss these
energy fluctuations for the case of the gravitational field. The uncertainty princi-
ple implies that the smaller the region of space and the shorter the time interval, the
larger these fluctuations must be. This means that at any point in so-called empty
space there’s a certain likelihood that a photon or a particle–antiparticle pair,
including any of the particles discussed in this chapter, will spontaneously pop into
and out of existence during short times. So even in empty space there is always
some probability of high energy events occurring in small regions. Empty space is
not the quiet, uninteresting place we had imagined. Microscopically, it’s a seething
soup of creation and annihilation. It seems that in nothingness, much is possible.2

2
Quantum energy fluctuations mean that the law of conservation of energy must be revised. In sub-microscopic
regions of space and for short times, energy is not strictly conserved. It is, however, conserved, on the average
over larger regions of space or longer times.

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 Quantum Fields

How do we know that there is energy in “empty” space, and that it It is ironic how physics turned out
fluctuates? One consequence of energy fluctuations in vacuum is a tiny effect on the in this [20th] century. The 19th
hydrogen atom’s energy levels. In Schroedinger’s nonrelativistic treatment of the hydro- and early 20th century was char-
gen atom, the energies of the quantum states are identical. But when relativistic quan- acterized by a materialistic out-
tum field theory is applied to the hydrogen atom, it is found that vacuum energy look which maintained a sharp
fluctuations cause the orbiting electron to jiggle a little and that the energy of this jiggling distinction between what actually
is slightly different for state (b) than for states (c) and (d). This difference was first was in the world and what wasn’t.
noticed experimentally in careful measurements of the hydrogen spectrum by Willis Today that distinction still exists,
but its meaning has altered. . . .
Lamb in 1947. After the experimental discovery of this Lamb shift, quantum field theo-
Nothingness contains all of being.
rists calculated it. The theoretically predicted frequency of the radiation absorbed or
Heinz Pagels, Physicist
emitted when a hydrogen atom shifts between these two closely spaced levels is
1057.860 ; 0.009 megahertz. The measured value is 1057.845 ; 0.009 megahertz. This
uncanny one part in a million agreement is testimony to both the accuracy of quantum
field theory and the precision of spectral measurements.

Quantum electrodynamics describes not only electrons and positrons but also the
electron-like muons along with antimuons. Furthermore, a third type of electron,
along with its antiparticle, was discovered in 1976. Called the tau, it’s much heav-
ier than the muon, weighing in at 3500 electron masses, or nearly twice the mass of
a proton. Again, nobody knows “who ordered that.” These three generations of
electron-like particles appear today to be among the most fundamental constituents
of matter. All three, along with their antiparticles, interact by exchanging photons,
and all of their interactions are correctly described by quantum electrodynamics.
The muon and tau are “unstable”; in other words, they decay spontaneously into
lower-energy entities. Muons and taus play a role today only when fleeting pairs of
them are created by vacuum fluctuations or in high-energy interactions. However,
these two heavy electrons might have played a crucial role during the big bang.
Sakharov’s process, mentioned earlier, for creating a slight excess of matter over
antimatter requires all three generations. Although they seem esoteric, we might
owe our existence to the activities of muons and taus during the first second of the
universe.
Are there more generations of still heavier electrons? As you will see, theory
combined with astronomical observations predict that the answer is no.

CONCEPT CHECK 1 If you visited an antigalaxy, (a) you would be pulled into
its black hole and ripped apart; (b) any planets there would contain many of the
same chemical elements as Earth but they would be made of antimatter; (c) you
would find gravity to be repulsive rather than attractive; (d) you would be annihi-
lated; (e) it would definitely be a one-way trip.

CONCEPT CHECK 2 A certain gamma-ray source emits photons that have a

20% chance of being found as an electron–positron pair. The source emits 400 pho-
tons. How many individual material particles will be found? (a) Approximately
160. (b) Exactly 160. (c) Approximately 80. (d) Exactly 80.

CONCEPT CHECK 3 Which of these feels the electric force? (a) Proton.
(b) Electron. (c) Positron. (d) Antiproton.

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 Quantum Fields

4 ELECTROWEAK UNIFICATION AND NEUTRINOS

Wolfgang Pauli suggested in 1930 that during radioactive beta decay, the nucleus
emitted, in addition to a beta particle, another particle of an entirely new type. The
hypothesized new particle was dubbed the neutrino, or “little neutral one.”
Although neutrinos would not be discovered experimentally for another 25 years,
Enrico Fermi immediately took Pauli’s suggestion seriously and argued that neu-
trinios indicated a new fundamental force, the weak force, was at work. Fermi was
aware of the work in progress on the quantum field theory of the electric force, and
he quickly adapted these ideas to the weak force. Fermi’s theory succeeded in pre-
dicting the half-lives of radioactive nuclei and the range of energies with which beta
particles emerged from the nucleus during beta decay.
The weak force is the most obscure of nature’s four fundamental forces. Gravity
and electromagnetism show up all the time in our macroscopic world because they
can act over long distances. The strong force is short-ranged but it is, as its name
says, strong. It holds the nucleus together, is the major actor in nuclear power and
nuclear weapons, and is responsible for radioactive alpha decay. The most notice-
able example we have of the weak force is beta decay. The weak force is elusive
At first glance, all of this sounds because it’s both weak and short-ranged.
like medieval mystics discussing A neutrino barely exists at all. That is, it has almost no properties: no charge,
the music of the spheres, angels only a tiny rest-mass (far less than an electron’s), and it feels neither the electric nor
on the head of a pin, or some the strong force. Moving at almost lightspeed and feeling only the weak force (and
similar early approach to cosmol- gravity), it’s the most elusive known particle and one of the most fantastic.
ogy. Is it just a mathematical
Because neutrinos have only weak interactions, they hardly “feel” matter as
game we are playing, is it just
semantics, or is it reality? they travel through it. It would take 8 light-years of solid lead to stop just half the
Leon Lederman and David Schramm, in neutrinos emitted during beta decay! No wonder the physicists studying beta decay
From Quarks to the Cosmos had so much trouble trapping this thing. There are millions of neutrinos from space
passing in all directions through your body at any instant, yet it will probably be
years before even one of them interacts within your body. The neutrinos now pass-
ing downward through you pass easily through our planet, exit Earth’s far side in
less than a tenth of a second, and are beyond the orbit of the moon in less than 2
seconds.
In 1967, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam and U.S. physicist Steven Weinberg
(Figure 8), working independently, uncovered a close connection between the weak
force and the EM force. They proposed a new quantum field theory that incorpo-
rated both force fields into a single electroweak force field and that incorporated
both the electron matter field and the neutrino matter field into a single
electroweak matter field—a unification comparable to Maxwell’s unification,
during the nineteenth century, of electricity and magnetism into a unified EM force.
Recall that quantum electrodynamics describes the electric interactions of elec-
trons and positrons and that this interaction occurs via photon exchanges between
the charged particles. The Weinberg-Salam theory is a broader version of this pic-
ture. It says that the weak and EM forces both arise from a single force field and so
are really different aspects of the same electroweak force. It describes the EM and
weak interactions of electrons, positrons, neutrinos, and antineutrinos and states
that this interaction occurs via the exchange of various other particles. These
exchange particles include not only the photon but also three additional kinds of
particles. The three new exchange particles differ a little from the photon, the main
difference being that all three have mass—in fact, rather large masses for subatomic

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 Quantum Fields

Figure 8
The co-inventors of the electroweak
Institute of Physics/Emilio Segre Visual Archives

force. They combined the quantum

Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture

theories of the electromagnetic field
Harvard University NewsOffice/American

and the weak nuclear field into a

single electroweak quantum field
theory. (a) Abdus Salam, born in
Pakistan, is one of the most promi-
nent scientists of the Islamic faith.
He donated his share of the Nobel
Prize to the institute with which he
is associated in Trieste, Italy, which
encourages scientists from develop-
ing countries. (b) In addition to his
Nobel Prize–winning work in quan-
tum field theory, U.S. physicist
Steven Weinberg has written several
books for nonscientists. His Dreams
of a Final Theory is about the funda-
particles. Each of them is about 100 times more massive than a proton! They are mental forces and other topics, and
The First Three Minutes describes
labeled, W + , W - , and Z and can be thought of as photons that have, for reasons
and explains the early stages of the
unknown, acquired a mass. Another difference from the photon is that the two Ws
big bang.
are charged, positively and negatively. The Z is, like the photon, not charged. The
massive, charge-neutral Z particle was a striking new prediction of the electroweak
theory, and its experimental detection six years later in 1973 was a key confirma-
tion of the theory.
Recall that, besides the electron, there are two other generations of heavier
electron-like particles, the muon and tau. Since the electroweak force binds the
electron and the neutrino together into a single family, we might guess that there
is a second-generation neutrino to go along with the muon and a third-generation
neutrino to go along with the tau. This would be a good guess. In fact, there is a
second-generation matter field whose quanta are the muon and the “muon-
neutrino” and a third-generation matter field whose quanta are the tau and the
“tau-neutrino.” But there are not three generetions of electroweak force particles.
Instead, all three generations interact via the same electroweak force field and its
four exchange particles: the photon, W +, W -, and Z. The electroweak theory cor-
rectly predicts all the observed interactions among all these fundamental parti-
cles. Table 1 summarizes the theory.

How do we know that neutrinos exist? The neutrino’s existence was first suspected
around 1930 when beta-decay experiments appeared to conflict with energy conserva-
tion. Application of energy conservation and other accepted principles led to the conclu-
sion that, in addition to the observed beta particle, an unseen particle was created in beta
decay. Furthermore, the data implied that this particle’s (rest) mass was either zero or
very small—far smaller than an electron’s mass. Most physicists assumed it was zero.
Neutrinos were finally observed in an experiment in 1956. Enormous numbers of
neutrinos created by beta decay within a nuclear reactor entered a huge tank of water.
Only about three of these neutrinos per hour interacted with protons in the water, creat-
ing high-energy gamma photons that scientists could observe, verifying that the interac-
tion had indeed occurred.

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 Quantum Fields

Table 1
The theory of the electroweak force. Two fundamental electroweak fields pervade the universe: an electroweak force field whose quanta
are the four exchange particles listed below, and an electroweak matter field whose quanta are the electron and the electron-neutrino.
In addition, there are “second-generation” and “third-generation” matter fields whose quanta are listed below.
Generation Particle type Mass (proton = 1) Charge (proton = +1)

1 electron 0.0005 –1

1 electron-neutrino a a
0

2 muon (mu electron) 0.11 –1

2 muon-neutrino a 0
3 tau (tau electron) 1.90 –1
3 tau-neutrino a 0
Exchange particles:

photon 0 0
W+ 86 +1
W- 86 –1
Z 98 0
a
The three types of neutrinos have small but nonzero rest-masses, although the values are uncertain. The sum of the three masses of all three types of neutrinos is known to
be less than 1 millionth of an electron’s mass.

But physicists were still unable to determine whether the elusive particle’s mass
was zero, or nonzero but tiny. Today, it’s known that the sum of the masses of all
three types of neutrinos is less than 1 millionth of an electron’s mass. Until recently,
a mass of zero seemed most plausible; after all, why should this new particle have a
mass far smaller than the mass of any other known material particle when a simple
“zero” (like the photon) seemed to fit all the data? But nature chose a small number
rather than zero. Nobody knows why.

How do we know that neutrinos have mass? The tale of this turnaround from
“probably zero” to “definitely nonzero” mass began during the 1960s with observations
of neutrinos from the sun. Physicists used widely accepted theories of nuclear reactions
occurring in the sun to calculate the number of high-energy neutrinos emitted by the sun.
This was a prediction that could be checked using huge neutrino detectors, or “neutrino
telescopes,” placed deep underground in order to prevent gamma photons and other
high-energy particles from space from penetrating the detector. But the results disagreed
wildly with predictions: The observed number of neutrinos was only one-third of the pre-
dicted number. Such disagreements between theory and observation are creative
moments in science, when something really new can be learned.
The experiment was repeated by different groups at different sites using different
techniques, but the disagreement persisted. Scientists began to suspect that something
was wrong with the theories—either the theory of nuclear reactions in the sun or of fun-
damental neutrino physics.
Astrophysicists went over the theory of nuclear reactions in the sun with a fine-toothed
comb but could find no holes in it. Suspicions turned toward neutrino physics. Several vari-
ations on the Weinberg-Salam electroweak theory were proposed. A new and surprising

490
 Quantum Fields

theoretical prediction emerged: If two neutrinos have different masses, then they should
be able to spontaneously transform their identity into each other. For example, if electron-
neutrinos and tau-neutrinos have different masses, then an electron-neutrino should be
able to spontaneously change into a tau-neutrino, and vice versa, in much the same way
that a high-energy photon can transform into a particle–antiparticle pair.
Scientists realized that such neutrino transformations could solve the problem of the
“missing” solar neutrinos. The neutrinos that were predicted to be emitted from the sun
were all electron-neutrinos, and existing neutrino detectors were sensitive only to electron-
neutrinos. If some fraction of the neutrinos from the sun changed into one of the other two
types of neutrinos during their journey from the sun, then a smaller number of electron-
neutrinos would be detected on Earth.
New detectors, able to observe all types of neutrinos, were needed. The Super-
Kamiokande detector in Japan was built with this in mind. Astrophysicist Masatoshi
Koshiba (Figure 9) used this detector to observe muon-neutrinos created when high-
energy particles from space hit Earth’s atmosphere. He obtained a surprising result. The
number of atmospheric muon-neutrinos coming through our planet and entering the
underground detector from below was only about half the number entering from
above. Apparently some of the upward-moving muon-neutrinos were lost during their
0.1-second trip through Earth. This was surprising, because it was known that only a
negligible fraction of these particles could be lost due to interactions within Earth. It
was suspected that this discrepancy was due to the spontaneous transformation of
muon-neutrinos into some other type during that 0.1 second. In 2000, the Super-
Kamiokande scientists announced that transmutations from muon-neutrinos to tau-
neutrinos actually were occurring.
Convincing icing was put on this result in 2001, when scientists at another new detec-
tor in Canada announced a definitive resolution of the solar neutrino problem. In the
Canadian experiment, the total number of neutrinos of all types coming from the sun
agreed precisely with the number of electron-neutrinos predicted to be emitted by the
sun, but the number of electron-neutrinos from the sun was (as had been observed
Peter Menzel, Napa CA, Courtesy
since the 1960s) only about one-third of the predicted amount. This showed that some of AIP Emilio Segre Visual
two-thirds of the emitted electron-neutrinos from the sun transform into either muon- or Archives/American Institute of
tau-neutrinos during their journey to Earth. Physics/Emilio Segre Visual
The conclusion is that at least some of the three types of neutrinos must have mass, Archives
because only neutrinos of different masses can transform into each other and so they
cannot all have zero mass. Figure 9
Astrophysicist Masatoshi Koshiba
of the University of Tokyo. Using
Are there more than the three generations of electroweak particles listed in Japan’s Super-Kamiokande neu-
Table 1? In a surprising turn of events, astronomical observations indicate that trino detector, he showed that
there are only three generations. The argument comes out of a close connection many muon-neutrinos, created in
between the large-scale universe and the microscopic world: Outer space and inner Earth’s atmosphere by high-
space are connected through a microscopic event that quickly became macro- energy cosmic rays, change into
scopic. This event was the big bang. tau-neutrinos during their passage
After the first 4 minutes of the big bang, the universe was about 75% hydrogen through our planet.
and 25% helium. These numbers are predicted by theoretical nuclear physics, and
they agree with observations of the oldest material in the universe. The theoreti-
cally predicted helium fraction depends on the number of generations of elec-
troweak particles: The predicted helium fraction grows larger if the number of
generations grows larger. If there are three generations, this leads to a predicted
helium fraction of about 25%; if there are four generations, this leads to a pre-
dicted helium fraction that is much higher than the observed 25%. Conclusion:
There are only three generations.
Unification is a recurring theme of science (Figure 10). For example, Copernicus
unified Earth with the other planets; Newton unified Earth-based physics with

491
 Quantum Fields

Figure 10
Heavenly Earthly
Some of the unifications in Space Time
motions motions
physics. The dashed lines represent
unifications not yet established.
Time runs from top to bottom. Newton’s Newton’s
mechanics gravity
Electricity Magnetism

Light

Electromagnetism

Electromagnetic
field theory
Quantum Special
theory relativity
General
relativity

Weak
Quantum force
electrodynamics

Strong
Electroweak force
theory

Grand
unification

Theory of
everything

physics throughout the heavens; and Maxwell found a field theory that unified elec-
tricity, magnetism, and light. By the end of the nineteenth century, scientists
believed that there were only two fundamental forces, electromagnetism and grav-
ity. Einstein, after fashioning the new theory that explained gravity as a conse-
quence of the geometry of spacetime, spent much of his scientific career trying to
unify electromagnetism with gravity in the hope that a single “unified field theory”
would show electricity and gravity to be different aspects of spacetime geometry.
He was not successful.
Lately, scientists have sought unification at the microscopic level, based on quan-
tum field theory. As you have seen, these efforts achieved significant success by uni-
fying quantum theory, special relativity, and the EM and weak forces. Physicists
today are trying to unify the electroweak with the strong force (Section 5) and to
unify these with the gravitational force (Section 6) to actieve Einstein’s dream, a
“theory of everything.”

CONCEPT CHECK 4 Which of these particles can feel the electric force? (a)
Muon. (b) Tau-neutrino. (c) Electron. (d) Photon. (e) W + . (f) Z.

492
 Quantum Fields

5 THE STRONG FORCE AND QUARKS

As far as the measurements made to date can tell, all the electroweak particles
(Table 1) are point particles. That is, their force fields appear to be centered on a
single point that itself takes up no volume. The electric charge of the electron, for
example, appears to be concentrated at a single point. But protons and neutrons are
different. Experiments done in the 1950s showed that their electric and magnetic
force centers are spread over a tiny volume about 10 - 15 meters across. Might they
be composites that are made of still smaller particles?
Early in the twentieth century, protons and electrons were thought to be the only
subatomic particles. The discovery of the neutron and the positron in 1932 initiated an
era of particle discovery that, by 1960, had produced hundreds of new kinds of suppos- Segre Collection/American
edly fundamental particles. This bewildering list of particles was frequently referred to Institute of Physics/Emilio Segre
as the “particle zoo.” Surely the universe wasn’t made of so many different things. Visual Archives
Murray Gell-Mann (Figure 11) hoped to bring order to the particle zoo by grouping
Figure 11
the known particles into families that corresponded to physical regularities among Murray Gell-Mann devised a clas-
them. Gell-Mann’s work was much like the work of the nineteenth-century chemists sification scheme for the then-
who found regularities in the chemical properties of the many known elements in the known subatomic particles. In
“atomic zoo” and grouped them accordingly into the pattern known today as the peri- about 1961 this scheme led to the
odic table. It was only later that this periodic table found its natural explanation in a prediction of new particles and
new model of the atom according to which the 100-plus elements are built of just suggested the existence of a small
electrons, protons, and neutrons. In a similar way, Gell-Mann’s classification scheme number of simpler entities, called
led him to speculate on the existence of a few simpler entities, which he called quarks, out of which protons, neu-
quarks, out of which protons, neutrons, and other particles could be built. That set trons, and other particles could be
experimentalists on a quark hunt. But despite strenuous searches among bubble- built. Quarks were discovered
experimentally in 1967.
chamber tracks, nobody could come up with direct evidence for quarks.

How do we know that quarks exist? When Richard Taylor, Jerome Friedman, Henry
Kendall (Figure 12), and 12 coworkers set out in 1967 to study the proton and the neutron,
they weren’t looking for quarks. Using a high-energy electron accelerator at Stanford University,
they were following up on earlier experiments showing protons and neutrons to be fuzzy balls
10 - 15 meters across. Hoping to get a clearer picture of these fuzzballs, they hurled high-
energy electrons at protons and used huge detectors that they had built specifically to meas-
ure the angular deviation of the electrons after they were deflected by the protons (Figure 13). Figure 12
At lower electron energies, their “scattered” electrons merely gave them a higher-resolution pic- (a) Richard Taylor, (b) Jerome
ture of the same old fuzzballs. But at energies so high that the electrons blew the protons and Friedman, and (c) Henry Kendall.
neutrons to bits, they found a surprise. Some of the electrons were deflected through very large In much the same way that
angles, as though they were bouncing off hard little granules buried deep within the fuzzball. Rutherford probed the interiors of
atoms by bombarding them with
alpha particles, they probed the
interior of protons and neutrons by
bombarding them with high-energy
electrons hurled by an electron
accelerator. And just as the scatter-
ing of Rutherford’s alpha particles
revealed a small dense core within
each atom—the nucleus—their
experiment revealed that within
each proton and each neuton lie
three tiny force centers: quarks.
(a) (b) (c)
Henry W. Kendall/ Donna Coveney/ American Institute of
Kendall Foundation Massachusetts Institute Physics/Emilio Segre
of Technology News Visual Archives
Office

493
 Quantum Fields

Figure 13
The enormous electron detectors at
the Stanford electron accelerator.
The electron beam enters from the
left and collides with protons in a
target. The deflected electrons are
then analyzed by three detectors:
the cylindrical tank at the far left,
the large detector in the fore-
ground, and the other large detec-
tor in the background.

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

The experiment and its outcome paralleled Rutherford’s discovery of a tiny hard nucleus deep
within what had been supposed to be a fuzzball atom. Only this time there appeared to be not
one but three tiny force centers within the proton and within the neutron. Taylor, Friedman, and
Kendall had found Gell-Mann’s quarks.

Scientists had thought that the proton, neutron, and electron, the three building
blocks of all atoms, were “fundamental”—not made of still smaller particles. This
might be true of the electron, but quarks imply that the proton and neutron are com-
posite objects, not fundamental particles. Maybe quarks are truly fundamental, or
maybe not. The Large Hadron Collider will penetrate to new depths of smallness and
could discover that quarks, too, are composite particles. Will we eventually come to
the end of nature’s successive seeds within seeds (Figure 14)? Nobody knows.
Physicists have found a version of quantum field theory that describes the interactions
between quarks and that has so far agreed with all experiments designed to test it. In this
theory, the strong force acts directly between quarks, and the force acting between pro-
tons and neutrons is a consequence only of the forces between their quarks. The force
field (analogous to the EM field) that is quantized in this new theory is the strong force
field, and the matter field (analogous to the electron field) that is quantized is the strong
matter field. The quanta of the strong matter field are quarks of two types, called
u-quarks and d-quarks (and their antiparticles). They are the material particles of this
theory, playing a role similar to the electron’s role in quantum electrodynamics. The
theory predicts that there are two stable configurations of u- and d-quarks, namely, the
proton made of two u-quarks and one d-quark, and the neutron made of one u-quark and
two d-quarks. This is why there are protons and neutrons! In addition to feeling and
exerting the strong force, quarks must also experience the electric force, because protons
experience this force and quarks are supposed to explain protons.

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 Quantum Fields

CONCEPT CHECK 5 Surprisingly, quarks turn out to be fractionally charged, the u pos-
sessing a charge of +2/3 of a proton’s charge and the d possessing a charge of –1/3 of a pro-
ton’s charge. In this case, one u and two d’s would have a net charge of (a) 0; (b) 1; (c) 2.
10⫺7 m
The quanta of the strong force field are called gluons because they “glue” quarks
together, and on a larger scale they bind the nucleus together. Think of them as the pho-
tons of the strong force. Like the photon, they have no mass and no charge. But there’s DNA
an important difference between the way gluons relate to the strong force and the way 10⫺9 m
photons relate to the electric force. Gluons themselves exert and feel the strong force,
unlike photons, which do not directly feel the electric force. In quantum electrodynam- Molecule
ics, “electric charge” can be thought of as “the ability to emit and absorb photons.” In 10⫺10 m
the same way, the property of feeling the strong force can be thought of as the ability to
emit and absorb gluons. But gluons themselves feel the strong force, which means that Atom
gluons can emit gluons, unlike photons, which cannot emit photons. 10⫺14 m
This ability of gluons to make more gluons explains one of the most curious fea-
tures of quarks (Figure 15): The force between quarks grows stronger, not weaker, as Nucleus
they are separated, making it impossible to isolate single quarks. When a quark within
10⫺15 m
a proton is pulled a short distance from its neighboring quarks, the gluons must fly far-
ther in order to reach from that quark to its neighbors. This gives these gluons more
Proton
time to proliferate in flight, which makes more gluons, which makes the force larger as Less than
the distance becomes larger. As the quark is pulled farther away, energy quickly builds 10⫺18 m
up in the strong force field, and this energy creates quark–antiquark pairs. After a brief
Quark
reshuffling, a new quark is created in the proton from which the first quark had been
?
removed! Furthermore, the removed quark and the new antiquark team up to form an
unstable pair. This provides a beautifully crazy explanation of why years of looking for Figure 14
isolated quarks in bubble chambers produced no results. Any attempt to pull a quark Nature’s successive seeds within
away from its neighbors just makes more nonisolated quarks. seeds, from DNA to quarks. Note
the approximate size of each level.

Suppose you start with the Proton

three quarks in a proton— d

u u

and begin pulling away d Gluons

one of the quarks. Gluons
travel between the quarks. u u

As the quark is separated More gluons

further, the gluons make d
more gluons, which makes
the force between the u u
quarks stronger.

New antiquark
Finally, all the gluon energy
(strong field energy) creates d
a quark–antiquark pair, the
new quark makes the proton u u u u
whole again, and the new
Figure 15
antiquark combines with the New quark
old quark to form an unstable Here’s why you can’t separate
quark–antiquark pair. quarks.

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 Quantum Fields

Recall that there are three generations of electroweak particles (Table 1). In just
the same way, observation reveals three generations of quarks. The second and third
generations each consist of two quarks that are heavier and unstable (short-lived)
variations on the u- and d-quarks.
Table 2 shows the entire setup for the strong force. The last quark to be discovered
experimentally, the t-quark, was confirmed in 1994. The t-quark was the most difficult
to discover because its mass turned out to be so much larger than the masses of the other
five quarks, which (because of E = mc2) meant that much more energy was needed to
create it. Weighing in at an estimated 185 proton masses, the t-quark is about as massive
as a gold atom! The resemblance between Tables 1 and 2 is striking and points to a close
connection between the electroweak and strong forces. This suggests that there should
be a grand unified theory that views the electroweak and strong forces as two facets of
a single underlying force. So far, such a theory has eluded science’s grasp.
Tables 1 and 2 summarize the current theory of matter at the microscopic level, a
theory known as the standard model—a boring title for a theory with such fantas-
tic predictions as antimatter, neutrinos, and quarks. To summarize:

The Standard Model

Neglecting gravitational phenomena, only two force fields pervade the universe: the
electroweak force field, whose quanta are photons, Ws, and Zs, and the strong force
field, whose quanta are gluons. And there are only six matter fields: three generations
of electroweak matter fields and three generations of strong matter fields. Ordinary
matter arises only from the two first-generation matter fields, whose quanta are elec-
trons and electron-neutrinos interacting via the electroweak force, and u- and d-quarks
interacting via the strong force. Second- and third-generation particles are unstable and
existed only in the early moments of the big bang and today only briefly following high-
energy microscopic events. The electroweak and strong particles, and their properties,
are listed in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 2
The theory of the strong force. Throughout the universe there is a strong force field whose
quanta are gluons and a strong matter field whose quanta are u-quarks and d-quarks. In addi-
tion, there are “second-generation” and “third-generation” matter fields whose quanta are listed
below. Only the first-generation particles are stable and play a role in ordinary matter. Protons
are made of u-u-d, and neutrons of u-d-d, bound together by the strong force acting between
quarks. The unstable second- and third-generation particles decayed during the early moments
of the big bang and exist today only during brief high-energy microscopic events.
Generation Particle type Mass (proton = 1) Charge (proton = 1)
1 u-quark 0.003 +2/3

1 d-quark 0.008 –1/3

2 c-quark 1.4 +2/3

2 s-quark 0.1 –1/3

3 t-quark 185 +2/3

3 b-quark 5.0 –1/3

Exchange particles: gluons 0 0

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 Quantum Fields

The standard model represents an enormous unification of knowledge. Neglecting

gravity, ordinary matter is a manifestation of only two matter fields and two force fields.
Think of the material quanta (u-quarks, d-quarks, electrons, and neutrinos) as the bricks
of the universe, and the force quanta (photons, Ws, Zs, gluons) as the cement.
But the standard model cannot be the end of the story. For one thing, it does not
incorporate gravity, leaving us with a nonquantum theory of gravity (general rela-
tivity) and a quantum theory of everything else. As you’ll see in the next section,
this is unsatisfactory. For another thing, which I’ll now discuss, the standard model
strongly suggests a new field whose quanta have not yet been observed but which
might be observed soon.
Because of E = mc2, 90% of the proton’s or neutron’s mass arises from the The God Particle
energy of the strong force fields between the quarks within these particles. So the Title of a Book About the Higgs
Particle, by Leon Lederman, Nobel
standard model explains nearly all the mass of ordinary matter. But the standard Prize Winner and Former Director of
model doesn’t explain why quarks and other particles in Tables 1 and 2 have mass in Fermilab Near Chicago

the first place. One widely supported hypothesis is that a new kind of fundamental
field, called the Higgs field,3 exists throughout the universe. This field, created
(like the other fundamental fields) during the big bang, permeates the entire uni-
verse in the sense that, except for photons and gluons, every particle interacts at all
times with the Higgs field. Even completely isolated particles “feel” the Higgs
field!
This interaction acts on accelerated particles in such a way as to resist their
acceleration, much as a vat of molasses resists the motion of any object that’s sub-
merged in it. The interaction is stronger for quarks, W particles, and Z particles;
weaker for electrons and neutrinos; and absent for photons and gluons. So the
Higgs field confers a large mass (resistance to acceleration) on quarks, Ws, and Zs;
a smaller mass on electrons and neutrinos; and no mass on photons and gluons.
However, this molasses analogy is misleading on a couple of counts. First, molasses
resists all motion, while the Higgs field resists only accelerated motion. Second, the
Higgs field is not the only source of mass; for example, you’ve seen that the source
of at least 90% of the proton’s mass arises from the interaction energy among its
quarks via Einstein’s relation m = E>c2.
Fortunately, this fantasy can be tested against reality. The Higgs field, like other fun-
damental fields, must obey relativity and quantum theory and so must interact in quan-
tized bundles. High-energy particle accelerators might be able to create these Higgs
particles within the next several years. The Higgs particle’s mass cannot be accurately
predicted, but indirect evidence suggests it to be perhaps 200 proton masses—about
the mass of a gold atom.4 Its large mass means, because of E = mc2, that enormous
energy is needed to create it in high-energy physics experiments—energies that are
beyond the reach of previous particle accelerators. However, the Large Hadron
Collider (Figure 7) is coming online in 2009–2010, and physicists believe that it will
spot the Higgs particle. If so, we will at last have an explanation of the ultimate origin
of mass in the universe. It’s quite possible that, by the time you read these words, the
Higgs particle will have been confirmed or, perhaps, disconfirmed!

3
After British physicist Peter Higgs, who invented this idea in 1964.
4
You might wonder why such a particle, as heavy as a gold atom, cannot simply be discovered moving
through space or within ordinary matter. The answer is that, like t-quarks and many other particles, Higgs
particles are predicted to be extremely unstable, transmuting into other, less massive particles an instant
after they are created. So they are around only briefly, following their creation in high-energy microscopic
events such as the collision of two particles in a high-energy particle accelerator.

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 Quantum Fields

CONCEPT CHECK 6 According to the standard model, which of the following

are fundamental particles? (a) Proton. (b) Electron. (c) Positron. (d) Hydrogen
atom. (e) Photon. (f) Water molecule.

CONCEPT CHECK 7 Gluons move (a) slower than lightspeed; (b) at light-
speed; (c) faster than lightspeed.

6 QUANTUM GRAVITY: PHYSICS AT THE PLANCK SCALE

Physicists are the Peter Pans of Physicists have had considerable success in unifying not only all known forces but also
the human race. They never grow all known material particles. Except for gravity, all fundamental forces and all particles
up, they keep their curiosity. of ordinary matter have been shown to arise from just a handful of force fields and mat-
I. I. Rabi, Physicist
ter fields. The obvious parallels between the electroweak and strong forces (Tables 1
and 2) suggest that there should be a single grand unified theory that unites the elec-
troweak and strong forces, although such a theory has not yet been found.
But even an experimentally verified grand unified theory would leave gravity
out of the picture. One reason it has been so hard to work gravity into these theories
is that so little is known about it at the microscopic level because it is so weak at
this level. For example, the gravitational attraction between two protons is a trillion
trillion trillion times weaker than their electric repulsion. Only if there are large
concentrations of matter, as in a planet or star, are gravitational effects strong
enough to be easily observed. In large aggregations of matter, the electric effects of
protons and electrons largely cancel each other, while gravity adds up because it’s
always attractive, so gravity dominates.
Einstein’s general theory of relativity has proven correct over an enormous range
of phenomena. It is a nonquantum field theory whose field is the spacetime curva-
ture that is caused by masses. The obvious path toward incorporating this theory
with the theories of the other forces would be to subject the gravitational field to the
principles of quantum theory. But this turns out to be no simple matter.
General relativity describes gravity as a smooth curvature of space in response to the
presence of mass. It works fine over astronomical distances and ordinary macroscopic
distances. But over extremely small distances, the smooth curvature described by gen-
eral relativity conflicts with the most basic quantum principle: the uncertainty principle.
Here’s why. Recall that the uncertainty principle will not allow the microscopic
world to sit still. A highly confined particle must have a highly uncertain speed and
therefore a high average speed. In quantum field theory, this principle translates
into fields whose motions at the smallest scale are highly agitated and uncertain.
That is, if you enormously magnified a small volume of space, you would find the
quantum fields in every tiny part of it are violently fluctuating like the surface of a
rapidly boiling soup.
The field we want to quantize is the gravitational field—the curvature of space.
A quantum theory of the gravitational field would predict a violently fluctuating
curvature of space at the smallest scale. As an illustration, Figure 16 shows a small
region of space at five successive levels of magnification. Only at the fourth level
of magnification do we begin to observe a little of the submicroscopic turbulence of
the gravitational field—undulations of space itself. At the highest (fifth) level of
magnification, space fluctuates violently, flying in the face of the smooth spatial
curvatures described by general relativity. John Wheeler (Figure 17) describes this
fluctuation of space as “quantum foam.”

498
 Quantum Fields

Figure 16
A small region of space is taken
through a series of five magnifica-
tions to reveal its submicroscopic
properties. At the highest (fifth)
level of magnification, we see the
“quantum foam” predicted by
quantum field theory. These violent
fluctuations fly in the face of the
smoother curvatures predicted by
general relativity and create great
difficulties for any attempt to quan-
tize the general theory of relativity.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Because these violent microscopic fluctions are too much for general relativity to
handle, physicists run into absurd answers when they try to quantize the gravitational
field. Typically, the probabilities of occurrence of certain microscopic events are pre-
dicted to be infinite, and other probabilities are predicted to be negative, even though
these predictions are absurd because every probability must lie between 0 and 1.
Physicists have made many ingenious attempts to overcome these difficulties. All have
failed, except for one. That one is called “the string hypothesis.” I’ll describe it later.
Taken together, general relativity and quantum theory predict a few fundamen-
tals that are likely to prove valid in the long run regardless of which, if any, theory
of quantum gravity is finally verified. One such fundamental is the graviton, the
quantum of the gravitational field. Like photons (the quantum of the EM field),
gravitons have zero mass and zero charge and move at lightspeed. From the quan-
tum point of view, the gravitational forces between two bodies such as Earth and the
moon occur via an exchange of gravitons between the two bodies. Gravitons have Roy L. Bishop, Acadia University/
long been predicted but they have never been observed and perhaps never will be American Institute of Physics/
directly observed, because the gravitational force acting at the microscpic level is Emilio SegreVisual Archives
so weak. For example, if a single proton absorbs a graviton, the proton should
Figure 17
recoil, but this recoil is predicted to be so tiny that one cannot hope to observe it. John Wheeler, a leading researcher
The basic numerical quantities or “constants” of general relativity and quantum in general relativity and the foun-
theory would surely show up in any valid theory of quantum gravity. These are the dations of quantum theory, has just
speed of light, Planck’s constant, and the “gravitational constant” (6.7 * 10 - 11 in emerged from Black Hole, Nova
metric units) that fixes the strength of the gravitational force acting between two Scotia. He appears somewhat
particular objects. These three constants of nature can be combined in such a way as dazed. His T-shirt proclaims, “I
to yield an estimate of the distance (between particles) at which we would expect have experienced Black Hole,
quantum-gravitational effects to show up—in other words, the separation between two Nova Scotia.”

499
 Quantum Fields

As an extreme possibility, it is particles at which we expect their interaction to be significantly influenced by both
possible that there is only one gravitational and quantum effects. Because quantum effects happen mostly at micro-
theory. . . that is consistent with scopic distances, and because gravitational forces between two microscopic particles
the existence of intelligent beings
are so much weaker than other forces, it’s not surprising that this Planck length5 is
capable of wondering about the
final theory. If this could be tiny, in fact an ultramicroscopic 10 - 35 meters—10 trillionths of a trillionth of a tril-
shown, then we would be as lionth of a meter! This is also the approximate spatial extent of the disturbances of
close as anyone could hope to a Figure 16.
satisfactory explanation of why In a similar way, a fundamental time duration can be worked out, the typical time
the world is the way it is. during which significant changes (in, for instance, the mutual interaction of two
Steven Weinberg particles) would occur when both quantum and gravitational effects are significant.
Because the uncertainty principle implies that changes at these small distance
scales must be rapid, this Planck time is extremely short: 10 - 43 seconds.
Physicists can also work out the predicted energy of typical quantum-gravitational
events. The uncertainty principle tells us that events within a region as small as the
Planck length must be rapid and hence enormously energetic. This fundamental
Planck energy turns out to be about a billion joules. This is not so large in our every-
day world—it’s the amount of chemical energy in 8 gallons (about a gas tank) of gaso-
line. But this is an enormous amount of energy to pack into a submicroscopic distance.
A billion joules has the mass (because of mass–energy equivalence) of some 1019 pro-
tons, which is surely colossal if packed into a volume measuring only 10 - 35 m across!
This Planck mass is about 0.01 milligrams, the mass of a typical dust grain.
The Planck length, time, and energy define the Planck scale, the approximate
size, duration, and energy of typical quantum-gravitational phenomena.
In the 1960s, John Wheeler pointed out a remarkable feature of nature at the
Planck scale. He found that in a sphere whose radius is the Planck length and dur-
ing time intervals whose duration is the Planck time, energy fluctuations as large as
the Planck energy are likely to occur and that this much mass in such a tiny volume
causes spacetime to bend back upon itself and form a black hole that is cut off from
the rest of the universe. This phenomenon would break space and time into tiny
bundles—quanta of spacetime itself—so that the Planck length and time are the
smallest lengths and times that have any physical meaning at all!
It’s difficult to observe such phenomena, because the energies of the microscopic
events created at today’s high-energy accelerators are far smaller than the Planck
energy. However, experiment and theory point to a significant trend: The differences
among the fundamental forces diminish as the energy rises. The theory of the elec-
troweak force suggests, for example, that at higher energies the weak force increases
in strength until it is roughly as strong as the electric force. At still higher energies,
the electroweak force becomes as strong as the strong force. And at even higher
energies, namely the Planck energy, even the normally tiny gravitational force
between microscopic particles becomes as strong as the other fundamental forces.

5
Around 1900, before there was a quantum theory of fields or even a completed quantum theory, Max
Planck understood that this length, along with the time and energy discussed below, had universal
significance.

500
 Quantum Fields

Here’s why. Imagine pushing, say, two protons closer and closer. At “normal”
microscopic separations, such as an atom’s size (10 - 10 m) or a proton’s size
(10 - 15 m), the electric force is enormously larger than the gravitational force. But as
the outside world does work to make the separation smaller, the forces get stronger
and the energy in these force fields increases rapidly. But energy has mass, and mass
always pulls gravitationally on other mass. So, as the separation decreases, the mass
of the two protons increases, which causes the gravitational force to increase faster
than the electric force. Eventually, the mass of the two protons becomes enormous,
and in fact when the separation is the Planck length the mass becomes about the
Planck mass. At this scale, the microscopic force of gravity about equals the strength
of the electric force, and in fact all the forces become roughly equal.
Among those who study quantum gravity, the predicted rough equality of all the
fundamental forces at the Planck scale is a strong hint that these forces are aspects
of a single underlying force, a unity that becomes obvious at the Planck scale.
The string hypothesis6 is a beautiful and promising attempt to unify general rel-
ativity with quantum theory. Although it has had no direct experimental verification
during its 25-year history, this hypothesis is good science because it does make spe-
cific verifiable predictions that should be tested soon, it does not conflict with any
known results, and it could resolve fundamental issues.
The string hypothesis’s key idea is that a fundamental particle such as an elec-
tron is not concentrated at one infinitely small point, but is instead a tiny loop—
think of an infinitely slender rubber band—in a particular state of vibration. These
loops are called strings. This spreading out of the point-particle model, so that it
resides along a loop rather than at a single point, smoothes its effects on the space
around it, smoothing the fluctuations in Figure 16 enough for them to be incorpo-
rated by general relativity. Strings are small, in fact comparable to—you guessed
it—the Planck distance. Viewed from the nuclear or atomic scale, strings are so
small that they appear indistinguishable from point particles—which is why we’ve
always thought of them as point particles.
Besides being able to move around in space, strings can vibrate. These vibrations
are quantized, and quantum theory allows only particular “modes” (patterns, fre-
quencies, energies) of vibration. According to the string hypothesis, each such
mode of vibration is a different elementary particle: An electron is a string vibrating
one way, a d-quark is a string vibrating another way, a photon is yet another string
vibration, and so forth. Underneath all appearances, fundamental particles are
really identical: They are all identical strings. Their different properties result
merely from their different vibrational modes. The lowest-energy, and hence most
stable, of these modes are the particles of ordinary matter—the first-generation par-
ticles and exchange particles of Tables 1 and 2.

6
It’s commonly called “string theory.” Because this text emphasizes the scientific process, I prefer the term
hypothesis rather than theory, indicating the still-tentative, observationally unconfirmed, and incomplete
nature of this wonderful idea. As I’ve emphasized before, the word theory is reserved for useful explana-
tory ideas that have been directly and repeatedly confirmed by observation. For more about the string
hypothesis, check out www.superstringtheory.com. For nontechnical discussions, click “basics.”

501
 Quantum Fields

This sounds promising, but there is one small fly in the ointment. Strings remove
the inconsistencies plaguing quantum theories of gravity only if the space around
us is not 3-dimensional but instead 10-dimensional, plus one time dimension for an
11-dimensional spacetime. Fewer than 10 spatial dimensions produce logical incon-
sistencies, as do more than 10. But at exactly 10 spatial dimensions, everything is
fine. Of course, this is absurd. Where could the other 7 dimensions be?
Or is it absurd? Remember that the quantum-gravitational effects we want to
describe happen only at tiny distances. What if the 7 extra dimensions were, some-
how, very small (whatever that might mean), so small that we aren’t aware of them in
our normal activities? In line with this suggestion, the string hypothesis assumes that
the other 7 dimensions are tightly “curled up” at every point of our 3-dimensional
space. To help you understand this, here’s an analogy.7 Think of a long straight gar-
den hose. When you view it from afar, for instance from a balloon hovering a few
thousand feet above your backyard, the hose appears to be a thin straight line, an
“uncurved 1-dimensional space.” But as your balloon descends and you see the hose
up close, you see that the hose’s surface is actually 2-dimensional, with the second
dimension going around the hose in a circle. From the high-altitude balloon point of
view, that second dimension is “curled up” and “small.”
Once you accept general relativity’s notion that gravity curves space, the string
hypothesis’s notion of 7 tightly curled spatial dimensions doesn’t seem so absurd.
The curled-up dimensions exist at every point of our 3-dimensional space—just as
the garden hose’s curled-up second dimension exists at every point along the
hose—but people aren’t aware of them because the force of gravity (the only force
that can directly detect curvatures in space) cannot probe such small distances in
our normal world. In fact, even if an extra dimension were as large as 1 millimeter,
it’s possible that it would not yet have been detected experimentally, because it’s dif-
ficult to detect variations in the gravitational force acting over such small distances.
The string hypothesis specifies that strings, which do respond to the gravitational
force at these small distances, stretch over the full 10 spatial dimensions. The many
distinct manners in which these identical strings can wrap around and vibrate
within the curled-up dimensions gives strings their distinct properties.
Why on Earth would one entertain such an odd notion, especially when one lacks
any real evidence? The reason is that at small distances, quantum field theory and
general relativity contradict each other. Yet within their own domains, both theories
are as theoretically compelling and as experimentally verified as any scientific theory
ever invented. The domain of general relativity is the macroscopic and cosmological
level, while the domain of quantum field theory is the microscopic level. There must
be a logically consistent way to extend general relativity into the microscopic realm,
because, after all, gravity doesn’t just vanish at microscopic distances. One observ-
able verification of the need for a theory of gravity that extends into the microscopic
realm is the collapse of the centers of galaxies and of some stars into black holes with
all their matter concentrated within a microscopic volume that, according to general
relativity, is actually a mathematical point. A correct theory of gravity should be able

7
This analogy, and Figure 16, come from Brian Greene’s fine nontechnical book for nonscientists and sci-
entists, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate
Theory (New York: Norton & Co., 1999).

502
 Quantum Fields

to describe such microscopic phenomena without running into logical contradictions,

but as you’ve seen, today’s “standard” quantum field theory is unable to do this. The
only theory found so far that has some chance of resolving this is string theory.8
New theories should predict new things, or at least explain things not yet
explained. For example, the existence of three generations of particles (Tables 1 and
2) might be explainable from general features of the geometry of the seven curled-
up dimensions. The string hypothesis also offers a framework for predicting the
masses and other properties of every particle, such as why quarks are electrically
charged the way they are. Unfortunately, the geometry of the seven curled-up
dimensions is so complex that nobody has yet made such predictions.
In the category of as-yet-unobserved phenomena, the graviton turns out to be
one of the fundamental patterns of string vibrations. Since gravitons are the most
widely expected feature of quantum gravity, this prediction indicates that gravity is
woven into the fabric of the string hypothesis.
Finally, the string hypothesis predicts that there is, in addition to the standard-
model particles, a new set of particles called “supersymmetric partners,” one for
each particle of the standard model. They are called “supersymmetric” because, if
the grand list of standard-model particles plus the proposed partners actually existed,
there would be a certain beautiful symmetry between the material “building-block”
particles (electrons, quarks, etc.) and the force-carrying exchange particles (pho-
tons, Ws, etc.). This idea, called “supersymmetry,” is found in many theories. It is
expected to be confirmed (or perhaps disconfirmed), perhaps at the Large Hadron
Collider. Supersymmetry emerges quite naturally from the string hypothesis,
because patterns of string vibration turn out to come in pairs having just the right
supersymmetric properties. The discovery of supersymmetry won’t confirm the
string hypothesis, but it will put it on a more solid experimental foundation.
This concludes our tour of quantum field theory, and it concludes this text (but
do read the epilogue). When we consider general relativity, quantum physics, the
string hypothesis, and other contemporary science, it’s clear that the natural uni-
verse holds possibilities that, to quote philosopher-scientist John Haldane, “are not
only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” Perhaps our uni-
verse is one among many universes, having their own spacetimes, having different
spacetime dimensionalities, and having different physical laws. Perhaps, over many
different “times,” an infinity of different universes passes into and out of existence,
forming collectively a reality that occurs not in space and time at all but that is in
some sense beyond space and time.
In one such universe, in one galaxy called Milky Way, on one planet called
Earth, you who read these words and I who write them are privileged beyond meas-
ure to be alive and to hold such ideas in our minds. Perhaps our best response to
such an immense gift is simply “Thanks.”

8
Another hypothesis called “loop quantum gravity” has been proposed. It seems to be free of contradic-
tions, and it doesn’t require extra dimensions. But it “pays” for this simplification by requiring spacetime
itself to consist of movable loops.

503
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Quantum Fields

© Sidney Harris, used with permission.

Quantum Fields
Problem Set
Answers to Concept Checks and odd-numbered Conceptual Exercises and Problems can be found at the end of this section.

Review Questions 15. Name the exchange particle for the electric force. Name the
four exchange particles for the electroweak force.
16. The electroweak particles are laid out in “generations.”
QUANTIZED FIELDS Describe this pattern. How many generations are there?
1. What two theories are combined to form quantum field theory?
THE STRONG FORCE
2. What is a field? What is a quantized field?
3. Name the quanta of the EM field. 17. Name the fundamental (not composite) particles responsible
4. Are electrons also “quanta”? Quanta of what? for the strong force.
18. How were quarks discovered?
QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS AND ANTIMATTER 19. Are protons fundamental particles? If they are composite par-
ticles, of what are they composites? What about electrons?
5. What role does the photon play in the electric force between 20. What force or forces do quarks exert on one another?
two electrons? 21. One property of quarks is that they exert and feel the strong
6. Describe the events that are diagrammed in Figure 3(a) and force. List at least two other properties.
(b). 22. How many kinds of quarks are there? How many of these are
7. What is a muon? A tau? found in ordinary matter?
8. What is an antiparticle? Name two antiparticles. 23. Name the exchange particles that carry the strong force.
9. What is antimatter? 24. Why do we never observe an isolated quark?
10. Describe the creation of a particle–antiparticle pair.
11. Name and describe several devices used to observe the sub-
QUANTUM GRAVITY
atomic world.
12. Is empty space really empty? What happens there? 25. Which of the four fundamental forces can be felt over macro-
scopic distances?
ELECTROWEAK UNIFICATION 26. What is a graviton? Has it been discovered experimentally? If
so, how? If not, why not?
13. Why is the neutrino so hard to detect? Which of the four fun- 27. What is the significance of the Planck length and time?
damental forces does it experience? 28. What is the string hypothesis?
14. Name the six particles that interact via the electroweak force.

1
1

2
Position

Position

Time
2
Time
(a) (b)

Figure 3
(a) A Feynman diagram for a series of interactions between two weakly interacting (i.e. only
low-energy photons are exchanged) electrons. The electrons’ paths approach smooth
Newtonian paths. (b) At stronger interactions (high-energy photons), the paths deviate con-
siderably from smooth paths, and Newtonian physics is no longer a good approximation.

From Chapter 17 of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

505
 Quantum Fields: Problem Set

Conceptual Exercises Problems

QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS AND ANTIMATTER QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS AND ANTIMATTER
1. In Figure 6(a), what is the evidence that each pair consists of (You’ll need to use the formula E = hf for some of these.)
two oppositely charged particles? 1. Each of the two photons created when an electron–positron
2. In Figure 6(a), which of the two pairs has the faster- pair annihilates has a frequency of about 1020 Hertz. Find the
moving particles? How do you know? energy of each photon.
3. In Figure 6(a), why don’t we see the tracks of the two pho- 2. A proton–antiproton pair, at rest, annihilates and creates two
tons that created the two pairs? photons. Using the information in the preceding problem,
4. Each of the two photons created when an electron–positron and the fact that a proton is 1800 times more massive than an
pair annihilates has a frequency of about 1020 Hertz. To what electron, find the frequency of each photon.
region of the EM spectrum do these photons belong? If the 3. A proton–antiproton pair, at rest, annihilate and create two
electron and positron were moving instead of at rest, would it photons. Find the energy of each photon from the fact that a
make this photon frequency higher or lower? proton’s mass is 1.7 * 10 - 27 kg. Use this energy to find
5. How would the photograph of Figure 4 be altered if the parti- the frequency of each photon, and compare your answer with
cle track had been made by an electron moving upward the preceding problem.
instead of a positron moving downward? 4. MAKING ESTIMATES A large electric power plant generates
1000 MW of electricity. If the energy came from matter-
ELECTROWEAK UNIFICATION antimatter annihilation, estimate the total mass of matter and
6. Of the 10 electroweak particles (Table 1), which ones travel of antimatter that would be required each year, assuming that
at or near lightspeed? the electricity is generated at an energy efficiency of 50%.
7. Of the 10 electroweak particles (Table 1), which ones can 5. MAKING ESTIMATES Suppose 1 gram of matter is annihilated
feel the electric force? Which can exchange photons? with 1 gram of antimatter. Show that the resulting energy
8. Into which one of the boxes of Figure 10 should the discov- could lift the entire U.S. population of about 300 million by
ery of beta decay be placed? about 1 km.
9. In what ways are the W and Z particles similar to photons? In
what ways are they different?
Answers to Concept Checks
THE STRONG FORCE
1. (b), (d), (e)
10. According to the standard model, which of the following are ele- 2. Twenty percent of 400 is 80 pairs, or 160 particles. However
mentary: neutrino, neutron, quark, muon, photon, antiproton? this is only approximate, due to quantum uncertainties, (a).
11. In what ways are gluons similar to photons? In what ways are 3. All four.
they different? 4. (a), (c), (e)
12. In what ways are quarks similar to electrons? In what ways 5. 2>3 - 1>3 - 1>3 = 0, (a)
are they different? 6. (b), (c), (e)
13. Give at least one specific reason (other than a general belief 7. (b)
in unity) why scientists believe there is probably a single the-
ory that can unite the electroweak and the strong force into a
single grand unified force.
14. According to Table 2, the total rest-mass of the two
Answers to Odd-Numbered Conceptual
u-quarks and one d-quark that make up a proton seems to be Exercises and Problems
only 0.003 + 0.003 + 0.008 = 0.014 proton mass!
Where does the remaining mass of the proton come from? Conceptual Exercises
1. Both the upper pair of tracks and the lower pair of tracks
QUANTUM GRAVITY curve in opposite directions, indicating the forces on the pair
15. In the past, it was assumed that the fundamental particles of charged particles are in opposite directions, so the parti-
occupied only isolated geometrical points. Why does the cles must have opposite charges.
string hypothesis assume that they are shaped like tiny loops 3. Photons are not charged, and only charged particles make
of string? tracks in bubble chambers.
16. Explain how a garden hose illustrates the notion of small, 5. The portion of the track below the barrier would have been
curled-up dimensions. straighter than the portion above the barrier.
7. The charged particles: electron, muon, tau, W + and W - .
These are also the particles that can exchange photons,
because microscopically “exchanging photons” is what we
mean by “feeling the electric force.”

506
 Quantum Fields: Problem Set

Figure 6

Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

(a) A bubble-chamber photograph of elec-
tron–positron pair creations, caused by
gamma-ray photons. In the event at the
top, a photon has struck an atomic electron
and knocked it out of its atom (long curv-
ing line), and it simultaneously created an
electron–positron pair (tightly curling spi-
rals). Why can’t you see the path of the
photon? Toward the bottom, a different
photon creates an electron–positron pair.
How can you tell that each pair has two
particles of opposite charge? Of the two
pairs, which pair has the highest energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory
and speed?
Figure 4
The photo that won a Nobel Prize.
This photo alone established the
existence of a positive electron.
(a)

Figure 10
Heavenly Earthly
Some of the unifications in Space Time
motions motions
physics. The dashed lines represent
unifications not yet established.
Time runs from top to bottom. Newton’s Newton’s
mechanics gravity
Electricity Magnetism

Light

Electromagnetism

Electromagnetic
field theory
Quantum Special
theory relativity
General
relativity

Weak
Quantum force
electrodynamics

Strong
Electroweak force
theory

Grand
unification

Theory of
everything

507
 Quantum Fields: Problem Set

Table 1
The theory of the electroweak force. Two fundamental electroweak fields pervade the universe: an electroweak force field whose quanta
are the four exchange particles listed below, and an electroweak matter field whose quanta are the electron and the electron-neutrino.
In addition, there are “second-generation” and “third-generation” matter fields whose quanta are listed below.
Generation Particle type Mass (proton = 1) Charge (proton = +1)

1 electron 0.0005 –1

1 electron-neutrino a a
0

2 muon (mu electron) 0.11 –1

2 muon-neutrino a 0
3 tau (tau electron) 1.90 –1
3 tau-neutrino a 0
Exchange particles:

photon 0 0
W + 86 +1
W- 86 –1
Z 98 0
a
The three types of neutrinos have small but nonzero rest-masses, although the values are uncertain. The sum of the three masses of all three types of neutrinos is known to
be less than 1 millionth of an electron’s mass.

Table 2
The theory of the strong force. Throughout the universe there is a strong force field whose
quanta are gluons and a strong matter field whose quanta are u-quarks and d-quarks. In addi-
tion, there are “second-generation” and “third-generation” matter fields whose quanta are listed
below. Only the first-generation particles are stable and play a role in ordinary matter. Protons
are made of u-u-d, and neutrons of u-d-d, bound together by the strong force acting between
quarks. The unstable second- and third-generation particles decayed during the early moments
of the big bang and exist today only during brief high-energy microscopic events.
Generation Particle type Mass (proton = 1) Charge (proton = 1)
1 u-quark 0.003 +2/3

1 d-quark 0.008 –1/3

2 c-quark 1.4 +2/3

2 s-quark 0.1 –1/3

3 t-quark 185 +2/3

3 b-quark 5.0 –1/3

Exchange particles: gluons 0 0

508
 Quantum Fields: Problem Set

9. Similarities: the W and Z are exchange particles; the Z is Problems

uncharged. Differences: the W and Z have rest-mass; the W 1. E = hf = (6.6 * 10 - 34 J-s) * (1020 Hz) = 6.6 * 10 - 14 J.
is charged; the W and Z move at less than lightspeed. 3. Each photon’s energy is mc2, where m represents the mass of
11. Similarities: both are exchange particles; both are uncharged either a proton or antiproton (they have the same mass).
and massless and move at lightspeed. Differences: gluons Thus, E = mc2 = (1.7 * 10 - 27 kg) * (3 * 108 m>s)2 =
exchange the strong force, and photons exchange the electric 1.5 * 10 - 10 J. From E = hf, each photon’s frequency is
force; gluons feel the strong force (the same force that they f = E>h = 1.5 * 10 - 10 J>(6.6 * 10 - 34 J>Hz) = 2.3 *
exchange), but photons do not feel the electric force (the
1023 Hz.
force that they exchange).
13. Tables 1 and 2 show considerable similarity between the two 5. 2 g, or 0.002 kg, of rest-mass is annihilated. The energy of
forces: There are three “generations” of weak particles, and this mass is E = mc2 = (0.002) * (3 * 108)2 =
three generations of strong particles; the weak force operates 1.8 * 1014 J. Assume that the average weight of a U.S. citi-
by means of exchange particles, and so does the strong zen is 600 N (about 130 pounds). Then the weight of the U.S.
force. Another reason is that it was possible to unify the elec- population is 300 * 106 * 600 N = 1.8 * 1011 N. Since
tric and magnetic forces into a single electromagnetic force, GravE = weight * height: height = energy>weight =
and it was possible to unify the electromagnetic and the 1.8 * 1014 J>1.8 * 1011 N = 1000 m = 1 kilometer!
weak forces into a single electroweak force, so it is plausible
that the electroweak and strong forces might be unified into
a single force.
15. The string hypothesis seems plausible because strings aren’t
concentrated at a single point as point particles are. Thus, we
expect this hypothesis to smoothe out the extreme fluctua-
tions, shown in Figure 16, that are the source of the problem
of unifying gravity with quantum theory.

509
510
EPILOGUE: SUMMING UP

From Epilogue of Physics: Concepts & Connections, Fifth Edition, Art Hobson. Copyright ©
2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Addison-Wesley. All rights reserved.

511
 EPILOGUE: SUMMING UP

Science is much less a body of knowledge than it is a way of thinking, and that way of
thinking, with its characteristic mix of rigorous skepticism and openness to new ideas, is
desperately needed in every area of our lives—including social, economic, political, and
religious arenas.
Carl Sagan

We have come some distance together, you and I, since we started this text. Now we
are at journey’s end. Let’s step back and view the landscape through which we have
passed. The details were connected by four recurring themes: the scientific process,
modern physics and its significance, energy, and the social context of physics.
Occasionally when I talk with groups on the social context of physics, I ask
them to name some significant contemporary social issues. It doesn’t take long to
accumulate quite a list: terrorism, overpopulation, extinction of species, drug
abuse, global warming, AIDS, poverty, and so forth. As we search for common
themes among them, it becomes apparent that each has a significant science and
technology component.
Science confers great power, power that is often both helpful and harmful. For
instance, because medical science has extended our lives (that’s good), we now have
an overpopulation problem (that’s bad). We have accepted science’s help in solving
the death problem but have not taken responsibility for the birth problem. For
another example, when you start your automobile you bring great power to bear on
yourself and on the planet. The speed is exhilarating, but global warming and other
problems testify to the dark side of the equation.
The problems of science and society come down to this: Humankind is not
paying its dues for the fruits of the scientific age. We are quick to accept the con-
venience of cars and the miracles of medicine, but slow to solve our fossil-fuel
problem or to control our birthrate. We dare not accept science’s benefits without
Tree Souls, by U.S. sculptor Alison
also taking on its responsibilities. Speaking as a science teacher who is doubtless
Saar, portrays humankind’s
dependence on Earth for physical prejudiced in the matter, my first suggestion is that all of us learn much more
and spiritual survival. science. Humankind commands enormous power today, with little knowledge. We
had better try harder to understand what we are doing, for power without knowl-
edge is a prescription for disaster.
Energy unifies all physics and can organize our thinking about every physical
process. I hope you have picked up the habit of visualizing physical processes as
transformations of energy. It’s a fundamental principle of physics that energy, not
matter, is the “stuff ” of the universe. Modern physics tells us the processes of the
universe are not simply mechanical motions of matter, but are more appropriately
viewed as transformations of various sorts of energy fields that fill the universe.
Socially, our culture must get a grip on our use of energy resources if we are to
fashion a prosperous future. We will soon face the end of the fossil-fuel age—a
challenging but exciting prospect. You can help.
Modern physics and its significance touches deeply upon the cultural roots of
industrial civilization. Modern culture still assumes that the Newtonian clockwork
universe represents science’s view of reality. This materialistic worldview leaves lit-
tle room for freedom, chance, creativity, or spiritual values.

512
 EP I LO GU E

But modern physics paints a non-Newtonian picture of fields and energy struc- Only by the fusion of science and
tured by relativity and quantum theory. Many nonmechanical forms of energy oper- the humanities can we hope to
ate in the modern universe, and reality emerges not as a predictable clockwork but as reach the wisdom appropriate to
our day and generation.
a dynamic and unpredictable network of energy. This is nearly the opposite of a clock.
I. I. Rabi, Physicist
It’s not clear what worldview will emerge from this. Our Newtonian culture is
only beginning to absorb the impact of relativity and quantum theory. After all, more
than a century elapsed after Copernicus’s death before Europe began to absorb the
cultural impact of postmedieval science. So it’s not surprising that the first post-
Newtonian century was not the twentieth, but will probably be the twenty-first.
One practical example of the importance of transcending the Newtonian worldview
is the ongoing reaction, in the United States at least, against the theory and observed
fact of biological evolution. The reaction comes from a perceived threat to religious
beliefs. Religious fundamentalists typically view evolution as deterministic and mate-
rialistic, with no room for spiritual values. This appears to be a reaction to evolution
as interpreted through Newtonian physics rather than a reaction to evolution itself. A
post-Newtonian culture might relieve us of such religious anxieties about science.
I hope that the main message you’ve gathered from this text concerns the scientific
process. We have often inquired: How do we know? Science’s answer is surprisingly sim-
ple: We know by experience, as interpreted by rational thought. It’s a simple but
demanding code: Take nothing for granted, form conclusions on the basis of careful
observation and honest thinking, and be willing to modify those conclusions in the
light of new experience. In other words: Trust the universe.
With today’s powerful technologies, we could all be living like kings and queens
if we had played our cards right. But we’re not living like kings and queens. In fact,
large parts of the globe, including millions in the United States, live in poor and
miserable conditions. What’s wrong? Perhaps the answer is that most ideologies are
not arrived at by anything resembling careful observation or honest thinking and are
seldom open to doubt in the light of new experience. Yet most believers of those
ideologies are absolutely convinced they are right. The results of their dogmatism
are all around us: fanaticism, war, terror, persecution, prejudice, and suffering.
Science’s view of this is that the danger lies not so much in the beliefs themselves
as in their absolute nature. Even wrong or harmful beliefs can be corrected if one
is willing to trust experience and be intellectually honest. Even correct and healthy
beliefs can become dangerous if accepted as absolute truth.
In thinking about how we might do better in the twenty-first century than we did For the belief in a single truth and
in the twentieth, we should perhaps ponder science’s most basic value: All ideas are in being the possessor thereof is
subject to testing by experience and to challenge by critical rational thought. It is a the root cause of all evil in the
world.
code that has worked surprisingly well for science. It might be science’s most
Max Born, Physicist
important benefit.

513
514
 Periodic table of the elements
1 2
H He
Hydrogen Metalloids and Non-metals Helium

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Li Be B C N O F Ne
Lithium Beryllium METALS Boron Carbon Nitrogen Oxygen Fluorine Neon

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Na Mg Transition Metals Al Si P S Cl Ar
Sodium Magnesium Aluminum Silicon Phosphorus Sulfur Chlorine Argon

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr
Potassium Calcium Scandium Titanium Vanadium Chromium Manganese Iron Cobalt Nickel Copper Zinc Gallium Germanium Arsenic Selenium Bromine Krypton

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54
Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
Rubidium Strontium Yttrium Zirconium Niobium Molybdenum Technetium Ruthenium Rhodium Palladium Silver Cadmium Indium Tin Antimony Tellurium Iodine Xenon

55 56 57–71* 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86
Cs Ba Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
Cesium Barium Hafnium Tantalum Tungsten Rhenium Osmium Iridium Platinum Gold Mercury Thallium Lead Bismuth Polonium Astatine Radon

87 88 89–103† 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112# 113# 114# 115# 116# 118#
Fr Ra Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt Ds Rg
Francium Radium Rutherfordium Dubnium Seaburgium Bohrium Hassium Meitnerium Darmstadtium Roentgenium

*Lanthanides 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71
LA Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho Er Tm Yb Lu
(Rare Earth Metals) Lanthanum Cerium Praseodymium Neodymium Promethium Samarium Europium Gadolinium Terbium Dysprosium Holmium Erbium Thulium Ytterbium Lutetium

†
89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103
Actinides Ac Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lw
Actinium Thorium Protactinium Uranium Neptunium Plutonium Americium Curium Berkelium Californium Einsteinium Fermium Mendelevium Nobelium Lawrencium

# These elements have been discovered but not yet named.

515
516
FLOW CHART OF TOPICS

This chart shows the text’s main topics and connections between them. It organizes
three topical categories—Newtonian, modern, and societal physics. These topics
can then be used to create several different course structures: general physics (all
three categories), Newtonian emphasis, modern emphasis, and societal emphasis.
For further details on alternative course structures, see the Instructor Resource
Manual.

Societal Newtonian Modern, philosophical

Invitation to science

Scientific method
Pseudoscience
Atoms and molecules

Newtonian worldview
Inertia
Motion
Newtonian mechanics
Newtonian gravity
Energy for transportation
Electric power plant
The law of entropy
Energy
Thermodynamics

Exponential growth

EM force Special relativity

Planetary atom
EM fields
Ozone depletion
General relativity
Cosmology
Waves
EM waves
Global warming
Quantum physics
Uncertainty
Nonlocality
Radioactive dating and
geological ages Modern Quantum
worldview atom

Biological effects The nucleus

of radiation Radioactivity
Technological risk

Fusion and fission

Nuclear weapons
Nuclear terrorism
Quantum fields and
The energy future standard model
Nuclear and fossil
Renewables
Efficiency
Quantum gravity

517
518
Index
Page references followed by "f" indicate illustrated Antimatter, 7, 289, 474, 477, 482-485, 487, 496, atoms
figures or photographs; followed by "t" indicates a 505-506 isotopes, 307, 387, 390, 394, 400, 406, 409-410
table. Antimony, 515 kinds of, 52-54, 63, 202, 212, 221, 240-241, 263,
antineutron, 1, 482 307, 311, 366, 385-386, 478, 493
Antiparticle, 3-4, 7, 10, 13, 482, 484, 486-487, 491, neutrons, 8-9, 50, 63, 152, 203-204, 242, 266, 290,
A 505 307, 311, 318, 336, 341, 381, 385, 387,
A ring, 254 Antiparticles, 290, 295, 482-483, 487, 494, 505 474-475, 493-494
Absolute zero, 74, 171, 306, 318 antiproton, 1, 290, 482, 487, 506, 509 periodic table, 9, 52, 66, 67-69, 198, 386-387, 406,
Absorption, 480 Antiprotons, 1, 289, 483 409, 493
Accelerating reference frames, 323 antiquark, 495 planetary model of, 10, 63, 202-204, 221-222, 366,
accelerating universe, 1, 300, 313, 321-322 Aquifers, 426 369, 376
Acceleration, 5-6, 8, 72, 81-85, 87, 89-91, 94-105, arcminutes, 31 properties of, 13, 205, 241, 386, 493
107, 109, 113-117, 121, 123, 127, 141-144, Area, 24, 183, 196, 198, 207, 234, 246, 248, 255, 257, protons, 1-2, 8-9, 50, 63, 152, 203-206, 224, 242,
164, 177, 275, 285-287, 293-294, 299-301, 296-297, 446-447, 471-472, 512 266, 290, 307, 309, 311, 318, 336, 338,
314-315, 464, 497 Aristarchus, 1-2, 25, 29, 34, 36 345, 351, 381, 483-484, 486, 493-494
and air resistance, 89 Aristotle, 24, 38, 47, 60, 72-76, 87, 91, 120-121, 135 size of, 2, 60, 131, 202, 241, 243-244, 265, 333,
and mass, 94, 100, 287, 293 asteroid, 107 353
average, 6, 87, 89-91, 177, 287 asteroids, 106, 402 structure of, 9, 59, 152, 241, 270, 386, 394
cosmic, 8, 299, 314-315, 321-323 Astrologer, 31 subatomic particles, 21, 133-134, 203, 221, 263,
due to gravity, 83, 87, 100, 116-117, 294, 323 astrology, 18, 40-42, 45, 47 493
force and, 6, 94-95, 114, 224 Astronomical unit, 47 AU, 47-48, 515
instantaneous, 1, 6, 81 astronomical unit (AU), 47 Average power, 163
straight-line motion, 121 astronomy, 17-18, 28, 30, 33, 37-39, 42, 45, 74, 78-79, Average speed, 6, 80, 87, 89-92, 287, 386, 498
Acceleration due to gravity, 83, 87, 116, 294 121, 132-135, 395
acid rain, 186, 424-425, 437 ancient, 18, 28, 45, 135 B
Acidity, 256 defined, 1 background radiation, 60, 244, 307, 309, 315, 318,
acids, 394 history of, 18, 30 322
actinides, 515 study of, 18, 135, 299 cosmic, 60, 307, 309, 315, 318, 322
Action, 1, 5, 76, 94, 246, 249-251, 258, 357, 385, 467, astrophysics, 303 bacteria, 66, 188
469 atmosphere, 9, 12-13, 40, 53, 59, 68-70, 77-78, 88, balloon analogy, 314
Action at a distance, 357 90, 105, 115, 132, 177-178, 185-186, 245, bar, 214-217, 221, 223-224, 288, 481
Addition, 12, 68, 73, 110, 117, 170, 237, 256, 289, 247-255, 257, 262-263, 267, 399, 416, 426, Bar magnets, 215-216, 221, 288
339, 369, 380, 389, 436, 488-490, 496, 503 432, 486, 491 bars, 223-224, 255
aerosols, 263 composition of, 247, 394 Batteries, 179-182, 195, 206, 208
Air, 17, 40, 53-56, 59-60, 63-66, 67-70, 73-79, 82-84, gravity and, 13, 77 recharging, 181
87-91, 95-97, 100-101, 105-107, 109, heat and, 2 Beam, 3, 7, 58-59, 90, 101, 152, 203, 236, 243, 270,
114-117, 123, 137, 141-142, 150, 152, 158, of Earth, 77, 250-251, 254-255, 265, 393, 407, 446 273-280, 287-288, 293-294, 302-304, 330,
170, 173, 175, 181, 183-184, 186, 194, origin of, 2, 59, 407 333-337, 364-365, 398, 484-485, 494
196-198, 235-236, 246-248, 252-253, 261, ozone hole, 248, 250 spread, 330, 333, 335-337
310, 314, 364, 389-390, 399-401, 403, 433, ozone in, 248 width, 59, 285, 303-304
439, 481-482 primary, 247, 253 Bell, Jocelyn, 133
density, 5, 55 secondary, 12 Beryllium, 454, 456-457, 474, 515
Air conditioners, 158, 246, 439 solar, 9, 12-13, 245, 247-248, 250, 263, 267, 296, Beta decay, 5, 14, 154, 385, 390-391, 405-406, 410,
air pressure, 63, 68, 165, 399 394, 416, 432, 491 473, 488-489, 506
air resistance, 1, 74-77, 79, 83-84, 89-91, 95, 100-101, structure of, 9, 59, 394 Beta particle, 1, 390, 462, 488-489
105-107, 114-117, 123, 141-142, 150, 152, Atmospheric pressure, 246 Beta particles, 390-391, 488
155-156, 161-165, 173, 178, 181, 183 atomic hydrogen gas, 371 Beta rays, 1, 5-6, 389-390, 398, 400
alloy, 41 atomic mass, 474 Betelgeuse, 132
Alpha Centauri, 263 Atomic model, 10-11 Big Bang, 42-43, 59, 175, 244, 300, 306-311, 313-314,
Alpha decay, 1, 5, 389-392, 405-406, 488 atomic nucleus, 58, 202, 204, 289, 316, 477, 484 316-319, 321-323, 352, 452, 455-456, 473,
Alpha particle, 1, 204-205, 389-392, 406, 460, Atomic number, 52, 205, 221, 386-387, 389-391, 481, 483, 486-487, 489, 491, 496-497
473-474 405-406, 410, 459-460, 462, 474-475 evidence for, 43, 237, 306-308, 323
Alpha particles, 204-205, 392, 399, 406, 457-458, 460, Atomic physics, 387, 483 Big Bang model, 318
473, 484 atomic spectra, 364, 371, 376 Big Bang theory, 306-307
Alpha rays, 5-6, 389, 400, 405 Atomic structure, 348 Big Crunch, 313
Alternating current, 1, 208, 245 Atom(s), 4 Big Dipper, 18-19
altitude, 40, 77, 122, 125-126, 128, 142, 247 atoms, 8-10, 13-14, 16, 21, 43, 49-66, 67-70, 74, 97, Biological evolution, 16, 42, 176, 398, 513
altitudes, 32, 77, 407 101, 128-131, 133-134, 136-137, 152, 178, biology, 12, 17, 38, 42-43, 45, 65, 282, 326, 395, 470
Aluminum, 98, 215, 457, 460, 515 198, 202-208, 212, 215, 221-222, 236, biomass, 1-2, 413-417, 431-432, 438, 441, 443-444,
Amino acid, 394 239-244, 246-247, 251, 253, 263, 265-267, 446-447
amino acids, 394 286, 290, 309, 311, 318, 363-364, 369-371, birds, 25, 29, 78
Ampere, 210-211, 221 384-387, 409-410, 424-425, 434, 438, black hole, 132-135, 139, 141, 143, 305, 311, 456,
Amplitude, 229-230, 261, 265, 326, 340 474-475, 483-484, 517 487, 499-500
of waves, 229 atomic mass, 474 Black holes, 1, 3, 54, 133-135, 138, 153, 305, 309,
Andromeda, 37, 299 atomic number, 1-2, 52, 205, 221, 386-387, 390, 311, 314, 485-486, 502
Andromeda galaxy, 37 406, 410, 474-475 geometry, 309, 314
angular distance, 303 characteristics of, 53 mass of, 133-135, 305, 311, 314
Angular momentum, 128, 153 electricity and, 236, 270, 424, 438 size of, 485
conservation of, 128, 153 electrons, 1-4, 8-10, 13-14, 50, 58-59, 63, 101, bladder, 60
rotational, 128, 153 129, 131, 202-208, 212, 215, 221-222, blood, 53, 65, 398-399
Angular position, 27, 32 224, 236, 242-244, 266, 290, 336, 345, blood vessels, 398
Animals, 40, 65-66, 156, 176, 184, 188, 243, 263, 319, 351, 367, 370, 381, 385-386, 390, 438, Bohr, Niels, 62, 154, 325, 339, 363, 370, 459, 461
395-396, 412-413, 435 483-484, 493-494 Boiling, 55, 91, 169, 184, 193-194, 296, 421, 498
annihilation, 3, 7, 289-290, 474, 477, 482-483, 486 elements, 13, 52-54, 63-64, 67-70, 202, 205, 221, of water, 91, 169, 296
Antarctic ozone hole, 250 307, 386-387, 474, 493 Boiling point, 91
Antennas, 142 Atom(s) Bone, 397-399
antielectron, 1, 291, 295-296 first, 4 bone marrow, 398-399

519
Boron, 420, 454, 515 entropy, 175 117-118, 128, 153, 206, 211
boson, 299 protons, 2, 152, 209, 289, 387 law of, 2, 7, 108-109, 111, 113, 117, 153, 206
Bosons, 485 chemistry, 17, 40, 42, 64, 67, 247, 249, 326, 366, 371, Constellation, 38
Boyle, Robert, 136 386, 388, 395, 397, 470 constellations, 19
Brahe, Tycho, 31, 33, 395 compounds, 2, 64, 69, 247 Constructive interference, 230-232, 262, 335, 359
brain, 60, 102, 137, 243, 271 elements, 2, 64, 67, 69, 386 consumers, 158, 177, 439
Breeder reactor, 1, 422, 424, 442, 446 Chinese, 41, 47, 72 Contact forces, 95, 206
bremsstrahlung, 154 Chips, 326 continental drift, 42
brightness, 26, 313-314, 340, 343 Chlorine, 2, 53-54, 66, 68-69, 205, 246-248, 250, 264, Continuous spectra, 366, 380
bromine, 53, 69, 515 515 continuous spectrum, 2, 365-367, 379
Brown, Robert, 51 Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), 2, 246 contraction, 7, 129, 132, 285-287, 295, 322
Brownian motion, 1, 51, 54, 58, 63, 68 Circuits, 199, 201, 208-211, 221-223, 243-245, 326, gravitational, 7, 322
Brushes, 218 439 Coordinate, 20, 359-360
Bubble chamber, 1-2, 481, 484 diagrams, 222 coordinates, 359, 378
bulge, 47, 93 elements, 209, 211, 221 Copernican revolution, 2, 31, 37, 39, 45, 47, 308
stars in, 47 short circuit, 221 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 28
Circular motion, 13, 28, 33, 45-46, 127, 305 Copper, 206-207, 211-212, 216, 515
C orbits, 28, 33, 45 core, 63, 130, 132-133, 146, 258, 420-421, 429-430,
Calculations, 2, 10, 32, 51, 250, 254, 290, 307, 315, uniform circular motion, 13, 28, 33, 45 445, 447, 456, 493
361, 459-460, 468 Circular orbits, 10, 135, 311 Earth, 130, 132-133, 258, 456
calendar, 42 Circular waves, 232, 262 Correlation, 248, 359
calorie, 2, 4, 155-156, 161 climate, 2, 6, 57, 227-260, 261-267, 396, 411, 426-427 cosmic background radiation, 60, 315, 318, 322
Camera, 76, 227-228, 263, 331 Moon and, 263 Cosmic inflation, 2, 315-319, 321-323
Cancellation, 230, 327 clocks, 11, 13, 87, 96, 273, 279-281, 283-285, Cosmic microwave background, 3, 299, 306-310, 314,
cancer, 249-250, 398-403, 405, 407-408, 410, 430 293-294, 304 319
carbohydrates, 66 Closed universe, 2, 5, 309-310 map of, 306
Carbon, 1-3, 9, 12-13, 43, 54, 63-66, 67-70, 178, 186, Cloud chamber, 1-2, 481-482 Cosmic rays, 3, 312, 393, 400, 406, 482, 484, 486,
202-203, 222, 227, 249-254, 256, 258-260, clouds, 12, 25, 29, 40, 128, 131, 248, 318, 360 491
263, 265, 267, 392-394, 396-397, 400, Cluster, 312 Cosmology, 3, 43, 135, 299-320, 321-323, 488, 517
405-406, 408-410, 424-427, 431-432, 437, galaxy, 312 Big Bang, 3, 43, 300, 306-311, 313-314, 316-319,
444, 456 cluster of galaxies, 312 321-323
forms of, 1, 9, 475 Clusters, 59-60, 306, 318-319, 352 cosmic microwave background, 3, 299, 306-310,
Carbon atom, 67, 222, 393, 409 coal, 5, 12, 68-69, 146, 161, 173, 179, 184-187, 314, 319
Carbon dating, 2, 254, 393-394, 396-397, 405-406, 195-196, 198, 260, 295, 403, 408, 412-417, dark energy and, 315
408 423-427, 430-433, 435-438, 441-444, defined, 302
Carbon dioxide, 9, 12-13, 43, 54, 64-65, 67-69, 186, 446-447 Newtonian, 135, 304-305, 517
251-253, 256, 424, 431, 444 Coils, 224 Coulomb, 1-3, 200-202, 210, 214, 224-225
on Mars, 251 collision, 107-110, 116, 244, 305, 438, 457, 486, 497 Coulomb, Charles, 200
carbon monoxide, 65, 67, 178 Collisions, 74, 107, 109, 389, 486 Couples, 169, 178
Carbon-12, 387 Color, 42, 53, 61, 158, 163, 234, 243, 250, 328, Crab Nebula, 47, 133-134
carbon-13, 387 343-345, 365 creationism, 3, 40, 42-44, 45
Carbon-14, 387 of stars, 365 Crescent Moon, 45
Cars, 91, 105, 116, 176-178, 180-184, 260, 270, 407, colors, 13, 243, 344, 364-365, 367 crests, 231-232, 262, 266, 327
410, 418 Columbus, Christopher, 28 critical mass, 3, 5, 465-466, 469, 473
Cathode, 203 Combustion, 4, 6, 9, 12, 65, 106, 173, 177-179, 184, crust, 464
Cathode rays, 203 193, 252, 289, 366, 413, 425-426, 446-447, Crystals, 55, 317, 319
cells, 9, 179, 181-182, 243-244, 246, 397-400, 453, 474-475 Cultural evolution, 395
416-417, 427, 432-435, 438, 442, 444, 446 Comets, 93, 130, 402 Curie, Marie, 388, 457
animal, 397, 416 communications satellites, 142, 265 Curie, Pierre, 237, 388
plant, 9, 181, 399, 416, 432-433, 435, 438, 442, community, 57, 172, 176, 314 Current, 3-5, 8-9, 12, 37, 41, 133, 190, 199, 204,
444 Compass needle, 216 207-212, 217-218, 221-224, 239, 254, 279,
types of, 9, 398, 435 Compasses, 215 307, 322, 366, 411-412, 422-424, 427, 435,
Celsius scale, 169 Components of, 136, 212, 442 438-439, 462
CFCs, 2, 9, 246-250, 256, 261, 263, 267 compounds, 1-2, 53, 56, 63-64, 68-69, 186, 247-248, conservation of, 211
Chain reaction, 2-3, 5, 401, 419, 421-422, 444, 451, 424 creating, 4, 210, 439, 462
458, 460-461, 463, 465, 468, 471, 473-475 Compression, 228 currents, 3, 237, 252, 257, 274, 423, 485
changes, 6, 24, 48, 65, 69, 80-83, 87, 91, 107, Computers, 146, 154, 352, 360-361 electric, 3, 237, 274, 423, 485
146-147, 200, 236-237, 256-258, 289, 360, Concentration, 47, 247-248, 251, 253, 264-265, 307, ocean, 257
394, 397-398, 416-418, 500 406-407, 416, 424, 426 surface, 252
chemical, 52, 65, 69, 289, 376, 416, 453, 500 Concrete, 9, 114, 117, 215, 328, 400-401, 421, 437 Curved space, 3, 303, 305
physical, 6, 52, 146, 289, 360, 398, 500 Conduction, 2, 207-209, 212 cycles per second, 208
Charged particles, 3, 7, 9, 202-203, 206-207, 215, electrical, 2, 207-209 Cyclotron, 458
221, 366, 480-482, 484, 488, 506 heat, 2, 207, 209 Cygnus, 134
interactions, 7, 480-481, 488 model of, 212 Cygnus X-1, 134
Charges, 3-4, 165, 201, 205-206, 213-216, 222, 224, conduction electrons, 2, 207-209, 212
237, 319 Conductor, 2-3 D
conservation of charge, 206 Conductors, 12, 207, 434 Dalton, John, 51
like, 201, 216, 224, 506 current, 12, 207 Dark energy, 3, 299-300, 313-315, 321-323
moving, 3-4, 165, 215-216, 224, 237, 506 semiconductors, 434 Dark matter, 3, 299-300, 311-315, 321-323, 485
opposite, 201, 203, 205, 213-214, 224, 506 cones, 281-282, 294 evidence for, 312, 323
source, 3, 203, 205, 213, 237 conservation, 2, 7, 64, 67, 108-111, 117-118, 128, extraordinary, 315
Charging, 4, 200, 205 145-160, 161-165, 168-169, 174, 211, 240, structure of, 323
chemical composition, 67, 259, 365, 376 260, 288-289, 296, 371, 415-418, 427, 440, Darwin, Charles, 38
chemical compounds, 1-2, 56, 64, 68 446-447 Daughter nuclei, 399, 408
Chemical elements, 13, 52, 221, 307, 322, 487 of angular momentum, 128 Daughter nucleus, 3, 390-391, 399, 410
atomic number, 52, 221 of energy, 2, 7, 111, 145-160, 161-165, 168-169, day, 22, 24, 29, 34, 39, 48, 60, 72, 124, 155, 157-158,
periodic table, 52, 473 174, 240, 288-289, 296, 371, 415-416, 162-163, 169, 186-188, 193-196, 199-200,
spectra, 307 446, 486, 489 245, 271-272, 282, 291, 299, 305-306, 395,
chemical energy, 1-2, 8, 109, 152-153, 156, 158, of momentum, 2, 7, 108-111, 113, 117-118, 128, 399, 409, 419, 446-447
162-163, 165, 173, 176-179, 181-182, 186, 153, 206, 211 solar, 60, 124, 146, 181, 196, 199, 245, 263, 395,
194, 416, 432, 486, 500 Conservation laws, 111 446-447
chemical formula, 54, 68-69 Conservation of angular momentum, 128 Decay, 9-11, 17, 59, 154, 175, 312, 339, 352, 364,
chemical properties, 1, 205, 386-387, 391, 493 Conservation of charge, 2, 7, 206, 211 384-385, 388-394, 399-400, 405-406,
chemical reactions, 2, 49, 64, 67-68, 152, 175, 202, Conservation of energy, 2, 7, 111, 145-160, 161-165, 409-410, 427, 456-457, 473, 487-489, 506
208-209, 248, 251, 289, 364, 386-387, 430 168-169, 174, 240, 288, 296, 371, 415, 446, exponential, 3, 6
combustion, 289 486 nuclear, 5-6, 9-11, 154, 175, 312, 352, 384-385,
electrons, 2, 202, 208-209, 289 machines, 146 388-391, 397, 399-400, 405-406, 427,
energy, 2, 49, 152, 175, 202, 208-209, 248, 251, relativity and, 288 456-457, 459, 473, 475, 488-489
289, 364, 430 Conservation of momentum, 2, 7, 108-111, 113, rate, 6, 10, 389, 394, 397

520
 series, 10 diameter of, 38, 57, 305, 312 245-246, 250, 276, 278, 311, 313, 315, 386,
Deceleration, 82, 181, 244 features of, 24, 41 410, 433
deciduous trees, 437 formation of, 67, 130, 456 Electromagnetic spectrum, 4, 239, 241-242, 244-245,
Deep space, 97 gravitational attraction, 122, 124-125 266, 313, 365, 381
Deferent, 26, 28 greenhouse effect on, 251 electromagnetic wave, 4, 11, 235, 237-240, 244, 261,
deforestation, 6, 256, 258, 260, 262-264 interior of, 244 263, 267, 273
degrees, 3, 27, 56, 171, 194, 196, 198, 248, 251, 255, life on, 16, 43, 131, 176, 246-247 Electromagnetic waves, 4, 237-245, 261, 263, 265,
306-307, 316, 318, 322-323, 422-423 mass of, 10, 12, 14, 100-102, 113-114, 116, 124, 276, 278
delta, 349 132-135, 143, 203, 293, 295-296, 305, energy of, 4, 345
Democritus, 50-51, 59, 61, 69, 136, 152, 240, 483 311, 314, 318, 466, 474, 487 momentum of, 8
Density, 5, 55 measuring, 27, 79, 89, 96, 250, 284, 354 speed of, 237, 239, 265, 276, 278, 345
average, 55 properties of, 13, 279, 319, 503 Electromagnetism, 4, 199-219, 221-225, 236-237,
critical, 5 radius of, 47, 78, 88, 265, 318 271, 335, 450, 488, 492
infinite, 5 rotation of, 24, 30 Electromagnets, 485
Derivative, 477 structure of, 5, 9, 59, 323, 384 Electron, 1, 7-8, 10-13, 58-59, 63, 69, 132-133, 139,
desert, 464, 466 surface of, 22, 84, 105-106, 133, 143, 251-252, 154, 202-206, 210-211, 215, 218, 222-223,
Destructive interference, 3, 230-232, 234-235, 262 261, 265, 305-306, 308, 319, 322-323 244, 288-289, 291, 295-296, 326, 332-340,
detector, 21, 236, 243, 354-357, 362, 375, 378, 380, velocity of, 14, 87, 115, 273 343-346, 351-353, 355-356, 361-362,
485, 490-491, 494 Echo, 307 366-370, 386-387, 389-391, 394, 434,
Detectors, 11, 243, 310, 353, 355-357, 361-362, eclipse, 24, 302-303 486-494, 498, 501, 506-508
375-376, 485, 490-491, 493-494 solar, 303 production of, 10, 434
determinism, 93, 348 eclipses, 19 Electron beam, 3, 58-59, 288, 333-337, 344, 494
Deuteron, 345 ecology, 259 Electron microscope, 4, 58-59, 338, 343-344
development, 5, 33, 37, 41, 45, 74, 120, 172, 179, ecosystems, 251 electron microscopes, 338
241, 271, 427, 430, 458, 466, 483 Efficiency, 3-6, 13, 147, 156, 158-159, 161, 168, Electron spin, 394
human, 41, 146 170-173, 181-182, 184-186, 193-196, 198, Electronic devices, 326
Diamond, 263 246, 254, 258, 260, 414-419, 423-424, 431, computers, 326
Dinosaurs, 402 435, 438-439, 446-447 Electron-positron pairs, 1, 482-483
Direct current, 3, 208 Einstein, Albert, 16, 34, 51, 137, 202, 241, 271-272, Electrons, 6-11, 13-14, 50, 58-59, 63, 101, 129, 131,
direction, 5-8, 11-14, 17, 19, 21, 25, 38, 46, 80-82, 388 201-212, 215-217, 221-224, 236, 238,
98-101, 105-110, 113-118, 141-143, theories of relativity, 271 242-244, 266, 289-291, 325-326, 331,
147-148, 174-175, 193, 208-209, 213-214, Electric charge, 3, 111, 153, 201-202, 213, 215, 333-341, 343-345, 349, 351, 354-356,
216, 243, 258, 276, 284-285, 293-294, 296, 221-223, 237-239, 261, 338, 386, 389, 482, 361-362, 367, 370, 380-381, 385-386, 390,
307, 319, 369, 422, 439, 481-482 486 405, 433-435, 438-439, 478-484, 487-488,
diseases, 257 electric forces, 3, 10, 202, 215, 221-222 493-494, 496-498, 503
Disorder, 175, 194 of an electron, 223 acceleration of, 1, 8
entropy, 175, 194 quantization of, 10 charge of, 201, 203, 206, 223-224, 493
Displacement, 26, 122, 261 electric circuits, 199, 209, 221-223, 243-244, 439 conduction, 2, 207-209, 212
dissolving, 162 Electric current, 3-5, 199, 204, 207, 209, 211, 217-218, discovery of, 63, 326, 483, 487, 493-494, 503
Distance, 7-8, 11-14, 23, 25, 47-48, 49, 51, 56-60, 223, 246, 422, 427, 433, 435, 438 drift speed of, 208
67-68, 74, 76-77, 79-80, 83-85, 89-92, electric currents, 3, 237, 274, 423, 485 electric charge of, 493
124-129, 132-133, 139, 141-144, 159, Electric field, 213-214, 216-218, 221, 223-224, 236, energy levels of, 7, 380
164-165, 182, 184, 200-203, 208, 212, 389, 434 energy of, 1, 4, 6-7, 13-14, 210, 289-291, 326, 331,
221-223, 237-241, 243, 265, 267, 279-280, Electric field lines, 213-214, 216 345, 367, 370, 433, 438, 482, 487
288, 303-305, 310, 322-323, 359, 369, 495, Electric field strength, 214 magnetic force on, 215-216
499-501, 512 Electric fields, 213-214, 216, 221, 236 mass of, 7, 10, 14, 101, 133, 203, 289-290, 311,
angular, 128, 303 Coulomb, 214 336-337, 345, 487, 497, 506
cosmological, 315 Electric force, 2-3, 7, 101, 199-203, 205-206, 208, nature of, 11, 50, 58, 63, 224, 338, 361-362, 370
measurement of, 284, 295 213-216, 218, 221-224, 385-386, 390, 406, orbits, 10, 63, 202-203, 205, 215, 238, 289, 311
distortion, 43, 213, 230, 310 409, 452, 487-488, 492, 494-495, 500-501, path of, 2, 484
Disturbance, 1, 4, 13-14, 206, 212-213, 229, 237-239, 505-506 reduction, 2, 439
242, 310, 389 Electric motors, 208 velocity of, 14, 349, 380
DNA, 53, 69, 242-243, 266, 344-345, 381, 394, electric power, 3-4, 9-10, 12, 158, 168, 171-172, 177, wavelengths of, 266, 333
397-398, 495 184-186, 189, 193-196, 203, 208, 217-218, Electroweak force, 4-6, 477, 488-490, 496, 500,
Double-slit interference, 234, 325, 328, 335, 339, 358 246, 264, 419, 432-434, 441, 463 508-509
down quark, 12 Electric power generation, 217-218, 264, 415, 419, Electroweak theory, 489-490
Drag, 59, 77, 89 441 Element, 50, 52, 63-64, 66, 67, 69, 130, 175, 181,
Drift, 42, 51, 208, 247, 384 Electrical charge, 389 205, 208, 210-212, 266, 289, 351, 386-389,
drift speed, 208 Electrical power, 172 391-392, 458-462, 464, 473-474
Drift velocity, 3, 208 electrical resistance, 3, 9, 207-208, 211 formation of, 67, 130
Driving force, 128 Electricity, 5, 9-10, 14, 52, 63, 152, 163, 171-172, 177, elements, 2, 52-54, 63-64, 67-70, 181, 202, 205, 209,
Dust, 1, 11, 22, 36, 38, 51, 58, 60, 69-70, 128-131, 179, 181-182, 184-186, 194-196, 198, 199, 211, 221, 289, 307-308, 321-322, 386-387,
202, 242-243, 266, 311, 316-318, 351, 376, 214-215, 217-218, 236-237, 260, 267, 270, 455-457, 459-460, 462, 493
380-381, 399, 401 412-413, 415-417, 419-425, 427, 431-436, heavy, 181, 322, 452, 455-456, 459
interplanetary, 36 438-439, 441-442, 444-446, 488, 492 in Earth, 68
interstellar, 129-130 atoms and, 152, 270 ellipse, 33, 47
Dust grain, 51, 317, 500 charges, 3, 214-215, 237, 506 foci, 33
Dynamics, 291 conductor, 2-3 Elliptical orbits, 35-36
Dyson, Freeman, 289 conservation of charge, 2 emission, 1, 11, 182, 330, 337, 371, 437, 452
coulomb, 2-3, 214 spontaneous, 1, 11
E direct current, 3 Energy, 1-14, 17-18, 49, 52, 65-66, 79, 104-105, 109,
Eagle Nebula, 129, 131 electric charge, 3, 10, 215, 217, 237, 239 111, 130, 138, 145-160, 161-165, 168-179,
Early universe, 306, 310, 316-317, 322 electric circuits, 199, 209, 439 181-187, 189-190, 193-196, 198, 206,
Big Bang, 306, 310, 316-317, 322 electric current, 3, 5, 199, 209, 217-218, 239, 422, 208-212, 228-230, 240-248, 251-255,
evolution of, 306 427, 433, 435, 438 257-260, 262-266, 270-271, 282, 286,
Earth, 5-6, 9-10, 12-14, 16, 18-19, 21-31, 33-44, electric power, 3, 9-10, 12, 171-172, 177, 184-186, 288-291, 295-297, 299-300, 312-319,
45-48, 52-55, 57, 59-60, 64, 66, 67-68, 194-196, 217-218, 264, 415, 419, 321-323, 328-333, 336-339, 353, 357,
72-73, 76-79, 84, 87-91, 98, 100-107, 432-434, 441, 506 360-362, 366-367, 369-372, 378-381,
120-135, 139, 147, 149, 151, 161, 164, 176, generation of, 172, 415, 422, 427, 444 390-391, 397-398, 411-440, 441-447,
181, 212-213, 215, 238-239, 242-247, insulators, 9, 12, 434 450-458, 466-469, 471, 477-484, 486-487,
250-252, 254-258, 263-267, 278-279, microwave oven, 163 489-491, 495-497, 500-501
283-284, 304-306, 308-314, 318-319, Electrode, 181, 207, 367 and chemical reactions, 364
321-323, 354, 370, 393, 395-396, 402, 423, Electrodes, 367 conservation of, 2, 7, 109, 111, 145-160, 161-165,
432-433, 486-488, 499, 502-503 Electromagnetic fields, 5, 217, 227, 236, 240-241, 168-169, 174, 211, 240, 288-289, 296,
atmosphere of, 251 276, 316, 328, 338 371, 415, 446, 486
composition of, 247 forces and, 217, 240-241 conservation of energy, 2, 7, 111, 145-160,
core, 130, 132-133, 258, 456 Electromagnetic force, 3-5, 9, 199, 206, 217-218, 236, 161-165, 168-169, 174, 240, 288, 296,
core of, 456 241, 317, 409, 474 371, 415, 446, 486
density, 5, 55 Electromagnetic radiation, 3-4, 12, 41, 237, 242-243, dark, 3, 248, 262-263, 266, 299-300, 312-315,

521
 321-323, 339, 366-367, 434, 450 evolution, 16, 42-43, 47, 128, 175-176, 299, 306, 395, 406, 409, 452, 487-488, 492, 494-495,
dark energy, 3, 299-300, 313-315, 321-323 398 500-501, 505-506
internal, 8-9, 147, 151, 177-179, 193, 204 biological, 1, 16, 42-43, 176, 395, 398, 513 external, 1, 4, 12, 76, 94, 99, 108, 115, 117, 212,
kinetic, 5, 7-8, 13-14, 109, 149-153, 155-156, chemical, 1, 175-176, 395 218
161-165, 173-175, 181, 193-194, 210, cosmic, 3, 299, 306 external forces, 1, 7, 76, 108, 117
246, 290, 295, 317, 386, 391, 433, 484 cultural, 395, 513 friction, 5, 76, 95-96, 99-100, 104-106, 114-117,
kinetic energy, 5, 7-8, 14, 109, 149-152, 155-156, evidence of, 395 162, 164
161-165, 181, 194, 246, 290, 295, 336, evolution of life on Earth, 395 gravitational, 5-9, 12, 14, 95, 97, 100-101, 103,
386, 391, 433, 484 exchange particle, 4, 6, 505 105-106, 113, 120-126, 128, 131, 133,
law of conservation of energy, 7, 149, 153, 161, excitation, 367 141-144, 161-162, 164-165, 175,
168, 174, 288, 446, 486 excited state, 4, 6, 370, 376, 462 200-202, 206, 212-213, 223-224, 288,
mass-energy equivalence, 3, 10, 290, 453, Excited states, 370, 376 300, 305, 313-314, 316-318, 322-323,
473-474, 500 exercise, 47, 81, 89-90, 165, 221, 376 370, 385-387, 464, 498-502
nuclear energy, 5, 11, 152, 154, 184, 246, 386, Expanding universe, 308, 313 gravitational force, 6, 12, 14, 95, 100-101, 103,
391, 405, 423, 427, 431, 450-458, 460, Expansion, 11, 56, 93, 131, 169-170, 189, 256, 300, 105-106, 113, 117, 121-122, 124-126,
463, 467, 473-475 307-308, 313-316, 318-319, 321-322, 352, 131, 141-144, 162, 200-202, 206,
of electromagnetic waves, 4, 241, 243-244 422, 424, 430-432 212-213, 224, 313, 316-317, 464,
of photon, 331, 338, 480 Experiment, 33-34, 47-48, 50, 52, 54, 59, 63, 67-68, 499-502
of photons, 332, 343, 362, 376 83, 96-97, 153, 158, 171, 205, 215, 232-238, in nature, 237, 316, 385, 399, 406, 479-480
potential, 151, 247, 432, 443, 457, 461 246, 254, 261, 263, 274-279, 300-304, 317, internal forces, 108
potential energy, 151 327-331, 333-341, 343-345, 354-355, magnetic, 4, 114-115, 133, 135, 199, 201, 203,
quantization of, 10, 206, 325, 434 358-362, 482-484, 489-491, 493-494, 500 208, 214-218, 223-224, 236-237, 286,
relativistic, 282, 286, 288, 386, 479, 481, 486-487 Explosions, 1, 3, 129-131, 315-316, 386, 416, 455 288, 290, 389
relativity and, 5, 11-12, 271, 288, 291, 293, exponential growth, 6, 168, 187, 189-190, 193, magnetic force, 7, 114, 203, 215-218, 223-224,
477-478, 480, 497 195-196, 316 236-237, 477, 493
rest, 4-7, 11-12, 65, 105, 130, 149, 151, 161-162, exposure time, 328-329, 335, 343 measuring, 32, 79, 96, 237, 394, 500
164-165, 209, 218, 223-224, 282, 286, External forces, 1, 7, 76, 81, 108, 110, 117 misconceptions about, 94, 290
289-291, 293, 300, 314, 323, 328, 330, extinction, 249, 251, 512 net, 7-8, 14, 99-102, 104-105, 107, 113-117, 123,
332, 367, 391, 401, 474-475, 486, atmospheric, 251 128, 142-143, 148, 201, 203-204, 206,
489-490, 500 extinctions, 256 285, 317, 394
rotational, 12, 153, 208 extraterrestrial life, 244 normal, 25, 40, 101, 105-106, 113-114, 117,
solar, 3, 8-9, 11-13, 66, 130, 135, 146, 153, 172, Eye, 6-8, 27, 31, 37, 45-46, 69, 72, 132, 235, 243-244, 125-126, 128, 131, 143, 286, 314,
176, 179, 181-182, 190, 196, 199, 250, 266, 456 318-319, 390, 394, 403, 405, 501-502
245-248, 258, 260, 263-264, 416-417, lens, 243 normal force, 101, 105-106, 113-114, 117
432-433, 435-438, 442-444, 456, 491 myopia, 31 nuclear force, 14, 290, 385, 389, 406, 450-452
sources of, 184, 241, 258, 262, 405, 411-412, 423 polarization, 215
stored, 149, 151, 156, 179, 181, 195, 427-428, 431, F support, 32, 131, 141
442 fact, 8-10, 16, 18, 29-30, 36, 41, 43, 45, 47-48, 58-59, total force, 96
thermal, 2, 12-13, 65, 148, 150-156, 161-162, 63, 69, 76, 80, 110, 125, 127, 136-137, types, 6-9, 141, 164, 175, 203, 316, 389, 398, 478,
164-165, 168-178, 184-186, 193-196, 152-153, 170-171, 189-190, 206, 211, 490
198, 210, 242-243, 246, 257, 265-266, 214-215, 233-234, 243, 253-254, 265, units of, 10, 161
288-289, 295-296, 381, 391, 401, 358-359, 362-364, 398, 401-403, 424, 434, work, 4, 6-10, 12, 98, 102, 106, 109, 113, 120, 126,
415-417, 421-422, 424, 432-433, 459-460, 471, 500-502 147-148, 161-162, 164-165, 237, 241,
435-438, 446-447, 452-454, 475, 486 Fahrenheit scale, 169, 194 288, 290, 317, 323, 369, 389, 395, 403,
transfer of, 480 Falling objects, 83-84, 90, 93 488-489, 500-501
transformation of, 7, 11, 147, 202, 415, 491 Faraday, Michael, 199, 217 Force pair, 103-104, 113, 115, 117
transitions, 151, 379 Fermi, Enrico, 458, 464, 488 Forces, 3-8, 76, 81, 87, 94-96, 98-111, 113-117,
uncertainty principle, 6, 11, 13, 306, 316, 348-349, Fever, 257, 398 120-124, 126, 128, 131-132, 137-139, 143,
353, 375-376, 378-380, 386, 486, 500 Feynman, Richard, 49, 54, 123, 175, 339, 366, 151-153, 175, 199-202, 206-208, 210,
units of, 10, 161, 289, 329 479-480 212-217, 221-222, 224, 240-241, 244, 270,
vacuum, 4, 7, 13, 147, 185, 218, 244, 314, Field lines, 213-214, 216 289-291, 305, 314, 316-319, 361, 384-387,
316-317, 333, 393, 486-487 Fields, 10-13, 62, 199, 212-214, 216-217, 223, 391-392, 434, 459-460, 462, 488-489, 496,
work, 6-10, 14, 109, 147-159, 161-165, 168, 236-237, 240-241, 266, 276, 288-291, 498-501, 509
170-171, 173, 176-178, 182-183, 304-305, 316, 328-329, 336, 348-350, 353, forests, 432
185-187, 194-196, 198, 208-209, 241, 357-358, 397, 432, 452, 477-504, 505-509, Forward direction, 91, 99, 175, 293
246-248, 296, 317, 323, 369, 405, 415, 512-513 fossil fuels, 3, 5, 146, 164, 181-182, 253, 255, 258,
420, 422, 443-444, 460-462, 473-474, gravitational, 5, 212-213, 221, 223, 240, 288, 411-417, 423-425, 431, 441, 443-444
489, 500-501 304-305, 316, 336, 452, 483, 486, 492, fossils, 394-395, 407
Energy levels, 4, 7, 10, 370-372, 378-381, 487 498-502 Fourier analysis, 349
Energy transfer, 14, 154, 362 Film, 234, 263, 331, 365, 379, 388 Frame of reference, 286
diagrams, 154 interference, 234, 263, 331 Free fall, 5, 83-84, 126
Energy transformations, 147, 155-156, 161-162, 164, Final velocity, 99, 109 acceleration, 5, 83-84
193, 210 First law of thermodynamics, 154, 168 acceleration of, 84
Engines, 12, 69-70, 77, 101, 106, 116, 136, 157, 163, Fission, 1-2, 5-7, 59, 244, 289, 419, 422-423, 427, weightlessness, 5, 126
168, 170-171, 177, 181-182, 193-194, 246, 429-431, 449-472, 473-475, 517 Freely falling objects, 84, 90
415, 438 Fission fragments, 427, 460 freezing, 169, 194, 198, 296, 319
Entropy, 1, 4, 6-7, 12, 168, 173-176, 193-194, 198 Floating, 68, 96, 127, 257 Frequency, 3, 5-6, 42, 208, 229-230, 234, 238-244,
environment, 14, 16-17, 64, 99-101, 104-106, fluorine, 2, 53, 69, 246, 515 256, 261-267, 311, 327-330, 343, 365-366,
158-159, 176, 188, 203, 206, 247-248, 255, Flux, 154, 411 371-372, 379-381, 439-440, 478, 487, 509
258, 264, 391, 405, 423-425, 427, 429-430, focus, 7, 17, 28, 33, 50, 60, 74, 83, 136, 235, 435-436 fundamental, 5-6, 371, 478, 487
436 Newtonian, 7, 136, 338 natural, 3, 5, 11, 243, 256, 264
epicycle, 26-28, 30-31 Force, 1-10, 12-14, 25, 32, 40, 61, 76, 79, 94-109, wave, 5, 11, 229-230, 234, 238-240, 242, 244,
Epicycles, 26-29, 34-35, 46-47 113-118, 120-128, 133, 135, 141-144, 261-265, 267, 345, 380
Equations, 84, 90, 237, 469 147-148, 161-162, 164-165, 199-206, 208, fresh water, 251, 394
equator, 47, 265, 306, 322-323 212-218, 228, 236-237, 285-288, 290, 293, Friction, 65, 74-76, 89, 91, 95-96, 99-100, 104-106,
equivalence principle, 4, 301-302, 321-322, 464 305, 313-314, 316-319, 321-323, 327, 110, 114-117, 155, 162, 164, 173, 178, 193
eras, 5 369-370, 383-404, 409, 450-452, 464, kinetic, 5, 155, 162, 164, 173, 193
Ethanol, 179, 194, 260, 264, 267, 416-417, 432 477-481, 487-490, 492-503 rolling, 75-76, 100, 105-106, 114, 116-117, 178
Ether, 4, 73, 241, 261, 278 acceleration and, 96, 109, 116-117, 300 Frictionless surface, 105, 110
Euclid, 199 and interactions, 478 Frisch, Otto, 459
Euclidean geometry, 309 and motion, 101, 147, 278, 290, 317 Front, 47, 57-58, 94, 96, 98-99, 106, 109, 127, 184,
European Southern Observatory, 20 combining, 1 204, 272-273, 284, 287, 293-294
eV, 3, 181, 484, 486 definition of, 107, 147, 398 fruit, 184
Evaporation, 155, 164, 178, 257, 431 electric, 1-7, 9-10, 12, 101, 161-162, 165, 199-206, Fuel, 5-6, 8-9, 11-14, 65-66, 69, 106, 114, 130-133,
Evaporative cooling, 185-186 208, 213-218, 221-224, 236-237, 286, 141, 153-154, 164, 172, 177-179, 181-183,
Events, 11, 19, 41-42, 48, 64, 175, 256-257, 290, 304, 385-386, 389-390, 450, 452, 487-488, 185, 193-194, 197, 252-254, 258, 260,
339-340, 353, 359, 364, 456-457, 486, 491, 492-495, 498, 500-501, 517 400-401, 415-417, 419-422, 424-425,
496-497, 499-500, 505 electric force, 2-3, 7, 101, 199-203, 205-206, 208, 427-432, 438-439, 442-443, 455, 468-471
time of, 175, 304 213-216, 218, 221-224, 385-386, 390, fuel cells, 179, 182, 427

522
full Moon, 30, 38, 45 321-323, 503 471
Fundamental forces, 5, 12, 14, 175, 202, 316, 319, Euclidean, 309 Half-lives, 392-394, 406, 409-410, 488
322, 385-387, 405, 473-474, 479, 488-489, of space, 314, 323 Hawking, Stephen, 303, 339, 364
492, 498, 500-501 Geosynchronous orbits, 142 health, 176, 257, 264, 391, 401, 405, 424-425
Fundamental particles, 4, 6, 8, 10, 237, 319, 489, Geothermal power plant, 194, 438, 446 Hearing, 263
493-494, 498, 501, 505-506 Giant planet, 142 heart, 43, 165, 212, 333, 352, 403, 408, 466, 471
Fuse, 307, 423, 451-454, 456, 468 giant star, 13, 133-134 Heat, 2-4, 12, 55, 65, 69, 129, 157, 168, 170-173,
Fusion, 5-6, 8-9, 59, 129-131, 244, 416, 422-423, 442, Giants, 61, 121 175-177, 182-186, 193-196, 198, 207, 246,
444, 449-472, 473-475, 513, 517 glaciers, 256 257, 296, 415, 421-422, 432, 438-439,
carbon, 9, 12-13, 416, 444, 456, 473, 475 Glass, 60, 68, 76, 169, 203, 251, 257, 267, 287, 338, 443-444, 446-447, 469, 471
helium, 130, 423, 453-456, 468, 474 364-365, 436-438 and temperature, 193
nuclear, 5-6, 8-9, 129-131, 244, 416, 422-423, 442, Glasses, 55, 60 calorie, 2, 4
444, 450-467, 469-471, 473-475, 517 global climate change, 258, 427 death, 175
proton, 451-452, 454, 460, 473-474 Global positioning system (GPS), 304 defined, 12
global warming, 6, 17, 42, 90, 159, 178, 181-182, 186, measuring, 193
G 190, 199, 253-258, 262, 264-265, 267, quantity, 12, 173, 194
g, 57, 184, 289, 368, 376-377, 410, 458, 460, 475, 509 411-413, 415-417, 421-425, 427, 431-432, quantity of, 12, 173, 194
Galaxies, 1, 4-5, 38-39, 47, 55, 59-60, 110, 132, 436-437, 440, 443-444 solar energy, 3, 176, 184, 196, 198, 246
134-135, 306, 308-309, 311-314, 318-319, glucose, 9, 12, 54, 65-66, 67, 69-70, 176, 376 thermal energy, 12, 65, 168, 170-173, 175-177,
321-323, 352, 365, 502 Gluon, 6, 317 184-186, 193-194, 196, 198, 246, 257,
active, 1, 308 Gluons, 6, 12, 477, 495-498, 506, 508-509 415, 421-422, 432, 438, 446-447
centers of, 1, 47, 134-135, 311, 502 Gold, 7, 50, 67, 69, 117, 308, 333, 359-360, 386, 456, work and, 415
colliding, 1, 55 496-497 Heat death, 175
defined, 1 GPS, 304 Heat engines, 12, 157, 168, 170-171, 177, 182,
evolution of, 1, 306 Grand unified theory, 6, 237, 496, 498 193-194, 196, 246, 415, 438, 443, 447
giant, 1, 38, 134-135, 312 Granite, 433 internal combustion engines, 177
irregular, 55 granules, 493 perfect, 171
life in, 483 Graph, 125-126, 162, 187-188, 190, 193, 196, refrigerators, 157, 246
masses of, 135, 314 258-260, 281, 286-287, 307, 339-340, 396, heavy elements, 452
normal, 5, 55, 134, 309, 318-319, 502 413, 418-419 Heisenberg uncertainty principle, 6
properties of, 319, 365 Gravitational attraction, 97, 122, 124-125, 498 Heisenberg, Werner, 137, 348-351, 353
radio, 4, 306, 365 Gravitational constant, 499 Helium, 1, 18, 52-54, 63-64, 67-69, 130, 154, 222-224,
receding, 306, 314, 323 Gravitational field, 6, 212-213, 223-224, 316, 483, 486, 307-308, 311, 344-345, 352, 366, 376,
spiral, 312 498-499 379-380, 389-390, 421, 453-456, 491
visible, 4, 38, 132, 134, 306, 311-312, 365 Gravitational force, 6, 12, 14, 95, 100-101, 103, discovery of, 63, 389
galaxy, 5, 37-39, 47, 60, 68, 79, 129-132, 134-135, 105-106, 113, 117, 121-122, 124-126, 131, in stars, 54, 455-456
141, 176, 244, 305, 308-309, 311-313, 141-144, 162, 200-202, 206, 212-213, 224, helium atom, 222, 344-345, 352
322-323, 456, 503 313, 316-317, 464, 499-502 helium fusion, 474
active, 308 weight and, 100 helium-burning star, 130
radio, 8, 244, 305 Gravitational forces, 6-8, 95, 100, 110, 120, 124, 128, hemoglobin, 53, 69-70
spiral, 305, 312 137-139, 151, 153, 202, 213, 318, 499-500 Hertz, 6, 229, 238-241, 243, 261, 265, 267, 506
Galilean relativity, 5, 272-274, 276-278, 293-294, 296 Gravitational lensing, 312 Hertz, Heinrich, 238-239, 241
defined, 293 Gravitational potential energy, 151 hertz (Hz), 6, 229
reference frames, 5 Graviton, 6, 499, 503, 505 Hewitt, Paul, 103
Galilei, Galileo, 61, 74 gravitons, 499, 503 High-energy physics, 52, 206, 282, 286, 290, 457, 497
force, 5, 61, 76, 94, 101, 121, 135, 224, 237 Gravity, 3-6, 13-14, 35-36, 47, 61, 75-79, 87, 94-95, History graph, 193
inertia, 72, 74-76, 87, 91, 93-94 98, 100-101, 104, 116-118, 120-126, 128, hominids, 396, 405-406
Galileo Galilei, 61, 74 131-133, 135, 138, 141-143, 149, 153, Homo erectus, 395, 407
Gamma, 4-6, 152, 242, 244-245, 261, 266, 288, 296, 199-202, 212-213, 216, 294, 299-305, 309, Homo sapiens, 395-396, 407, 428
345, 381, 389-391, 397-398, 400, 405-406, 313-314, 316-319, 385-386, 456, 464, horizon, 18, 24-25, 30, 248
487, 489-490 487-488, 497-499, 501-503 Hot spring, 406
gamma radiation, 244, 296, 345, 406 acceleration of, 1, 8, 89, 104, 116-117, 300, 305, hour, 7, 18, 60, 68-69, 79-82, 158-159, 161, 163, 177,
Gamma ray, 5, 242, 244, 266, 288, 381 314 188, 198, 208, 273, 395, 403, 407-408, 412,
Gamma rays, 4-6, 244-245, 261, 389-390, 397-398, and distance, 3, 5, 200 446-447
400, 405-406, 410 and speed, 386, 507 Hubble Space Telescope, 20, 38, 129, 131, 134, 306,
applications of, 261 center of, 79, 128, 135, 142, 305, 309, 313, 464 312
medical uses, 398 in general relativity, 304, 499 human behavior, 136, 254
Gamma-ray photon, 5, 390 on Jupiter, 142 Human body, 165, 244, 399-400
gaps, 52, 136, 369 particles and, 501 eye, 244
Gas, 3-6, 11-13, 53-56, 59, 65, 67-69, 78, 105-106, quantum, 3-6, 8, 13-14, 131, 133, 138, 199, 202, radiation and, 244
128-131, 134-135, 141, 146-147, 170, 270-271, 316, 318-319, 385-386, 391, humans, 8-9, 11, 19, 34, 39, 41-42, 60, 120, 135, 137,
172-174, 179, 181-182, 184, 186, 245-247, 479, 487-488, 492, 497-499, 501-503, 184, 227, 243-244, 256, 284, 361-362,
249, 251, 253-254, 257, 260, 267, 338, 505-507, 509 394-395, 407, 412-413, 432
364-367, 376, 379, 401, 412-417, 422, sensation of, 126 and global warming, 246, 432
424-427, 430-431, 434-435, 438-439, solar, 35, 47, 87, 124, 128, 131, 133, 135, 153, evolution of, 3, 299, 395
443-444, 464, 500 202, 303, 309, 456 hurricanes, 256
greenhouse, 6, 130, 251, 253-254, 257, 260, 267, strength of, 117, 499, 501 Huygens, Christian, 199
424, 438 theory of, 4-6, 13-14, 35, 78, 95, 98, 120-121, Hydrocarbon, 5, 65, 69, 178
interstellar, 129-130 123-126, 128, 133, 138, 141-143, 212, hydrocarbons, 70, 178
pressure in, 68 294, 299-300, 303-305, 477, 488, 492, hydroelectric power, 152, 190, 194, 198, 217, 263-264,
Gases, 6, 9, 52, 55-56, 64, 67-68, 133-134, 177-178, 497-499, 502 438, 447
185, 227, 246-247, 251-252, 255-256, zero, 3, 98, 101, 104, 116-118, 123, 125-126, 128, Hydrogen, 1, 5-7, 9, 51-54, 64-65, 67-70, 106,
261-263, 267, 360, 365-366, 379, 423, 438 138, 216, 317-318, 322, 464, 499 128-132, 178-179, 181-182, 202, 204,
density, 55 green light, 243, 265 223-224, 260, 307-309, 311, 322, 366-372,
expansion, 1, 56, 256 Greene, Brian, 306, 502 376-380, 385, 422-427, 447, 450-455,
greenhouse, 6, 251-252, 255-256, 262, 267, 438 greenhouse effect, 6, 130, 251-253, 255, 262 468-469, 473-474, 487, 491, 498
ideal, 178 runaway, 130 energy levels of, 7, 372, 378-380
pressure, 55-56, 68, 177, 185, 246, 425-426 Greenhouse gas, 6, 251, 253-254, 257, 260, 267, 424 energy-level diagram, 370-371
Gell-Mann, Murray, 493 greenhouse gases, 251-252, 256, 262, 438 in stars, 54, 455
General relativity, 7, 12, 123, 137-139, 270, 304-306, Greenland ice sheet, 257 isotopes, 11, 307, 406, 427, 454, 468
308-309, 315-316, 319, 322-323, 479, 492, ground state, 4, 370, 376, 380 spectrum of, 371, 380
497-499, 501-503, 517 GUT, 255 Hydrogen atom, 7, 67-69, 202, 204, 367-372, 376-378,
General theory of relativity, 4-6, 12, 278, 293, 299-300, Guth, Alan, 315, 317 422, 487, 498
303-304, 306, 312, 479, 498-499 GUTs, 432 mass, 7, 202, 204, 376, 487, 498
Generators, 172, 433 Hydrogen bomb, 5-6, 468, 474
genome, 395 H hydrogen fusion, 450
human, 395 Hadrons, 484 Hydrogen isotopes, 468
geology, 17, 42, 395 Hahn, Otto, 459 Hydrogen spectrum, 487
Geometry, 2, 24, 32, 235, 303, 309-310, 314, 319, Half-life, 384, 391-393, 397, 399, 404, 405-407, 410, Hypothesis, 12, 18, 22, 24-26, 29, 34-36, 41, 43, 45,

523
 47, 50-51, 54, 127, 215, 248, 300, 315-316, 357, 359
318-319, 395, 497, 499, 501-503, 505-506, K interference of, 262, 327
509 Kelvin, Lord, 137 laser light, 154
Hz, 5-6, 11, 229, 238-239, 241-244, 262, 265-267, Kepler, Johannes, 31-32 models of, 6, 8, 10, 67, 233
328, 331-333, 345-346, 372, 379, 381, 439 Kilogram, 7-8, 12, 14, 97, 101, 114, 126, 155, 183-184, nature of, 58, 93, 310, 315, 338
286-287, 289, 293, 386, 398 plants and, 65
I kilogram (kg), 7 power of, 4, 10, 17, 60, 159
Ice, 7, 50, 54-55, 89, 105-106, 116, 138, 174, 193-194, kilowatt, 4, 7, 57, 157, 159, 161, 163, 177, 189, prism, 120, 364-365
248, 254, 256-257, 317, 319, 394, 426 195-196, 412, 446 properties of, 13, 241, 262, 279, 319, 365, 435
density, 55 kilowatt-hour, 4, 7, 159, 161, 163, 412, 446 quanta, 4, 6-7, 10, 12-13, 329-331, 333, 336, 338,
melting, 138, 256, 281, 426 Kinetic energy, 5, 7-8, 14, 109, 149-152, 155-156, 345, 364, 483
ice ages, 257, 426 161-165, 181, 194, 246, 290, 295, 336, 386, radiation and, 129, 244-245, 315, 332-333, 479
ice sheets, 256 391, 433, 484 scattering, 110
Image, 20, 32, 38, 59, 299-300, 310 falling object, 155 sources of, 234, 241, 258, 262
immune system, 250 gas molecules, 5 speed of, 21, 89-90, 110, 133-135, 138-139, 143,
Inertia, 6-7, 11-12, 72, 74-81, 87, 89, 91, 93-94, 96-97, random kinetic energy, 366 153, 208, 237, 239, 265, 270, 273-274,
100, 106, 122, 124, 183-184, 286, 289-290, relativity of, 7, 295 276-278, 287, 296, 299, 499
336, 381 work and, 8, 149-150, 156 ultraviolet, 4-6, 9, 12-13, 152, 227, 242-247,
and acceleration, 72, 100 250-251, 263-264, 266-267, 366, 438
law of inertia, 7, 72, 74-77, 79-81, 87, 89, 91, visible, 6-8, 12-13, 27, 37-38, 48, 58, 69, 132-134,
L 238, 242-245, 251, 259, 266-267,
93-94, 106, 124, 183-184 lanthanides, 515
thermal, 6, 12, 74, 184, 289, 381 311-312, 332, 338, 343, 345-346, 353,
Large Hadron Collider, 7, 477, 484, 494, 497, 503 364-366, 427, 438
Inertial mass, 337, 349, 486 Laser, 154, 273, 276, 294, 302, 330
Infrared radiation, 6, 227, 243, 251-252, 255, 331, 366 visible light, 133, 157, 238, 243, 267, 343, 346, 438
operation, 154 white, 132, 203, 222, 235, 250, 257, 332, 334
inheritance, 352, 364 Laser beam, 276, 294
Inner core, 132 Light clock, 7, 13, 279-281, 293, 302
Laser beams, 302 light microscopes, 338
insects, 40, 115 Laser light, 154
Instantaneous speed, 1, 6, 12-13, 80-81 Light pipes, 20
Lasers, 154, 237, 326, 360 Light waves, 4, 58, 234-236, 239, 243, 261, 263, 313,
Insulators, 12, 207, 434 latitude, 249, 303, 306, 322
Intelligence, 271, 319, 470 326-327, 331
lava, 184 Lightbulbs, 157-158, 163, 208, 376, 411
intelligent design, 6, 40, 42-43 law, 1-9, 12-13, 17-18, 34, 38, 42-43, 50, 74-77,
Intensity, 314, 335, 337, 343-344, 348, 355, 369 Lightning, 154, 237-238, 366
79-82, 87, 89, 91, 93-94, 98, 100-109, 111, light-year, 7, 47, 129, 284
of waves, 344 113-117, 120-121, 123-124, 137-138,
Interaction, 102-103, 110, 115, 227, 336, 340, 353, Light-years, 129, 132, 154, 284, 294, 305, 309-310,
152-154, 164-165, 167-191, 193-198, 206, 359, 488
357-358, 479-480, 482, 488-489, 497, 500 211, 214, 216-218, 223-225, 236, 249,
interactions, 7, 111, 153, 244, 290-291, 335, 338, 362, Like charges, 3
285-286, 350 Limit, 35, 50, 278, 287, 316, 410, 411, 426
478, 480-481, 487-489, 491, 505 law of conservation of energy, 7, 149, 153, 161, 168,
Interference, 2-3, 14, 227, 230-235, 261-263, 307, Line spectra, 10, 365-366, 379
174, 288, 446, 486 Line spectrum, 7, 365
327-328, 331, 334-336, 338-339, 354-359, law of conservation of momentum, 2, 7, 111, 153
362, 376, 378 Liquid, 1-2, 4, 51, 53-56, 67, 151, 154, 179, 181, 185,
Law of gravity, 77, 94, 121, 123, 201-202 194, 246, 435-436, 459-460, 463-464, 481,
constructive, 14, 230-235, 262, 335, 359 Law of inertia, 7, 72, 74-77, 79-81, 87, 89, 91, 93-94,
constructive interference, 230-232, 262, 335, 359 484
106, 124, 183-184 Liquids, 55-56, 67, 106, 385
destructive, 3, 14, 230-235, 262 Law of thermodynamics, 1, 7-8, 12, 42, 147, 154,
destructive interference, 3, 230-232, 234-235, 262 boiling, 55
167-191, 193-198, 415 density, 55
of light, 227, 233-235, 263, 327-328, 331, 336 Laws of thermodynamics, 168, 271
of matter, 2-3, 14, 336, 362 Lithium ion, 180
second law of, 168 Load, 147, 165, 183, 196, 469
Interference patterns, 235, 354 Lead, 98, 154, 243, 255, 263, 275, 317, 339, 360, 364,
Internal combustion engines, 177 Logarithmic scale, 242
386, 460, 515 longitude, 303, 322-323
Internal energy, 151 isotopes, 389, 399, 462
Internal forces, 108 determining, 322
Length contraction, 7, 11, 285-287, 295 zero, 322
interstellar travel, 154 lens, 243
Iodine, 53, 69, 391-392, 399, 402, 406, 456, 515 Loop, 3-4, 10, 26, 33, 207-208, 217-218, 228, 251,
eye, 243 421, 434, 444, 447, 503
isotopes, 391-392, 399, 406 Lenses, 338
Ion, 6, 180, 203, 221-222, 224, 361, 483 low-mass black holes, 134
life, 5-6, 9, 16-18, 28, 33-36, 38, 42-43, 53, 56, 64-65, Luminous matter, 312, 314-315
Ionization, 397 67-69, 72, 74, 120-121, 130-131, 175-176,
Ionizing radiation, 6, 8, 11-14, 244, 397-398, 403, 405, lungs, 59, 165, 253, 399
182, 193, 204, 209, 244, 246-248, 252, 258,
408 271, 282-283, 308, 319, 331-332, 366,
Ions, 10, 203, 360, 439 391-393, 395-397, 399, 403-404, 405-410, M
Iridium, 515 439, 455, 458-459, 471 Machine, 135-136, 184, 326, 366, 398
Iron, 9, 114, 132-133, 141, 143, 215-217, 438, characteristics of, 53 machines, 40, 146, 184
454-456 extraterrestrial, 244 conservation of energy, 146
Isolated system, 43, 198 history of, 16, 18, 34, 175, 190, 483 macroscopic level, 54, 151, 202, 326
Isotope, 4-7, 11, 253, 387, 389-390, 392-394, 398-400, on Earth, 16, 28, 43, 64, 67, 120-121, 131, 176, Macroscopic systems, 364
404, 405-407, 422, 451-452, 454, 457, 246-247, 283, 319, 408 macroscopic world, 72, 339, 351, 488
459-461, 464, 468, 473, 475 origin of, 2, 38, 175, 395, 407, 455 Magnetic field, 4, 7, 208, 216-218, 223-224, 236-237,
Isotopes, 11, 307, 387, 389-394, 399-401, 405-407, Lifetime, 4, 190, 249, 257, 263-264, 282-284, 294, 417 288, 291, 477, 481
409-410, 427-428, 454, 457-459, 461-462, lift, 102, 113-114, 147-150, 158-159, 161-164, 170, Magnetic field lines, 216
464, 468, 472, 474 295, 297, 474 Magnetic fields, 214, 216-217, 221, 223, 236-237,
of carbon, 387, 389, 400, 410 Light, 3-10, 12-13, 17, 20-21, 27-28, 30, 33, 37-38, 43, 290, 389, 481
of helium, 307, 389-390, 474 47-48, 56, 58-60, 62, 65-66, 67, 74, 76, 110, energy in, 290
radioactive, 6, 11, 389-394, 399-401, 405-407, 120-121, 129, 132-135, 138-139, 152-154, Magnetic force, 7, 114, 203, 215-218, 223-224,
409-410, 427-428, 457-459, 461-462, 157, 159, 194, 203-204, 208-209, 227-260, 236-237, 477, 493
468, 472, 474 261-267, 273-281, 284-285, 287-288, direction of, 114, 223-224
293-294, 302-305, 307, 309-313, 321-323, magnitude of, 114
J 325-336, 338-339, 343-346, 353-354, magnetic forces, 4, 7, 115, 152, 199, 214-217, 237,
Jefferson, Thomas, 136 364-366, 427, 431, 433-435, 438-439, 455, 286, 509
Jet, 106, 113, 115-117, 128, 138, 163, 184, 273-274, 488, 499 Magnetic poles, 7, 10, 215-216
277, 282-283, 403, 407-408, 421-423, 445, bending of, 302-304, 322-323 Magnetism, 199, 214-216, 236-237, 239, 270, 488,
456 color, 163, 231, 234, 243, 250, 328, 343-345, 365 492, 507
joule, 7-8, 10, 14, 148, 152, 155, 157, 161, 210, 297, double-slit interference, 234, 325, 328, 335, 339 electric currents, 237
398, 446, 478 electromagnetic spectrum, 4, 239, 241-242, gravity and, 488
joule (J), 7, 14, 148 244-245, 266, 313, 365 magnetic force, 215-216, 236-237
jumping, 238, 371 emission of, 4 magnetic poles, 215-216
Junction, 434-435 energy of, 1, 4-7, 13, 153-154, 164, 262, 288, 316, solar, 199
Jupiter, 23, 27, 29, 35, 46, 76, 237-239 329-332, 345-346, 353, 431, 433, 438 Magnets, 102, 110, 203, 214-217, 221, 223-224,
mass of, 124 frequencies of, 241, 345, 365 274-275, 288
moons of, 76 interference, 3, 227, 230-235, 261-263, 307, bar magnets, 215-216, 221, 288
327-328, 331, 334-336, 338-339, 354, compass needle, 216
permanent magnets, 215, 223-224

524
Magnification, 498-499 Mercury, 23, 27, 29, 35, 46-48, 67, 138, 169, 376, 379, Moon, the, 18, 102
magnitude, 60, 107-108, 110, 113-114, 123, 141, 143, 438 mass of, 102
206 composition of, 376 Motion, 3-8, 10-13, 24-26, 28-30, 32-36, 40, 45-47, 49,
absolute, 110 expansion, 169 51, 54, 56, 58, 61, 63, 68, 72-77, 79-82, 91,
malaria, 257 orbit of, 47, 138 94-96, 98-99, 101-105, 107-110, 113-117,
mammals, 395-396, 407 radius of, 47 120-123, 127, 137-138, 147-149, 151-153,
Manhattan Project, 7, 458, 462-466 Metals, 52, 181, 207, 434, 515 156, 183, 193-194, 208-209, 215-217,
Mars, 23-27, 29-30, 32, 35, 46-48, 57, 85, 91, 124, meteorites, 129, 131, 394, 408 223-224, 230, 274-276, 284-286, 290-291,
143, 240, 251 meteoroid, 89 317, 360, 367, 381, 433, 439
atmosphere of, 251 Meteoroids, 87 acceleration, 5-6, 8, 72, 81-82, 87, 89, 91, 94-96,
features of, 24 methane, 5, 65, 67-70, 179, 182, 256-257 98-99, 101-105, 107, 109, 113-117, 127,
mass of, 124, 143 methanol, 179, 416-417, 444 224, 275, 285-286, 293-294, 497
moons of, 124 metric, 7-8, 13, 49, 56-58, 68, 101, 169, 196, 288, 499 apparent, 28, 300
radius of, 47 metric system, 13, 56, 58 Aristotle, 24, 47, 72-76, 87, 91, 120-121
surface of, 85, 143, 251 Microscope, 4, 51, 58-59, 67, 316, 338, 343-344 atomic, 5, 10-11, 49, 51, 54, 56, 58, 61, 63, 290,
water, 91, 143, 251 Microscopes, 58-59, 338, 384 341, 381, 457
Mass, 5-14, 94, 97-98, 100-102, 104, 107-109, electron, 58-59, 338 Brownian, 1, 51, 54, 58, 63, 68
113-117, 124-126, 128, 131-135, 141-144, electron microscope, 58-59, 338 describing, 305
164, 184, 200-204, 213, 221, 254, 265, 271, light, 58-59, 338 free fall, 5
284-291, 295-297, 305, 307, 311, 314-318, scanning electron, 58 Galileo, 30, 34-35, 61, 72, 74-76, 82, 87, 91, 101,
330, 332-333, 336-337, 345-346, 365, scanning tunneling, 59 121, 224, 237, 274, 276, 279-280
379-381, 387-391, 418, 424, 431, 452-455, scanning tunneling microscope, 59 kilogram, 7-8, 12, 101, 114, 183, 286, 293
464-466, 469-470, 473-475, 486-491, microscopic level, 54-56, 95, 164, 175, 221, 325-326, natural, 3-5, 8, 10-13, 24, 29, 36, 40, 73, 87, 91,
495-501, 508-509 492, 496, 498, 502 94, 110, 120-121, 175, 243, 305
and acceleration, 94, 100 Microwave oven, 158, 163, 242, 245, 266, 381 net force, 8, 99, 101-102, 104-105, 107, 113-117,
and weight, 7, 102, 114 Microwaves, 242-243, 245, 263, 265, 309, 321 123, 142-143, 148, 285
atomic, 1-2, 7, 10-11, 133, 202, 204, 221, 289-290, Milky Way, 5, 8, 37-39, 60, 68, 79, 135, 176, 299, proper, 28, 63, 243
316, 351, 376, 380-381, 387-391, 431, 308-309, 312, 503 relativity of, 7, 11, 13, 278-279, 284-285, 293-294
460, 474-475, 501 Milky Way Galaxy, 37-39, 60, 68, 79, 135, 176, retrograde, 12, 24-26, 29-30, 34, 45-46
center of, 9, 128, 134-135, 142, 305, 311, 464, 466, 308-309, 312 rotational, 12, 153, 208
469-470 center of, 37-39, 79, 135, 308-309, 312, 322 speed, 5-6, 8, 10-13, 46, 74, 76, 79-82, 87, 89, 91,
conservation of, 2, 7, 108-109, 113, 117, 128, diameter of, 38, 312 94-95, 98-99, 105, 107, 109-110,
149-150, 164, 288-289 formation of, 130 113-117, 138, 147-149, 153, 183, 208,
force and, 6, 94, 221, 224, 278, 317, 488 history of, 322 237-238, 274-276, 278-279, 293-294, 381
gravitational, 5-9, 14, 97, 100-101, 113, 124-126, mass, 135 types of, 4, 6, 152, 171, 175, 193, 439
128, 131, 133-134, 141-144, 149-150, mass of, 135 uniform, 13, 24, 26, 28, 33, 45-46
164, 200-202, 213, 288, 300, 305, 314, measuring, 79 velocity, 7-8, 72, 79-82, 87, 89, 91, 96, 99, 102,
316-318, 336, 391, 431, 498-501 size of, 60 105, 107-110, 113-115, 120-121, 183,
inertial, 135, 337, 349, 486 structure of, 309 274-275, 306
mass-energy equivalence, 3, 10, 290, 453, mining, 424-425, 447 vibrational, 262, 367
473-474, 500 minute, 24, 31, 33, 60, 79-80, 164, 188, 251, 281, 294, violent, 8, 73-75, 87, 109, 120
measuring, 101, 224, 284, 315, 351, 365, 380, 500 344-345, 397, 400 wave, 3-5, 11-13, 58, 228, 230, 236-238, 261-262,
units of, 10, 289 Mirror, 20, 233, 263, 279, 299, 359 275-276, 341, 345, 355, 360, 375
mass increase, 286-288, 295, 486 Mirrors, 55, 279, 359, 435-436 Motors, 208, 246
Mass number, 7, 9, 387, 390-391, 405, 454-455 model, 6, 8, 10-13, 32, 34, 49, 63, 137, 202-205, 212, Mount Everest, 78, 88, 125
mass-energy, 3, 10, 290, 453, 473-474, 477, 500 221-222, 255-256, 271, 290, 366-367, 369, Multiplication, 57, 60
Mass-energy equivalence, 3, 10, 290, 453, 473-474, 376, 460, 493, 496-498, 501, 503 Muon, 8, 13, 282, 482, 487, 489-492, 505-506, 508
500 Models, 6, 8, 10-11, 49, 63, 233, 254-256 Muons, 282, 487
Mathematics, 17, 24, 125 atomic model, 10-11 muscles, 164, 322
Matter, 1-8, 10-14, 37, 41, 43, 50-52, 54-56, 58-59, Modes, 178, 183-184, 197, 384, 501 Musical tones, 24
61-64, 67, 74, 95, 97, 125, 128, 131, Molecular structure, 2, 53, 152 mutation, 6, 8, 398-399
133-134, 136-137, 139, 150, 153-154, 174, Molecule, 8-9, 51, 53-54, 60, 65, 67-70, 181, 198, 242, Myopia, 31
212, 218, 223-224, 241, 244, 270, 275-276, 247-248, 251, 266-267, 338, 344-345, 376,
286-290, 299-300, 306-308, 310-315, 317, 483, 495, 498 N
321-323, 332-333, 335-341, 352-353, kinetic energy, 8, 181 Nanometer (nm), 57, 59
355-358, 360-362, 367-370, 375-378, 432, molecules, 1-2, 5-6, 12-13, 49, 51, 53-56, 59-60, NASA, 20, 56, 127, 306-307, 312-313
457, 464, 482-490, 496-498, 501-502 64-65, 67-69, 74, 77, 110, 151-152, 165, National Academy of Sciences, 43, 398-399
antimatter, 7, 289, 474, 477, 482-485, 487, 496, 173-176, 178, 181, 198, 228, 242-244, natural motion, 8, 73, 91, 120-121
505-506 246-248, 251, 253, 264-267, 333, 338, 390, natural philosophy, 93-94
antimatter and, 483 399, 420 Nature of science, 18
atomic mass, 474 polar, 248 Navigation, 57
dark matter, 3, 299-300, 311-315, 321-323, 485 Moment, 17, 41-42, 54, 132, 153, 283, 353 nebula, 47, 129, 131, 133-134
luminous matter, 312, 314-315 Momentum, 7-8, 94, 107-111, 113-118, 128, 138, 153, Negative charges, 216
nature of, 11, 50, 58, 63, 224, 310, 315, 338, 206, 211, 338, 397, 466 Neptune, 35, 462
361-362, 370, 501 angular, 128, 153 discovery of, 462
normal, 5, 54-55, 113, 125, 128, 131, 134, 139, angular momentum, 128, 153 Net charges, 201
143, 244, 270, 501-502 collisions, 107, 109 net force, 8, 99-102, 104-105, 107, 113-117, 123,
organic, 1-2, 432 components, 8 142-143, 148, 285
properties of, 13, 241, 340, 386, 392 conservation laws, 111 neutrino, 21, 154, 311-312, 390, 482, 488-492,
superconducting, 485 conservation of, 2, 7, 108-111, 113, 117-118, 128, 505-506, 508
Matter waves, 4, 59, 333, 336, 338, 341, 356-357, 153, 206, 211 electron, 154, 390, 482, 488-492, 506, 508
368, 377 conservation of angular momentum, 128 mu, 490, 508
Measurement, 7-9, 13, 34, 54, 56, 97-98, 193, 201, in two dimensions, 110 solar, 8, 491
278, 284, 294-295, 302, 304-305, 353-354, increasing, 13 tau, 8, 489-492, 505-506, 508
362-363, 369, 371, 375-376, 394, 453 law of conservation of momentum, 2, 7, 111, 153 Neutrino detector, 21, 491
uncertainties, 13, 375 linear, 7 Neutrino telescope, 21
units, 13, 56, 98 total, 2, 7-8, 107-108, 110-111, 113-115, 153, 397 neutrino telescopes, 490
Mechanics, 271, 291, 325-326, 333, 339, 353, 363, total momentum, 7-8, 107-108, 110-111, 113, 115, Neutrinos, 3-4, 8, 21, 154, 311, 314-315, 477,
478, 492, 517 153 488-491, 496-497, 508
Medium, 1, 4-5, 8, 12-14, 32, 229-230, 235-237, month, 163, 165, 188, 198, 313, 406 Neutron, 54, 132-134, 138-139, 141, 143, 203-204,
261-263, 278, 333, 344-345, 471 Moon, 17-19, 22-25, 27-31, 34, 38-39, 41, 45-47, 68, 244, 290, 305, 326, 344-345, 390-391,
for electromagnetic waves, 8, 237 73, 76-78, 84, 87-90, 92, 100-102, 104, 117, 419-420, 422, 451-452, 456-463, 468,
of waves, 229, 235, 344 120-123, 131, 212-213, 236-239, 305-306, 473-475, 493-494, 497
megawatt (MW), 157 362, 499 fusion of, 9, 452, 473-474
Meitner, Lise, 459 eclipses, 19 neutron star, 132-134, 139, 141, 143, 456
Melting, 8, 52, 138, 151, 212, 256, 281, 426 full Moon, 30, 38, 45 neutron stars, 54, 133, 138, 244, 305, 326
of ice, 256 new Moon, 30, 45 discovery of, 326
Melting point, 212 orbit of, 47, 488 Neutrons, 6-9, 50, 63, 152, 203-204, 242, 266,
Merbold, Ulf, 248 phases of, 30-31 289-290, 307, 311, 317-318, 335-336, 341,

525
 381, 385, 387, 389-391, 405, 420, 422, Optic nerve, 243 Photovoltaic cells, 246, 432, 434-435, 438, 442, 446
451-452, 456-462, 465-466, 473-475, 496, Orbital period, 141-142 physical change, 360
508 orbiter, 57 Physical laws, 62, 169, 503
mass of, 133, 203, 289-290, 311, 317-318, 336, orbits, 10, 12, 28-29, 33, 35-36, 45, 47, 63, 123-124, physical properties, 62, 319
389, 452, 458, 460-461, 466, 474 135, 142-143, 202-203, 205, 238-239, 289, Physical theories, 291
new Moon, 30, 45 294, 311 physics, 5, 7-11, 15-18, 28-29, 38, 42-44, 45, 52, 54,
Newton, Isaac, 8, 29, 35-36, 38, 47, 61, 93-94, circular, 10, 28, 33, 45, 47, 135, 311 61-63, 71-75, 77, 79-80, 93-94, 97-98, 103,
121-122, 137, 199, 237 elliptical, 33, 35-36 110, 131, 135-139, 152-153, 202-204, 206,
and gravity, 8, 35, 61 geosynchronous, 142 212, 215, 217, 223, 254, 275-276, 278,
law of inertia, 93-94 Order-of-magnitude estimates, 60 285-288, 290-291, 293-295, 307, 314-316,
newton (N), 8 Ordinary matter, 12, 282, 289-290, 307, 311-312, 314, 330-332, 335-341, 356-358, 360-364,
Newtonian mechanics, 271, 325, 363 321, 455, 496-498, 501, 508 366-367, 403, 433-434, 457-459, 477-484,
Nickel, 454, 456, 473 ore, 388, 474 486-487, 490-493, 497-499, 503
night sky, 18-19, 31, 37, 40, 45 Oscillation, 326 Pitch, 311, 462
Nitrogen, 1, 53, 64, 69, 178, 186, 247, 251-253, Oscillations, 238, 326 Planck, Max, 271, 329-330, 500
392-393, 425-426 amplitude of, 326 Planck time, 10, 500
liquid, 1, 53 frequency of, 238 Plane, 90, 115, 117, 128, 274-275, 282, 294, 456
molecular, 53, 64 Oxygen, 1, 9, 51-54, 60, 64-66, 67-70, 106, 181-182, planet, 10, 16, 24-28, 30, 32-34, 36-38, 40, 45-48, 60,
Noise, 244 186, 198, 247, 251-252, 322, 426, 456 90-91, 95, 124, 133, 138, 142-143, 184, 199,
normal, 25, 30, 40, 54-55, 70, 101, 105-106, 113-114, molecular, 53, 64, 68, 424 209, 251-253, 417, 438-439, 462, 498, 503
117, 125-126, 128-129, 131, 139, 143, 184, oxygen gas, 53, 67 terrestrial, 251
240, 246, 248, 251-252, 263-265, 270-271, ozone, 2, 9, 13, 54, 64, 199, 246-250, 256, 258, planetary model, 10, 63, 202-205, 221-222, 366, 369,
280, 318-319, 390, 405, 483, 486 261-265, 267 376
Normal force, 101, 105-106, 113-114, 117 ozone hole, 248, 250 Planetary system, 284, 294
Normal matter, 483 Ozone layer, 246, 250 Planets, 1-3, 7, 10, 12, 19, 22, 25-29, 31-38, 41-42,
North Pole, 288, 323 45-48, 63, 68, 73, 76, 93, 123-125, 127,
North Star, 18-19, 22, 474 P 129-131, 135, 137, 251, 311, 318, 364, 487
nova, 499 Partial melting, 256 data on, 31
n-type semiconductors, 434 Particle accelerators, 391, 477, 484, 497 Earth, 1-3, 10, 12, 19, 22, 25-29, 31, 33-38, 41-42,
Nuclear decay, 154 Particle, charged, 203 45-48, 68, 73, 76, 93, 123-125, 127,
Nuclear energy, 5, 11, 152, 154, 184, 246, 386, 391, Particle detector, 356, 378 129-131, 251, 311, 318, 487, 491
405, 423, 427, 431, 450-458, 460, 463, 467, Particle model, 12, 501 Jupiter, 27, 29, 35, 46, 76
473-475 Particle physics, 316, 477 Mars, 25-27, 29, 32, 35, 46-48, 124, 143, 251
Nuclear fission, 289, 451, 457, 459-461, 473 Particle-antiparticle pair, 486, 491, 505 Mercury, 27, 29, 35, 46-48
Nuclear force, 14, 290, 385, 389, 406, 450-452 Particles, 3-4, 6-13, 21, 49-52, 58, 61, 63, 130, Neptune, 35
Nuclear fusion, 9, 12, 129-131, 416, 423, 451, 133-134, 136, 152-153, 175, 186, 199, Saturn, 27, 29, 35, 46
473-475 202-207, 212, 215-216, 224, 233-237, Uranus, 35
Nuclear medicine, 400 240-241, 243, 248, 263, 289-291, 311-312, Venus, 27, 29, 31, 35, 46-48, 130, 143, 251
Nuclear physics, 204, 307, 326, 387, 479, 491 317, 319, 330, 332-336, 340-341, 343-345, plankton, 256
nuclear reactions, 387 349-351, 357-364, 375-376, 384-385, 387, plants, 2, 17, 40, 47-48, 65-66, 158-159, 165,
radiation, 307, 326, 479 390-393, 457-458, 477-494, 496-501, 503, 171-172, 176, 184, 186, 189, 217, 250, 260,
radioactivity, 204, 384, 387 505-509 419, 421, 425-428, 432-435, 438-440, 444,
Nuclear power, 5, 8-9, 11, 13, 159, 194-195, 258, system of, 8, 153, 289 447, 470-471
263-264, 267, 289, 295, 326, 399-403, 408, parts per million (ppm), 248 plasma, 54, 317
416, 419, 421-425, 427-428, 430-431, Path, 16, 18, 26, 51, 78, 286, 301-305, 309, 312, platelets, 398
441-442, 444-447, 470-471, 488 463-464, 480-482, 498 plates, 221, 389, 482
Nuclear power plants, 263-264, 427-428, 430, 447, Pauli, Wolfgang, 154, 488 Plato, 24-25, 34, 36, 199
470-471 Peak power, 159 Pluto, 462
Nuclear reactions, 130, 132, 152, 175, 244, 289, Pendulum, 279 discovery of, 462
386-387, 390-391, 405, 450, 453, 459 physical, 279 Plutonium, 5, 9, 11, 392, 406, 416, 422-423, 428,
Nuclear reactors, 386, 391, 399, 416, 463, 466 Period, 38, 41, 50, 59, 130, 141-142, 159, 257, 430-431, 444, 446-447, 462-468, 470-471,
nuclei, 129, 131, 133, 152, 203-206, 222-224, 242, 315-316, 367, 392, 413, 426, 428 473-474, 515
244, 266, 289, 307-308, 317-318, 322, 333, of wave, 59 p-n junction, 434-435
370, 381, 385-390, 392, 394, 399, 405, orbital, 141-142 Polar, 248, 426
408-409, 450-461, 468 wave, 2, 59 polar ice, 426
atomic, 133, 204-205, 222, 242, 244, 266, 289, Periodic table, 9, 52, 66, 67-69, 198, 386-387, 399, Polarization, 215
370, 381, 385-390, 405, 457, 459-460 406, 409, 456, 459, 462, 464, 473 pollen, 1, 51, 68-69
Nucleus, 5-12, 58-60, 63, 154, 202-205, 221, 223-224, groups, 52 Pope, Alexander, 93, 270
242, 244, 266, 289, 366, 369-370, 381, periods, 26, 159, 483 population, 17, 146, 161, 188, 190-191, 197-198, 247,
383-404, 405-410, 422, 450-451, 453-465, permafrost, 257 254, 258, 297, 395, 400-403, 413-414, 467,
473-475, 484, 493-495 Permanent magnets, 215, 223-224 474-475
alpha decay, 1, 5, 389-392, 405-406, 488 petroleum, 105, 177, 194, 413 growth of, 413
atomic, 5, 10-11, 58, 60, 63, 202, 204-205, 221, Phase, 30-31, 132, 151 Position, 2-3, 27, 32, 34, 37, 41, 48, 55, 59, 79, 83-84,
242, 244, 266, 289, 370, 381, 385-391, phases, 30-31, 46-47, 132 87, 133, 149, 162, 206, 212, 234-235, 304,
401, 405-406, 457, 459-460, 462-463, of Venus, 30-31 349-351, 362-363, 365, 368-369, 375-377,
474-475, 484, 493 Phosphor, 5, 438 379-380, 394, 480-481
beta decay, 5, 154, 385, 390-391, 405-406, 410, Photodisintegration, 456 Positive charges, 213-214, 216
473, 488 Photoelectric effect, 9, 434 Positive ion, 483
cell, 5, 9, 60, 242, 266, 381, 395, 397-398, 407 Photography, 243, 328 Positron, 1, 4, 10, 336, 389, 481-484, 487, 493, 498,
daughter, 3, 388, 390-391, 399, 408, 457 Photomultiplier, 21 506-507
discovery of, 63, 389, 457, 462, 493-494 Photon, 4-5, 9-10, 330-333, 338, 343-345, 354, Positrons, 1, 4, 481-483, 487-488
parent, 9, 352 359-360, 364, 370-372, 376, 378-381, 480, Potential, 151, 188, 247, 443, 457, 461
properties of, 205, 386, 391-392, 493 483-484, 486, 488-492, 495, 498, 501, Potential energy, 151
505-509 elastic, 151
O energy of, 4-5, 330-332, 345, 364, 370-371, 478, gravitational, 151
observable universe, 36-38, 135, 138, 143, 305, 313, 486, 509 gravitational potential energy, 151
322 gamma-ray, 4-5, 390, 507 pounds, 56, 98, 100-101, 114, 117, 143, 158, 400
galaxies in, 38 Photons, 4-5, 9-10, 13, 330-332, 334-336, 338, 341, Power, 2-5, 8-13, 17, 26, 40, 42, 49, 54, 57, 67-68, 83,
observatories, 132, 134, 484 343-346, 358-360, 362, 367, 370, 372, 376, 107, 152, 157-159, 163-165, 168, 171-172,
ocean currents, 257 379, 391, 433, 438, 480-484, 487, 489-490, 177, 180-181, 184-186, 189-190, 193-198,
ocean water, 171 495-497, 503, 505-507 202-203, 208, 217-218, 242, 246, 258, 260,
oceans, 130, 251, 256, 264 absorption of, 480 263-267, 289, 381, 399-403, 408, 419-436,
seawater, 256 emission of, 4 438-440, 444-447, 450-451, 453, 467,
waves, 251, 256, 264 energy of, 4-5, 13, 330-332, 345-346, 367, 370, 470-471
Octave, 24 391, 433, 438, 478, 482, 487, 509 average power, 163
ohms, 12, 211-212, 224 gamma-ray photon, 5 machines, 40, 184
Open universe, 5, 9, 309-310 wavelength of, 334, 344-345 of light, 4, 13, 60, 67, 159, 203, 208, 263, 265-266,
Oppenheimer, Robert, 133, 464-465, 468 Photosynthesis, 2, 9, 64, 66, 67, 156, 345 333, 434, 446
opposition, 36, 258 photovoltaic cell, 9 of sound, 263

526
 of waves, 333 atomic structure, 348 427, 458-459, 472
production of, 2, 10, 434 lasers, 326, 360 Radioactivity, 2, 9, 13, 204, 383-404, 405-410,
solar, 8-9, 11-13, 47, 57, 60, 172, 181, 184, 190, photoelectric effect, 434 428-430, 432, 470-471, 517
194, 196, 246, 258, 260, 263-264, 267, quantum state, 4, 11, 370-372, 376, 482 alpha decay, 389-392, 405-406
427, 432-433, 435-436, 438, 446-447 Quark, 3, 11-13, 317, 485, 493-496, 501, 505-506, 508 alpha particle, 204, 389-392, 406
unit of, 4, 8, 147, 157, 161, 424, 467 Quark-antiquark pair, 495 beta decay, 385, 390-391, 405-406, 410
units of, 10, 161, 289 Quarks, 10-12, 50, 206, 290, 317-318, 385, 477, 488, beta particle, 390
Power generation, 217-218, 260, 264, 415, 419, 434, 493-497, 503, 505-506, 508 gamma rays, 389-390, 397-398, 400, 405-406, 410
441 types of, 8, 508 half-life, 384, 391-393, 397, 399, 404, 405-407,
Power lines, 186 Quarter Moon, 30 410, 471
powers of 10, 10, 49, 56-58, 68, 317 quasars, 135 Radios, 240
precipitation, 256 Radium, 389-390, 399, 457, 515
Pressure, 55-56, 63, 68-69, 115, 129, 151, 162, R Radius, 23, 47, 78, 88, 125-126, 128, 133, 135,
164-165, 179, 184-185, 217, 246, 399-400, RA, 515 142-143, 265, 296, 318, 500
416, 419-421, 425-426, 432, 445 radar, 11, 90, 242-243, 245, 265-266, 304, 381 of Earth, 47, 125, 128, 142, 265
atmospheric, 55, 69, 246, 399, 425, 432 Radiant, 5, 11, 152, 161, 164-165, 176, 210, 242, of Mars, 47
atmospheric pressure, 246 245-246, 251-252, 317, 330, 391, 447 of Mercury, 47
blood, 165, 399 radiant energy, 5, 11, 152, 176, 242, 245-246, of stars, 135, 318
in liquids, 56 251-252, 330, 391 Radon, 8, 11, 392, 399-404, 405-406, 408, 410, 515
measuring, 365 emission of, 11 decay, 11, 392, 399-400, 405-406, 410
radiation, 5, 129, 164, 246, 365, 399-400, 425 types of, 152 Rainbow, 365, 380
thermal, 5, 56, 151, 162, 164-165, 177, 184-185, Radiation, 3-14, 41, 43, 60, 128-131, 164, 176, 227, Rainbows, 365
246, 416, 419, 432 237, 242-247, 250-252, 259, 263-267, 276, Random kinetic energy, 366
units, 56 287-288, 290, 304, 306-307, 309-311, 313, Randomness, 326, 331, 339, 480
primates, 395-396, 407 315, 318, 321-322, 325-327, 329-333, ranges, 244, 256, 350-351
Princeton University, 259 336-337, 360, 364-366, 370-371, 376, reacting, 264, 419, 422, 464, 473, 475
Principle of equivalence, 5 379-381, 388-390, 397-404, 405-410, Reaction, 5, 64-66, 67, 69, 247, 266, 384, 386, 391,
Principle of relativity, 12, 271, 274-276, 278, 293-294, 424-425, 427-428, 433-435, 447, 471-472, 401, 419-422, 451-454, 457-458, 460-461,
300 478-479 463, 465, 468-469, 471, 473-475
Prism, 120, 364-365, 379 alpha, 1, 5-6, 263, 389-390, 397-400, 405-406, recharging, 181
Probability, 10-11, 13, 340, 344, 355, 368-369, 447, 460 Recoil, 115, 499
376-377, 392, 398-399, 410, 430, 478-480, as particles, 330, 332, 478 red blood cells, 398-399
483, 499 background, 3, 60, 176, 227, 243-244, 304, red light, 263, 288, 331, 343
probe, 57, 59, 107, 259, 306, 502 306-307, 309-310, 315, 318, 321-322, redshift, 11, 313
producers, 417 428 gravitational, 313
products, 6, 184, 250, 432, 474 beta, 1, 5-6, 14, 389-390, 397-398, 400, 405-406, reduction, 2, 12, 35, 125, 152, 158, 181, 257-259, 439
Projection, 255 410, 447 reference frames, 5, 12, 283, 323
Projectors, 200 cosmic background, 60, 315, 318, 322 accelerating, 323
Promethium, 515 defined, 12-13, 293 time in, 283
Proportionality, 9, 84, 96, 98, 100, 201-202, 211 doses of, 401 Reflection, 233, 265, 299
proportionality constant, 9, 202 electromagnetic, 3-6, 8-12, 41, 227, 237, 242-246, Refrigerators, 157, 246, 250
proportions, 307, 403 250, 263, 265-267, 276, 278, 287-288, Relative motion, 11, 13, 272, 275, 293
Propulsion, 12, 106, 154 290, 311, 313, 315, 360, 364-366, 381, velocity, 13, 275
Protein, 53 386, 400, 409-410, 433, 478-479 Relativity, 4-7, 10-13, 72, 93, 123, 137-139, 144, 241,
Proton, 1, 10, 69-70, 202-204, 206, 218, 290-291, 315, environmental, 176, 246-247, 250-251, 428, 433 269-291, 293-297, 299-300, 303-306,
344-345, 351-352, 367, 369, 376, 380, 385, gamma, 4-6, 242, 244-245, 261, 266, 288, 296, 308-309, 312, 315-316, 319, 321-323,
390-391, 460, 473-474, 480, 482-487, 345, 381, 389-390, 397-398, 400, 330-331, 345, 477-480, 482, 492, 497-499,
489-490, 493-499, 501, 508-509 405-406, 487 501-503
mass of, 10, 203, 290, 345, 452, 460, 474, 487, gravitational, 5-9, 14, 41, 128, 131, 164, 288, 304, energy and, 199, 271, 288, 296, 306, 315, 478
490, 497, 501 306, 313, 322, 336, 370, 447 events, 1, 11, 290, 304, 497, 499
Proton fusion, 452 half-life, 397, 399, 404, 405-407, 410, 471 general, 4-7, 12-13, 93, 123, 137-139, 270-271,
Protons, 1-2, 6-9, 50, 63, 152, 201, 203-206, 209, 224, Hawking, 364 278, 299-300, 303-306, 308-309, 312,
238, 242, 266, 289-290, 307, 311, 317-318, in universe, 318 315-316, 319, 321-323, 330-331, 479,
335-336, 338, 351-352, 381, 387, 389-392, ionizing, 6, 8, 11-14, 244, 261, 397-398, 403, 408 492, 497-499, 501-503
405, 450-452, 458, 482-484, 493-494, 496, laws of, 10, 276, 287, 345, 364 general theory of, 4-6, 12, 278, 293, 299-300,
498, 500-501 light and, 9, 263, 287, 329, 343, 427, 433-434 303-304, 306, 312, 479, 498-499
charge of, 201, 203, 206, 224, 493 medical uses of, 398 length contraction, 7, 11, 285-287, 295
mass of, 14, 133, 203, 289-290, 311, 317-318, 336, nonthermal, 12 measurements, 11, 272, 284, 286, 289, 295,
345, 389, 452, 458, 500-501 particle, 1, 6-14, 60, 242-243, 266, 290, 315, 304-305
pseudoscience, 10, 18, 39-43, 45, 47 326-327, 329-330, 332-333, 336-337, of motion, 1, 6, 11, 13, 72, 123, 137-138, 144,
Ptolemy, 10, 13, 26-31, 34-36, 38, 45-48 345, 360, 381, 386, 389-390, 406 284-286, 293-294, 345
p-type semiconductors, 434 solar, 3, 8-9, 11-13, 60, 128-131, 176, 245-247, of time, 4, 7, 11, 13, 137, 139, 271, 278-282, 284,
pupil, 243, 345 250, 261, 263-264, 267, 296, 309, 364, 293-294, 315
pure substance, 2, 52, 64 427, 433, 435 special, 1, 7, 11-12, 137-139, 144, 269-291,
Pythagoras, 22-25, 28, 36 terrestrial, 251 293-297, 299-300, 304, 316, 319,
thermal, 9, 12-13, 164, 176, 242-243, 246, 322-323, 345, 387, 477-480, 492
Q 265-266, 330, 381, 401, 421, 424, 433, speed of light, 138-139, 276, 278, 299, 499
Quality, 136, 170, 173, 176, 193-194, 415, 439, 464 435 theory of, 4-7, 10-13, 72, 123, 137-138, 241,
Quanta, 10-13, 329-331, 333, 336, 338, 345, 349-350, types of, 4, 6, 8-9, 307, 326, 389, 398, 405, 435 269-291, 293-297, 299-300, 303-306,
361-362, 364, 397, 478-480, 482-483, ultraviolet, 4-6, 9, 12-13, 227, 242-247, 250-251, 312, 325, 345, 479-480, 492, 497-499,
489-490, 494-497, 500, 505, 508 263-264, 266-267, 366, 381 502
Quantization, 10, 138, 206, 325, 329, 331-332, 434, units of, 10, 329 time dilation, 11, 13, 281-282, 284-287, 294-297
479 Radiation dose, 398, 404 reptiles, 395, 407
atomic, 10, 331 Radiation exposure, 400, 404 research, 43, 181, 204, 312, 335, 395, 400, 434, 471,
of charge, 10, 206 radiation zone, 472 479
of energy, 10, 206, 329, 331-332, 434 Radio radiation, 365 reservoirs, 426
Quantized, 6-7, 9-11, 13, 138, 206, 316, 325, 327-329, Radio signals, 21, 133 Resistance, 1, 5-6, 28, 74-77, 79, 83-84, 89-91, 95-96,
331-332, 336, 338, 345, 348, 353, 362, 370, Radio telescope, 21, 133 100-101, 105-107, 114-117, 123, 141-142,
433, 477-478, 480, 497, 501 Radio telescopes, 243 147, 150, 152, 155-156, 161-165, 173, 178,
Quantum computers, 352, 360-361 Radio waves, 11, 133, 239, 241-245, 261, 263, 181, 183, 207-208, 286, 467, 497
Quantum gravity, 318, 477, 498-499, 501, 503, 265-266 equivalent, 12, 155, 163, 183
505-506 radioactive dating, 11, 42-43, 384, 391, 393-394, 396, internal, 6, 9, 107, 147, 178
Quantum jumps, 370-372, 376, 378-379, 381 405-406, 408, 517 Resistive force, 1, 12, 113-114
Quantum mechanics, 291, 325-326, 333, 339, 353, radioactive decay, 9-11, 59, 154, 339, 352, 364, 384, Resolution, 20, 201, 360, 491, 493
478 388-391, 393-394, 405-406, 409-410, 457, angular, 493
Quantum physics, 7-8, 10-11, 93, 137-138, 202, 241, 473, 475 telescope, 20
270, 315, 325-326, 330-331, 335-341, radioactive isotope, 6, 11, 392-394, 398-400, 406, 409, Resonance, 394
343-345, 348-349, 357-358, 360-364, 367, 422, 457, 461, 468 respiration, 12, 64-66, 67, 412
370, 387, 390-391, 433-434, 503 Radioactive isotopes, 11, 389-392, 399-401, 405-407, Rest mass, 296, 332, 475, 486

527
Retina, 243 solar eclipse, 303 types of, 307
retrograde motion, 12, 24-26, 29-30, 34, 45-46 Solar energy, 3, 9, 11, 66, 146, 176, 190, 196, 198, spectroscope, 12, 364-365, 371, 376, 379
rock, 5, 13, 18, 23, 56, 69, 73-74, 89-91, 96-98, 107, 199, 245-246, 248, 417, 427, 435 Spectroscopy, 365
114-117, 161-164, 173, 193-194, 198, 210, global warming, 190, 199, 246, 417, 427 spectrum, 11-12, 239, 241-245, 250, 261, 263, 266,
289, 362, 370, 433, 437 seasons, 196, 245 306-307, 313, 365-367, 371, 379-381, 386,
formation, 452 solar masses, 8, 134 483, 487, 506
sedimentary, 394 solar neutrino, 491 emission, 4, 11, 371
types, 161, 164 problem, 491 Speed, 1-3, 8-14, 21, 46, 74, 76, 78-85, 87, 89-92,
Rocket propulsion, 12, 106 Solar neutrino problem, 491 94-95, 97-99, 105, 107, 109-110, 113-117,
rocks, 18, 87, 106-107, 124, 131, 240, 251, 394, 400, Solar neutrinos, 491 133-135, 138-139, 147-149, 153, 177-180,
406, 433 solar power, 260, 264, 267, 427 183, 208, 229, 237-239, 265-266, 272-279,
sedimentary, 394 solar radiation, 9, 12, 176, 245, 250, 261, 263, 296, 281-282, 285-287, 293-296, 318, 321-322,
rods, 2, 6, 9, 11, 27, 419-421, 425, 427-431, 444-445, 433, 435 386-387, 464, 481, 484, 498-499
447 Solar system, 35, 47, 57-58, 60, 87, 96, 106, 124, and air resistance, 76, 89
Ropes, 235 128-131, 133, 135, 153, 222, 309, 364, and gravity, 8, 299
Rotation, 19, 24, 29-30, 105, 279 394-395, 407-408, 456 average, 6, 13, 80, 87, 89-92, 139, 163, 173, 177,
of Earth, 30 age of, 309, 394, 407-408 287, 316, 386, 419, 498
rate of, 24 asteroids, 106 average speed, 6, 80, 87, 89-92, 287, 386, 498
Rotational motion, 12, 153 astronomical unit, 47 escape, 1, 9, 133-134, 183
rubber, 105, 151, 162, 164, 207, 236, 288-289, 291, black holes, 133, 135, 153, 309 in units, 12-13
451, 501 comets, 130 instantaneous, 1-2, 6, 9, 11-13, 80-81
Rubin, Vera, 311 cosmology, 135, 309 instantaneous speed, 1, 6, 12-13, 80-81
Runaway greenhouse effect, 130 formation of, 130, 456 kinetic energy and, 149
Rutherford, Ernest, 202, 204, 364 meteoroids, 87 molecular, 138, 175, 194
Milky Way, 60, 135, 309 of light, 21, 90, 110, 133-135, 138-139, 143, 153,
S Moon, 47, 87, 128, 131 208, 237, 239, 265-266, 273, 276,
S waves, 239-240, 243 planets, 12, 35, 47, 124, 129-131, 135, 153, 364, 278-279, 299, 315, 322, 330, 499
Sagan, Carl, 34, 40, 283, 512 456 of sound, 115
Salam, Abdus, 488-489 properties of, 13 terminal, 164, 208
satellites, 12, 40, 77, 122-125, 134, 138, 142, 265, sun, 35, 47, 60, 106, 124, 128-131, 133, 135, 364, units of, 10, 161
299, 304, 306 456 wave, 1-3, 8, 11-14, 229, 237-239, 265, 275-276,
communications, 142, 265 Solids, 55-56, 67, 136, 204, 385 278, 344-345
orbits, 12, 123-124, 142 molecules, 55-56, 67, 385 Speed of light, 21, 90, 110, 133-135, 138-139, 143,
Saturn, 23, 27, 29, 35, 46 solstices, 19 153, 208, 237, 239, 265, 276, 299, 499
scanning tunneling microscope (STM), 59 solutions, 17, 258, 432 in a vacuum, 239
science, 12, 15-44, 45-48, 49, 51, 59, 61-64, 72, 75, solvent, 249, 263 relativity, 138-139, 276, 278, 299, 499
93-94, 132, 134-137, 150, 152-153, 217, Sound, 24, 91, 115, 156, 236-237, 239-240, 244, 267, Speed of sound, 115
248-251, 278, 290, 307-308, 316, 339, 363, 361 speedometer, 79-80, 83
394-396, 457, 464, 490-491, 496, 501, 503, interference, 263 sperm, 398
512-513 nature of, 91, 310, 361 Spherical surface, 303
and technology, 17-18, 43, 248, 457, 512 origin of, 361 spin, 29, 91, 275, 394
astronomy, 17-18, 28, 30, 33, 37-39, 42, 45, speed of, 91, 115, 237, 239 Spiral galaxy, 312
134-135, 395 Sound waves, 236, 240, 263, 310 Spontaneous emission, 1
chemistry, 2, 17, 40, 42, 64, 249, 388, 395, 405, Sources of energy, 258, 411-412, 423 Springs, 101, 279
470 Space, 3-7, 9-14, 16, 18, 20-21, 24-25, 28, 38, 40, 53, stability, 130
hypothesis, 1-2, 12, 18, 22, 24-26, 29, 34-36, 41, 55, 57, 60-61, 63, 69, 76-78, 87-89, 95-98, Stable isotopes, 391, 409
43, 45, 47, 248, 316, 395, 482, 501 106-107, 126-134, 137-139, 176, 199, 206, Stadium, 229
limitations of, 137 212-214, 216-217, 244, 250-252, 259, Standard model, 6, 10, 12, 212, 290, 477, 496-498,
mathematics, 17, 24 270-271, 284-285, 287-288, 290-291, 503, 506
nature of, 18, 49, 63, 501 300-316, 319, 330, 336, 357, 402, 426, 435, standing wave, 12
physics, 15-18, 28-29, 38, 42-44, 45, 61-63, 72, 75, 455-456, 477-478, 484-488, 497-503 Stanford Linear Accelerator, 315, 494
93-94, 135-137, 150, 152-153, 217, 237, at, 3-4, 6-7, 9-14, 16, 18, 21, 24-25, 28, 38, 40, 60, star, 12-14, 18-19, 22, 27, 29, 35, 37, 39, 46-47,
240, 271, 278, 290, 307, 316, 339, 363, 63, 76-78, 87-89, 95, 97-98, 101, 123-124, 128-134, 141, 143, 245, 283-284,
395, 503, 512-513 106-107, 126-134, 137-138, 176, 199, 294, 302, 305, 309, 394, 455-456, 468, 498
pseudoscience, 18, 39-43, 45, 47 212-214, 216-217, 234, 241-242, 244, star formation, 130
roots of, 512 250-251, 259, 270-271, 284-285, Starlight, 302
Scientific method, 18, 43, 517 290-291, 300-302, 304-316, 319, 330, stars, 5, 12-14, 16-25, 27-30, 32, 34, 37-39, 45-48, 49,
stars and, 18 357, 402, 426, 455-456, 477-478, 54, 59-60, 68-69, 73, 100, 120, 124-125,
seasons, 196, 245 484-488, 497-503 127-135, 175, 236, 243-244, 284, 302, 305,
Seawater, 256 black holes, 1, 3, 133-134, 138, 153, 305, 309, 311, 307-309, 311, 315, 365, 394, 450-452,
second, 4-8, 12, 17, 24, 37-38, 40-43, 55, 76, 78-79, 314, 485-486, 502 455-456, 502
81-85, 87, 90-92, 94-95, 99-100, 102-106, conservation of momentum, 7, 113, 128, 153, 206 constellations, 19
108-110, 114, 117, 132-134, 136, 138, cosmology, 3, 300-316, 319, 321-323, 488 neutron, 54, 132-134, 138, 141, 244, 305, 326,
147-149, 157-159, 167-191, 193-198, curvature of, 122, 303, 305, 314, 498 385, 451-452, 456
208-211, 213, 215, 232-233, 235-236, geometry of, 5, 9, 310, 314, 319, 321-322, 503 neutron star, 132-134, 141, 456
238-240, 245, 247-248, 256, 265-266, 276, telescopes, 20-21, 237, 306, 313, 490 supernova, 13, 130, 132-134, 315, 456, 473
287-288, 307, 312, 318-319, 331-333, weightlessness, 5, 14, 126, 305, 322 white dwarfs, 14, 131-132, 456
357-360, 394-395, 398, 404, 435, 437, 439, Space program, 25, 88 Steam, 3-5, 7, 12, 54, 67, 69, 106, 146, 157, 170-172,
459-460, 469, 502, 508 Space Shuttle, 106 177, 184-186, 193-196, 217-218, 419-422,
Second law of thermodynamics, 1, 7-8, 12, 42, 147, Space Station, 322 426, 429, 432, 435-436, 438
167-191, 193-198, 415 Space travel, 106, 284 Steel, 105, 183, 401, 421
seeds, 38, 352, 494-495 spacetime, 5-6, 12, 299-300, 304-305, 315, 492, 498, Stellar evolution, 128
Seeing, 40, 58, 243, 304 500, 502-503 theory of, 128
Semiconductors, 434-435, 442 curved, 304-305 stomach, 38
p-n junction, 434-435 geometry of, 5, 492, 503 Stonehenge, 19
senses, 38, 276 mass and, 6 Straight-line motion, 121
shale, 417 time and, 5, 12, 500 acceleration, 121
shell, 22, 95, 117, 130, 204 Sparks, 366 velocity, 121
Shock wave, 456 Special relativity, 1, 7, 11, 137-139, 144, 270-271, 278, Strain, 188
Short circuit, 12, 212, 221 291, 316, 319, 323, 326, 387, 477-480, 492 Strangeness, 271, 276
silicon, 59, 66, 69, 326, 434, 515 Special theory of relativity, 5, 12, 269-291, 293-297, strata, 394
Silver, 52, 314, 359-360, 432, 515 299-300, 322, 325, 345, 479-480 stratosphere, 9, 12, 247-250, 264
Slip rings, 218 species, 1, 17, 38-40, 249, 251, 256, 395, 428, 462, streams, 1, 203, 390, 426
smell, 51, 54, 67 512 Stress, 439, 477
Smog, 247 Spectra, 10, 307, 364-366, 371, 376, 379-380 stresses, 93
snow, 168, 256, 307 continuous, 10, 365-366, 379-380 string theory, 501, 503
Sodium, 52, 205, 265, 345, 366, 376, 515 continuous spectra, 366, 380 Strings, 12, 94, 501-502, 509
Sodium atom, 345 electromagnetic, 10, 364-366 strong force, 3, 6, 12-13, 202, 316-318, 385-386, 392,
soil, 7, 47, 50, 400 line spectra, 10, 365-366, 379 405, 409, 488, 492-497, 500, 505-506,

528
 508-509 Hubble Space Telescope, 20, 306 tissue, 200, 204-205, 215-216, 221-222, 224, 353
quarks and, 494, 496-497, 506, 508 resolution of, 20 titanium, 515
strong nuclear force, 385, 389, 406, 450-451 Temperature, 2-4, 56, 74, 106, 151, 154-155, 169, Total angular momentum, 153
Subatomic particle, 7, 277, 282, 286, 481 171-177, 179, 181, 184-185, 193, 198, 246, Total electric charge, 482
Subatomic particles, 21, 133-134, 153, 203, 221, 263, 250-251, 254-259, 306-310, 316, 365-366, Total energy, 150, 153, 164, 173-174, 182, 289, 329,
282, 319, 450, 493 376, 419, 422, 429, 438, 453-455, 468-469 336, 349, 418-419, 424, 438, 441-442, 447,
Sulfur, 51, 53, 68-69, 186, 424-426, 431, 437, 439, absolute, 74, 171, 306 486
446, 515 atmospheric, 6, 246, 250-251, 257-258, 264 Total force, 96
sulfur dioxide, 51, 68, 431, 439 body, 6, 106, 193, 255, 267, 308, 474 Total mass, 142, 184, 288-290, 295-296, 311, 321
sulfuric acid, 67 energy and, 151, 154, 169, 193, 296, 306, 454-455 Total momentum, 7-8, 107-108, 110-111, 113, 115, 153
Sun, 1-2, 9-10, 18-19, 21-25, 27-37, 39, 41, 43, 45-48, mass and, 2, 6, 296 touch, 54, 103, 169, 206
60, 63, 65-66, 73, 77-79, 84, 90, 100, 120, of stars, 365 Tracers, 399
123-125, 128-135, 138, 141, 143-144, 176, on Mars, 251 Transformers, 157
179, 238-239, 244-248, 250-252, 259, Tension, 340 Transistors, 326
265-266, 278-279, 284, 295-297, 302-305, terminal speed, 164 transit, 184, 418
364-366, 417, 431, 433, 446-447, 455-456, Terminals, 206-207, 209 Transitions, 151, 379
466, 474-475, 490-491 Theory, 4-14, 18, 22, 26-36, 38-39, 43, 45-48, 50-51, Transmission, 178, 186, 195, 237, 239, 243, 330, 415,
active, 1, 304, 435 54, 61, 63-64, 67, 69, 72-75, 123-128, 433, 441
atmosphere of, 251 137-138, 212, 235-239, 241, 247-248, 258, Transparency, 200, 204-205, 213, 215-216, 221-222,
composition of, 247, 259 269-291, 293-297, 299-300, 302-307, 224, 236
constellations and, 19 329-332, 336, 338-339, 353-354, 357, transportation, 13, 171-172, 176-178, 182-184,
diameter of, 305 363-364, 387, 477-482, 486-490, 492, 494, 193-194, 196-198, 264, 412, 415, 427,
evolution of, 1, 43, 128 496-503 431-432, 441, 443, 446-447
features of, 24, 41 Theory of relativity, 4-6, 12-13, 269-291, 293-297, tree of life, 395
interior of, 244 299-300, 303-304, 306, 312, 325, 345, troughs, 231-232, 262
mass of, 10, 12, 100, 124, 132-135, 143, 164, 265, 479-480, 498-499 Tungsten, 59, 207, 334, 515
295-296, 305, 311, 318, 452-453, 466, thermal energy, 2, 12-13, 65, 148, 150-156, 161-162, Turbulence, 128, 498
474, 490 168-178, 184-186, 198, 210, 246, 257, gas, 128
neutrinos of, 491 265-266, 288-289, 295-296, 391, 401, 415, Tycho Brahe, 31, 33, 395
nuclear fusion in, 130 417, 421-422, 424, 432-433, 435-438,
orbit of, 47, 138 446-447, 452-454, 475, 486 U
oscillations, 238 absolute zero, 171 UFOs, 13, 40
path of, 2, 144, 302-303 heat, 12, 65, 168, 170-173, 175-177, 184-186, Ultraviolet radiation, 5, 9, 13, 227, 243, 246-247, 250,
radius of, 47, 78, 265, 318 193-194, 196, 198, 246, 257, 415, 264, 267, 366
regions of, 129, 244 421-422, 432, 438, 446-447 Uncertainty, 6, 10-11, 13, 139, 254-256, 305-306, 316,
rotation of, 24, 30 microscopic, 13, 151-155, 161-162, 169, 171, 325, 331, 339-340, 343-344, 348-353, 357,
spectrum of, 244, 365 174-175, 198, 202, 391, 435, 486 359-363, 369, 378-380, 385-386, 390, 486,
structure of, 9, 152 of gases, 174 498, 500
temperature of, 2, 176, 250-251, 259, 296, 366 temperature, 2, 13, 151, 154-155, 169, 171-177, Uncertainty principle, 6, 11, 139, 306, 316, 348-349,
visible surface of, 259 184-185, 193, 198, 246, 257, 296, 419, 351-353, 359, 375-376, 378-380, 386, 486,
weight of, 14, 100, 133, 143, 297, 474-475 422, 438, 453-454 498, 500
Sunlight, 9, 12, 40, 152, 161-162, 172, 176, 227, 245, Thermal expansion, 256 Uniform circular motion, 13, 28, 33, 45
247-248, 257, 296, 436-437, 447 water, 256 Uniform motion, 28
superclusters, 318 Thermodynamics, 1, 7-8, 12-13, 42, 147, 154, Units, 10, 12-13, 49, 56-58, 82, 84, 98, 100, 157, 202,
superconductors, 54, 154, 326 167-191, 193-198, 415 251, 288-289, 307, 329, 438, 483, 499
supernatural, 42-43 energy resources, 172-173, 195, 415 astronomical, 12, 98, 100
supernova, 1, 13, 130, 132-134, 294, 313, 315, 456, entropy, 1, 7, 12, 168, 173-176, 193-194, 198 of charge, 10, 202
473-474 first law of, 154, 168 of radiation, 4, 10, 307, 329, 483
white dwarf, 456 heat engines, 7, 12, 168, 170-171, 177, 182, Universal constant, 329
Supernova explosion, 13, 130, 132-134, 313 193-194, 196, 415 universe, 1-6, 8-9, 11, 16, 22-25, 27-29, 31-34, 36-39,
Supernovae, 13, 452, 456 internal combustion engines, 177 43, 46-47, 53-54, 58-62, 66, 74, 76, 93-94,
Superposition, 349 laws of, 168, 173, 193, 271, 481 110-111, 119-140, 141-144, 147, 154,
Supersymmetry, 240, 503 second law of, 1, 7-8, 12, 42, 147, 167-191, 175-176, 181, 199, 240-241, 243-244,
surface area, 196 193-198, 415 275-276, 278-280, 290-291, 321-323, 331,
surface temperature, 176, 251, 254-255 Thermometers, 56, 254 347-373, 375-381, 384-386, 391, 394, 427,
surface waves, 231-232, 262 Fahrenheit, 56 454-456, 477-481, 485-487, 496-497, 500,
Symmetry, 37, 55, 153, 237, 317, 332-333, 336, 480, thermonuclear fusion, 468-469 502-503
503 Thomson, J.J., 203 acceleration of, 1, 8, 127, 300, 305, 314, 323
System, 7-8, 10, 22, 26, 28, 32, 35, 38, 43, 47, 56-58, Thorium, 391, 423, 515 age of, 53, 299, 306, 309, 394
87, 96, 98, 101, 106-111, 117-118, 128-131, Thrust, 37, 39, 101-102, 114, 116, 163 big bang, 43, 59, 175, 244, 300, 306-311, 313-314,
133, 135-137, 149-154, 161-162, 171, thyroid gland, 398 316-319, 321-323, 352, 452, 455-456,
173-175, 182, 194, 246, 250-251, 288-291, tide, 61 481, 483, 486-487, 491, 496-497
304-306, 309, 361-362, 394-395, 407-408, Tides, 41, 93 birth of, 326
427, 437, 452-453, 482-483 Time, 3-7, 9-14, 16, 18, 22, 25-26, 30-31, 33-34, 38, black holes, 1, 3, 54, 133-135, 138, 305, 309, 311,
Systems, 10-11, 43, 68, 138, 150, 155, 171-173, 42, 45-47, 54, 59-61, 69, 72-76, 79-85, 87, 314, 485-486, 502
175-176, 296, 360, 364, 385, 417, 438, 456, 89-92, 97, 103, 107, 109-111, 116-117, closed, 2-5, 54, 121, 309-310, 319, 326, 355
471, 482-483 120-123, 127, 135, 137-139, 141-142, composition of, 307, 376, 394
energy of, 173, 364, 438, 456, 482 147-149, 156-158, 163-164, 174-175, 184, critical, 5, 427, 513
isolated, 6, 43, 438 187-190, 196-198, 212, 236-240, 246, 248, expansion of, 1, 4, 11, 300, 307-308, 313-314, 316,
ordered, 482 253-254, 264-267, 270-272, 278-287, 318, 321-322, 352
293-297, 304-309, 312-313, 315-319, fate of, 168, 175
T 338-340, 353-354, 392-394, 403-404, flat, 5, 9, 23-24, 33, 47, 74, 303-304, 308-310, 319,
Technetium, 515 422-423, 426-429, 439, 446-447, 455, 467, 321-323
technology, 17-18, 41-43, 97, 105, 161, 182, 184, 194, 486, 488, 492, 494-495, 497, 502-503 galaxies, 1, 4-5, 38-39, 47, 59-60, 110, 132,
237, 243, 248-249, 259-260, 263, 267, 425, beginning of, 33, 47, 82 134-135, 306, 308-309, 311-314,
430-434, 457, 468 dilation, 11, 13, 281-282, 284-287, 294-297 318-319, 321-323, 352, 365, 483, 502
telescope, 19-21, 30, 35, 37-38, 76, 129, 131, gravity and, 5-6, 13, 76, 121, 299-300, 488 geocentric, 37
133-134, 263, 306, 311-312, 316, 365 in different reference frames, 283 geometry of, 2, 5, 9, 310, 314, 319, 321-322, 503
Hale, 311 measurement of, 9, 284, 295, 302 night sky, 31, 37
high-energy, 266, 312 of events, 353 open, 5, 76, 309-310, 319, 355, 361, 513
infrared, 263, 266 Planck, 9-12, 271, 329, 332, 343, 500 quasars, 135
neutrino, 21, 311-312 relativity and, 5, 11-12, 72, 271, 278, 293, 480, 497 radiation in, 243
Newtonian, 38, 131 relativity of, 7, 11, 13, 271, 278-279, 281-282, relativity and, 5, 11, 93, 144, 276, 278, 291,
optical, 134 284-285, 293-295 477-478, 497, 513
radio, 21, 133, 263, 266, 306, 365 uncertainty principle, 6, 11, 13, 139, 306, 316, 351, stars, 5, 8, 16, 22-25, 27-29, 32, 34, 37-39, 46-47,
resolution, 20 353, 486, 500 54, 59-60, 124-125, 127-135, 141, 175,
size of, 131 units of, 10, 329 243-244, 302, 305, 307-309, 311, 315,
ultraviolet, 263, 266 Time delay, 237, 265 365, 385, 394, 455-456, 502
Telescopes, 20-21, 27, 29, 45, 237, 243, 306, 384, 490 Time dilation, 11, 13, 281-282, 284-287, 294-297 Unlike charges, 3

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up quark, 12 drinking, 403, 408 and mass, 7, 100, 128, 289
Uranium, 5-7, 9, 13, 289, 296, 385, 388-390, 392, forms, 1-2, 8-9, 12, 53, 55, 64, 151-152, 155-156, in an elevator, 126, 300
396-397, 406, 416, 419-423, 430-431, 163-164, 184, 207, 264, 287, 380, 432, true, 52, 56, 62, 67, 115, 150
442-444, 446-447, 456, 459-462, 464-472, 435 Weightlessness, 5, 14, 126, 305, 322
473-475, 515 fresh, 251, 394 Weinberg, Steven, 212, 291, 326, 363, 477-478, 482,
isotopes, 6, 389-390, 392, 406, 459, 461-462, 464, heavy, 1, 9, 91, 104, 181, 184, 256, 322, 459 488-489, 500
468, 472 in chemical reactions, 2, 64 Wheeler, John, 486, 498-500
uranium dating, 397 life and, 406, 459, 471 white blood cells, 398
Uranium isotopes, 461-462 ocean, 171, 194-195, 198, 251, 256-257, 426 white dwarf, 14, 54, 131, 456
Uranus, 35, 462 on Earth, 1-2, 41, 43, 52, 54-55, 60, 64, 67, 73, 91, helium, 54, 456
discovery of, 462 120, 176, 181, 251, 427, 432 white dwarfs, 14, 131-132, 456
on Mars, 251 Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), 306
V thermal expansion, 256 wind power, 260
Vacuum, 55, 67, 74, 147, 185, 216, 218, 239, 314, wastewater treatment, 411 winds, 146, 156
316-317, 333, 393, 486-487 waves of, 230, 235 trade, 146
perfect, 55, 67, 147 water vapor, 2, 6, 13, 64-65, 251-253, 255-257, 424, Wires, 201, 203, 207-209, 221-223, 434
vacuum energy, 7, 487 481 WMAP, 306
vapor, 13, 54, 64-65, 251-253, 255-257, 265, 366, watershed, 32, 415 Wood, 50, 141, 152, 179, 190, 207, 396, 416-417,
376, 424, 438 Watt, 10, 57, 157, 161, 164, 201, 297, 412, 446 432, 438, 443-444, 447
variation, 239 Watt, James, 157 Work, 6-10, 28, 45, 51, 75, 98, 102, 109, 120, 126,
Vector, 110 watt (W), 157 147-159, 161-165, 170-171, 173, 176-178,
Vector addition, 110 watts, 57, 157-158, 163, 177, 196, 245-246, 446, 453 182-183, 185-188, 194-196, 208-209, 237,
Vectors, 8, 110, 257 Wave function, 7, 336 239, 241, 246-248, 296, 317, 369, 403, 422,
area, 257 Wave packets, 350, 357-359, 375 443-444, 459-462, 473-474, 488-489, 498,
force, 8 uncertainty and, 357 500-501
unit, 8 Wavelength, 11, 14, 58-60, 67, 222, 229-230, 235, and kinetic energy, 150
velocity, 8, 110 239, 242, 244-245, 263-267, 313, 333-334, electric circuits, 209
Vega, 284 343-346, 349, 365, 371, 379, 381 heat and, 2
Velocity, 7-8, 13-14, 69, 72, 79-83, 87, 89-91, 96, 99, of electrons, 14, 333-334, 344 kinetic energy and, 149, 156
102, 105-110, 113-115, 117, 120-121, 183, of radio waves, 261 relativity and, 12, 93, 276, 288
212, 273-275, 306, 333-334, 349-353, rest, 11, 334, 343, 349 units of, 10, 161, 289
362-363, 375-376, 379-380 Wavelengths, 13, 59, 235, 241-245, 261, 263,
acceleration and, 96, 109, 117 265-267, 338, 349-350, 364, 366, 372, 379, X
and acceleration, 72, 82 381 x-axis, 107-109, 348, 350, 353, 367, 375
average, 13, 69, 80, 87, 89-91, 351 of electromagnetic waves, 241, 243-244 X-ray radiation, 244
escape, 1, 183 of sound waves, 263
in two dimensions, 110 Waves, 4-5, 11, 58-59, 133, 227-260, 261-267, 276,
278, 288, 310, 326-327, 330-336, 338, 341, Y
instantaneous, 1, 13, 80-81, 353 y-axis, 367
of Earth, 87, 91, 141-142 343-345, 349, 368, 381, 405, 423
amplitude, 229-230, 261, 265, 326 year, 19, 28, 31, 37, 47-48, 49, 60, 90, 129-130,
relative, 7, 13, 164, 183, 273-275, 294, 301 157-158, 180-181, 187-191, 195-198,
straight-line motion, 121 body, 5, 244, 255, 267
circular, 232, 262 248-250, 253-258, 260, 267, 271, 283-284,
terminal, 164, 208, 212 304, 306-307, 392, 398-403, 405-410, 418,
wave, 1, 7-8, 13-14, 273, 275, 333-334, 345, compression, 228
disturbance of, 229 426, 428, 430-431, 438-439, 442-443, 450,
349-350, 352-353, 362, 375-376, 380 459, 501
Venus, 23, 27, 29-31, 35, 40, 46-48, 130, 133, 143, electromagnetic, 4-5, 11, 227, 235-246, 250, 263,
265-267, 276, 278, 288, 313, 338, 381 tropical, 257
251-252 Young, Thomas, 234
atmosphere of, 251 electron, 4, 8, 11, 58-59, 133, 244, 288, 326,
distance from Earth to, 47 332-336, 338, 343-345, 349, 356, 368,
greenhouse effect on, 251 381 Z
mass of, 133, 143 frequency, 5, 11, 229-230, 234, 238-244, 256, zero, 3, 6-7, 59, 74, 81-82, 91, 98, 101, 104-105, 107,
orbit of, 47 261-267, 327, 330, 343, 381 113, 115-118, 125-126, 128, 138, 216, 233,
phases of, 30-31 hertz, 229, 238-241, 243, 261, 265, 267 251, 287, 306, 317-318, 322, 328-331, 369,
radius of, 47 infrared, 4, 227, 242-245, 250-252, 255, 263-264, 403, 432, 464, 489-491
surface of, 133, 143, 251-252 266-267, 331 absolute, 74, 171, 306, 318
vertebrates, 395, 407 intensity, 335, 343-344 longitude, 322
vibrations, 5, 228-229, 234, 242, 266, 278, 381, 439, interference, 227, 230-235, 261-263, 327, 331, zinc, 456, 515
501, 503 334-336, 338, 356-357
violent motion, 73-74 motion, 4-5, 11, 58, 228, 230, 236-238, 243,
violet light, 243 261-262, 276, 345, 381, 517
Visible galaxy, 312 motion of, 228, 230, 243, 261, 276, 278
Visible light, 133, 157, 238, 243, 267, 343, 346, 438 ocean, 248, 250-251, 256-257
frequency of green, 243 power of, 4
Vision, 17, 31, 136-137, 458 radio, 4, 8, 133, 237, 239-245, 261, 263, 265-267,
void, 152 381, 423
volcanoes, 407 sound, 236-237, 239-240, 244, 263, 267, 310
Voltage, 9, 12-13, 210-212, 221, 224, 244, 486 sound waves, 236, 240, 263, 310
peak, 9 speed, 5, 11, 14, 133, 229, 237-239, 265-266, 276,
terminal, 210, 212, 486 278, 330, 343-345, 381
Volts, 7, 13, 210-211, 224, 484, 486 speed of, 133, 237, 239, 265, 276, 278, 345, 381
Volume, 10, 41, 54-56, 67-69, 114, 131, 174, 204, 207, surface, 5, 58-59, 133, 228, 230-236, 245-246,
309, 329, 331, 369, 424, 426, 439, 465-466, 250-252, 254-255, 259, 261-262,
493, 498, 500, 502 264-267, 345
units of, 10, 329 types of, 4, 8, 59, 253, 258, 326, 405
vibrations, 5, 228-229, 234, 242, 266, 278, 381
wavelength, 11, 14, 58-59, 229-230, 235, 239, 242,
W 244-245, 261, 263-267, 313, 333-334,
walking, 59, 157, 164, 182-184, 194, 197 343-345, 349, 381
Waste heat, 446 weak force, 6, 14, 175, 316-317, 385, 390, 488, 492,
Wastewater treatment, 411 500, 509
Water, 5-9, 12-13, 21, 41, 43, 50-55, 58, 60, 62, 64-66, Weak nuclear force, 385
67-70, 73, 91, 104-106, 120, 151-152, Weather, 193, 245, 256, 437
155-156, 162-164, 174-179, 181-182, and climate, 245, 256
184-186, 198, 207-209, 217, 232-235, 237, hurricanes, 256
251-253, 255-257, 261-262, 264, 329-330, solar radiation, 245
364, 403, 411, 419-422, 426-427, 429-433, week, 19, 388, 403, 408, 411, 460
435, 444-447, 471, 489, 498 Weight, 6-7, 13-14, 32, 51-52, 54, 56, 58, 62, 64,
boiling, 55, 91, 169, 184, 193-194, 296, 421, 498 67-69, 73, 93, 96-97, 100-102, 105, 113-117,
cycle of, 1, 194 124-126, 133, 135, 141-144, 148-150, 155,
density, 5, 55 158-159, 181-182, 194, 289, 297, 474-475

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