Curie temperature by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 1.
Variation of saturation magnetisation with temperature for Nickel
. Source. This graph shows what happens when you approach the Curie temperature from below.
Ferromagnetism by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
The wiki comments: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ferromagnetism&oldid=965600553#Explanation
The Bohr-van Leeuwen theorem, discovered in the 1910s, showed that classical physics theories are unable to account for any form of magnetism, including ferromagnetism. Magnetism is now regarded as a purely quantum mechanical effect. Ferromagnetism arises due to two effects from quantum mechanics: spin and the Pauli exclusion principle.
Ising model by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Toy model of matter that exhibits phase transition in dimension 2 and greater. It does not provide numerically exact results by itself, but can serve as a tool to theorize existing and new phase transitions.
Each point in the lattice has two possible states: TODO insert image.
As mentioned at: stanford.edu/~jeffjar/statmech/intro4.html some systems which can be seen as modelled by it include:
Also has some funky relations to renormalization TODO.
Video 1.
The Ising Model in Python by Mr. P Solver
. Source. The dude is crushing it on a Jupyter Notebook.
TODO what it means to solve an Ising model in general?
stanford.edu/~jeffjar/statmech/lec4.html gives some good notions:
Magnetic dipole by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
A tiny idealized magnet! It is a very good model if you have a small strong magnet interacting with objects that are far away, notably other magnetic dipoles or a constant magnetic field.
The cool thing about this model is that we have simple explicit formulas for the magnetic field it produces, and for how this little magnet is affected by a magnetic field or by another magnetic dipole.
This is the perfect model for electron spin, but it can also be representative of macroscopic systems in the right circumstances.
The intuition for the name is likely that "dipole" means "both poles are on the same spot".
Figure 1.
Different macroscopic magnets can be approximated by a magnetic dipole when shrunk seen from far away
. Source.
Oxford Instruments by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
They are pioneers in making superconducting magnets, physicist from the university taking obsolete equipment from the uni to his garage and making a startup kind of situation. This was particularly notable for this time and place.
They became a major supplier for magnetic resonance imaging applications.
Planck's law by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Used to explain the black-body radiation experiment.
The Quantum Story by Jim Baggott (2011) page 9 mentions that Planck apparently immediately recognized that Planck constant was a new fundamental physical constant, and could have potential applications in the definition of the system of units (TODO where was that published):
Planck wrote that the constants offered: 'the possibility of establishing units of length, mass, time and temperature which are independent of specific bodies or materials and which necessarily maintain their meaning for all time and for all civilizations, even those which are extraterrestrial and nonhuman, constants which therefore can be called "fundamental physical units of measurement".'
This was a visionary insight, and was finally realized in the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units.
Video 1.
Quantum Mechanics 2 - Photons by ViaScience (2012)
Source. Contains a good explanation of how discretization + energy increases with frequency explains the black-body radiation experiment curve: you need more and more energy for small wavelengths, each time higher above the average energy available.
Video 1.
Black-body Radiation Experiment by sciencesolution (2008)
Source. A modern version of the experiment with a PASCO scientific EX-9920 setup.

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 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . 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.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  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