January 2013
Beginner to intermediate
336 pages
6h 6m
English
Content preview from Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition
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Chapter 6
Getting Dizzy with Spin
In This Chapter
- Discovering spin with the Stern-Gerlach experiment
- Looking at eigenstates and spin notation
- Understanding fermions and bosons
- Comparing the spin operators with angular momentum operators
- Working with spin ½ and Pauli matrices
Physicists have suggested that orbital angular momentum is not the only kind of angular momentum present in an atom — electrons could also have intrinsic built-in angular momentum. This kind of built-in angular momentum is called spin. Whether or not electrons actually spin will never be known — they're as close to point-like particles as you can come, without any apparent internal structure. Yet the fact remains that they have intrinsic angular momentum. And that's what this chapter is about — the intrinsic, built-in quantum mechanical spin of subatomic particles.
The Stern-Gerlach Experiment and the Case of the Missing Spot
The Stern-Gerlach experiment unexpectedly revealed the existence of spin back in 1922. Physicists Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach sent a beam of silver atoms through the poles of a magnet — whose magnetic field was in the z direction — as you can see in Figure 6-1.
Figure 6-1: The Stern-Gerlach experiment.
Because 46 of silver's 47 electrons are arranged in a symmetrical cloud, they contribute nothing to the orbital angular momentum of the atom. The 47th electron can be in
- The 5s
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