Recent content by ZealScience

It means the difference between the terms is a derivative of some function. (e.g. In 3-D, the gradient of something.) In the language of differential forms, an exact form. The point is that the total derivative (or exact form) in the action could be converted into a boundary integral by Stokes'...

For the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam Electroweak theory, I do not think there is any deep philosophical reason behind. Basically, electromagnetic interaction and weak have certain similarities (in particular the photon and the Z boson), and it is assumed that this similarity has certain underlying...

Photon has no rest mass. In solid material where you have spontaneous breaking of phase symmetry (Anderson-Higgs phenomenon, condensed matter version of Higgs mechanism), it would acquire a mass. In which case it becomes dispersive and group velocity would be different from c. I am guessing the...

I think the connection between spin and space-time is torsion. In elementary general relativity, we usually assume torsionless situations in which algebra could be simplified. The components are as you said because of the matrices. 4-dimensional matrices are the smallest dimensional...

In equilibrium thermodynamics, this is a phase separation between the two. I don't know your level of knowledge in thermodynamics, but to start with in common English, below certain temperature (freezing point) where there is a phase separation, the amounts of the two phases (ice and vapour) are...

There is only conservation of matter (nucleons and electrons) in Chemistry probably. When it comes to subatomic physics there is no such thing. A more familiar example is in a nuclear reaction, there is loss in mass. For rest particles, we have E = m0c2, so the mass loss is an indication of...

For phenomenological descriptions, this is a scattering problem and in general characterised by a scattering cross-section, which is a Lorentz invariant quantity. The notion of distance is not as useful, since it is not invariant, so there is no 'universal distance' of scattering. I think any...

I could not find where kinetic energy is defined in this manner. Well, Boltzmann k is already defined, and I am sure that temperature is also defined in another way. I believe that the average kinetic energy has to be the actual average of the molecular kinetic energy. In that sense, you could...

I don't think it is conventional to define kinetic energy and derive Boltzmann factor like that. Kinetic energy is by definition always the point particle kinetic energy and the mean is calculated from the distribution. The distribution arises entirely from statistical argument by considering...

If you really want to know more about real life applications, you should read more engineering books. In fact, many engineering courses have compulsory thermodynamics. You would learn that thermo is crucial to many parts of engineering. Heat, enthalpy, and internal energy are so different...

I think in the Huygens picture, the requirement is completely geometrical. The semi circles are the wavelets that are emitted at every point on the wavefront. On the incident surface, points on the incident wavefront arrive at different times and the wavelets are thus considered to emerge at...

Firstly, atomic lattice structure is not compatible with the light cone structure theoretically predicted inside a black hole, and is thus forbidden by principle of causality. (Unless some new theory breaks this, such as a tesseract bookshelf at the singularity:-p) Secondly, the light cone...

When the unit is defined, the electrons were not even discovered. Therefore, it highly likely not. In fact, in modern physics, electric charges are associated with particles that interact with EM fields which have a whole family of them.

By the way, the equations of states (Ideal gas and VdW are examples of them) are usually obtained from Helmholtz free energy, which could be calculated from the partition function. (If you have not done any statistical physics, just take it as a fact maybe?) Partition function is related to the...

I don't think so. His modifications were based on some physical arguments. Well, firstly it goes to ideal gas in the dilute limit, which is experimentally observed; secondly, it has theoretical phase transition and critical points, which sounds more realistic. But in many circumstances, it is...