Universal instantiation is a rule of inference in formal logic that allows one to derive a specific instance from a universally quantified statement. In simple terms, if something is true for all members of a certain set (as stated by a universal quantifier), one can conclude that it is true for any particular member of that set.
Alpha decay by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Most of the helium in the Earth's atmosphere comes from alpha decay, since helium is lighter than air and naturally escapes out out of the atmosphere.
Wiki mentions that alpha decay is well modelled as a quantum tunnelling event, see also Geiger-Nuttall law.
As a result of that law, alpha particles have relatively little energy variation around 5 MeV or a speed of about 5% of the speed of light for any element, because the energy is inversely exponentially proportional to half-life. This is because:
  • if the energy is much larger, decay is very fast and we don't have time to study the isotope
  • if the energy is much smaller, decay is very rare and we don't have enough events to observe at all
Video 1.
Quantum tunnelling and the Alpha particle Paradox by Physics Explained (2022)
Source.
The Kramer graph, often referred to as the "K4,4" graph or "Kramer graph," is a specific type of graph used in combinatorial design and graph theory. Here are some key points about the Kramer graph: 1. **Properties**: - The Kramer graph is a bipartite graph, meaning it can be divided into two distinct sets of vertices such that no two vertices within the same set are adjacent.
This book really tries to recall basic things to ensure that the reader will be able to understand the more advanced ones.
Sometimes it goes a little bit overboard, like defining what a function does several times.
But Ciro Santilli really prefers it when authors error on the side of obvious.
Lagrangian density by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
When we particles particles, the action is obtained by integrating the Lagrangian over time:
In the case of field however, we can expand the Lagrangian out further, to also integrate over the space coordinates and their derivatives.
Since we are now working with something that gets integrated over space to obtain the total action, much like density would be integrated over space to obtain a total mass, the name "Lagrangian density" is fitting.
E.g. for a 2-dimensional field :
Of course, if we were to write it like that all the time we would go mad, so we can just write a much more condensed vectorized version using the gradient with :
And in the context of special relativity, people condense that even further by adding to the spacetime Four-vector as well, so you don't even need to write that separate pesky .
The main point of talking about the Lagrangian density instead of a Lagrangian for fields is likely that it treats space and time in a more uniform way, which is a basic requirement of special relativity: we have to be able to mix them up somehow to do Lorentz transformations. Notably, this is a key ingredient in a/the formulation of quantum field theory.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact