1.
State (polity)
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A state is a type of polity that is an organized political community living under a single system of government. States may or may not be sovereign, for instance, federated states are members of a federal union, and may have only partial sovereignty, but are, nonetheless, states. Some states are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony, in which ultimate sovereignty lies in another state, States that are sovereign are known as sovereign states. The term state can also refer to the branches of government within a state, often as a manner of contrasting them with churches. Speakers of American English often use the state and government as synonyms. Many human societies have been governed by states for millennia, over time a variety of different forms developed, employing a variety of justifications of legitimacy for their existence. In the 21st century, the modern nation-state is the predominant form of state to which people are subjected, there is no academic consensus on the most appropriate definition of the state. The term state refers to a set of different, but interrelated and often overlapping, general categories of state institutions include administrative bureaucracies, legal systems, and military or religious organizations. Another commonly accepted definition of the state is the one given at the Montevideo Convention on Rights, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a state is a. an organized political community under one government, a commonwealth, a nation. B. such a community forming part of a federal republic, confounding the definition problem is that state and government are often used as synonyms in common conversation and even some academic discourse. According to this schema, the states are nonphysical persons of international law. The relationship between a government and its state is one of representation and authorized agency, States may be classified as sovereign if they are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Other states are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony where ultimate sovereignty lies in another state, many states are federated states which participate in a federal union. A federated state is a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federation, such states differ from sovereign states in that they have transferred a portion of their sovereign powers to a federal government. One can commonly and sometimes readily classify states according to their apparent make-up or focus, the concept of the nation-state, theoretically or ideally co-terminous with a nation, became very popular by the 20th century in Europe, but occurred rarely elsewhere or at other times. Imperial states have sometimes promoted notions of racial superiority, the concept of temple states centred on religious shrines occurs in some discussions of the ancient world. To some extent, urban secession, the creation of a new city-state, a state can be distinguished from a government. The government is the group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time
2.
Matter
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All the everyday objects that we can bump into, touch or squeeze are ultimately composed of atoms. This ordinary atomic matter is in turn made up of interacting subatomic particles—usually a nucleus of protons and neutrons, typically, science considers these composite particles matter because they have both rest mass and volume. By contrast, massless particles, such as photons, are not considered matter, however, not all particles with rest mass have a classical volume, since fundamental particles such as quarks and leptons are considered point particles with no effective size or volume. Nevertheless, quarks and leptons together make up ordinary matter, Matter exists in states, the classical solid, liquid, and gas, as well as the more exotic plasma, Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, and quark–gluon plasma. For much of the history of the natural sciences people have contemplated the nature of matter. The idea that matter was built of discrete building blocks, the so-called particulate theory of matter, was first put forward by the Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, Matter should not be confused with mass, as the two are not the same in modern physics. Matter is itself a physical substance of which systems may be composed, while mass is not a substance, while there are different views on what should be considered matter, the mass of a substance or system is the same irrespective of any such definition of matter. Another difference is that matter has an opposite called antimatter, antimatter has the same mass property as its normal matter counterpart. Different fields of use the term matter in different, and sometimes incompatible. Some of these ways are based on loose historical meanings, from a time there was no reason to distinguish mass from simply a quantity of matter. As such, there is no universally agreed scientific meaning of the word matter. Scientifically, the mass is well-defined, but matter can be defined in several ways. Sometimes in the field of matter is simply equated with particles that exhibit rest mass, such as quarks. However, in physics and chemistry, matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties, the so-called wave–particle duality. A definition of based on its physical and chemical structure is. Such atomic matter is sometimes termed ordinary matter. As an example, deoxyribonucleic acid molecules are matter under this definition because they are made of atoms and this definition can extend to include charged atoms and molecules, so as to include plasmas and electrolytes, which are not obviously included in the atoms definition. Alternatively, one can adopt the protons, neutrons, and electrons definition, at a microscopic level, the constituent particles of matter such as protons, neutrons, and electrons obey the laws of quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality
3.
Solid
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Solid is one of the four fundamental states of matter. It is characterized by structural rigidity and resistance to changes of shape or volume, unlike a liquid, a solid object does not flow to take on the shape of its container, nor does it expand to fill the entire volume available to it like a gas does. The atoms in a solid are tightly bound to other, either in a regular geometric lattice or irregularly. The branch of physics deals with solids is called solid-state physics. Materials science is concerned with the physical and chemical properties of solids. Solid-state chemistry is concerned with the synthesis of novel materials, as well as the science of identification. The atoms, molecules or ions which make up solids may be arranged in a repeating pattern. Materials whose constituents are arranged in a regular pattern are known as crystals, in some cases, the regular ordering can continue unbroken over a large scale, for example diamonds, where each diamond is a single crystal. Almost all common metals, and many ceramics, are polycrystalline, in other materials, there is no long-range order in the position of the atoms. These solids are known as amorphous solids, examples include polystyrene, whether a solid is crystalline or amorphous depends on the material involved, and the conditions in which it was formed. Solids which are formed by slow cooling will tend to be crystalline, likewise, the specific crystal structure adopted by a crystalline solid depends on the material involved and on how it was formed. While many common objects, such as an ice cube or a coin, are chemically identical throughout, for example, a typical rock is an aggregate of several different minerals and mineraloids, with no specific chemical composition. Wood is an organic material consisting primarily of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of organic lignin. In materials science, composites of more than one constituent material can be designed to have desired properties, the forces between the atoms in a solid can take a variety of forms. For example, a crystal of sodium chloride is made up of sodium and chlorine. In diamond or silicon, the atoms share electrons and form covalent bonds, in metals, electrons are shared in metallic bonding. Some solids, particularly most organic compounds, are together with van der Waals forces resulting from the polarization of the electronic charge cloud on each molecule. The dissimilarities between the types of solid result from the differences between their bonding, metals typically are strong, dense, and good conductors of both electricity and heat
4.
Quantum mechanics
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Quantum mechanics, including quantum field theory, is a branch of physics which is the fundamental theory of nature at small scales and low energies of atoms and subatomic particles. Classical physics, the physics existing before quantum mechanics, derives from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid only at large scales, early quantum theory was profoundly reconceived in the mid-1920s. The reconceived theory is formulated in various specially developed mathematical formalisms, in one of them, a mathematical function, the wave function, provides information about the probability amplitude of position, momentum, and other physical properties of a particle. In 1803, Thomas Young, an English polymath, performed the famous experiment that he later described in a paper titled On the nature of light. This experiment played a role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light. In 1838, Michael Faraday discovered cathode rays, Plancks hypothesis that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete quanta precisely matched the observed patterns of black-body radiation. In 1896, Wilhelm Wien empirically determined a distribution law of black-body radiation, ludwig Boltzmann independently arrived at this result by considerations of Maxwells equations. However, it was only at high frequencies and underestimated the radiance at low frequencies. Later, Planck corrected this model using Boltzmanns statistical interpretation of thermodynamics and proposed what is now called Plancks law, following Max Plancks solution in 1900 to the black-body radiation problem, Albert Einstein offered a quantum-based theory to explain the photoelectric effect. Among the first to study quantum phenomena in nature were Arthur Compton, C. V. Raman, robert Andrews Millikan studied the photoelectric effect experimentally, and Albert Einstein developed a theory for it. In 1913, Peter Debye extended Niels Bohrs theory of structure, introducing elliptical orbits. This phase is known as old quantum theory, according to Planck, each energy element is proportional to its frequency, E = h ν, where h is Plancks constant. Planck cautiously insisted that this was simply an aspect of the processes of absorption and emission of radiation and had nothing to do with the reality of the radiation itself. In fact, he considered his quantum hypothesis a mathematical trick to get the right rather than a sizable discovery. He won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, lower energy/frequency means increased time and vice versa, photons of differing frequencies all deliver the same amount of action, but do so in varying time intervals. High frequency waves are damaging to human tissue because they deliver their action packets concentrated in time, the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr became widely accepted. In the mid-1920s, developments in mechanics led to its becoming the standard formulation for atomic physics. In the summer of 1925, Bohr and Heisenberg published results that closed the old quantum theory, out of deference to their particle-like behavior in certain processes and measurements, light quanta came to be called photons
5.
Crystallography
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Crystallography is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in the crystalline solids. The word crystallography derives from the Greek words crystallon cold drop, frozen drop, with its meaning extending to all solids with some degree of transparency, and graphein to write. In July 2012, the United Nations recognised the importance of the science of crystallography by proclaiming that 2014 would be the International Year of Crystallography, X-ray crystallography is used to determine the structure of large biomolecules such as proteins. Before the development of X-ray diffraction crystallography, the study of crystals was based on measurements of their geometry. This involved measuring the angles of crystal faces relative to other and to theoretical reference axes. This physical measurement is carried out using a goniometer, the position in 3D space of each crystal face is plotted on a stereographic net such as a Wulff net or Lambert net. The pole to face is plotted on the net. Each point is labelled with its Miller index, the final plot allows the symmetry of the crystal to be established. Crystallographic methods now depend on analysis of the patterns of a sample targeted by a beam of some type. X-rays are most commonly used, other beams used include electrons or neutrons and this is facilitated by the wave properties of the particles. Crystallographers often explicitly state the type of beam used, as in the terms X-ray crystallography and these three types of radiation interact with the specimen in different ways. X-rays interact with the distribution of electrons in the sample. Electrons are charged particles and therefore interact with the charge distribution of both the atomic nuclei and the electrons of the sample. Neutrons are scattered by the atomic nuclei through the nuclear forces, but in addition. They are therefore also scattered by magnetic fields, when neutrons are scattered from hydrogen-containing materials, they produce diffraction patterns with high noise levels. However, the material can sometimes be treated to substitute deuterium for hydrogen, because of these different forms of interaction, the three types of radiation are suitable for different crystallographic studies. An image of an object is made using a lens to focus the beam. However, the wavelength of light is three orders of magnitude longer than the length of typical atomic bonds and atoms themselves
6.
Electromagnetism
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Electromagnetism is a branch of physics involving the study of the electromagnetic force, a type of physical interaction that occurs between electrically charged particles. The electromagnetic force usually exhibits electromagnetic fields such as fields, magnetic fields. The other three fundamental interactions are the interaction, the weak interaction, and gravitation. The word electromagnetism is a form of two Greek terms, ἤλεκτρον, ēlektron, amber, and μαγνῆτις λίθος magnētis lithos, which means magnesian stone. The electromagnetic force plays a role in determining the internal properties of most objects encountered in daily life. Ordinary matter takes its form as a result of forces between individual atoms and molecules in matter, and is a manifestation of the electromagnetic force. Electrons are bound by the force to atomic nuclei, and their orbital shapes. The electromagnetic force governs the processes involved in chemistry, which arise from interactions between the electrons of neighboring atoms, there are numerous mathematical descriptions of the electromagnetic field. In classical electrodynamics, electric fields are described as electric potential, although electromagnetism is considered one of the four fundamental forces, at high energy the weak force and electromagnetic force are unified as a single electroweak force. In the history of the universe, during the epoch the unified force broke into the two separate forces as the universe cooled. Originally, electricity and magnetism were considered to be two separate forces, Magnetic poles attract or repel one another in a manner similar to positive and negative charges and always exist as pairs, every north pole is yoked to a south pole. An electric current inside a wire creates a corresponding magnetic field outside the wire. Its direction depends on the direction of the current in the wire. A current is induced in a loop of wire when it is moved toward or away from a field, or a magnet is moved towards or away from it. While preparing for a lecture on 21 April 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted made a surprising observation. As he was setting up his materials, he noticed a compass needle deflected away from north when the electric current from the battery he was using was switched on. At the time of discovery, Ørsted did not suggest any explanation of the phenomenon. However, three later he began more intensive investigations
7.
Metallurgy
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The production of metals involves the processing of ores to extract the metal they contain, and the mixture of metals, sometimes with other elements, to produce alloys. Metallurgy is distinguished from the craft of metalworking, although metalworking relies on metallurgy, as medicine relies on medical science, Metallurgy is subdivided into ferrous metallurgy and non-ferrous metallurgy or colored metallurgy. Ferrous metallurgy involves processes and alloys based on iron while non-ferrous metallurgy involves processes, the production of ferrous metals accounts for 95 percent of world metal production. The roots of metallurgy derive from Ancient Greek, μεταλλουργός, metallourgós, worker in metal, from μέταλλον, métallon, metal + ἔργον, érgon, in the late 19th century it was extended to the more general scientific study of metals, alloys, and related processes. In English, the pronunciation is the more common one in the UK. The /ˈmetələrdʒi/ pronunciation is the common one in the USA. The earliest recorded metal employed by humans appears to be gold, small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, c.40,000 BC. Silver, copper, tin and meteoric iron can also be found in native form, egyptian weapons made from meteoric iron in about 3000 BC were highly prized as daggers from heaven. Certain metals, notably tin, lead and copper, can be recovered from their ores by simply heating the rocks in a fire or blast furnace, a process known as smelting. The first evidence of this extractive metallurgy dates from the 5th and 6th millennia BC and was found in the sites of Majdanpek, Yarmovac and Plocnik. To date, the earliest evidence of copper smelting is found at the Belovode site, other signs of early metals are found from the third millennium BC in places like Palmela, Los Millares, and Stonehenge. However, the ultimate beginnings cannot be ascertained and new discoveries are both continuous and ongoing. These first metals were single ones or as found, about 3500 BC, it was discovered that by combining copper and tin, a superior metal could be made, an alloy called bronze, representing a major technological shift known as the Bronze Age. The extraction of iron from its ore into a metal is much more difficult than for copper or tin. The process appears to have been invented by the Hittites in about 1200 BC, the secret of extracting and working iron was a key factor in the success of the Philistines. Historical developments in ferrous metallurgy can be found in a variety of past cultures. A 16th century book by Georg Agricola called De re metallica describes the highly developed and complex processes of mining metal ores, metal extraction, Agricola has been described as the father of metallurgy. Extractive metallurgy is the practice of removing valuable metals from an ore, in order to convert a metal oxide or sulphide to a purer metal, the ore must be reduced physically, chemically, or electrolytically
8.
Condensed matter physics
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Condensed matter physics is a branch of physics that deals with the physical properties of condensed phases of matter, where particles adhere to each other. Condensed matter physicists seek to understand the behavior of these phases by using physical laws, in particular, they include the laws of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism and statistical mechanics. The field overlaps with chemistry, materials science, and nanotechnology, the theoretical physics of condensed matter shares important concepts and methods with that of particle physics and nuclear physics. A variety of topics in physics such as crystallography, metallurgy, elasticity, magnetism, etc. were treated as distinct areas until the 1940s, when they were grouped together as solid state physics. Around the 1960s, the study of properties of liquids was added to this list, forming the basis for the new. The Bell Telephone Laboratories was one of the first institutes to conduct a program in condensed matter physics. References to condensed state can be traced to earlier sources, as a matter of fact, it would be more correct to unify them under the title of condensed bodies. One of the first studies of condensed states of matter was by English chemist Humphry Davy, Davy observed that of the forty chemical elements known at the time, twenty-six had metallic properties such as lustre, ductility and high electrical and thermal conductivity. This indicated that the atoms in John Daltons atomic theory were not indivisible as Dalton claimed, Davy further claimed that elements that were then believed to be gases, such as nitrogen and hydrogen could be liquefied under the right conditions and would then behave as metals. In 1823, Michael Faraday, then an assistant in Davys lab, successfully liquefied chlorine and went on to all known gaseous elements, except for nitrogen, hydrogen. By 1908, James Dewar and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes were successfully able to hydrogen and then newly discovered helium. Paul Drude in 1900 proposed the first theoretical model for an electron moving through a metallic solid. Drudes model described properties of metals in terms of a gas of free electrons, the phenomenon completely surprised the best theoretical physicists of the time, and it remained unexplained for several decades. Drudes classical model was augmented by Wolfgang Pauli, Arnold Sommerfeld, Felix Bloch, Pauli realized that the free electrons in metal must obey the Fermi–Dirac statistics. Using this idea, he developed the theory of paramagnetism in 1926, shortly after, Sommerfeld incorporated the Fermi–Dirac statistics into the free electron model and made it better able to explain the heat capacity. Two years later, Bloch used quantum mechanics to describe the motion of an electron in a periodic lattice. Magnetism as a property of matter has been known in China since 4000 BC, Pierre Curie studied the dependence of magnetization on temperature and discovered the Curie point phase transition in ferromagnetic materials. In 1906, Pierre Weiss introduced the concept of magnetic domains to explain the properties of ferromagnets
9.
Atom
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An atom is the smallest constituent unit of ordinary matter that has the properties of a chemical element. Every solid, liquid, gas, and plasma is composed of neutral or ionized atoms, Atoms are very small, typical sizes are around 100 picometers. Atoms are small enough that attempting to predict their behavior using classical physics - as if they were billiard balls, through the development of physics, atomic models have incorporated quantum principles to better explain and predict the behavior. Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and typically a number of neutrons. Protons and neutrons are called nucleons, more than 99. 94% of an atoms mass is in the nucleus. The protons have an electric charge, the electrons have a negative electric charge. If the number of protons and electrons are equal, that atom is electrically neutral, if an atom has more or fewer electrons than protons, then it has an overall negative or positive charge, respectively, and it is called an ion. The electrons of an atom are attracted to the protons in a nucleus by this electromagnetic force. The number of protons in the nucleus defines to what chemical element the atom belongs, for example, the number of neutrons defines the isotope of the element. The number of influences the magnetic properties of an atom. Atoms can attach to one or more other atoms by chemical bonds to form compounds such as molecules. The ability of atoms to associate and dissociate is responsible for most of the changes observed in nature. The idea that matter is made up of units is a very old idea, appearing in many ancient cultures such as Greece. The word atom was coined by ancient Greek philosophers, however, these ideas were founded in philosophical and theological reasoning rather than evidence and experimentation. As a result, their views on what look like. They also could not convince everybody, so atomism was but one of a number of competing theories on the nature of matter. It was not until the 19th century that the idea was embraced and refined by scientists, in the early 1800s, John Dalton used the concept of atoms to explain why elements always react in ratios of small whole numbers
10.
Materials science
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The interdisciplinary field of materials science, also commonly termed materials science and engineering, involves the discovery and design of new materials, with an emphasis on solids. Materials science still incorporates elements of physics, chemistry, and engineering, as such, the field was long considered by academic institutions as a sub-field of these related fields. Materials science is a syncretic discipline hybridizing metallurgy, ceramics, solid-state physics and it is the first example of a new academic discipline emerging by fusion rather than fission. Many of the most pressing scientific problems humans currently face are due to the limits of the materials that are available, thus, breakthroughs in materials science are likely to affect the future of technology significantly. Materials scientists emphasize understanding how the history of a material influences its structure, the understanding of processing-structure-properties relationships is called the § materials paradigm. This paradigm is used to advance understanding in a variety of areas, including nanotechnology, biomaterials. Such investigations are key to understanding, for example, the causes of various accidents and incidents. The material of choice of a given era is often a defining point, phrases such as Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Steel Age are great examples. Originally deriving from the manufacture of ceramics and its putative derivative metallurgy, materials science is one of the oldest forms of engineering, modern materials science evolved directly from metallurgy, which itself evolved from mining and ceramics and the use of fire. Materials science has driven, and been driven by, the development of technologies such as rubbers, plastics, semiconductors. Before the 1960s, many materials science departments were named metallurgy departments, reflecting the 19th, a material is defined as a substance that is intended to be used for certain applications. There are a myriad of materials around us—they can be found in anything from buildings to spacecraft, Materials can generally be divided into two classes, crystalline and non-crystalline. The traditional examples of materials are metals, semiconductors, ceramics, New and advanced materials that are being developed include nanomaterials and biomaterials, etc. The basis of science involves studying the structure of materials. Once a materials scientist knows about this structure-property correlation, they can go on to study the relative performance of a material in a given application. The major determinants of the structure of a material and thus of its properties are its constituent chemical elements and these characteristics, taken together and related through the laws of thermodynamics and kinetics, govern a materials microstructure, and thus its properties. As mentioned above, structure is one of the most important components of the field of materials science, Materials science examines the structure of materials from the atomic scale, all the way up to the macro scale. Characterization is the way materials scientists examine the structure of a material, structure is studied at various levels, as detailed below
11.
Transistor
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A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals and electrical power. It is composed of semiconductor material usually with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit, a voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistors terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled power can be higher than the controlling power, today, some transistors are packaged individually, but many more are found embedded in integrated circuits. The transistor is the building block of modern electronic devices. Julius Edgar Lilienfeld patented a field-effect transistor in 1926 but it was not possible to construct a working device at that time. The first practically implemented device was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by American physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, the transistor revolutionized the field of electronics, and paved the way for smaller and cheaper radios, calculators, and computers, among other things. The transistor is on the list of IEEE milestones in electronics, and Bardeen, Brattain, the thermionic triode, a vacuum tube invented in 1907, enabled amplified radio technology and long-distance telephony. The triode, however, was a device that consumed a substantial amount of power. Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed a patent for a transistor in Canada in 1925. Lilienfeld also filed patents in the United States in 1926 and 1928. However, Lilienfeld did not publish any research articles about his devices nor did his patents cite any examples of a working prototype. In 1934, German inventor Oskar Heil patented a device in Europe. Solid State Physics Group leader William Shockley saw the potential in this, the term transistor was coined by John R. Pierce as a contraction of the term transresistance. Instead, what Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley invented in 1947 was the first point-contact transistor, Mataré had previous experience in developing crystal rectifiers from silicon and germanium in the German radar effort during World War II. Using this knowledge, he began researching the phenomenon of interference in 1947, realizing that Bell Labs scientists had already invented the transistor before them, the company rushed to get its transistron into production for amplified use in Frances telephone network. The first bipolar junction transistors were invented by Bell labs William Shockley, on April 12,1950, Bell Labs chemists Gordon Teal and Morgan Sparks had successfully produced a working bipolar NPN junction amplifying germanium transistor. Bell Labs had made this new sandwich transistor discovery announcement, in a release on July 4,1951. The first high-frequency transistor was the surface-barrier germanium transistor developed by Philco in 1953 and these were made by etching depressions into an N-type germanium base from both sides with jets of Indium sulfate until it was a few ten-thousandths of an inch thick
12.
Semiconductor
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Semiconductors are crystalline or amorphous solids with distinct electrical characteristics. They are of high electrical resistance — higher than typical resistance materials and their resistance decreases as their temperature increases, which is behavior opposite to that of a metal. The behavior of charge carriers which include electrons, ions and electron holes at these junctions is the basis of diodes, transistors and all modern electronics. Semiconductor devices can display a range of properties such as passing current more easily in one direction than the other, showing variable resistance. The modern understanding of the properties of a semiconductor relies on quantum physics to explain the movement of carriers in a crystal lattice. Doping greatly increases the number of carriers within the crystal. When a doped semiconductor contains mostly free holes it is called p-type, the semiconductor materials used in electronic devices are doped under precise conditions to control the concentration and regions of p- and n-type dopants. A single semiconductor crystal can have many p- and n-type regions, although some pure elements and many compounds display semiconductor properties, silicon, germanium, and compounds of gallium are the most widely used in electronic devices. Elements near the so-called metalloid staircase, where the metalloids are located on the table, are usually used as semiconductors. Some of the properties of materials were observed throughout the mid 19th. The first practical application of semiconductors in electronics was the 1904 development of the Cats-whisker detector, developments in quantum physics in turn allowed the development of the transistor in 1947 and the integrated circuit in 1958. There are several developed techniques that allow semiconducting materials to behave like conducting materials and these modifications have two outcomes, n-type and p-type. These refer to the excess or shortage of electrons, respectively, an unbalanced number of electrons would cause a current to flow through the material. Heterojunctions Heterojunctions occur when two differently doped semiconducting materials are joined together, for example, a configuration could consist of p-doped and n-doped germanium. This results in an exchange of electrons and holes between the differently doped semiconducting materials, the n-doped germanium would have an excess of electrons, and the p-doped germanium would have an excess of holes. The transfer occurs until equilibrium is reached by a process called recombination, a product of this process is charged ions, which result in an electric field. Excited Electrons A difference in electric potential on a material would cause it to leave thermal equilibrium. This introduces electrons and holes to the system, which interact via a process called ambipolar diffusion, whenever thermal equilibrium is disturbed in a semiconducting material, the amount of holes and electrons changes
13.
Hardness
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Hardness is a measure of how resistant solid matter is to various kinds of permanent shape change when a compressive force is applied. Some materials are harder than others, Hardness is dependent on ductility, elastic stiffness, plasticity, strain, strength, toughness, viscoelasticity, and viscosity. Common examples of matter are ceramics, concrete, certain metals, and superhard materials. There are three types of hardness measurements, scratch, indentation, and rebound. Within each of these classes of measurement there are individual measurement scales, for practical reasons conversion tables are used to convert between one scale and another. Scratch hardness is the measure of how resistant a sample is to fracture or permanent plastic deformation due to friction from a sharp object, the principle is that an object made of a harder material will scratch an object made of a softer material. When testing coatings, scratch hardness refers to the necessary to cut through the film to the substrate. The most common test is Mohs scale, which is used in mineralogy, one tool to make this measurement is the sclerometer. Another tool used to make these tests is the pocket hardness tester and this tool consists of a scale arm with graduated markings attached to a four-wheeled carriage. A scratch tool with a rim is mounted at a predetermined angle to the testing surface. In order to use it a weight of mass is added to the scale arm at one of the graduated markings. The use of the weight and markings allows a known pressure to be applied without the need for complicated machinery. Indentation hardness measures the resistance of a sample to material deformation due to a constant compression load from an object, they are primarily used in engineering. The tests work on the premise of measuring the critical dimensions of an indentation left by a specifically dimensioned and loaded indenter. Common indentation hardness scales are Rockwell, Vickers, Shore, rebound hardness, also known as dynamic hardness, measures the height of the bounce of a diamond-tipped hammer dropped from a fixed height onto a material. This type of hardness is related to elasticity, the device used to take this measurement is known as a scleroscope. Two scales that measures rebound hardness are the Leeb rebound hardness test, there are five hardening processes, Hall-Petch strengthening, work hardening, solid solution strengthening, precipitation hardening, and martensitic transformation. Hardness in the elastic range—a small temporary change in shape for a given force—is known as stiffness in the case of a given object and they exhibit plasticity—the ability to permanently change shape in response to the force, but remain in one piece
14.
Elasticity (physics)
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In physics, elasticity is the ability of a body to resist a distorting influence or deforming force and to return to its original size and shape when that influence or force is removed. Solid objects will deform when adequate forces are applied on them, if the material is elastic, the object will return to its initial shape and size when these forces are removed. The physical reasons for elastic behavior can be different for different materials. In metals, the atomic lattice changes size and shape when forces are applied, when forces are removed, the lattice goes back to the original lower energy state. For rubbers and other polymers, elasticity is caused by the stretching of polymer chains when forces are applied, perfect elasticity is an approximation of the real world. The most elastic body in modern science found is Quartz fibre which is not even a perfect elastic body, so perfect elastic body is an ideal concept only. Most materials which possess elasticity in practice remain purely elastic only up to very small deformations. In engineering, the amount of elasticity of a material is determined by two types of material parameter, the first type of material parameter is called a modulus, which measures the amount of force per unit area needed to achieve a given amount of deformation. The SI unit of modulus is the pascal, a higher modulus typically indicates that the material is harder to deform. The second type of measures the elastic limit, the maximum stress that can arise in a material before the onset of permanent deformation. Its SI unit is also pascal, when describing the relative elasticities of two materials, both the modulus and the elastic limit have to be considered. Rubbers typically have a low modulus and tend to stretch a lot, of two rubber materials with the same elastic limit, the one with a lower modulus will appear to be more elastic, which is however not correct. When an elastic material is deformed due to a force, it experiences internal resistance to the deformation. The various moduli apply to different kinds of deformation, for instance, Youngs modulus applies to extension/compression of a body, whereas the shear modulus applies to its shear. The elasticity of materials is described by a curve, which shows the relation between stress and strain. The curve is nonlinear, but it can be approximated as linear for sufficiently small deformations. For even higher stresses, materials exhibit behavior, that is, they deform irreversibly. Elasticity is not exhibited only by solids, non-Newtonian fluids, such as viscoelastic fluids, in response to a small, rapidly applied and removed strain, these fluids may deform and then return to their original shape. Under larger strains, or strains applied for longer periods of time, because the elasticity of a material is described in terms of a stress-strain relation, it is essential that the terms stress and strain be defined without ambiguity
15.
Electrical resistivity and conductivity
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Electrical resistivity is an intrinsic property that quantifies how strongly a given material opposes the flow of electric current. A low resistivity indicates a material that allows the flow of electric current. Resistivity is commonly represented by the Greek letter ρ, the SI unit of electrical resistivity is the ohm-metre. Electrical conductivity or specific conductance is the reciprocal of electrical resistivity and it is commonly represented by the Greek letter σ, but κ or γ are also occasionally used. Its SI unit is siemens per metre and CGSE unit is reciprocal second, many resistors and conductors have a uniform cross section with a uniform flow of electric current, and are made of one material. All copper wires, irrespective of their shape and size, have approximately the same resistivity, every material has its own characteristic resistivity – for example, resistivity of rubber is far larger than coppers. If the pipes are the size and shape, the pipe full of sand has higher resistance to flow. Resistance, however, is not solely determined by the presence or absence of sand and it also depends on the length and width of the pipe, short or wide pipes have lower resistance than narrow or long pipes. The above equation can be transposed to get Pouillets law, R = ρ ℓ A, the resistance of a given material increases with length, but decreases with increasing cross-sectional area. From the above equations, resistivity has the SI unit ohm metre, the formula R = ρ ℓ / A can be used to intuitively understand the meaning of a resistivity value. For example, if A = 7000100000000000000♠1 m2 ℓ = 7000100000000000000♠1 m, Conductivity, σ, is defined as the inverse of resistivity, σ =1 ρ. Conductivity has SI units of siemens per metre, the above definition was specific to resistors or conductors with a uniform cross-section, where current flows uniformly through them. A more basic and general definition starts from the fact that a field inside a material makes electric current flow. Conductivity is the inverse, σ =1 ρ = J E, for example, rubber is a material with large ρ and small σ—because even a very large electric field in rubber makes almost no current flow through it. On the other hand, copper is a material with small ρ, according to elementary quantum mechanics, electrons in an atom do not take on arbitrary energy values. Rather, electrons only occupy discrete energy levels in an atom or crystal. When a large number of such allowed energy levels are spaced close together —i. e. have similar energies— we can talk about these energy levels together as an energy band. There can be many such bands in a material, depending on the atomic number
16.
Magnetism
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Magnetism is a class of physical phenomena that are mediated by magnetic fields. Electric currents and the moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field. The most familiar effects occur in materials, which are strongly attracted by magnetic fields and can be magnetized to become permanent magnets. Only a few substances are ferromagnetic, the most common ones are iron, nickel and cobalt, the prefix ferro- refers to iron, because permanent magnetism was first observed in lodestone, a form of natural iron ore called magnetite, Fe3O4. The magnetic state of a material depends on temperature and other such as pressure. A material may exhibit more than one form of magnetism as these variables change, magnetism was first discovered in the ancient world, when people noticed that lodestones, naturally magnetized pieces of the mineral magnetite, could attract iron. The word magnet comes from the Greek term for lodestone, magnítis líthos, in ancient Greece, Aristotle attributed the first of what could be called a scientific discussion of magnetism to the philosopher Thales of Miletus, who lived from about 625 BC to about 545 BC. Around the same time, in ancient India, the Indian surgeon Sushruta was the first to use of the magnet for surgical purposes. In ancient China, the earliest literary reference to magnetism lies in a 4th-century BC book named after its author, the 2nd-century BC annals, Lüshi Chunqiu, also notes, The lodestone makes iron approach, or it attracts it. The earliest mention of the attraction of a needle is in a 1st-century work Lunheng, by the 12th century the Chinese were known to use the lodestone compass for navigation. They sculpted a directional spoon from lodestone in such a way that the handle of the spoon always pointed south, alexander Neckam, by 1187, was the first in Europe to describe the compass and its use for navigation. In 1269, Peter Peregrinus de Maricourt wrote the Epistola de magnete, in 1282, the properties of magnets and the dry compass were discussed by Al-Ashraf, a Yemeni physicist, astronomer, and geographer. In 1600, William Gilbert published his De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, in this work he describes many of his experiments with his model earth called the terrella. From his experiments, he concluded that the Earth was itself magnetic and this landmark experiment is known as Ørsteds Experiment. James Clerk Maxwell synthesized and expanded these insights into Maxwells equations, unifying electricity, magnetism, in 1905, Einstein used these laws in motivating his theory of special relativity, requiring that the laws held true in all inertial reference frames. Magnetism, at its root, arises from two sources, Electric current, Spin magnetic moments of elementary particles. The magnetic moments of the nuclei of atoms are thousands of times smaller than the electrons magnetic moments. Nuclear magnetic moments are very important in other contexts, particularly in nuclear magnetic resonance
17.
Crystal
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A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macroscopic single crystals are usually identifiable by their geometrical shape, the scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is known as crystallography. The process of crystal formation via mechanisms of crystal growth is called crystallization or solidification, the word crystal derives from the Ancient Greek word κρύσταλλος, meaning both ice and rock crystal, from κρύος, icy cold, frost. Examples of large crystals include snowflakes, diamonds, and table salt, most inorganic solids are not crystals but polycrystals, i. e. many microscopic crystals fused together into a single solid. Examples of polycrystals include most metals, rocks, ceramics, a third category of solids is amorphous solids, where the atoms have no periodic structure whatsoever. Examples of amorphous solids include glass, wax, and many plastics, Crystals are often used in pseudoscientific practices such as crystal therapy, and, along with gemstones, are sometimes associated with spellwork in Wiccan beliefs and related religious movements. The scientific definition of a crystal is based on the arrangement of atoms inside it. A crystal is a solid where the form a periodic arrangement. For example, when liquid water starts freezing, the change begins with small ice crystals that grow until they fuse. Most macroscopic inorganic solids are polycrystalline, including almost all metals, ceramics, ice, rocks, solids that are neither crystalline nor polycrystalline, such as glass, are called amorphous solids, also called glassy, vitreous, or noncrystalline. These have no periodic order, even microscopically, there are distinct differences between crystalline solids and amorphous solids, most notably, the process of forming a glass does not release the latent heat of fusion, but forming a crystal does. A crystal structure is characterized by its cell, a small imaginary box containing one or more atoms in a specific spatial arrangement. The unit cells are stacked in three-dimensional space to form the crystal, the symmetry of a crystal is constrained by the requirement that the unit cells stack perfectly with no gaps. There are 219 possible crystal symmetries, called space groups. These are grouped into 7 crystal systems, such as cubic crystal system or hexagonal crystal system, Crystals are commonly recognized by their shape, consisting of flat faces with sharp angles. Euhedral crystals are those with obvious, well-formed flat faces, anhedral crystals do not, usually because the crystal is one grain in a polycrystalline solid. The flat faces of a crystal are oriented in a specific way relative to the underlying atomic arrangement of the crystal. This occurs because some surface orientations are more stable than others, as a crystal grows, new atoms attach easily to the rougher and less stable parts of the surface, but less easily to the flat, stable surfaces
18.
Metal
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A metal is a material that is typically hard, opaque, shiny, and has good electrical and thermal conductivity. Metals are generally malleable—that is, they can be hammered or pressed permanently out of shape without breaking or cracking—as well as fusible and ductile, about 91 of the 118 elements in the periodic table are metals, the others are nonmetals or metalloids. Some elements appear in both metallic and non-metallic forms, astrophysicists use the term metal to collectively describe all elements other than hydrogen and helium, the simplest two, in a star. The star fuses smaller atoms, mostly hydrogen and helium, to larger ones over its lifetime. In that sense, the metallicity of an object is the proportion of its matter made up of all chemical elements. Many elements and compounds that are not normally classified as metals become metallic under high pressures, the atoms of metallic substances are typically arranged in one of three common crystal structures, namely body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, and hexagonal close-packed. In bcc, each atom is positioned at the center of a cube of eight others, in fcc and hcp, each atom is surrounded by twelve others, but the stacking of the layers differs. Some metals adopt different structures depending on the temperature, atoms of metals readily lose their outer shell electrons, resulting in a free flowing cloud of electrons within their otherwise solid arrangement. This provides the ability of metallic substances to easily transmit heat, while this flow of electrons occurs, the solid characteristic of the metal is produced by electrostatic interactions between each atom and the electron cloud. This type of bond is called a metallic bond, Metals are usually inclined to form cations through electron loss, reacting with oxygen in the air to form oxides over various timescales. Examples,4 Na + O2 →2 Na2O2 Ca + O2 →2 CaO4 Al +3 O2 →2 Al2O3, the transition metals are slower to oxidize because they form a passivating layer of oxide that protects the interior. Others, like palladium, platinum and gold, do not react with the atmosphere at all, some metals form a barrier layer of oxide on their surface which cannot be penetrated by further oxygen molecules and thus retain their shiny appearance and good conductivity for many decades. The oxides of metals are generally basic, as opposed to those of nonmetals, exceptions are largely oxides with very high oxidation states such as CrO3, Mn2O7, and OsO4, which have strictly acidic reactions. Painting, anodizing or plating metals are good ways to prevent their corrosion, however, a more reactive metal in the electrochemical series must be chosen for coating, especially when chipping of the coating is expected. Water and the two form an electrochemical cell, and if the coating is less reactive than the coatee. Metals in general have high conductivity, high thermal conductivity. Typically they are malleable and ductile, deforming under stress without cleaving, in terms of optical properties, metals are shiny and lustrous. Sheets of metal beyond a few micrometres in thickness appear opaque, although most metals have higher densities than most nonmetals, there is wide variation in their densities, lithium being the least dense solid element and osmium the densest
19.
Ice
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Ice is water frozen into a solid state. Depending on the presence of such as particles of soil or bubbles of air. In the Solar System, ice is abundant and occurs naturally from as close to the Sun as Mercury to as far as away the Oort cloud objects, beyond the Solar System, it occurs as interstellar ice. It falls as snowflakes and hail or occurs as frost, icicles or ice spikes, Ice molecules can exhibit up to sixteen different phases that depend on temperature and pressure. When water is cooled rapidly, up to three different types of ice can form depending on the history of its pressure and temperature. When cooled slowly correlated proton tunneling occurs below 20 K giving rise to macroscopic quantum phenomena, virtually all the ice on Earths surface and in its atmosphere is of a hexagonal crystalline structure denoted as ice Ih with minute traces of cubic ice denoted as ice Ic. The most common phase transition to ice Ih occurs when water is cooled below 0°C at standard atmospheric pressure. It may also be deposited directly by water vapor, as happens in the formation of frost, the transition from ice to water is melting and from ice directly to water vapor is sublimation. Ice is used in a variety of ways, including cooling, winter sports, as a naturally occurring crystalline inorganic solid with an ordered structure, ice is considered a mineral. It possesses a regular crystalline structure based on the molecule of water, an unusual property of ice frozen at atmospheric pressure is that the solid is approximately 8. 3% less dense than liquid water. The density of ice is 0.9167 g/cm3 at 0 °C, liquid water is densest, essentially 1.00 g/cm³, at 4 °C and becomes less dense as the water molecules begin to form the hexagonal crystals of ice as the freezing point is reached. This is due to hydrogen bonding dominating the intermolecular forces, which results in a packing of molecules less compact in the solid, density of ice increases slightly with decreasing temperature and has a value of 0.9340 g/cm³ at −180 °C. When water freezes, it increases in volume and it is also a common cause of the flooding of houses when water pipes burst due to the pressure of expanding water when it freezes. The result of this process is that ice floats on liquid water, sufficiently thin ice sheets allow light to pass through while protecting the underside from short-term weather extremes such as wind chill. This creates an environment for bacterial and algal colonies. When ice melts, it absorbs as much energy as it would take to heat an equivalent mass of water by 80 °C, during the melting process, the temperature remains constant at 0 °C. While melting, any energy added breaks the bonds between ice molecules. Energy becomes available to increase the thermal energy only after enough hydrogen bonds are broken that the ice can be considered liquid water, the amount of energy consumed in breaking hydrogen bonds in the transition from ice to water is known as the heat of fusion
20.
Amorphous solid
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In condensed matter physics and materials science, an amorphous or non-crystalline solid is a solid that lacks the long-range order that is characteristic of a crystal. In some older books, the term has been used synonymously with glass, nowadays, glassy solid or amorphous solid is considered to be the overarching concept, and glass the more special case, A glass is an amorphous solid that exhibits a glass transition. Other types of solids include gels, thin films. Amorphous materials have a structure made of interconnected structural blocks. Even amorphous materials have some shortrange order at the length scale due to the nature of chemical bonding. Furthermore, in small crystals a large fraction of the atoms are the crystal, relaxation of the surface and interfacial effects distort the atomic positions. Amorphous phases are important constituents of thin films, which are layers of a few nm to some tens of µm thickness deposited upon a substrate. For higher values, the diffusion of deposited atomic species would allow for the formation of crystallites with long range atomic order. Regarding their applications, amorphous metallic layers played an important role in the discussion of a suspected superconductivity in amorphous metals, today, optical coatings made from TiO2, SiO2, Ta2O5 etc. and combinations of them in most cases consist of amorphous phases of these compounds. Much research is carried out into thin films as a gas separating membrane layer. Also, hydrogenated amorphous silicon, a-Si, H in short, is of significance for thin film solar cells. In case of a-Si, H the missing long-range order between silicon atoms is partly induced by the presence by hydrogen in the percent range, the occurrence of amorphous phases turned out as a phenomenon of particular interest for studying thin film growth. Remarkably, the growth of polycrystalline films is used and preceded by an initial amorphous layer. The most investigated example is represented by thin multicrystalline silicon films, an initial amorphous layer was observed in many studies. The phenomenon has been interpreted in the framework of Ostwalds rule of stages that predicts the formation of phases to proceed with increasing condensation time towards increasing stability. Experimental studies of the phenomenon require a clearly defined state of the substrate surface, the Physics of Structurally Disordered Matter, An Introduction. Amorphous Solids and the Liquid State
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Glass
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Glass is a non-crystalline amorphous solid that is often transparent and has widespread practical, technological, and decorative usage in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optoelectronics. The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of glass are silicate glasses based on the chemical compound silica, the primary constituent of sand. The term glass, in usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material. Many applications of silicate glasses derive from their optical transparency, giving rise to their use as window panes. Glass can be coloured by adding metallic salts, and can also be painted and printed with vitreous enamels and these qualities have led to the extensive use of glass in the manufacture of art objects and in particular, stained glass windows. Although brittle, silicate glass is extremely durable, and many examples of glass fragments exist from early glass-making cultures, because glass can be formed or moulded into any shape, it has been traditionally used for vessels, bowls, vases, bottles, jars and drinking glasses. In its most solid forms it has also used for paperweights, marbles. Some objects historically were so commonly made of glass that they are simply called by the name of the material, such as drinking glasses. Porcelains and many polymer thermoplastics familiar from everyday use are glasses and these sorts of glasses can be made of quite different kinds of materials than silica, metallic alloys, ionic melts, aqueous solutions, molecular liquids, and polymers. For many applications, like glass bottles or eyewear, polymer glasses are a lighter alternative than traditional glass, silica is a common fundamental constituent of glass. In nature, vitrification of quartz occurs when lightning strikes sand, forming hollow, fused quartz is a glass made from chemically-pure SiO2. It has excellent resistance to shock, being able to survive immersion in water while red hot. However, its high melting-temperature and viscosity make it difficult to work with, normally, other substances are added to simplify processing. One is sodium carbonate, which lowers the transition temperature. The soda makes the glass water-soluble, which is undesirable, so lime, some magnesium oxide. The resulting glass contains about 70 to 74% silica by weight and is called a soda-lime glass, soda-lime glasses account for about 90% of manufactured glass. Most common glass contains other ingredients to change its properties, lead glass or flint glass is more brilliant because the increased refractive index causes noticeably more specular reflection and increased optical dispersion. Adding barium also increases the refractive index, iron can be incorporated into glass to absorb infrared energy, for example in heat absorbing filters for movie projectors, while cerium oxide can be used for glass that absorbs UV wavelengths
22.
Electrical engineering
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Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. This field first became an occupation in the later half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone. Subsequently, broadcasting and recording media made electronics part of daily life, the invention of the transistor, and later the integrated circuit, brought down the cost of electronics to the point they can be used in almost any household object. Electrical engineers typically hold a degree in engineering or electronic engineering. Practicing engineers may have professional certification and be members of a professional body, such bodies include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Electrical engineers work in a wide range of industries and the skills required are likewise variable. These range from basic circuit theory to the management skills required of a project manager, the tools and equipment that an individual engineer may need are similarly variable, ranging from a simple voltmeter to a top end analyzer to sophisticated design and manufacturing software. Electricity has been a subject of scientific interest since at least the early 17th century and he also designed the versorium, a device that detected the presence of statically charged objects. In the 19th century, research into the subject started to intensify, Electrical engineering became a profession in the later 19th century. Practitioners had created an electric telegraph network and the first professional electrical engineering institutions were founded in the UK. Over 50 years later, he joined the new Society of Telegraph Engineers where he was regarded by other members as the first of their cohort, Practical applications and advances in such fields created an increasing need for standardised units of measure. They led to the standardization of the units volt, ampere, coulomb, ohm, farad. This was achieved at a conference in Chicago in 1893. During these years, the study of electricity was considered to be a subfield of physics. Thats because early electrical technology was electromechanical in nature, the Technische Universität Darmstadt founded the worlds first department of electrical engineering in 1882. The first course in engineering was taught in 1883 in Cornell’s Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering. It was not until about 1885 that Cornell President Andrew Dickson White established the first Department of Electrical Engineering in the United States, in the same year, University College London founded the first chair of electrical engineering in Great Britain. Professor Mendell P. Weinbach at University of Missouri soon followed suit by establishing the engineering department in 1886
23.
Optics
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Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light, because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties. Most optical phenomena can be accounted for using the classical description of light. Complete electromagnetic descriptions of light are, however, often difficult to apply in practice, practical optics is usually done using simplified models. The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of rays that travel in straight lines, physical optics is a more comprehensive model of light, which includes wave effects such as diffraction and interference that cannot be accounted for in geometric optics. Historically, the model of light was developed first, followed by the wave model of light. Progress in electromagnetic theory in the 19th century led to the discovery that waves were in fact electromagnetic radiation. Some phenomena depend on the fact that light has both wave-like and particle-like properties, explanation of these effects requires quantum mechanics. When considering lights particle-like properties, the light is modelled as a collection of particles called photons, quantum optics deals with the application of quantum mechanics to optical systems. Optical science is relevant to and studied in many related disciplines including astronomy, various engineering fields, photography, practical applications of optics are found in a variety of technologies and everyday objects, including mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, lasers, and fibre optics. Optics began with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, the earliest known lenses, made from polished crystal, often quartz, date from as early as 700 BC for Assyrian lenses such as the Layard/Nimrud lens. The ancient Romans and Greeks filled glass spheres with water to make lenses, the word optics comes from the ancient Greek word ὀπτική, meaning appearance, look. Greek philosophy on optics broke down into two opposing theories on how vision worked, the theory and the emission theory. The intro-mission approach saw vision as coming from objects casting off copies of themselves that were captured by the eye, plato first articulated the emission theory, the idea that visual perception is accomplished by rays emitted by the eyes. He also commented on the parity reversal of mirrors in Timaeus, some hundred years later, Euclid wrote a treatise entitled Optics where he linked vision to geometry, creating geometrical optics. Ptolemy, in his treatise Optics, held a theory of vision, the rays from the eye formed a cone, the vertex being within the eye. The rays were sensitive, and conveyed back to the observer’s intellect about the distance. He summarised much of Euclid and went on to describe a way to measure the angle of refraction, during the Middle Ages, Greek ideas about optics were resurrected and extended by writers in the Muslim world
24.
Mechanical engineering
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Mechanical engineering is the discipline that applies the principles of engineering, physics, and materials science for the design, analysis, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the design, production and it is one of the oldest and broadest of the engineering disciplines. The mechanical engineering field requires an understanding of areas including mechanics, kinematics, thermodynamics, materials science, structural analysis. Mechanical engineering emerged as a field during the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18th century, however, Mechanical engineering science emerged in the 19th century as a result of developments in the field of physics. The field has evolved to incorporate advancements in technology, and mechanical engineers today are pursuing developments in such fields as composites, mechatronics. Mechanical engineers may work in the field of biomedical engineering, specifically with biomechanics, transport phenomena, biomechatronics, bionanotechnology. Mechanical engineering finds its application in the archives of various ancient, in ancient Greece, the works of Archimedes deeply influenced mechanics in the Western tradition and Heron of Alexandria created the first steam engine. In China, Zhang Heng improved a water clock and invented a seismometer, during the 7th to 15th century, the era called the Islamic Golden Age, there were remarkable contributions from Muslim inventors in the field of mechanical technology. Al-Jazari, who was one of them, wrote his famous Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices in 1206 and he is also considered to be the inventor of such mechanical devices which now form the very basic of mechanisms, such as the crankshaft and camshaft. Newton was reluctant to publish his methods and laws for years, gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is also credited with creating Calculus during the same time frame. On the European continent, Johann von Zimmermann founded the first factory for grinding machines in Chemnitz, education in mechanical engineering has historically been based on a strong foundation in mathematics and science. Degrees in mechanical engineering are offered at universities worldwide. In Spain, Portugal and most of South America, where neither B. Sc. nor B. Tech, programs have been adopted, the formal name for the degree is Mechanical Engineer, and the course work is based on five or six years of training. In Italy the course work is based on five years of education, and training, in Greece, the coursework is based on a five-year curriculum and the requirement of a Diploma Thesis, which upon completion a Diploma is awarded rather than a B. Sc. In Australia, mechanical engineering degrees are awarded as Bachelor of Engineering or similar nomenclature although there are a number of specialisations. The degree takes four years of study to achieve. To ensure quality in engineering degrees, Engineers Australia accredits engineering degrees awarded by Australian universities in accordance with the global Washington Accord, before the degree can be awarded, the student must complete at least 3 months of on the job work experience in an engineering firm. Similar systems are present in South Africa and are overseen by the Engineering Council of South Africa
25.
Engineering
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The term Engineering is derived from the Latin ingenium, meaning cleverness and ingeniare, meaning to contrive, devise. Engineering has existed since ancient times as humans devised fundamental inventions such as the wedge, lever, wheel, each of these inventions is essentially consistent with the modern definition of engineering. The term engineering is derived from the engineer, which itself dates back to 1390 when an engineer originally referred to a constructor of military engines. In this context, now obsolete, a referred to a military machine. Notable examples of the obsolete usage which have survived to the present day are military engineering corps, the word engine itself is of even older origin, ultimately deriving from the Latin ingenium, meaning innate quality, especially mental power, hence a clever invention. The earliest civil engineer known by name is Imhotep, as one of the officials of the Pharaoh, Djosèr, he probably designed and supervised the construction of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara in Egypt around 2630–2611 BC. Ancient Greece developed machines in both civilian and military domains, the Antikythera mechanism, the first known mechanical computer, and the mechanical inventions of Archimedes are examples of early mechanical engineering. In the Middle Ages, the trebuchet was developed, the first steam engine was built in 1698 by Thomas Savery. The development of this gave rise to the Industrial Revolution in the coming decades. With the rise of engineering as a profession in the 18th century, similarly, in addition to military and civil engineering, the fields then known as the mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering. The inventions of Thomas Newcomen and the Scottish engineer James Watt gave rise to mechanical engineering. The development of specialized machines and machine tools during the revolution led to the rapid growth of mechanical engineering both in its birthplace Britain and abroad. John Smeaton was the first self-proclaimed civil engineer and is regarded as the father of civil engineering. He was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and he was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton designed the third Eddystone Lighthouse where he pioneered the use of hydraulic lime and his lighthouse remained in use until 1877 and was dismantled and partially rebuilt at Plymouth Hoe where it is known as Smeatons Tower. The United States census of 1850 listed the occupation of engineer for the first time with a count of 2,000, there were fewer than 50 engineering graduates in the U. S. before 1865. In 1870 there were a dozen U. S. mechanical engineering graduates, in 1890 there were 6,000 engineers in civil, mining, mechanical and electrical. There was no chair of applied mechanism and applied mechanics established at Cambridge until 1875, the theoretical work of James Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz in the late 19th century gave rise to the field of electronics
26.
Ion
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An ion is an atom or a molecule in which the total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons, giving the atom or molecule a net positive or negative electrical charge. Ions can be created, by chemical or physical means. In chemical terms, if an atom loses one or more electrons. If an atom gains electrons, it has a net charge and is known as an anion. Ions consisting of only a single atom are atomic or monatomic ions, because of their electric charges, cations and anions attract each other and readily form ionic compounds, such as salts. In the case of ionization of a medium, such as a gas, which are known as ion pairs are created by ion impact, and each pair consists of a free electron. The word ion comes from the Greek word ἰόν, ion, going and this term was introduced by English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday in 1834 for the then-unknown species that goes from one electrode to the other through an aqueous medium. Faraday also introduced the words anion for a charged ion. In Faradays nomenclature, cations were named because they were attracted to the cathode in a galvanic device, arrhenius explanation was that in forming a solution, the salt dissociates into Faradays ions. Arrhenius proposed that ions formed even in the absence of an electric current, ions in their gas-like state are highly reactive, and do not occur in large amounts on Earth, except in flames, lightning, electrical sparks, and other plasmas. These gas-like ions rapidly interact with ions of charge to give neutral molecules or ionic salts. These stabilized species are commonly found in the environment at low temperatures. A common example is the present in seawater, which are derived from the dissolved salts. Electrons, due to their mass and thus larger space-filling properties as matter waves, determine the size of atoms. Thus, anions are larger than the parent molecule or atom, as the excess electron repel each other, as such, in general, cations are smaller than the corresponding parent atom or molecule due to the smaller size of its electron cloud. One particular cation contains no electrons, and thus consists of a single proton - very much smaller than the parent hydrogen atom. Since the electric charge on a proton is equal in magnitude to the charge on an electron, an anion, from the Greek word ἄνω, meaning up, is an ion with more electrons than protons, giving it a net negative charge. A cation, from the Greek word κατά, meaning down, is an ion with fewer electrons than protons, there are additional names used for ions with multiple charges
27.
Sodium
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Sodium is a chemical element with symbol Na and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal, Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table, because it has a single electron in its outer shell that it readily donates, creating a positively charged atom—the Na+ cation. Its only stable isotope is 23Na, the free metal does not occur in nature, but must be prepared from compounds. Sodium is the sixth most abundant element in the Earths crust, Sodium was first isolated by Humphry Davy in 1807 by the electrolysis of sodium hydroxide. Among many other useful compounds, sodium hydroxide is used in soap manufacture, and sodium chloride is a de-icing agent. Sodium is an element for all animals and some plants. Sodium ions are the major cation in the fluid and as such are the major contributor to the ECF osmotic pressure. Loss of water from the ECF compartment increases the sodium concentration, isotonic loss of water and sodium from the ECF compartment decreases the size of that compartment in a condition called ECF hypovolemia. In nerve cells, the charge across the cell membrane enables transmission of the nerve impulse—an action potential—when the charge is dissipated. The melting and boiling points of sodium are lower than those of lithium but higher than those of the alkali metals potassium, rubidium. All of these high-pressure allotropes are insulators and electrides.3 nm, spin-orbit interactions involving the electron in the 3p orbital split the D line into two, at 589.0 and 589.6 nm, hyperfine structures involving both orbitals cause many more lines. Twenty isotopes of sodium are known, but only 23Na is stable, 23Na is created in the carbon-burning process in stars by fusing two carbon atoms together, this requires temperatures above 600 megakelvins and a star of at least three solar masses. Two nuclear isomers have been discovered, the one being 24mNa with a half-life of around 20.2 milliseconds. Sodium atoms have 11 electrons, one more than the stable configuration of the noble gas neon. This process requires so little energy that sodium is oxidized by giving up its 11th electron. In contrast, the ionization energy is very high, because the 10th electron is closer to the nucleus than the 11th electron. As a result, sodium usually forms ionic compounds involving the Na+ cation, the most common oxidation state for sodium is +1. It is generally less reactive than potassium and more reactive than lithium, Sodium metal is highly reducing, with the reduction of sodium ions requiring −2.71 volts, though potassium and lithium have even more negative potentials
28.
Chlorine
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Chlorine is a chemical element with symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the table and its properties are mostly intermediate between them. Chlorine is a gas at room temperature. It is an extremely reactive element and a strong oxidising agent, among the elements, it has the highest electron affinity, the most common compound of chlorine, sodium chloride, has been known since ancient times. Around 1630, chlorine gas was first synthesised in a chemical reaction, Carl Wilhelm Scheele wrote a description of chlorine gas in 1774, supposing it to be an oxide of a new element. In 1809, chemists suggested that the gas might be an element, and this was confirmed by Sir Humphry Davy in 1810. Because of its reactivity, all chlorine in the Earths crust is in the form of ionic chloride compounds. It is the second-most abundant halogen and twenty-first most abundant chemical element in Earths crust and these crustal deposits are nevertheless dwarfed by the huge reserves of chloride in seawater. Elemental chlorine is produced from brine by electrolysis. The high oxidising potential of chlorine led to the development of commercial bleaches and disinfectants. As a common disinfectant, elemental chlorine and chlorine-generating compounds are used directly in swimming pools to keep them clean. Elemental chlorine at high concentrations is extremely dangerous and poisonous for all living organisms, in the form of chloride ions, chlorine is necessary to all known species of life. Other types of compounds are rare in living organisms. In the upper atmosphere, chlorine-containing organic molecules such as chlorofluorocarbons have been implicated in ozone depletion, small quantities of elemental chlorine are generated by oxidation of chloride to hypochlorite in neutrophils as part of the immune response against bacteria. Its importance in food was very well known in antiquity and was sometimes used as payment for services for Roman generals. Around 1630, chlorine was recognized as a gas by the Flemish chemist, the element was first studied in detail in 1774 by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, and he is credited with the discovery. He called it dephlogisticated muriatic acid air since it is a gas and he failed to establish chlorine as an element, mistakenly thinking that it was the oxide obtained from the hydrochloric acid. He named the new element within this oxide as muriaticum, in 1809, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thénard tried to decompose dephlogisticated muriatic acid air by reacting it with charcoal to release the free element muriaticum
29.
Ionic bonding
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Ionic bonding is a type of chemical bond that involves the electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged ions, and is the primary interaction occurring in ionic compounds. The ions are atoms that have gained one or more electrons and this transfer of electrons is known as electrovalence in contrast to covalence. In the simplest case, the cation is an atom and the anion is a nonmetal atom. In simpler words, a bond is the transfer of electrons from a metal to a non-metal in order for both atoms to obtain a full valence shell. Bonds with partially ionic and partially covalent character are called polar covalent bonds, Ionic compounds conduct electricity when molten or in solution, typically as a solid. Ionic compounds generally have a melting point, depending on the charge of the ions they consist of. The higher the charges the stronger the forces and the higher the melting point. They also tend to be soluble in water, here, the opposite trend roughly holds, the weaker the cohesive forces, the greater the solubility. Atoms that have an almost full or almost empty valence shell tend to be very reactive, atoms that are strongly electronegative often have only one or two empty orbitals in their valence shell, and frequently bond with other molecules or gain electrons to form anions. Atoms that are weakly electronegative have relatively few valence electrons that can easily be shared with atoms that are strongly electronegative, as a result, weakly electronegative atoms tend to distort their electrons cloud and form cations. Ionic bonding can result from a reaction when atoms of an element, whose ionization energy is low. In doing so, cations are formed, the atom of another element, whose electron affinity is positive, then accepts the electron, again to attain a stable electron configuration, and after accepting electron the atom becomes an anion. Typically, the electron configuration is one of the noble gases for elements in the s-block and the p-block. The electrostatic attraction between the anions and cations leads to the formation of a solid with a lattice in which the ions are stacked in an alternating fashion. In such a lattice, it is not possible to distinguish discrete molecular units. However, the ions themselves can be complex and form molecular ions like the acetate anion or the ammonium cation, for example, common table salt is sodium chloride. When sodium and chlorine are combined, the sodium atoms each lose an electron, forming cations, and these ions are then attracted to each other in a 1,1 ratio to form sodium chloride. For compounds that are transitional to the alloys and possess mixed ionic and metallic bonding, many sulfides, e. g. do form non-stoichiometric compounds
30.
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
31.
Covalent bond
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A covalent bond, also called a molecular bond, is a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electron pairs between atoms. These electron pairs are known as shared pairs or bonding pairs, for many molecules, the sharing of electrons allows each atom to attain the equivalent of a full outer shell, corresponding to a stable electronic configuration. Covalent bonding includes many kinds of interactions, including σ-bonding, π-bonding, metal-to-metal bonding, agostic interactions, bent bonds, the term covalent bond dates from 1939. In the molecule H2, the atoms share the two electrons via covalent bonding. Covalency is greatest between atoms of similar electronegativities, thus, covalent bonding does not necessarily require that the two atoms be of the same elements, only that they be of comparable electronegativity. Covalent bonding that entails sharing of electrons more than two atoms is said to be delocalized. The term covalence in regard to bonding was first used in 1919 by Irving Langmuir in a Journal of the American Chemical Society article entitled The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules. Langmuir wrote that we shall denote by the term covalence the number of pairs of electrons that an atom shares with its neighbors. The idea of covalent bonding can be traced several years before 1919 to Gilbert N. Lewis and he introduced the Lewis notation or electron dot notation or Lewis dot structure, in which valence electrons are represented as dots around the atomic symbols. Pairs of electrons located between atoms represent covalent bonds, multiple pairs represent multiple bonds, such as double bonds and triple bonds. An alternative form of representation, not shown here, has bond-forming electron pairs represented as solid lines, Lewis proposed that an atom forms enough covalent bonds to form a full outer electron shell. In the diagram of methane shown here, the atom has a valence of four and is, therefore, surrounded by eight electrons, four from the carbon itself. Each hydrogen has a valence of one and is surrounded by two electrons – its own one electron plus one from the carbon, walter Heitler and Fritz London are credited with the first successful quantum mechanical explanation of a chemical bond in 1927. Their work was based on the valence bond model, which assumes that a bond is formed when there is good overlap between the atomic orbitals of participating atoms. Atomic orbitals have specific directional properties leading to different types of covalent bonds, sigma bonds are the strongest covalent bonds and are due to head-on overlapping of orbitals on two different atoms. A single bond is usually a σ bond, pi bonds are weaker and are due to lateral overlap between p orbitals. A double bond between two given atoms consists of one σ and one π bond, and a bond is one σ. Covalent bonds are also affected by the electronegativity of the atoms which determines the chemical polarity of the bond
32.
Van der Waals force
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It can be shown that van der Waals forces are of the same origin as the Casimir effect, arising from quantum interactions with the zero-point field. The resulting van der Waals forces can be attractive or repulsive, the term includes, force between permanent dipoles force between a permanent dipole and a corresponding induced dipole force between instantaneously induced dipoles. It is also used loosely as a synonym for the totality of intermolecular forces. Van der Waals forces define many properties of compounds and molecular solids. In low molecular weight alcohols, the properties of their polar hydroxyl group dominate other weaker van der Waals interactions. In higher molecular weight alcohols, the properties of the hydrocarbon chain dominate. Van der Waals forces quickly vanish at longer distances between interacting molecules, Van der Waals forces include attraction and repulsions between atoms, molecules, and surfaces, as well as other intermolecular forces. They differ from covalent and ionic bonding in that they are caused by correlations in the fluctuating polarizations of nearby particles, Intermolecular forces have four major contributions, A repulsive component resulting from the Pauli exclusion principle that prevents the collapse of molecules. Attractive or repulsive electrostatic interactions between permanent charges, dipoles, quadrupoles, and in general between permanent multipoles, the electrostatic interaction is sometimes called the Keesom interaction or Keesom force after Willem Hendrik Keesom. Induction, which is the interaction between a permanent multipole on one molecule with an induced multipole on another. This interaction is sometimes called Debye force after Peter J. W. Debye, dispersion, which is the attractive interaction between any pair of molecules, including non-polar atoms, arising from the interactions of instantaneous multipoles. Returning to nomenclature, different texts refer to different things using the van der Waals force. Some texts describe the van der Waals force as the totality of forces, all intermolecular/van der Waals forces are anisotropic, which means that they depend on the relative orientation of the molecules. The induction and dispersion interactions are attractive, irrespective of orientation. That is, the force can be attractive or repulsive. Sometimes this effect is expressed by the statement that random thermal motion around room temperature can usually overcome or disrupt them, clearly, the thermal averaging effect is much less pronounced for the attractive induction and dispersion forces. The Lennard-Jones potential is used as an approximate model for the isotropic part of a total van der Waals force as a function of distance. Van der Waals forces are responsible for cases of pressure broadening of spectral lines
33.
American Physical Society
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Not be be confused with the American Physical Society which was absorbed by the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh in 1796. The American Physical Society is the second largest organization of physicists. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the prestigious Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, APS is a member society of the American Institute of Physics. The American Physical Society was founded on May 20,1899 and they proclaimed the mission of the new Society to be to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics, and in one way or another the APS has been at that task ever since. In the early years, virtually the sole activity of the APS was to hold scientific meetings, in 1913, the APS took over the operation of the Physical Review, which had been founded in 1893 at Cornell University, and journal publication became its second major activity. The Physical Review was followed by Reviews of Modern Physics in 1929, rev. has subdivided into five separate sections as the fields of physics proliferated and the number of submissions grew. In more recent years, the activities of the Society have broadened considerably, in addition, the Society conducts extensive programs in education, science outreach, and media relations. APS has 14 divisions and 11 topical groups covering all areas of physics research, there are 6 forums that reflect the interest of its 50,000 members in broader issues, and 9 sections organized by geographical region. In 1999, APS Physics celebrated its centennial with the biggest-ever physics meeting in Atlanta, einstein@Home, one of the projects APS initiated during World Year of Physics, is an ongoing and popular distributed computing project. During the summer of 2005, the society conducted an electronic poll, the poll became the motivation for a proposal of a name change promised in the leadership election that year. However, because of issues, the planned name change was eventually abandoned by the APS Executive Board. To promote public recognition of APS as a society, while retaining the name American Physical Society. General use of APS Physics to refer to APS or the American Physical Society is encouraged, the new APS Physics logo was designed by Kerry G. Johnson. At least now when you are in an elevator at an APS meeting and someone looks at your badge, the American Physical Society publishes 13 international research journals and an open-access on-line news and commentary website Physics. Physical Review Letters Reviews of Modern Physics Physical Review A, Atomic, molecular, Physical Review B, Condensed matter and materials physics. Physical Review D, Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology, Physical Review E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics. Physical Review X, Open access, pure, applied, Physical Review Applied, Experimental and theoretical applications of physics. Physical Review Accelerators and Beams, Open access, accelerator science, Physical Review Physics Education Research, Open access, experimental and theoretical research on physics education
34.
Cubic crystal system
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In crystallography, the cubic crystal system is a crystal system where the unit cell is in the shape of a cube. This is one of the most common and simplest shapes found in crystals and minerals, there are three main varieties of these crystals, Primitive cubic Body-centered cubic, Face-centered cubic Each is subdivided into other variants listed below. Note that although the cell in these crystals is conventionally taken to be a cube. This is related to the fact that in most cubic crystal systems, a classic isometric crystal has square or pentagonal faces. The three Bravais lattices in the crystal system are, The primitive cubic system consists of one lattice point on each corner of the cube. Each atom at a point is then shared equally between eight adjacent cubes, and the unit cell therefore contains in total one atom. The body-centered cubic system has one point in the center of the unit cell in addition to the eight corner points. It has a net total of 2 lattice points per unit cell, Each sphere in a cF lattice has coordination number 12. The face-centered cubic system is related to the hexagonal close packed system. The plane of a cubic system is a hexagonal grid. Attempting to create a C-centered cubic crystal system would result in a simple tetragonal Bravais lattice, there are a total 36 cubic space groups. Other terms for hexoctahedral are, normal class, holohedral, ditesseral central class, a simple cubic unit cell has a single cubic void in the center. Additionally, there are 24 tetrahedral voids located in a square spacing around each octahedral void and these tetrahedral voids are not local maxima and are not technically voids, but they do occasionally appear in multi-atom unit cells. A face-centered cubic unit cell has eight tetrahedral voids located midway between each corner and the center of the cell, for a total of eight net tetrahedral voids. One important characteristic of a structure is its atomic packing factor. This is calculated by assuming all the atoms are identical spheres. The atomic packing factor is the proportion of space filled by these spheres, assuming one atom per lattice point, in a primitive cubic lattice with cube side length a, the sphere radius would be a⁄2 and the atomic packing factor turns out to be about 0.524. Similarly, in a bcc lattice, the atomic packing factor is 0.680, as a rule, since atoms in a solid attract each other, the more tightly packed arrangements of atoms tend to be more common
35.
Crystal structure
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In crystallography, crystal structure is a description of the ordered arrangement of atoms, ions or molecules in a crystalline material. Ordered structures occur from the nature of the constituent particles to form symmetric patterns that repeat along the principal directions of three-dimensional space in matter. The smallest group of particles in the material that constitutes the pattern is the unit cell of the structure. The unit cell completely defines the symmetry and structure of the crystal lattice. The repeating patterns are said to be located at the points of the Bravais lattice, the lengths of the principal axes, or edges, of the unit cell and the angles between them are the lattice constants, also called lattice parameters. The symmetry properties of the crystal are described by the concept of space groups, all possible symmetric arrangements of particles in three-dimensional space may be described by the 230 space groups. The crystal structure and symmetry play a role in determining many physical properties, such as cleavage, electronic band structure. The crystal structure of a material can be described in terms of its unit cell, the unit cell is a box containing one or more atoms arranged in three dimensions. The unit cells stacked in three-dimensional space describe the arrangement of atoms of the crystal. Commonly, atomic positions are represented in terms of fractional coordinates, the atom positions within the unit cell can be calculated through application of symmetry operations to the asymmetric unit. The asymmetric unit refers to the smallest possible occupation of space within the unit cell and this does not, however imply that the entirety of the asymmetric unit must lie within the boundaries of the unit cell. Symmetric transformations of atom positions are calculated from the group of the crystal structure. Vectors and planes in a lattice are described by the three-value Miller index notation. It uses the indices ℓ, m, and n as directional parameters, which are separated by 90°, by definition, the syntax denotes a plane that intercepts the three points a1/ℓ, a2/m, and a3/n, or some multiple thereof. That is, the Miller indices are proportional to the inverses of the intercepts of the plane with the unit cell, if one or more of the indices is zero, it means that the planes do not intersect that axis. A plane containing a coordinate axis is translated so that it no longer contains that axis before its Miller indices are determined, the Miller indices for a plane are integers with no common factors. Negative indices are indicated with horizontal bars, as in, in an orthogonal coordinate system for a cubic cell, the Miller indices of a plane are the Cartesian components of a vector normal to the plane. Likewise, the planes are geometric planes linking nodes
36.
X-ray crystallography
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By measuring the angles and intensities of these diffracted beams, a crystallographer can produce a three-dimensional picture of the density of electrons within the crystal. From this electron density, the positions of the atoms in the crystal can be determined, as well as their chemical bonds, their disorder. The method also revealed the structure and function of biological molecules, including vitamins, drugs, proteins. X-ray crystallography is still the method for characterizing the atomic structure of new materials. In a single-crystal X-ray diffraction measurement, a crystal is mounted on a goniometer, the goniometer is used to position the crystal at selected orientations. The crystal is illuminated with a finely focused monochromatic beam of X-rays, poor resolution or even errors may result if the crystals are too small, or not uniform enough in their internal makeup. X-ray crystallography is related to other methods for determining atomic structures. Similar diffraction patterns can be produced by scattering electrons or neutrons, for all above mentioned X-ray diffraction methods, the scattering is elastic, the scattered X-rays have the same wavelength as the incoming X-ray. By contrast, inelastic X-ray scattering methods are useful in studying excitations of the sample, Crystals, though long admired for their regularity and symmetry, were not investigated scientifically until the 17th century. Johannes Kepler hypothesized in his work Strena seu de Nive Sexangula that the symmetry of snowflake crystals was due to a regular packing of spherical water particles. The Danish scientist Nicolas Steno pioneered experimental investigations of crystal symmetry, hence, William Hallowes Miller in 1839 was able to give each face a unique label of three small integers, the Miller indices which remain in use today for identifying crystal faces. In the 19th century, a catalog of the possible symmetries of a crystal was worked out by Johan Hessel, Auguste Bravais, Evgraf Fedorov, Arthur Schönflies. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, just as the studies of crystal symmetry were being concluded, physicists were initially uncertain of the nature of X-rays, but soon suspected that they were waves of electromagnetic radiation, in other words, another form of light. Single-slit experiments in the laboratory of Arnold Sommerfeld suggested that X-rays had a wavelength of about 1 angstrom, however, X-rays are composed of photons, and thus are not only waves of electromagnetic radiation but also exhibit particle-like properties. Albert Einstein introduced the concept in 1905, but it was not broadly accepted until 1922. Therefore, these properties of X-rays, such as their ionization of gases. Nevertheless, Braggs view was not broadly accepted and the observation of X-ray diffraction by Max von Laue in 1912 confirmed for most scientists that X-rays were a form of electromagnetic radiation, Crystals are regular arrays of atoms, and X-rays can be considered waves of electromagnetic radiation. Atoms scatter X-ray waves, primarily through the atoms electrons and this phenomenon is known as elastic scattering, and the electron is known as the scatterer
37.
Neutron diffraction
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Neutron diffraction or elastic neutron scattering is the application of neutron scattering to the determination of the atomic and/or magnetic structure of a material. A sample to be examined is placed in a beam of thermal or cold neutrons to obtain a pattern that provides information of the structure of the material. The technique requires a source of neutrons, neutrons are usually produced in a nuclear reactor or spallation source. At a research reactor, other components are needed, including a crystal monochromators as well as filters to select the desired neutron wavelength, some parts of the setup may also be movable. The technique is most commonly performed as powder diffraction, which requires a polycrystalline powder. Single crystal work is possible, but the crystals must be much larger than those that are used in single-crystal X-ray crystallography. It is common to use crystals that are about 1 mm3, summarizing, the main disadvantage to neutron diffraction is the requirement for a nuclear reactor. For single crystal work, the technique requires relatively large crystals, diffraction is one of these phenomena, it occurs when waves encounter obstacles whose size is comparable with the wavelength. If the wavelength of a particle is short enough, atoms or their nuclei can serve as diffraction obstacles. Such a beam can then be used to perform a diffraction experiment, impinging on a crystalline sample it will scatter under a limited number of well-defined angles according to the same Braggs law that describes X-ray diffraction. Neutrons and X-rays interact with matter differently, X-rays interact primarily with the electron cloud surrounding each atom. The contribution to the diffracted intensity is therefore larger for atoms with larger atomic number. It is also often the case that light atoms contribute strongly to the diffracted intensity even in the presence of large Z atoms, the scattering length varies from isotope to isotope rather than linearly with the atomic number. An element like vanadium is a scatterer of X-rays, but its nuclei hardly scatter neutrons. Non-magnetic neutron diffraction is directly sensitive to the positions of the nuclei of the atoms, unlike X-rays, neutrons scatter mostly from the nuclei of the atoms, which are tiny. Diffractograms therefore can show well defined diffraction peaks even at high angles. Many neutron sources are equipped with liquid cooling systems that allow data collection at temperatures down to 4.2 K. The superb high angle information means that the positions in the structure can be determined with high precision
38.
Electron diffraction
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Electron diffraction refers to the wave nature of electrons. However, from a technical or practical point of view, it may be regarded as a used to study matter by firing electrons at a sample. This phenomenon is known as wave–particle duality, which states that a particle of matter can be described as a wave. For this reason, an electron can be regarded as a wave much like sound or water waves and this technique is similar to X-ray and neutron diffraction. Electron diffraction is most frequently used in solid state physics and chemistry to study the structure of solids. Experiments are usually performed in an electron microscope, or a scanning electron microscope as electron backscatter diffraction. In these instruments, electrons are accelerated by a potential in order to gain the desired energy. The periodic structure of a crystalline solid acts as a grating, scattering the electrons in a predictable manner. Working back from the diffraction pattern, it may be possible to deduce the structure of the crystal producing the diffraction pattern. However, the technique is limited by the phase problem, the de Broglie hypothesis, formulated in 1924, predicts that particles should also behave as waves. De Broglies formula was confirmed three years later for electrons with the observation of diffraction in two independent experiments. At the University of Aberdeen, George Paget Thomson passed a beam of electrons through a metal film. Around the same time at Bell Labs, Clinton Joseph Davisson, in 1937, Thomson and Davisson shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery. Unlike other types of radiation used in studies of materials, such as X-rays and neutrons, electrons are charged particles. This means that the incident electrons feel the influence of both the positively charged nuclei and the surrounding electrons. In comparison, X-rays interact with the distribution of the valence electrons. In addition, the moment of neutrons is non-zero. Because of these different forms of interaction, the three types of radiation are suitable for different studies, in the kinematical approximation for electron diffraction, the intensity of a diffracted beam is given by, I g = | ψ g |2 ∝ | F g |2
39.
Crystallite
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A crystallite is a small or even microscopic crystal which forms, for example, during the cooling of many materials. The orientation of crystallites can be random with no preferred direction, called random texture, or directed, possibly due to growth, fiber texture is an example of the latter. Crystallites are also referred to as grains, the areas where crystallite grains meet are known as grain boundaries. Polycrystalline or multicrystalline materials, or polycrystals are solids that are composed of many crystallites of varying size, most inorganic solids are polycrystalline, including all common metals, many ceramics, rocks and ice. The extent to which a solid is crystalline has important effects on its physical properties, sulfur, while usually polycrystalline, may also occur in other allotropic forms with completely different properties. Although crystallites are referred to as grains, powder grains are different, while the structure of a crystal is highly ordered and its lattice is continuous and unbroken. Amorphous materials, such as glass and many polymers, are non-crystalline, Polycrystalline structures and paracrystalline phases are in between these two extremes. Crystal size is measured from X-ray diffraction patterns and grain size by other experimental techniques like transmission electron microscopy. Solid objects that are enough to see and handle are rarely composed of a single crystal. Most materials are polycrystalline, they are made of a number of single crystals — crystallites — held together by thin layers of amorphous solid. The crystallite size can vary from a few nanometers to several millimeters, if the individual crystallites are oriented completely at random, a large enough volume of polycrystalline material will be approximately isotropic. This property helps the simplifying assumptions of continuum mechanics to apply to real-world solids, however, most manufactured materials have some alignment to their crystallites, resulting in texture that must be taken into account for accurate predictions of their behavior and characteristics. When the crystallites are mostly ordered with just some random spread of orientations, material fractures can be intergranular fracture or a transgranular fracture. There is an ambiguity with powder grains, a grain can be made of several crystallites. Thus, the size found by laser granulometry can be different from the grain size found by X-ray diffraction, by optical microscopy under polarised light. Coarse grained rocks are formed very slowly, while fine grained rocks are formed quickly, if a rock forms very quickly, such as the solidification of lava ejected from a volcano, there may be no crystals at all. Grain boundaries are interfaces where crystals of different orientations meet, a grain boundary is a single-phase interface, with crystals on each side of the boundary being identical except in orientation. The term crystallite boundary is sometimes, though rarely, used, grain boundary areas contain those atoms that have been perturbed from their original lattice sites, dislocations, and impurities that have migrated to the lower energy grain boundary
40.
Single crystal
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A single crystal or monocrystalline solid is a material in which the crystal lattice of the entire sample is continuous and unbroken to the edges of the sample, with no grain boundaries. These properties, in addition to making them precious in some gems, are used in technological applications. On the other hand, imperfect single crystals can reach sizes in nature, several mineral species such as beryl, gypsum. The opposite of a crystal is an amorphous structure where the atomic position is limited to short range order only. In between the two extremes exist polycrystalline, which is made up of a number of crystals known as crystallites. Single crystal silicon is used in the fabrication of semiconductors, therefore, microprocessor fabricators have invested heavily in facilities to produce large single crystals of silicon. Monocrystals of sapphire and other materials are used for lasers and nonlinear optics, monocrystals of fluorite are sometimes used in the objective lenses of apochromatic refracting telescopes. Another application of single crystal solids is in science in the production of high strength materials with low thermal creep. Single crystals provide a means to understand, and perhaps realize, of all the metallic elements, silver and copper have the best conductivity at room temperature, so set the bar for performance. The size of the market, and vagaries in supply and cost, have provided strong incentives to seek alternatives or find ways to use less of them by improving performance. The conductivity of commercial conductors is often expressed relative to the International Annealed Copper Standard, the purest modern copper wire is a better conductor, measuring over 103% on this scale. The gains are from two sources, first, modern copper is more pure. However, this avenue for improvement seems at an end, making the copper purer still makes no significant improvement. Second, annealing and other processes have been improved, annealing reduces the dislocations and other crystal defects which are sources of resistance. But the resulting wires are still polycrystalline, the grain boundaries and remaining crystal defects are responsible for some residual resistance. This can be quantified and better understood by examining single crystals, as anticipated, single-crystal copper did prove to have better conductivity than polycrystalline copper. But there were surprises in store, the single-crystal copper not only became a better conductor than high purity polycrystalline silver, but with prescribed heat and pressure treatment could surpass even single-crystal silver. And although impurities are usually bad for conductivity, a silver single-crystal with an amount of copper substitutions was a better conductor than them all
41.
Diamond
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Diamond is a metastable allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at standard conditions. Diamond is renowned as a material with superlative physical qualities, most of which originate from the covalent bonding between its atoms. In particular, diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any bulk material and those properties determine the major industrial application of diamond in cutting and polishing tools and the scientific applications in diamond knives and diamond anvil cells. Because of its extremely rigid lattice, it can be contaminated by very few types of impurities, such as boron, small amounts of defects or impurities color diamond blue, yellow, brown, green, purple, pink, orange or red. Diamond also has relatively high optical dispersion, most natural diamonds are formed at high temperature and pressure at depths of 140 to 190 kilometers in the Earths mantle. Carbon-containing minerals provide the source, and the growth occurs over periods from 1 billion to 3.3 billion years. Diamonds are brought close to the Earths surface through deep volcanic eruptions by magma, Diamonds can also be produced synthetically in a HPHT method which approximately simulates the conditions in the Earths mantle. An alternative, and completely different growth technique is chemical vapor deposition, several non-diamond materials, which include cubic zirconia and silicon carbide and are often called diamond simulants, resemble diamond in appearance and many properties. Special gemological techniques have developed to distinguish natural diamonds, synthetic diamonds. The word is from the ancient Greek ἀδάμας – adámas unbreakable, the name diamond is derived from the ancient Greek αδάμας, proper, unalterable, unbreakable, untamed, from ἀ-, un- + δαμάω, I overpower, I tame. Diamonds have been known in India for at least 3,000 years, Diamonds have been treasured as gemstones since their use as religious icons in ancient India. Their usage in engraving tools also dates to early human history, later in 1797, the English chemist Smithson Tennant repeated and expanded that experiment. By demonstrating that burning diamond and graphite releases the same amount of gas, the most familiar uses of diamonds today are as gemstones used for adornment, a use which dates back into antiquity, and as industrial abrasives for cutting hard materials. The dispersion of light into spectral colors is the primary gemological characteristic of gem diamonds. In the 20th century, experts in gemology developed methods of grading diamonds, four characteristics, known informally as the four Cs, are now commonly used as the basic descriptors of diamonds, these are carat, cut, color, and clarity. A large, flawless diamond is known as a paragon and these conditions are met in two places on Earth, in the lithospheric mantle below relatively stable continental plates, and at the site of a meteorite strike. The conditions for diamond formation to happen in the mantle occur at considerable depth corresponding to the requirements of temperature and pressure
42.
Crystallographic defect
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Crystalline solids exhibit a periodic crystal structure. The positions of atoms or molecules occur on repeating fixed distances, however, the arrangement of atoms or molecules in most crystalline materials is not perfect. The regular patterns are interrupted by crystallographic defects, point defects are defects that occur only at or around a single lattice point. They are not extended in space in any dimension, strict limits for how small a point defect is are generally not defined explicitly. However, these defects typically involve at most a few extra or missing atoms, larger defects in an ordered structure are usually considered dislocation loops. For historical reasons, many point defects, especially in ionic crystals, are called centers, for example a vacancy in many ionic solids is called a luminescence center and these dislocations permit ionic transport through crystals leading to electrochemical reactions. These are frequently specified using Kröger–Vink Notation, vacancy defects are lattice sites which would be occupied in a perfect crystal, but are vacant. If a neighboring atom moves to occupy the vacant site, the moves in the opposite direction to the site which used to be occupied by the moving atom. The stability of the crystal structure guarantees that the neighboring atoms will not simply collapse around the vacancy. In some materials, neighboring atoms actually move away from a vacancy, a vacancy is sometimes called a Schottky defect. Interstitial defects are atoms that occupy a site in the structure at which there is usually not an atom. They are generally high energy configurations, small atoms in some crystals can occupy interstices without high energy, such as hydrogen in palladium. A nearby pair of a vacancy and an interstitial is often called a Frenkel defect or Frenkel pair and this is caused when an ion moves into an interstitial site and creates a vacancy. Due to fundamental limitations of material purification methods, materials are never 100% pure, in the case of an impurity, the atom is often incorporated at a regular atomic site in the crystal structure. This is neither a vacant site nor is the atom on an interstitial site, the atom is not supposed to be anywhere in the crystal, and is thus an impurity. In some cases where the radius of the atom is substantially smaller than that of the atom it is replacing. These types of defects are often referred to as off-center ions. There are two different types of defects, Isovalent substitution and aliovalent substitution
43.
Heat capacity
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Heat capacity or thermal capacity is a measurable physical quantity equal to the ratio of the heat added to an object to the resulting temperature change. The unit of capacity is joule per kelvin J K. Specific heat is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of mass by 1 kelvin, Heat capacity is an extensive property of matter, meaning it is proportional to the size of the system. The molar heat capacity is the capacity per unit amount of a pure substance. In some engineering contexts, the heat capacity is used. Other contributions can come from magnetic and electronic degrees of freedom in solids, for quantum mechanical reasons, at any given temperature, some of these degrees of freedom may be unavailable, or only partially available, to store thermal energy. In such cases, the capacity is a fraction of the maximum. As the temperature approaches zero, the heat capacity of a system approaches zero. Quantum theory can be used to predict the heat capacity of simple systems. In a previous theory of common in the early modern period, heat was thought to be a measurement of an invisible fluid. Bodies were capable of holding an amount of this fluid, hence the term heat capacity, named. Heat is no longer considered a fluid, but rather a transfer of disordered energy, nevertheless, at least in English, the term heat capacity survives. In some other languages, the thermal capacity is preferred. In the International System of Units, heat capacity has the unit joules per kelvin, if the temperature change is sufficiently small the heat capacity may be assumed to be constant, C = Q Δ T. Heat capacity is a property, meaning it depends on the extent or size of the physical system studied. A sample containing twice the amount of substance as another sample requires the transfer of twice the amount of heat to achieve the change in temperature. For many purposes it is convenient to report heat capacity as an intensive property. In practice, this is most often an expression of the property in relation to a unit of mass, in science and engineering, International standards now recommend that specific heat capacity always refer to division by mass
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Drude model
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The Drude model of electrical conduction was proposed in 1900 by Paul Drude to explain the transport properties of electrons in materials. Here t is the time, ⟨p⟩ is the momentum per electron and q, n, m, and τ are respectively the electron charge, number density, mass. The latter expression is important because it explains in semi-quantitative terms why Ohms law, one of the most ubiquitous relationships in all of electromagnetism. The model was extended in 1905 by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and is a classical model, later it was supplemented with the results of quantum theory in 1933 by Arnold Sommerfeld and Hans Bethe, leading to the Drude–Sommerfeld model. The Drude model considers the metal to be formed of a mass of charged ions from which a number of free electrons were detached. These may be thought to have become delocalized when the levels of the atom came in contact with the potential of the other atoms. The Drude model neglects any long-range interaction between the electron and the ions or between the electrons, the only possible interaction of a free electron with its environment is via instantaneous collisions. After a collision event, the velocity of the electron only depends on the temperature distribution and is completely independent of the velocity of the electron before the collision event. Then an electron isolated at time t will on average have been traveling for time τ since its last collision, and consequently will have accumulated momentum Δ ⟨ p ⟩ = q E τ. Substituting the relations ⟨ p ⟩ = m ⟨ v ⟩, J = n q ⟨ v ⟩, results in the formulation of Ohms law mentioned above, the dynamics may also be described by introducing an effective drag force. This, which is a differential equation, may be solved to obtain the general solution of ⟨ p ⟩ = q τ E + ⟨ p ⟩ e − t / τ for p. The steady state solution is then ⟨ p ⟩ = q τ E, here it is assumed that E = ℜ, J = ℜ. In other conventions, i is replaced by −i in all equations, here the Drude model is applied to electrons, it can be applied both to electrons and holes, i. e. positive charge carriers in semiconductors. The curves for σ are shown in the graph, the characteristic behavior of a Drude metal in the time or frequency domain, i. e. exponential relaxation with time constant τ or the frequency dependence for σ stated above, is called Drude response. But for certain materials with metallic properties, frequency-dependent conductivity was found that closely follows the simple Drude prediction for σ. These are materials where the relaxation rate τ−1 is at lower frequencies. This is the case for certain doped semiconductor single crystals, high-mobility two-dimensional electron gases, historically, the Drude formula was first derived in an incorrect way, namely by assuming that the charge carriers form an ideal gas. This simple classical Drude model provides a good explanation of DC and AC conductivity in metals, the Hall effect
45.
Kinetic theory of gases
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Kinetic theory explains macroscopic properties of gases, such as pressure, temperature, viscosity, thermal conductivity, and volume, by considering their molecular composition and motion. The theory posits that gas pressure is due to the impacts, on the walls of a container, Kinetic theory defines temperature in its own way, not identical with the thermodynamic definition. Under a microscope, the making up a liquid are too small to be visible. Known as Brownian motion, it directly from collisions between the grains or particles and liquid molecules. As analyzed by Albert Einstein in 1907, this evidence for kinetic theory is generally seen as having confirmed the concrete material existence of atoms. The theory for ideal gases makes the assumptions, The gas consists of very small particles known as molecules. This smallness of their size is such that the volume of the individual gas molecules added up is negligible compared to the volume of the smallest open ball containing all the molecules. This is equivalent to stating that the distance separating the gas particles is large compared to their size. These particles have the same mass, the number of molecules is so large that statistical treatment can be applied. These molecules are in constant, random, and rapid motion, the rapidly moving particles constantly collide among themselves and with the walls of the container. All these collisions are perfectly elastic and this means, the molecules are considered to be perfectly spherical in shape, and elastic in nature. Except during collisions, the interactions among molecules are negligible and this means that the inter-particle distance is much larger than the thermal de Broglie wavelength and the molecules are treated as classical objects. Because of the two, their dynamics can be treated classically. This means that the equations of motion of the molecules are time-reversible, the average kinetic energy of the gas particles depends only on the absolute temperature of the system. The kinetic theory has its own definition of temperature, not identical with the thermodynamic definition, the elapsed time of a collision between a molecule and the containers wall is negligible when compared to the time between successive collisions. Because they have mass, the gas molecules will be affected by gravity, more modern developments relax these assumptions and are based on the Boltzmann equation. These can accurately describe the properties of gases, because they include the volume of the molecules. The necessary assumptions are the absence of quantum effects, molecular chaos, expansions to higher orders in the density are known as virial expansions
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Thermal conductivity
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In physics, thermal conductivity is the property of a material to conduct heat. It is evaluated primarily in terms of Fouriers Law for heat conduction, heat transfer occurs at a lower rate across materials of low thermal conductivity than across materials of high thermal conductivity. Correspondingly, materials of high thermal conductivity are used in heat sink applications. The thermal conductivity of a material may depend on temperature, the reciprocal of thermal conductivity is called thermal resistivity. Thermal conductivity is actually a tensor, which means it is possible to have different values in different directions, in SI units, thermal conductivity is measured in watts per meter-kelvin. The dimension of thermal conductivity is M1L1T−3Θ−1 and these variables are mass, length, time, and temperature. In Imperial units, thermal conductivity is measured in BTU/, other units which are closely related to the thermal conductivity are in common use in the construction and textile industries. The construction industry makes use of such as the R-value. Although related to the conductivity of a material used in an insulation product, R-. Likewise the textile industry has several units including the tog and the clo which express thermal resistance of a material in a way analogous to the R-values used in the construction industry, there are a number of ways to measure thermal conductivity. Each of these is suitable for a range of materials, depending on the thermal properties. There is a distinction between steady-state and transient techniques, in general, steady-state techniques are useful when the temperature of the material does not change with time. This makes the signal analysis straightforward, the disadvantage is that a well-engineered experimental setup is usually needed. The Divided Bar is the most common used for consolidated rock solids. Thermal conductivity is important in science, research, electronics, building insulation and related fields. Several materials are shown in the list of thermal conductivities and these should be considered approximate due to the uncertainties related to material definitions. High energy generation rates within electronics or turbines require the use of materials with high thermal conductivity such as copper, aluminium, the reciprocal of thermal conductivity is thermal resistivity, usually expressed in kelvin-meters per watt. For a given thickness of a material, that particular constructions thermal resistance, unfortunately, there are differing definitions for these terms
