Recent content by GravitatisVis

Hi Sam, Thanks for the input. I don't think it's fair game though at this point to symmetrize the first term, since you don't know the anti-commutation relation between the gamma matrices yet. That comes next when you expand everything out, compare terms on the RHS with the LHS, and realize...

Hi everyone, I'm trying to follow how Dirac went about deriving his wave equation. I know there's a couple of different ways to "derive" this, but I'm trying to follow the original method that Dirac used. There's a lot of good stuff online for this, but there's a step that I get stuck at and...

Would it be correct to say that TS is the energy not available for doing useful work? When you write down any thermodynamic potential, you have the TS term, but the other terms (like PV, \muN, HM, etc) are the "work terms", which tell you how much useful energy you can get out of your system...

tag.

I'm kind of struggling with the concept of energy. A particle in a conservative field has kinetic and potential energy (E=T+U), but I can always choose an inertial frame where the motion of the particle is zero, which means I can change the the particle's kinetic energy by just switching frames...

In principle I don't think your question is really any different than an electrostatics problem where you have some charge distribution in space here and you want to find out what the field strength is over there. The only difference is that we're talking about a mass distribution and not a...

so from above \Phi_{right}=\frac{q}{|3-2|}=\frac{q}{1} \Phi_{left}=\frac{q}{|1-2|}=\frac{q}{1} The absolute value ensures that the distance is positive and I get the same potential on each side, which makes sense since I'm standing on a equipotential. What I don't understand then is...

So you're saying the distance from the charge to where you're measuring the potential can be positive or negative? e.g. if I'm standing to the right of the 3rd charge, \Phi_3 = \frac{-q}{|x-1|} = \frac{-q}{x-1} BUT, if I'm standing to the left, \Phi_3 = \frac{-q}{|x-1|} =...

Hey everyone, thanks for taking a look at this. I was hoping you could look over this to make sure I solved this correctly. Thanks for you time. Homework Statement ---- "+" ---- "+" ---- "-" ---- Given this configuration of charges where the plus and minus indicate the magnitude of...

It literally says, "in a constant temperature environment, saying F tends to decrease is the same as saying that U tends to decrease while S tends to increase." But it doesn't mention how this is done. I thought that since Helmholtz free energy only applies to an open system with const T,V,N...

I'd like to thank everyone for the previous clarifications. I've been able to clear a lot up because of them. But I still have some questions. In my book Thermal Physics by Schroeder, it says that for a system with constant T,V,N, the change in Helmholtz Free Energy places a limit on the total...

Let me try to state my current understanding. The reason to introduce new thermodynamic potentials is because they're required to explain what's going on in a system that has artificially imposed constraints. While internal energy works great for an isolated system (const. U), new potentials...

I'm teaching myself thermodynamics and I'm having trouble understanding Helmholtz and Gibbs free energy. My understanding of enthalpy (H) is pretty solid I think. I understand that enthalpy is a state variable, meaning its change tells you how much heat (Q) is absorbed or released by a system...

What do you mean by "normal nuber?" Would pi be a rational number in a different base?

Mr. Rives, could you explain that in a little more detail? The most we've delved into exponents is, as you said, "repeated multiplication." That's why I find it so difficult to wrap my head around something like a term raised to a non whole number. I've never heard of an exponent "mapping"...