Physics 133
Spring Quarter 2004
Quiz for 31 March 2004
Email the quiz back to me at aubrecht@mps.ohio-state.edu.
Put your name and email address at the top of the quiz.
The quiz is due before class today, 31 March 2004.
Explain in your own words as best you can the meaning of “zero-point energy.”
take me to the journal assignments
Gordon’s solution will appear here
This gives the minimum kinetic energy because the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle tells us that the localization of a particle causes it to attain a nonzero momentum.
The
Dx comes from being confined to the region in the neighborhood of the atom’s center--that is, the diameter is Dx .Since the particle is localized, its momentum is greater than some minimum, and so its energy is greater than some minimum--the zero point energy.
aubrecht@mps.ohio-state.edu [latest revision, 31 March 2004]