Sanctuary’s science, spin and songs
by
Bryan Sanctuary

July 3, 2012

Complementarity between spin components in quantum mechanics

This example nicely shows several things about quantum mechanics. First quantum mechanics is a statistical theory of measurement. You only get the SG results after many spins have been filtered. Second, Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations tell us that you cannot devise an experiment that will measure both the Z and X polarization simultaneously. You can do it for one, but not the other, and vice versa.
June 4, 2012

Physical chemistry course outline on intrinsic spin angular momentum.

The lectures will be recorded at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras which is part of the NPTEL program. A major goal of NPTEL is to raise awareness and improve scientific and technological education throughout India by use of multimedia. I will be giving a series of lectures on basic spin theory for chemistry and physics undergraduate students who have a basis in quantum mechanics; know of spin and its importance; and want to go deeper.
January 30, 2012

E-Books for post-secondary education

I believe it is long overdue to do away with hard copy text books at the freshman level altogether, along with their high cost and adopt ebooks. Think of the advantages: no paper, nothing to ship, can be updated so users always have the latest edition, integrated into the internet, easy to copy protect, and can be sold for a fraction of the price of hard copy. No resale market.
December 19, 2011

Entropy (Part 6): Randomness and ensembles

httpvh://youtu.be/wFe2zu2116I After rolling 2, 3, 4, 10 and Avogadro’s dice, as seen in the entries below, it becomes clear that the most random states (most number of ways of rolling a number) always dominate while those with fewer arrangements occur less frequently: 1 Entropy: Randomness by rolling two dice 2 […]
December 14, 2011

Exams: Teach yourself to learn.

A “course” is a “path” through the material which your prof. decides is important and attempts to teach you. Exams come from that material, so listen to him/her. You need to organize that material, see how it fits in the big picture and manage your time properly: that is you must be efficient.
December 12, 2011

Entropy (Part 5): Randomness by rolling Avogadro’s dice

With Avogadro's number of dice, you can roll them as much as you want, and the chance that there is an outcome other than the one that corresponds to the position of the spike is so unlikely you can safely ignore them.
December 8, 2011

Is Learning Chemistry difficult? Are you stressed about it?

Exam time is coming and we have 1,100 freshman chemists getting stressed and nervous, so this is for them. You need “stress” in your live. No stress would mean you would stay in bed all day. Well I’m a chemistry prof and like physical chemistry, and not a psychologist, but over the years you get to know students worries. There are two types of stress. There is bad stress ("I'm scared", "I'm dumb" "It is too hard?") and there is good stress ("Great day, gotta get up!", "I really want to understand stuff" "I am looking forward to tonight, so got to look good.") Use the good stress.
December 5, 2011

Entropy (Part 4): Randomness by rolling ten dice

For 10 dice there are over 60 million arrangements and Figure 1 shows the outcomes for 30,000 rolls.
November 28, 2011

“We’ve lost our Nobel Prize winner!!”

At that time, it was customary for a week’s symposium to have an outing. Although it was mid-August, Bob, an avid skier, had planned a trip to Whistler mountain where the participants would take the gondola up to the Round House and spend a couple of hours in the clean mountain air and enjoy the surrounding scene of mountains and glaciers. However the day before the outing, by chance I called Whistler and found that gondola was closed for maintenance and at that time it was the only way up.
November 21, 2011

Entropy (part 3): Randomness by rolling four dice

The basic idea is that a physical system has many different arrangements (states) of particles which are consistent with some macroscopic quantity, like the temperature. Boltzmann found that out of all possible ways those particles can be arranged, only those that are consistent with the actual temperature need be considered. The chance of any other arrangements is negligible in comparison. Rolling dice illustrates this nicely.
November 14, 2011

Entropy (Part 2): Randomness by rolling three dice

it is suggested the difficulty students have in understanding that entropy is a measure of randomness can be approached by rolling dice. In the first entry two dice were rolled but in that case there are only 36 arrangements and 10 outcomes (rolls from 2 to 12). This does not show that the most random state dominates (i.e. the one with most number of arrangements consistent with a roll of 7) . To show that more dice need be rolled. In this entry three dice are shown to have more randomness in the outcomes (3 to 18).
November 8, 2011

Entropy (Part 1): Randomness by rolling two dice

To understand entropy, I roll dice. I start with two, then move to three, four, ten and then Avogadro’s constant of dice, and roll them randomly.

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