Physics 215 Links: Fall 2014

Superposition Oddities

• A short National Geographic article on The Physics Behind Schrödinger's Cat Paradox"
• Brian Greene's video: "What's Beyond the Double Slit Experiment?"

Relativity

For a detailed example of length contraction, and references to many other paradoxes, see Is length contraction really paradoxical? in the October 1987 issue of The American Journal of Physics.

The May 2002 issue of Physics Today contains an article on Relativity and the Global Positioning System. (After you click, the link to the full text will be on the left of the screen.)

Getting Started with Mathematica

To obtain a student copy of Mathematica, visit the following ITS web site: https://help.lafayette.edu/mathematica/students.

There are a variety of on-line tutorials available for Mathematica. I recommend going to Wolfram.com and exploring their on-line resources. Some students have reported the following to be useful:

• "Hands-on Start": A series of screencasts that walk you through many different aspects of Mathematica, with a good balance between overview information and specific, detailed information that allows you to actually accomplish something quickly.
• These screencasts are part of the Getting Started channel, which is one of many channels available in the Wolfram Screencast & Video Gallery.
• Many more resources are available in the Learning Center.

Constants, Units, and Uncertainty

The National Institute of Technology and Standards maintains a useful page with the current best values for many fundamental constants, at http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/.

The July 2014 issue of Physics Today included an interesting article about a proposed revamping of the standards used for many fundamental constants. You can read about it in the article A more fundamental International System of Units.

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