Materials, Matter and Particles: A Brief History

318 Pages·2009·2.85 MB·English

by  Michael M. Woolfson

Materials,
Matter Particles
&
A Brief History
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Materials,
Matter Particles
&
A Brief History
Michael M Woolfson
University of York, UK
Imperial College Press
ICP
Published by
Imperial College Press
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Covent Garden
London WC2H 9HE
Distributed by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
MATERIALS, MATTER AND PARTICLES
A Brief History
Copyright © 2010 by Imperial College Press
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval
system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.
For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright
Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to
photocopy is not required from the publisher.
ISBN-13978-1-84816-459-8
ISBN-101-84816-459-9
ISBN-13978-1-84816-460-4 (pbk)
ISBN-101-84816-460-2 (pbk)
Typeset by Stallion Press
Email: [email protected]
Printed in Singapore.
Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Elements of Nature 5
Chapter 2 Early Ideas of the Nature of Matter 11
Chapter 3 The Quest for Gold and Eternal Life 17
Chapter 4 The Beginning of Chemistry 23
4.1 The Chaos of Alchemy 23
4.2 Paracelsus and His Medicines 24
4.3 Robert Boyle, the Gentleman Scientist 25
Chapter 5 Modern Chemistry is Born 31
5.1 The Phlogiston Theory 31
5.2 Joseph Priestley 32
5.3 Antoine Lavoisier 36
Chapter 6 Nineteenth Century Chemistry 41
6.1 Chemistry Becomes Quantitative 41
6.2 John Dalton 42
6.3 Amedeo Avogadro 45
v
vi Materials, Matter and Particles
6.4 The Concept of Valency 47
6.5 Chemical Industry is Born 48
6.6 Bringing Order to the Elements 50
Chapter 7 Atoms Have Structure 53
7.1 Michael Faraday 53
7.2 The Nature of Cathode Rays 55
7.3 J. J. Thomson and the Electron 58
7.4 The Charge and Mass of the Electron 61
Chapter 8 Radioactivity and the Plum-Pudding Model 65
8.1 Röntgen and X-rays 65
8.2 Becquerel and Emanations 68
from Uranium
8.3 The Curies and Radioactivity 70
8.4 Rutherford and the Nuclear Atom 71
Chapter 9 Some Early 20th Century Physics 77
9.1 The Birth of Quantum Physics 77
9.2 The Photoelectric Effect 80
9.3 Characteristic X-rays 82
Chapter 10 What is a Nucleus Made Of? 85
10.1 First Ideas on the Nature of the Nucleus 85
10.2 Moseley’s Contribution to 86
Understanding Atomic Numbers
10.3 Breaking Up the Nucleus 89
10.4 Another Particle is Found 91
Chapter 11 Electrons in Atoms 95
11.1 The Bohr Atom 95
11.2 Waves and Particles 99
11.3 The Bohr Theory and Waves 101
11.4 An Improvement of the Bohr Theory 103
Contents vii
Chapter 12 The New Mechanics 107
12.1 Schrödinger’s Wave Equation 107
12.2 The Wave Equation and Intuition 109
12.3 Orbits Become Orbitals 112
12.4 The Great Escape 116
12.5 Heisenberg and Uncertainty 118
Chapter 13 Electrons and Chemistry 121
13.1 Shells and the Periodic Table 121
13.2 Valency 125
Chapter 14 Electron Spin and the Exclusion Principle 129
14.1 The Stern–Gerlach Experiment 129
14.2 Electrons in a Spin 131
14.3 The Pauli Exclusion Principle 133
Chapter 15 Isotopes 135
15.1 What is an Isotope? 135
15.2 The Stable Isotopes of Some Common 136
Materials
Chapter 16 Radioactivity and More Particles 141
16.1 The Emission of α Particles 141
16.2 β Emission 143
16.3 The Positron 144
16.4 Another Kind of β Emitter 147
16.5 The Elusive Particle — The Neutrino 148
16.6 How Old is that Ancient Artefact? 152
16.7 An Interim Assessment of the 153
Nature of Matter
Chapter 17 Making Atoms, Explosions and Power 155
17.1 The New Alchemy 155
17.2 Reactions with α Particles 155
viii Materials, Matter and Particles
17.3 Reactions with Protons 157
17.4 γ-ray Induced Reactions 157
17.5 Neutron Induced Reactions 158
17.6 Fission Reactions 159
17.7 The Atomic Bomb 162
17.8 Atomic Power 165
17.9 Fusion — Better Power Production 166
and Bigger Bombs
Chapter 18 Observing Matter on a Small Scale 169
18.1 Seeing 169
18.2 Microscopes 171
18.3 X-ray Diffraction from Crystals 176
Chapter 19 Living Matter 183
19.1 Defining Life 183
19.2 Forms of Life 187
Chapter 20 Life at the Atomic Level 195
20.1 Seeing Life Matter at the Atomic Level 195
20.2 Encoding Complex Structures 197
20.3 Encoding Living Matter — The 198
Chemistry of DNA
20.4 The Double Helix 203
20.5 What Makes Us How We Are? 207
20.6 The Artificial Manipulation of Genes 210
Chapter 21 Materials from Ancient Times 213
21.1 The Earliest Use of Natural 213
Materials — The Stone Age
21.2 Some Early Manufactured 215
Materials — The Bronze Age
21.3 The Iron Age 222
21.4 Cement and Concrete 227
21.5 Clothing Materials 230
Contents ix
Chapter 22 Modern Materials 237
22.1 Materials Old and New 237
22.2 Manufactured Fibres, Synthetic Fibres 238
and Plastics
22.3 Semiconductors 245
22.4 Nanotechnology 250
Chapter 23 The Fantastic World of Particles 255
23.1 Antics on Ice 255
23.2 The First Designed Atom-Smasher 259
23.3 The Cyclotron 261
23.4 The Stanford Linear Accelerator 262
23.5 Synchrotrons and the 263
Large Hadron Collider
23.6 Some Fundamental Particles 267
Chapter 24 How Matter Began 273
24.1 Wailing Sirens 273
24.2 Measuring the Universe 275
24.3 The Expanding Universe 278
24.4 The Big Bang Hypothesis 280
24.5 The Creation of Matter 281
Chapter 25 Making Heavier Elements 287
25.1 The Architecture of the Universe 287
25.2 Dark Matter and Dark Energy 290
25.3 The Formation of a Star 291
25.4 The Death of a Star 294
25.5 The Evolving Universe 299
Index 305