If the voltage were held at for the entire ideal discharge, thenand the electrical power would beThese are constant-voltage estimates, not a determination of the actual energy from the fresh-cell open-circuit voltage. Under load the voltage depends on state of discharge, electric polarization and internal resistance. The physical result is , and . The supplied single open-circuit value does not specify that voltage curve; practical delivered energy will generally be lower than the simple estimate.
Increase the electrochemically accessible area and reduce transport resistance rather than merely forcing more electric current through the same thick electrode. A thinner, porous composite distributed over a larger area, a conductive-carbon network, good electrolyte wetting and short ionic paths reduce local current density and electric polarization. Adequate battery separator conductivity and low-resistance collectors also help. Parallel cells can distribute total electric current while retaining the total active-material inventory.
The objective is to preserve usable capacity at a higher rate by avoiding premature voltage cutoff and inaccessible active material. It does not create more charge: a fixed inventory with delivers a greater electric current for a proportionally shorter time. Maintaining the original two-year duration at greater electric current requires proportionally more capacity.
The illuminated area and incident power areA photon has energy , above the silicon band gap. With one collected electron per photon,Use the ideal-diode approximation with ideality factor , negligible shunt leakage and the same dark diode parameters under illumination. At , . The measured dark point then fixesAt open circuit the forward diode electric current balances the photocurrent:This is below the band gap expressed per elementary charge. Excess photon energy does not translate directly into terminal voltage; much of it thermalizes.
Use low-voltage, preferably aberration-corrected HRTEM, with about 60–80 kV as a defensible operating range. An approximately 80 kV starting point balances useful lattice resolution against carbon displacement damage; use the lower end if the instrument still resolves the lattice and defect stability is the priority.
A higher accelerating voltage reduces the electron wavelength, but can remove carbon atoms by knock-on displacement. Measurements on pristine single-layer graphene show a strong increase in displacement probability above the vicinity of 80 kV, so simply selecting a conventional 200–300 kV setting is a poor way to preserve the original lattice.[ref]
Accurate Measurement of Electron Beam Induced Displacement Cross Sections for Single-Layer Graphene by Jannik C. Meyer and others. Beam-energy dependence of displacement cross sections, Physical Review Letters 108, 196102
reduced graphene oxide is already defective and chemically modified. Its vulnerable sites need not share the pristine-graphene threshold, and ionization, contamination and chemical etching remain possible at low voltage. Minimize dose, spread the beam while aligning and compare successive short exposures. The voltage choice suppresses one damage mechanism; it does not guarantee damage-free imaging.
Treat the film as a parallel-plate capacitor, initially compensated and then isolated electrically. Its capacitance and temperature-induced electric polarization charge areThe corresponding ideal open-circuit signal, with the electrode polarity defined consistently with this charge convention, isArea cancels because both charge and capacitance are proportional to it. Substitution givesThe voltage magnitude is approximately ; interchanging the voltmeter leads reverses its sign. This is an ideal capacitive result, before leakage, mobile-charge screening or loading by the measurement circuit reduces the signal.
A thermocouple uses two materials with different Seebeck coefficients. With their junctions at different temperatures, the net open-circuit voltage isUsing p-type and n-type legs makes the two contributions add. Many pairs can be connected electrically in series to add voltage while remaining thermally in parallel between the same hot and cold plates. A single homogeneous wire does not provide this same complete-circuit voltage when its return lead has the same thermopower.
The reciprocal Peltier effect transports heat when electric current passes through a junction. The Kelvin relation connects the heat carried per unit charge to the Seebeck coefficient. The same combination of large thermopower, high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity gives a favorable dimensionless figure of meritThus materials useful for a generator are also useful for a cooler when electric current is driven in the appropriate direction. Joule heating and thermal leakage oppose cooling; device geometry, contact resistance and operating temperature must still be appropriate. Reversibility of the thermoelectric coupling does not make either device lossless.
Three standard approaches are piezoelectric, electromagnetic and electrostatic energy harvesting.
- A piezoelectric microcantilever or nanowire develops electric polarization when strained. An inertial mass, bending substrate or vibration bends the element; electrodes and a rectifier collect charge. PZT, ZnO and PVDF illustrate different material choices. This approach needs no external bias for transduction and can give appreciable voltage in a compact element. Its capacitance gives high source impedance and relatively small electric current; brittle materials, fatigue, depolarization and a narrow mechanical resonance can limit performance.
- Electromagnetic harvesting uses relative motion of a magnet and coil to change magnetic flux, producing . A micromachined coil and movable magnet can implement it at the microscale. It can offer low source impedance and useful electric current, but the small flux and coil area make voltage and power increasingly difficult to maintain on miniaturization; coil resistance and fabrication of magnets also matter. A practical microscale device does not imply efficient scaling all the way to individual nanowires.
- Electrostatic harvesting uses a variable capacitor, for example MEMS comb fingers or moving plates. Mechanical motion changes capacitance; an initial charge, electrical bias or electret allows this change to do electrical work. Small gaps favor strong coupling and compatibility with microfabrication. Limitations include the need for charge or bias, parasitic capacitance, leakage, pull-in, stiction and dielectric breakdown.
In all three cases the output is constrained by the available mechanical input and damping. Nanoscale dimensions alone do not supply an energy advantage.
forward bias opposes the built-in electric field and lowers the junction barrier from approximately to . In the abrupt-junction depletion approximation,Thus the depletion region narrows and carriers cross the reduced barrier more readily. electron injection into the p side and hole injection into the n side increase strongly, allowing radiative recombination in an LED.
The injected minority-carrier concentrations, and therefore the ideal diffusion electric current, vary approximately as . This produces the steep forward branch of the electric current–voltage curve. One should not extrapolate the depletion-width formula to claim that the junction must lose its entire depletion region before conducting; appreciable electric current flows while a barrier remains, and high injection and series resistance eventually invalidate the simple formulas.
Taking room temperature as , the thermal voltage is . For the stated ideal diode, , soThe term is negligible here. A different precise interpretation of room temperature changes the result noticeably because of the exponential; the calculation above states its temperature explicitly.
For a lower-bandgap material, the intrinsic carrier concentration generally rises, increasing the reverse saturation current density, approximately through with when other parameters are held comparable. Thus the forward electric current at the same voltage would normally increase. If were artificially held fixed at the supplied numerical value, however, the ideal-diode equation would give the same electric current: the band gap dependence enters through the material parameters rather than as a separate term in that equation.
The wavelength is , and the aperture diameter is . A uniformly illuminated circular aperture has normalized power pattern , where . Its first null is at , while its half-power point has . ThusThe first-null small-angle estimate is , or roughly ; using the sine gives about . This is a broad beam because the diameter is only about two wavelengths. Real illumination and aperture efficiency alter the exact beam shape; a required allowable gain loss would specify the pointing tolerance more precisely.
For a matched, correctly polarized half-wave dipole, with . For an efficient dish, . Received available powers are proportional to these areas. With both voltages referred to the same matched receiver resistance,For ideal aperture efficiency this is about one fifth, or five times greater voltage from the dish. Terminal voltages without a common impedance or matching convention are not fixed by aperture alone: for the respective matched loads. A short-dipole rather than half-wave convention changes the order-one gain factor, not the main estimate.
The Johnson-Nyquist noise formula gives the open-circuit mean-square voltage in a small frequency band . When a source electrical resistance drives a load with impedance matching, the load sees half the source voltage, so the available noise power isThe factor of four in the open-circuit formula is therefore not an extra factor in the delivered power.
The transmitter's antenna gain makes the axial spectral energy flux at range Multiplication by the receiving antenna effective area gives . Define the equivalent receiving antenna temperature by the available matched-load noise . ThenThis is the transmitter-induced equivalent noise temperature of the receiver port. It does not determine the actual physical temperature of its internal electrical resistance, or any additional receiver and background noise. The calculation assumes the usual far-field link, negligible path loss beyond geometric spreading, matched polarization of an electromagnetic wave at the two antennas and the stated effective collecting area. No additional one-half polarization factor is needed for the matched polarization of radiation from one transmitting antenna.
Measure an unwanted effect separately or design a comparison in which it cancels. Calibration against reference standards at several settings tests zero offset, gain and nonlinearity. Blanks reveal background. Reversal is useful when the wanted response is odd and the nuisance is even: gives and . For example reversing current in a resistance measurement cancels a stable thermoelectric voltage, but does not cancel the current-scale error or even-in-current Joule heating.
Interleave reversals to detect drift; interchange sensors or leads to expose asymmetry. Null or bridge methods reduce dependence on detector gain. Alignment checks, shielding and temperature control target specified physical couplings. Independent measurement methods provide a stronger test than repetition of the same setup. Repeated readings reduce independent random errors, not a shared bias. Correct significant identified effects and propagate the uncertainty of the correction and standards; complete removal of an unknown systematic error cannot generally be certified.[ref]
Guidelines for Evaluating and Expressing the Uncertainty of NIST Measurement Results by Barry N. Taylor and Chris E. Kuyatt. §5.2, uncertainty remaining after systematic-effect corrections
Past exam of the physics A course of the University of Cambridge 2010 Paper 2 Section D D13 Solution 2026-10-20
An ideal operational amplifier has infinite input impedance and open-loop gain, zero output impedance and no offsets or response limits. Its input currents vanish. Stable operational-amplifier negative feedback, a finite output and unsaturated linear operation then imply a virtual short, . Real amplifiers have finite frequency-dependent gain, input bias currents, offset voltage, output loading, finite bandwidth, slew rate and supply-rail limits. Equal input voltages cannot be assumed in an open-loop or saturated circuit.
Here the noninverting input is grounded. In the ideal-feedback limit the inverting node is a virtual ground, so the resistor current charges the feedback capacitor:The initial capacitor charge fixes the integration constant. This is an op amp integrator, with .
A tiny direct-current input, input bias current or offset can drive the output towards saturation. A parallel feedback resistor provides a direct-current return path, giving ; choose over the intended integration band. A reset switch sets initial charge; low-offset components and suitable signal amplitude reduce drift and saturation. The useful band must also remain below the amplifier's bandwidth and slew-rate limits.
For the stipulated finite but constant real gain , infinite input impedance and negligible output impedance, write the inverting-node voltage as . With phasors proportional to ,ThereforeThe low-frequency gain is . The corner is ; above it the amplitude falls as and the phase approaches . phase and describe the same low-frequency inversion. This finite-gain circuit is a low-pass response with an integrating high-frequency regime, not an ideal integrator down to zero frequency. A genuinely frequency-dependent would introduce additional high-frequency limitations beyond this specified model.
Finite-gain integrator response
. Details. In a classically forbidden region, the Schrödinger equation has evanescent solutions rather than forcing the wavefunction to vanish. Matching at both sides of a finite barrier permits nonzero transmission. For a broad barrier the WKB approximation giveswhere is a matching prefactor. Transmission is exponentially sensitive to barrier width and height. A single decaying exponential function carries no probability current; the matched scattering solution includes the combination needed for transmitted current. energy is conserved throughout.
In alpha decay, a quasibound alpha particle penetrates the nuclear Coulomb barrier. Multiplying the penetration probability by an assault frequency estimates the decay rate; the strong dependence on alpha energy explains the wide range of lifetimes. In a scanning tunnelling microscope, a voltage drives electron quantum tunnelling between a conducting tip and sample. Approximately , so constant-current feedback resolves changes in gap width, with electronic density of states also affecting the image. Piezoelectric motion, vibration isolation and stable voltage are necessary; a bright feature is not automatically a taller atom. Atomic-scale imaging was demonstrated with a vacuum-tunnelling microscope in the original surface study.[ref]
Surface Studies by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy by Gerd Binnig and others. Abstract and pp. 57–61: atomic-scale steps and surface reconstruction
In a Josephson junction, Cooper pair quantum tunnelling through a weak link gives , allowing supercurrent without an applied voltage and phase-sensitive interference. These are distinct applications of barrier penetration and coupling with quantum coherence, not particles borrowing energy to climb over a barrier. Past exam of the physics A course of the University of Cambridge 2011 Paper 2 Section D D13 Solution 2026-10-20
An ideal operational amplifier draws no current at either input. With stable operational-amplifier negative feedback in its unsaturated linear range, infinite open-loop gain also gives a virtual short, . The amplifier adjusts its output to enforce that equality; it is not a conducting connection between the inputs. Here , so the ideal summing node is a virtual ground. Kirchhoff's current law gives , hence the ideal gain is .
For the finite-input-resistance inverting amplifier let the inverting-node voltage be , and continue to neglect output impedance. The controlled output and node-current balance areEliminating givesDividing the denominator by gives the requested resistance-sum form. The ideal result follows whenever ; taking alone is insufficient if is small. At finite frequency and the gain are phasor ratios, subject to feedback stability.
With equal resistors and sufficiently large loop gain, . This gives a controlled sign reversal or 180-degree phase inversion, useful for subtraction and opposite-phase signal paths, with amplitude set by a resistor ratio rather than uncertain open-loop gain. The source still sees approximately , so this is not a high-input-impedance voltage follower. For the ideal-input, single-pole model, the noise gain of an operational amplifier is two and the closed-loop bandwidth is approximately half the gain-bandwidth product. Output swing, slew rate and load constraints must also permit linear operation.
Past exam of the physics A course of the University of Cambridge 2018 Paper 1 Section C C10 Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
The postulates of quantum mechanics give a framework for predicting observations from a prepared state. The experiments below motivate different features of that framework; no one experiment proves the whole set of postulates or specifies every Hamiltonian operator.
A pure quantum state is a normalized vector in a complex Hilbert space, with vectors differing by an overall quantum phase representing the same physical preparation. In position representation, . The linear state space permits quantum superposition, while the Born rule assigns probability to a position outcome in a region . The wavefunction is a probability amplitude; it is not a classical distribution of definite particle positions and momenta.
An observable is represented by a self-adjoint operator. If has spectral projectors , its possible measurement outcomes are its spectral values and . The mean is . For an ideal repeatable projective measurement, obtaining leaves the normalized conditional state . This projects onto an entire eigenspace if the outcome is degenerate. General detectors need more general measurement in quantum mechanics models; the projective update is an idealization. Noncommuting observables need not have simultaneous sharp values, as the canonical commutation relation and Heisenberg uncertainty relation illustrate.
Between measurements, an isolated system has unitary time evolution generated by its Hamiltonian operator:This preserves normalization and superpositions. Composite systems use a tensor product of state spaces, allowing entangled states as well as product states; identical particles additionally require the bosonic or fermionic exchange symmetry appropriate to their species. Statistical mixtures are described by a density matrix, with . These rules separate preparation, coherent evolution and measurement.
The photoelectric effect exposes discrete energy transfer by light. Illuminate a clean metal cathode in an evacuated tube and measure the collected electron current while varying the light frequency, intensity and a retarding voltage. The stopping potential probes the largest emitted electron kinetic energy, whereas the photocurrent measures the rate at which charge is collected. In the ordinary single-photon regime there is a threshold frequency; above it the maximum energy grows with frequency, rather than with intensity. Changing intensity at fixed frequency mainly changes the number of emitted electrons. These observations are summarized by the Einstein photoelectric equationHere is the surface work function, and the stopping voltage is understood after any photoelectric contact-potential correction. A photon delivers in an absorption event; emission is allowed only when that energy can pay the escape cost. This accounts for the frequency threshold and the lack of the classical waiting time associated with slowly accumulating energy in a single electron. The experiment supports energy quantization of light; it does not imply that every incident photon emits an electron or that every emitted electron has the maximum energy. Surface losses and collection geometry affect the full current-voltage curve.
The Davisson–Germer experiment demonstrates a complementary wave property of matter. An electron gun uses a heated emitter, accelerating voltage and apertures to send a narrow beam onto a nickel single crystal in vacuum. A movable collector measures scattered electric current versus direction; rotating the crystal also tests its azimuthal symmetry. The crystal gives sharp angular beams whose positions depend on voltage and crystal orientation. A prominent feature occurs near accelerating voltage and roughly detector colatitude. The nonrelativistic de Broglie wavelength predicted at that voltage isDiffraction wavelengths inferred using the known crystal structure agree with this voltage dependence. These angular peaks arise from coherent addition of scattering amplitudes from the crystal, not from classical specular reflection of independent point projectiles. Bragg's law is for lattice-plane spacing and angle to those planes; a detector colatitude is a different angle and must not be substituted without its geometry. The historical readout was current, not a photograph of individual electron trajectories.[ref]
Diffraction of Electrons by a Crystal of Nickel by C. Davisson and L. H. Germer. 1927, apparatus pp. 707–710 and angular/voltage scans pp. 715–719
The double-slit experiment makes the role of amplitudes especially direct. A coherent source illuminates two narrow slits; an observation screen a distance away records the pattern. For slit spacing and small screen displacement , the path difference is approximately . The two amplitudes add before probabilities are formed:For equal coherent illumination the interference term varies as , giving fringe spacing beneath the single-slit diffraction envelope. Blocking one slit removes that cross term. Young's optical experiment established wave interference; later particle-resolved realizations with photons or electrons show localized detection events whose accumulated distribution has the interference pattern. Low arrival rates demonstrate that this pattern does not require different incident particles to collide with one another.
If the paths become correlated with distinguishable detector states and , the cross term acquires their overlap . Perfectly distinguishable path records make that overlap zero, suppressing interference even if the spatial beams still overlap. This connects quantum entanglement, measurement and loss of observable coherence. Without a path measurement, the two alternatives are amplitudes for one preparation, rather than classical mutually exclusive events whose probabilities may simply be added.
Together these experiments motivate a description in which energy transfer and detector outcomes can be discrete, yet propagation retains complex quantum phases and interference. The Born rule connects those amplitudes to repeatable frequencies of outcomes. The Schrödinger equation supplies the dynamics once a Hamiltonian operator is specified, while observable operators, state preparation and the measurement model specify what the apparatus can read.
Quantum tunnelling is transmission through a finite classically forbidden region, where . The stationary Schrödinger equation permits an evanescent wavefunction inside such a barrier rather than forcing it to vanish at its entrance. Matching to propagating states beyond a barrier of finite width gives a nonzero transmitted probability current.
For a rectangular barrier of height and width , with equal exterior potentials and , write . The exact rectangular-barrier tunnelling probability isFor an opaque barrier its dominant dependence is . For a slowly varying barrier, the WKB approximation generalizes this to , apart from matching prefactors. Barrier width, particle mass and energy therefore have a strong influence. Energy is conserved in a static barrier: tunnelling does not require the particle to borrow energy or acquire a classical path with negative kinetic energy.
In alpha decay, a nuclear alpha-particle configuration is confined by the short-range nuclear interaction but separated from the exterior by a Coulomb barrier. Its energy can be positive relative to infinity while still lying below the barrier maximum. Escape by tunnelling produces alpha particles at that conserved energy, with an exponentially small decay probability per nuclear encounter. The pronounced dependence of half-life on alpha energy is a characteristic consequence of the barrier exponent, unlike a simple classical escape threshold.
In scanning tunneling microscopy, a conducting tip is brought within a nanometer-scale vacuum gap of a conducting surface and biased weakly. Electron tunnelling gives a current that depends approximately exponentially on separation, in a simple low-bias model. Feedback adjusts the tip height to keep current fixed while scanning, producing a surface map sensitive to both geometry and electronic states. Finite current through the non-contact gap, and its steep dependence on separation, are the direct tunnelling signatures; current is not a direct measurement of topographic height alone.
A Josephson junction provides a collective superconducting example. Two superconductors separated by a thin barrier can carry a coherent pair current even at zero voltage. At constant voltage the AC Josephson effect gives and oscillation frequency . The coupled condensate quantum phases and pair transfer distinguish this from independent normal-electron transmission. These examples involve different microscopic barriers, but all require quantum coupling across a region that suppresses classical passage. Comparing weak-temperature tunnelling behavior with thermally activated escape helps distinguish the mechanisms experimentally.
Past exam of the physics A course of the University of Cambridge 2018 Paper 1 Section D D13 c Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Johnson-Nyquist noise is equilibrium electrical fluctuation caused by thermal agitation of charge carriers. A resistor can generate a fluctuating terminal voltage even when its mean current is zero. In the classical frequency range , the fluctuation-dissipation theorem relates this noise to dissipative resistance. The one-sided voltage power spectral density of an unloaded resistor isEquivalently its short-circuit current spectrum is . Over a flat bandwidth the rms voltage is . A real measurement instead integrates over positive frequency, with loading and the filter's effective noise bandwidth included. A flat spectrum does not imply an infinite physically measurable variance; the circuit and the quantum high-frequency regime limit the ideal white-noise model.
Cooling or narrowing the accepted bandwidth reduces thermal noise. Reducing resistance lowers its open-circuit voltage noise but raises its short-circuit current noise, so the appropriate choice depends on source impedance and amplifier loading. Thermal agitation is not a fluctuating externally applied voltage that can be removed by perfect shielding alone.
Shot noise arises from discrete transfer events. In the simplest shot noise counting model, equal charges arrive independently at constant rate . A gate of duration contains a Poisson number , with mean and variance . Therefore mean current is , and the averaged-current variance is . The corresponding one-sided low-frequency spectrum isfor a flat accepted bandwidth. Electron current has . Vacuum emission or photodetection can approximate independent arrivals; correlations in a conductor can suppress or enhance the fluctuations. Discreteness by itself does not guarantee Poisson statistics.
For a fixed mean current the ideal shot-noise formula is not proportional to temperature, whereas Johnson noise is. Increasing current raises absolute shot noise but lowers its fractional size, since . Both can appear approximately white within a useful frequency band, and independent noise powers add after referring them to a common measurement point. Their spectra must use the same convention: two-sided densities are half these one-sided values. A real low-current experiment can also contain amplifier noise, low-frequency drift and correlated transfer noise, so a mean current or resistance alone does not specify its complete noise budget.
Past exam of the physics A course of the University of Cambridge 2019 Paper 1 Section A 4 Solution 2026-10-18
Ohm's law gives the mean electric currentFor an estimate, assume the shot noise counting model: electron transfers are independent, so the number recorded in an interval has a Poisson distribution with expectation value and variance . One measurement has relative standard deviation . Averaging independent intervals reduces this to , soabout minutes in total.
This is a one-standard deviation, shot noise estimate. A resistance and mean voltage alone do not specify the actual current fluctuations: a real resistor also has Johnson-Nyquist noise, and electron-transfer correlations can change the shot noise. Its temperature, measurement bandwidth and noise model would be needed for an unconditional acquisition time.
Let be the inverting-input potential. The non-inverting input is grounded, so the ideal operational amplifier rules give and no input current. Kirchhoff's current law at that node therefore givesIntegrating from an initial time ,This op amp integrator performs inverted time integration; the initial voltage across the capacitor supplies the integration constant. For zero initial conditions its transfer function is . In sinusoidal steady state, with the convention ,For example, a cosine input produces a negative sine output after its constant component is set. The additional inversion makes the phase modulo , rather than the of non-inverting integration.
