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Torog
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Is the kinetic energy of a particle quantized? Does it increase and decrease in discreet amounts?
Torog said:Is the kinetic energy of a particle quantized?
A charged particle in a magnetic field has quantized kinetic energy. It also has x and y velocity operators which do not commute with other nor their corresponding position operators. Ballentine treats this special case (where the particle is not free but has no potential energy) very readably.Torog said:Is the kinetic energy of a particle quantized? Does it increase and decrease in discreet amounts?
How about a particle in a square well? The boundary conditions lead to quantized total energies, but the potential is zero.PeterDonis said:The energy spectrum is discrete for the case of a particle in a bound system, but for such a particle, kinetic energy by itself is not an observable: only total energy is (i.e., including both kinetic and potential energy).
Nugatory said:How about a particle in a square well? The boundary conditions lead to quantized total energies, but the potential is zero.
hilbert2 said:Maybe there's some reason why the kinetic energy operator is not defined in a rigorous sense in that system (as is the case with the momentum operator). [...]
Nugatory said:How about a particle in a square well? The boundary conditions lead to quantized total energies, but the potential is zero.
CharlesDarwin said:Finding the energy operator.
Kinetic energy is the energy an object possesses due to its motion. It is dependent on the mass and velocity of the object.
Yes, kinetic energy is quantized at the atomic and subatomic level. This means that it can only take on certain discrete values rather than any value.
Quantization refers to the restriction of values that a physical quantity can take on. In the case of kinetic energy, it can only take on specific values rather than any value within a range.
Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that deals with the behavior of matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic level. It explains the concept of quantization, including the quantization of kinetic energy.
No, the quantization of kinetic energy is only noticeable at the atomic and subatomic level. In everyday objects, the values of kinetic energy are so large that the quantization effect is negligible.