Johnson said:
Well, technically speaking I'm at Grade 12 Physics and Grade 12 Math. However, I'm far above the rest of my class, and probably my teacher who doesn't know a thing about what he's trying to teach...
I've read a few books, including Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but I'm not as far advanced as most of you guys on here :) Our Textbook in class talks about the String Theory briefly, but in no great detail. When I asked my teacher if he knew anything about it, he just said he was never taught anything about sub-atomic particles, or anything to that degree. I've also read a few websites that talk about it, but in such a large amount of detail, I can't really follow it, so I was just wondering if there is a "String Theory for Dummies" out there, or a beginners guide to it.
Also, if you know the answer to this question, which has been frustrating. Inelastic and Elastic collisions, would atoms colliding be Elastic or Inelastic. Our text and teacher says they are Elastic, but if so, how come matter can lose energy to its surroundings just by sitting there. How else could heat be created if not through the collisions of the atoms?
Thank you,
Andrew
Andrew, you may find useful information about string theory at superstringtheory.com. Try google.
I am sure your book has explained that there are two mechanisms of heat transfer. One is conduction, the other is radiation. Mass which is isolated from other matter can lose heat by radiating energy, even into a perfect vacuum, if there were such a thing.
I am glad for you that you are interested in physics, and I hope you will find the answers to the questions you have posed. Meanwhile, perhaps you will take a small advice. Listen to your teachers, who are trying to give you the basis for understanding. There will be time to go beyond them when you have mastered what they do have to offer you.
Good luck to you. I hope you find some humility before it comes looking for you.
Richard
Post Script:
About your last question, having to do with heat and atoms. Atoms are very small, so small that only the very best microscopes, using electrons instead of light, are able to get an image of them. But they are not the smallest thing we know about. Atoms are made of much smaller particles, electrons, neutrons, and protons, mainly. There is rather strong evidence, most or maybe all of it indirect, that the protons and neutrons are also made of still smaller particles, called quarks. Each of these particles has the property we call mass, which will be more familiar to you as weight.
You will remember that Albert Einstein popularized the idea that mass is the same thing as energy. These smaller particles have mass, and so they have energy. We can extract some of the energy by means of nuclear reactions, which take place at far smaller scales than the atomic processes of chemistry, which you usually associate with heat. Heat is in fact a form of energy. So you should be able to see that heat occurs not only on the stove top, where you can see it, but also at the atomic level, which is where elastic collision processes come in.
Probably you have been taught that heat energy, such as we see in chemistry, is a matter of elastic collisions between atoms. Now I hope you also see that there is more. Heat is a form of energy. Mass is a form of energy. Since sub-atomic particles have mass, they also have energy, which can be expressed in terms of heat. In fact, we can and do think about heat where there is no atom, no particle, no mass at all.
Perhaps, since you live in a cold climate, you are familiar with the heat that comes off of hot metallic surfaces, such as hot plates used in cooking, or the iron surface of a wood stove, or perhaps the hot coils of a radiant electric heater. You can feel this heat from some distance. The heat is not carried by particles that collide with your skin, it is carried by electromagnetic radiation, an energy very close in nature to light. This heat does not involve collisions of any kind.
You may have heard of Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. This is a heat that occurs everywhere at a temperature very close to absolute zero. It is made of the same kind of microwaves you find in a microwave oven. Cosmologists, who study the origins of the universe, think that the CMB is evidence of the original process, often called the big bang, that created the stars and planets and all the dust we are made of. Cosmologists believe that this energy comes from a time BEFORE there were atoms.
I hope you see now that heat does not only come from elastic collisions between atoms. In fact, this whole discussion has carried you far away from the point your teacher was trying to give you. Perhaps you have already got it and moved on. The idea you need to carry away from this discussion is that atoms are not hard little balls of something, but are made of something smaller. It took humans thousands of years of hard thinking and experimentation to come to this conclusion, which you are being handed as if it were a nickle.
I recommend that this discussion be moved elsewhere, since it has little to do with the details being considered on this board.
Again, Andrew Johnson, good luck to you.
R.
