1.
Electron
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The electron is a subatomic particle, symbol e− or β−, with a negative elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, the electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton. Quantum mechanical properties of the include a intrinsic angular momentum of a half-integer value, expressed in units of the reduced Planck constant. As it is a fermion, no two electrons can occupy the same state, in accordance with the Pauli exclusion principle. Like all elementary particles, electrons exhibit properties of particles and waves, they can collide with other particles and can be diffracted like light. Since an electron has charge, it has an electric field. Electromagnetic fields produced from other sources will affect the motion of an electron according to the Lorentz force law, electrons radiate or absorb energy in the form of photons when they are accelerated. Laboratory instruments are capable of trapping individual electrons as well as electron plasma by the use of electromagnetic fields, special telescopes can detect electron plasma in outer space. Electrons are involved in applications such as electronics, welding, cathode ray tubes, electron microscopes, radiation therapy, lasers, gaseous ionization detectors. Interactions involving electrons with other particles are of interest in fields such as chemistry. The Coulomb force interaction between the positive protons within atomic nuclei and the negative electrons without, allows the composition of the two known as atoms, ionization or differences in the proportions of negative electrons versus positive nuclei changes the binding energy of an atomic system. The exchange or sharing of the electrons between two or more atoms is the cause of chemical bonding. In 1838, British natural philosopher Richard Laming first hypothesized the concept of a quantity of electric charge to explain the chemical properties of atoms. Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney named this charge electron in 1891, electrons can also participate in nuclear reactions, such as nucleosynthesis in stars, where they are known as beta particles. Electrons can be created through beta decay of isotopes and in high-energy collisions. The antiparticle of the electron is called the positron, it is identical to the electron except that it carries electrical, when an electron collides with a positron, both particles can be totally annihilated, producing gamma ray photons. The ancient Greeks noticed that amber attracted small objects when rubbed with fur, along with lightning, this phenomenon is one of humanitys earliest recorded experiences with electricity. In his 1600 treatise De Magnete, the English scientist William Gilbert coined the New Latin term electricus, both electric and electricity are derived from the Latin ēlectrum, which came from the Greek word for amber, ἤλεκτρον
2.
Hydrogen
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Hydrogen is a chemical element with chemical symbol H and atomic number 1. With a standard weight of circa 1.008, hydrogen is the lightest element on the periodic table. Its monatomic form is the most abundant chemical substance in the Universe, non-remnant stars are mainly composed of hydrogen in the plasma state. The most common isotope of hydrogen, termed protium, has one proton, the universal emergence of atomic hydrogen first occurred during the recombination epoch. At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, nonmetallic, since hydrogen readily forms covalent compounds with most nonmetallic elements, most of the hydrogen on Earth exists in molecular forms such as water or organic compounds. Hydrogen plays an important role in acid–base reactions because most acid-base reactions involve the exchange of protons between soluble molecules. In ionic compounds, hydrogen can take the form of a charge when it is known as a hydride. The hydrogen cation is written as though composed of a bare proton, Hydrogen gas was first artificially produced in the early 16th century by the reaction of acids on metals. Industrial production is mainly from steam reforming natural gas, and less often from more energy-intensive methods such as the electrolysis of water. Most hydrogen is used near the site of its production, the two largest uses being fossil fuel processing and ammonia production, mostly for the fertilizer market, Hydrogen is a concern in metallurgy as it can embrittle many metals, complicating the design of pipelines and storage tanks. Hydrogen gas is flammable and will burn in air at a very wide range of concentrations between 4% and 75% by volume. The enthalpy of combustion is −286 kJ/mol,2 H2 + O2 →2 H2O +572 kJ Hydrogen gas forms explosive mixtures with air in concentrations from 4–74%, the explosive reactions may be triggered by spark, heat, or sunlight. The hydrogen autoignition temperature, the temperature of spontaneous ignition in air, is 500 °C, the detection of a burning hydrogen leak may require a flame detector, such leaks can be very dangerous. Hydrogen flames in other conditions are blue, resembling blue natural gas flames, the destruction of the Hindenburg airship was a notorious example of hydrogen combustion and the cause is still debated. The visible orange flames in that incident were the result of a mixture of hydrogen to oxygen combined with carbon compounds from the airship skin. H2 reacts with every oxidizing element, the ground state energy level of the electron in a hydrogen atom is −13.6 eV, which is equivalent to an ultraviolet photon of roughly 91 nm wavelength. The energy levels of hydrogen can be calculated fairly accurately using the Bohr model of the atom, however, the atomic electron and proton are held together by electromagnetic force, while planets and celestial objects are held by gravity. The most complicated treatments allow for the effects of special relativity
3.
Quantum electrodynamics
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In particle physics, quantum electrodynamics is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved, in technical terms, QED can be described as a perturbation theory of the electromagnetic quantum vacuum. Dirac described the quantization of the field as an ensemble of harmonic oscillators with the introduction of the concept of creation and annihilation operators of particles. At higher orders in the series emerged, making such computations meaningless. With no solution for this problem known at the time, it appeared that a fundamental incompatibility existed between special relativity and quantum mechanics, difficulties with the theory increased through the end of 1940. Improvements in microwave technology made it possible to more precise measurements of the shift of the levels of a hydrogen atom, now known as the Lamb shift. These experiments exposed discrepancies which the theory was unable to explain, a first indication of a possible way out was given by Hans Bethe in 1947, after attending the Shelter Island Conference. While he was traveling by train from the conference to Schenectady he made the first non-relativistic computation of the shift of the lines of the atom as measured by Lamb. Despite the limitations of the computation, agreement was excellent, the idea was simply to attach infinities to corrections of mass and charge that were actually fixed to a finite value by experiments. In this way, the infinities get absorbed in those constants, sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman were jointly awarded with a Nobel prize in physics in 1965 for their work in this area. Even though renormalization works very well in practice, Feynman was never comfortable with its mathematical validity, even referring to renormalization as a shell game. QED has served as the model and template for all subsequent quantum field theories. One such subsequent theory is quantum chromodynamics, which began in the early 1960s and attained its present form in the 1975 work by H. David Politzer, Sidney Coleman, David Gross and Frank Wilczek. Near the end of his life, Richard P. Feynman gave a series of lectures on QED intended for the lay public. These lectures were transcribed and published as Feynman, QED, The strange theory of light and matter, the key components of Feynmans presentation of QED are three basic actions. A photon goes from one place and time to another place, an electron goes from one place and time to another place and time. An electron emits or absorbs a photon at a certain place and these can all be seen in the adjacent diagram. It is important not to over-interpret these diagrams, nothing is implied about how a particle gets from one point to another
4.
IUPAC books
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The Compendium of Chemical Terminology is a book published by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry containing internationally accepted definitions for terms in chemistry. Work on the first edition was initiated by Victor Gold, hence its informal name, the first edition was published in 1987 and the second edition, edited by A. D. McNaught and A. Wilkinson, was published in 1997. A slightly expanded version of the Gold Book is also freely searchable online, translations have also been published in French, Spanish and Polish
5.
Deuterium
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Deuterium is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen. The nucleus of deuterium, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one neutron, whereas the far more common hydrogen isotope, Deuterium has a natural abundance in Earths oceans of about one atom in 6420 of hydrogen. Thus deuterium accounts for approximately 0. 0156% of all the naturally occurring hydrogen in the oceans, the abundance of deuterium changes slightly from one kind of natural water to another. The deuterium isotopes name is formed from the Greek deuteros meaning second, Deuterium was discovered and named in 1931 by Harold Urey. When the neutron was discovered in 1932, this made the structure of deuterium obvious. Soon after deuteriums discovery, Urey and others produced samples of water in which the deuterium content had been highly concentrated. Deuterium is destroyed in the interiors of stars faster than it is produced, other natural processes are thought to produce only an insignificant amount of deuterium. Nearly all deuterium found in nature was produced in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago and this is the ratio found in the gas giant planets, such as Jupiter. However, other bodies are found to have different ratios of deuterium to hydrogen-1. This is thought to be as a result of natural isotope separation processes that occur from solar heating of ices in comets, like the water-cycle in Earths weather, such heating processes may enrich deuterium with respect to protium. The analysis of ratios in comets found results very similar to the mean ratio in Earths oceans. This reinforces theories that much of Earths ocean water is of cometary origin, the deuterium/protium ratio of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as measured by the Rosetta space probe, is about three times that of earth water. This figure is the highest yet measured in a comet, deuterium/protium ratios thus continue to be an active topic of research in both astronomy and climatology. Deuterium is frequently represented by the chemical symbol D, since it is an isotope of hydrogen with mass number 2, it is also represented by 2H. IUPAC allows both D and 2H, although 2H is preferred, a distinct chemical symbol is used for convenience because of the isotopes common use in various scientific processes. In quantum mechanics the energy levels of electrons in atoms depend on the mass of the system of electron. For hydrogen, this amount is about 1837/1836, or 1.000545, the energies of spectroscopic lines for deuterium and light-hydrogen therefore differ by the ratios of these two numbers, which is 1.000272. The wavelengths of all deuterium spectroscopic lines are shorter than the lines of light hydrogen
6.
Nuclear magnetic resonance
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Nuclear magnetic resonance is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a magnetic field absorb and re-emit electromagnetic radiation. NMR allows the observation of quantum mechanical magnetic properties of the atomic nucleus. Many scientific techniques exploit NMR phenomena to study physics, crystals. NMR is also used in advanced medical imaging techniques, such as in magnetic resonance imaging. The most commonly studied nuclei are 1H and 13C, although nuclei from isotopes of other elements have been studied by high-field NMR spectroscopy as well. A key feature of NMR is that the frequency of a particular substance is directly proportional to the strength of the applied magnetic field. Since the resolution of the technique depends on the magnitude of magnetic field gradient, many efforts are made to develop increased field strength. The effectiveness of NMR can also be improved using hyperpolarization, and/or using two-dimensional, three-dimensional and higher-dimensional multi-frequency techniques, the principle of NMR usually involves two sequential steps, The alignment of the magnetic nuclear spins in an applied, constant magnetic field B0. The perturbation of this alignment of the nuclear spins by employing an electro-magnetic, the required perturbing frequency is dependent upon the static magnetic field and the nuclei of observation. The two fields are chosen to be perpendicular to each other as this maximizes the NMR signal strength. The resulting response by the magnetization of the nuclear spins is the phenomenon that is exploited in NMR spectroscopy. NMR phenomena are also utilized in low-field NMR, NMR spectroscopy and MRI in the Earths magnetic field, in 1946, Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell expanded the technique for use on liquids and solids, for which they shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952. Yevgeny Zavoisky likely observed nuclear magnetic resonance in 1941, well before Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell, russell H. Varian filed the Method and means for correlating nuclear properties of atoms and magnetic fields, U. S. Patent 2,561,490 on July 24,1951, Varian Associates developed the first NMR unit called NMR HR-30 in 1952. Purcell had worked on the development of radar during World War II at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Radiation Laboratory. His work during that project on the production and detection of radio frequency power, when this absorption occurs, the nucleus is described as being in resonance. Different atomic nuclei within a molecule resonate at different frequencies for the magnetic field strength. The observation of magnetic resonance frequencies of the nuclei present in a molecule allows any trained user to discover essential chemical and structural information about the molecule
7.
Spectroscopy
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Spectroscopy /spɛkˈtrɒskəpi/ is the study of the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation. Historically, spectroscopy originated through the study of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, later the concept was expanded greatly to include any interaction with radiative energy as a function of its wavelength or frequency. Spectroscopic data is represented by an emission spectrum, a plot of the response of interest as a function of wavelength or frequency. Spectroscopy and spectrography are terms used to refer to the measurement of radiation intensity as a function of wavelength and are used to describe experimental spectroscopic methods. Spectral measurement devices are referred to as spectrometers, spectrophotometers, spectrographs or spectral analyzers, daily observations of color can be related to spectroscopy. Neon lighting is an application of atomic spectroscopy. Neon and other noble gases have characteristic emission frequencies, neon lamps use collision of electrons with the gas to excite these emissions. Inks, dyes and paints include chemical compounds selected for their characteristics in order to generate specific colors. A commonly encountered molecular spectrum is that of nitrogen dioxide, gaseous nitrogen dioxide has a characteristic red absorption feature, and this gives air polluted with nitrogen dioxide a reddish-brown color. Rayleigh scattering is a spectroscopic scattering phenomenon that accounts for the color of the sky, Spectroscopy is used in physical and analytical chemistry because atoms and molecules have unique spectra. As a result, these spectra can be used to detect, identify and quantify information about the atoms, Spectroscopy is also used in astronomy and remote sensing on earth. The measured spectra are used to determine the composition and physical properties of astronomical objects. One of the concepts in spectroscopy is a resonance and its corresponding resonant frequency. Resonances were first characterized in mechanical systems such as pendulums, mechanical systems that vibrate or oscillate will experience large amplitude oscillations when they are driven at their resonant frequency. A plot of amplitude vs. excitation frequency will have a peak centered at the resonance frequency and this plot is one type of spectrum, with the peak often referred to as a spectral line, and most spectral lines have a similar appearance. In quantum mechanical systems, the resonance is a coupling of two quantum mechanical stationary states of one system, such as an atom, via an oscillatory source of energy such as a photon. The coupling of the two states is strongest when the energy of the matches the energy difference between the two states. The energy of a photon is related to its frequency by E = h ν where h is Plancks constant, spectra of atoms and molecules often consist of a series of spectral lines, each one representing a resonance between two different quantum states
8.
Electron paramagnetic resonance
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Electron paramagnetic resonance or electron spin resonance spectroscopy is a method for studying materials with unpaired electrons. The basic concepts of EPR are analogous to those of nuclear magnetic resonance, EPR spectroscopy is particularly useful for studying metal complexes or organic radicals. EPR was first observed in Kazan State University by Soviet physicist Yevgeny Zavoisky in 1944, and was developed independently at the same time by Brebis Bleaney at the University of Oxford. Every electron has a moment and spin quantum number s =12, with magnetic components m s = +12 and m s = −12.0023 for the free electron. Therefore, the separation between the lower and the state is Δ E = g e μ B B0 for unpaired free electrons. This equation implies that the splitting of the levels is directly proportional to the magnetic fields strength. An unpaired electron can move between the two levels by either absorbing or emitting a photon of energy h ν such that the resonance condition. This leads to the equation of EPR spectroscopy, h ν = g e μ B B0. Furthermore, EPR spectra can be generated by varying the photon frequency incident on a sample while holding the magnetic field constant or doing the reverse. In practice, it is usually the frequency that is kept fixed, a collection of paramagnetic centers, such as free radicals, is exposed to microwaves at a fixed frequency. At this point the electrons can move between their two spin states. The upper spectrum below is the absorption for a system of free electrons in a varying magnetic field. The lower spectrum is the first derivative of the absorption spectrum, the latter is the most common way to record and publish EPR spectra. For the microwave frequency of 9388.2 MHz, the predicted resonance occurs at a field of about B0 = h ν / g e μ B =0.3350 teslas =3350 gausses. For example, for the field of 3350 G shown at the right, in practice, EPR samples consist of collections of many paramagnetic species, and not single isolated paramagnetic centers. At 298 K, X-band microwave frequencies give n upper / n lower ≈0.998, therefore, transitions from the lower to the higher level are more probable than the reverse, which is why there is a net absorption of energy. With k f and P being constants, N min ~ −1, i. e. N min ~ ν − α, in practice, α can change varying from 0.5 to 4.5 depending on spectrometer characteristics, resonance conditions, and sample size. A great sensitivity is obtained with a low detection limit N min
9.
Quark
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A quark is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, due to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never directly observed or found in isolation, they can be found only within hadrons, such as baryons and mesons. For this reason, much of what is known about quarks has been drawn from observations of the hadrons themselves, Quarks have various intrinsic properties, including electric charge, mass, color charge, and spin. There are six types of quarks, known as flavors, up, down, strange, charm, top, up and down quarks have the lowest masses of all quarks. The heavier quarks rapidly change into up and down quarks through a process of particle decay, the transformation from a higher mass state to a lower mass state. Because of this, up and down quarks are generally stable and the most common in the universe, whereas strange, charm, bottom, and top quarks can only be produced in high energy collisions. For every quark flavor there is a type of antiparticle, known as an antiquark. The quark model was proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig in 1964. Accelerator experiments have provided evidence for all six flavors, the top quark was the last to be discovered at Fermilab in 1995. The Standard Model is the theoretical framework describing all the known elementary particles. This model contains six flavors of quarks, named up, down, strange, charm, bottom, antiparticles of quarks are called antiquarks, and are denoted by a bar over the symbol for the corresponding quark, such as u for an up antiquark. As with antimatter in general, antiquarks have the mass, mean lifetime, and spin as their respective quarks. Quarks are spin- 1⁄2 particles, implying that they are fermions according to the spin-statistics theorem and they are subject to the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two identical fermions can simultaneously occupy the same quantum state. This is in contrast to bosons, any number of which can be in the same state, unlike leptons, quarks possess color charge, which causes them to engage in the strong interaction. The resulting attraction between different quarks causes the formation of composite particles known as hadrons, there are two families of hadrons, baryons, with three valence quarks, and mesons, with a valence quark and an antiquark. The most common baryons are the proton and the neutron, the blocks of the atomic nucleus. A great number of hadrons are known, most of them differentiated by their quark content, the existence of exotic hadrons with more valence quarks, such as tetraquarks and pentaquarks, has been conjectured but not proven. However, on 13 July 2015, the LHCb collaboration at CERN reported results consistent with pentaquark states, elementary fermions are grouped into three generations, each comprising two leptons and two quarks
10.
Tritium
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Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The nucleus of tritium contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of protium contains one proton and no neutrons, naturally occurring tritium is extremely rare on Earth, where trace amounts are formed by the interaction of the atmosphere with cosmic rays. It can be produced by irradiating lithium metal or lithium bearing ceramic pebbles in a nuclear reactor, the name of this isotope is derived from the Greek word τρίτος meaning third. While tritium has several different experimentally determined values of its half-life and it decays into helium-3 by beta decay as in this nuclear equation, and it releases 18.6 keV of energy in the process. The electrons kinetic energy varies, with an average of 5.7 keV, beta particles from tritium can penetrate only about 6.0 mm of air, and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin. The unusually low energy released in the beta decay makes the decay appropriate for absolute neutrino mass measurements in the laboratory. The low energy of tritiums radiation makes it difficult to detect tritium-labeled compounds except by using liquid scintillation counting, Tritium is produced in nuclear reactors by neutron activation of lithium-6. This is possible with neutrons of any energy, and is an exothermic reaction yielding 4.8 MeV, in comparison, the fusion of deuterium with tritium releases about 17.6 MeV of energy. High-energy neutrons can produce tritium from lithium-7 in an endothermic reaction. This was discovered when the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test produced a high yield. High-energy neutrons irradiating boron-10 will also produce tritium, A more common result of boron-10 neutron capture is 7Li. The reactions requiring high neutron energies are not attractive production methods for peaceful applications, Tritium is also produced in heavy water-moderated reactors whenever a deuterium nucleus captures a neutron. This reaction has a quite small absorption cross section, making water a good neutron moderator. Even so, cleaning tritium from the moderator may be desirable after several years to reduce the risk of its escaping to the environment. Ontario Power Generations Tritium Removal Facility processes up to 2,500 tonnes of water a year. Deuteriums absorption cross section for thermal neutrons is about 0.52 millibarns, whereas that of oxygen-16 is about 0.19 millibarns and that of oxygen-17 is about 240 millibarns. Tritium is a product of the nuclear fission of uranium-235, plutonium-239. The release or recovery of tritium needs to be considered in the operation of reactors, especially in the reprocessing of nuclear fuels
