David Custis Kimball - blog
You: Why Dave; why now?
Me: Well, I've two talented kids; the younger mentioned my stopping with the lectures. Then enthusiastically asked, 'Dad, can I help you set up a blog?' Moments later, Me: 'OK, that's a great idea, thinkin' they might just read it someday.
me ---> 'Gaarr of Blog' <---
Goto oft comments on Art, Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), CommoNonsense, Dance, Dark Matter, Design, Etc., Environment, Eventspace, Fable, Food, Frogsense, Hazard Mitigation, Hegel, History, Horsense, Human Affairs, Humor, Law+Lawless, Mathematics, Medicine, Music, Nerd Stuff, Parenting, Physics, Psychophysics, Real Estate, Sailing, Science, Science Fiction, Swimming, Technology, Theology, UncommonSense, and Waldo, alphabetically.
Just use 'Search' for the topic of choice or Waldo, perhaps.
Matters of Import & Timely Expertise
repressing gossip and hate-speech.
An Unmapped Ponderocity:
To say: '"He is a man of truth," is to say nothing; to say: "He is a man of of," is to state an elementary truth of logic.'
Winston Davids, 1969 - Trinity College Valedictorian - 1970; known endeavor: actuarial contributions to The Donald; since has contacted me and sadly is quite ill. Ask prayers for recovery; thanks for his brilliance and music.
Discussing how quantum mechanics works, we first defined mechanics, and then we defined a quantum. It turns out light is not the only thing quantized. This is why quantum mechanics is so important: it describes how the matter in atoms, and therefore everything, behaves.
You can think of the nucleus and electrons in an atom as analogous to the sun and the planets. However, there is a major difference: atoms are small, and solar systems are large. The math for solar systems completely breaks down at the atomic level. Around the turn of the 20th Century, scientists were grappling with this.
Neils Bohr proposed that an electron’s orbital levels in an atom were quantized. This makes things work out*: electrons can’t have any energy level (corresponding to an orbiting distance). Instead, they can only have certain well-defined energies. This is quantum behavior, just like observed in light. The two phenomena are related, because for an electron to change energy levels, it either absorbs or gives off a photon, which is the minimum unit of light.
*The Bohr Model is not exactly correct, but is still taught because it contains all the basics of QM and is easy to understand. It really works out only for the hydrogen atom.
Mathematics, Physics, Science, Uncommon Sense
Bravo for the clarity, especially as ‘energy level (corresponding to an orbiting distance)’, which forces me to think of diameters, so changes happen in whole numbers, and is that distance unique for each atom? Each is like a puzzle piece, both shape and magnetically. And a kind of digital progression of energies, ever more complex in the 100 elements that exist out there (more or less).
I have a book written about H2O, water, and its quite magical properties. One is that the solid is less dense than the liquid, and that makes all the difference.
Well, my son nicknamed me ‘David Khemical’ when he was about 5, and my chemical magic was putting the baking soda in the swimming pool … to feel the ‘cooling’ effect. I stressed ‘endothermic’ reaction was operative. That means that the soda absorbs energy… meaning rapidly moving electrons were attracted to the molecules of the bicarbonate of soda… and reduced friction, 10 to the 26th power at a time…. amazing (Avagadro’s no.)
