A Universe Of AtomsContents

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Preface

Introduction: The Fire Within

Chapter 1: The Wirbelrohr's Roar

Chapter 2: Musical Bottles, Flying Balloons, and Hot Stoves: The Uncommon Physics of Common Things

2.1: The good sound of CokeTM: Physical modeling by analogy

2.2: Comedy of errors: What every aeronaut needs to know 2.3: Cool in the kitchen: Radiation, conduction, and Newton's 'hot:block' experiment

Chapter 3: The Unimaginably Strange Behaviour of Free Electrons

3.1: Variations on 'the only mystery'

3.2: Electron interference in a space with holes

3.3: The two-electron quantum interference disappearing act

3.4: Heretical correlations

Chapter 4: Quantum Beats and Giant Atoms

4.1: The light from atomic 'pulsars'

4.2: Anomalous reversals

4.3: Quantum implications of travelling in circles

4.4: Long-distance beats

Chapter 5: And Yet It Moves: Exotic Atoms and the Invariance of Charge

5.1: A commotion about motion

5.2: The electric charge of a moving electron

5.3: The exotic atom

5.4: The Planetary atom

Chapter 6: Reflections on Light

6.1: Exorcising a Maxwell demon

6.2: Enhanced reflection: how light gets brighter when it is up against a wall

6.3: Left- and right-handed reflection

Chapter 7: Two Worlds, Large and Small: Earth and Atom

Chapter 8: Computers, Coins, and Quanta: Unexpected Outcomes of Random Events

8.1: The suggestive power of fun

8.2: To switch or not to switch: that is the question

8.3: On the run: How random is random?

8.4: Random acts of measurement

8.5: Do radioactive nuclei decay randomly?

8.6: Mark off time with Markov

8.7: Exponential decay, correlation, and randomness: the quantum perspective

Chapter 9: A Universe of Atoms: Symmetry, Unity, Gravity, and the Problem of 'Missing Mass'

9.1: Keep it together! Keep it together! Keep it together!

9.2: Symmetries for the mind's eye

9.3: Spontaneous symmetry breaking

9.4: What is the matter with gravity?

9.5: Shedding light on dark matter

9.6: A galactic superfluid?

9.7: And so...

Chapter 10: Science and Wonder

Selected Papers by the Author

About the Author

Index

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