Recent content by blah

Are physicists shure that it's possible to make a quantum computer?

You can date a rock by measuring the ratio of a parent isotope and its daughter. But you can only determine when the rock was formed if you know the ratio of parent to daughter isotopes when it was formed. So how is that ratio known?

When I look at a map which shows the sea floors I see canons at the base of large rivers which tend to fork out and travel long across the ocean floor. It looks very much like they were carved by the river. What are these and what caused them?

Why is the absolute distance sqrt(x^2 + y^2)? I've found several proofs on the internet but none really tell me much. I believe I have noticed something about pythagoras theorem and that is it allows all inertial reference frames in physics to be equivalent. In physics you can describe...

ahhhh qm is so complicated

I am asking about width of these absorption lines. I would guess that the the amount of radiation an atom absorbed would be proportional to the width. I remember reading some german once measured the atomic spectra of a hydrogen atom very accurately and it was very slightly different from what...

The formula for finding a derivative for x^n is nx^(n-1) and the anti derivative is 1/(n+1) x^(n+1) Why is this the formula?

I know this I don't understand how atoms can absorb EM radiation which ranges continuously if they can only absorb EM radiation at exact frequencies. For example, say there was some EM radiation that ranged continuously from frequency a to b. And let's say the radiation was shining on atoms...

I don't know a whole lot about quantum mechanics and there is something that dosen't make sense to me. An atom absorbes radiation in only certin frequencies. Do these frequencies have to be exact? Can they vary over a small range like say 1.000 to 1.001 or do they have to be perfectly exact...

I'm wondering if anyone here might know were I could download a free quantum mechanics textbook. So far I havn't had much luck looking for one has the few ones I found were too hard. Websites I find that discuss QM are ethier too short and don't go into much detail, or their too advanced. I'm...