2019 redefinition of the SI base units Updated +Created
web.archive.org/web/20181119214326/https://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/CGPM-2018/26th-CGPM-Resolutions.pdf gives it in raw:
The breakdown is:
Dirac equation solution for the hydrogen atom Updated +Created
Predicts fine structure.
Video 1.
Dirac equation for the electron and hydrogen Hamiltonian by Barton Zwiebach (2019)
Source. Uses perturbation theory to get to the relativistic corrections of fine structure! Part of MIT 8.06 Quantum Physics III, Spring 2018 by Barton Zwiebach
Video 2.
How To Solve The Dirac Equation For The Hydrogen Atom | Relativistic Quantum Mechanics by Dietterich Labs (2018)
Source.
Lamb shift Updated +Created
2s/2p energy split in the hydrogen emission spectrum, not predicted by the Dirac equation, but explained by quantum electrodynamics, which is one of the first great triumphs of that theory.
Note that for atoms with multiple electrons, 2s/2p shifts are expected: Why does 2s have less energy than 1s if they have the same principal quantum number?. The surprise was observing that on hydrogen which only has one electron.
On the return from the train from the Shelter Island Conference in New York, Hans Bethe managed to do a non-relativistic calculation of the Lamb shift. He then published as The Electromagnetic Shift of Energy Levels by Hans Bethe (1947) which is still paywalled as of 2021, fuck me: journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.72.339 by Physical Review.
The Electromagnetic Shift of Energy Levels Freeman Dyson (1948) published on Physical Review is apparently a relativistic analysis of the same: journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.73.617 also paywalled as of 2021.
TODO how do the infinities show up, and how did people solve them?
Video 1.
Lamb shift by Dr. Nissar Ahmad (2020)
Source. Whiteboard Lecture about the phenomena, includes description of the experiment. Seems quite good.
Video 2.
Murray Gell-Mann - The race to calculate the relativistic Lamb shift by Web of Stories (1997)
Source. Quick historical overview. Mentions that Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger were using mass renormalization and cancellation if infinities. He says that French and Weisskopf actually managed to do the correct calculations first with a less elegant method.
www.mdpi.com/2624-8174/2/2/8/pdf History and Some Aspects of the Lamb Shift by G. Jordan Maclay (2019)
Video 3.
Freeman Dyson - The Lamb shift by Web of Stories (1998)
Source.
Mentions that he moved to the USA from the United Kingdom specifically because great experiments were being carried at Columbia University, which is where the Lamb-Retherford experiment was done, and that Isidor Isaac Rabi was the head at the time.
He then explains mass renormalization briefly: instead of calculating from scratch, you just compare the raw electron to the bound electron and take the difference. Both of those have infinities in them, but the difference between them cancels out those infinities.
Video 4.
Hans Bethe - The Lamb shift (1996)
Source.
Ahh, Hans is so old in that video, it is sad to see. He did live a lot tough. Mentions that the shift is of about 1000 MHz.
Video 5.
Lamb shift by Vidya-mitra (2018)
Source.
NIST Atomic Spectra Database Updated +Created
Nuclear magnetic resonance Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli once visited the chemistry department of a world leading university, and the chemists there were obsessed with NMR. They had small benchtop NMR machines. They had larger machines. They had a room full of huge machines. They had them in corridors and on desk tops. Chemists really love that stuff. More precisely, these are used for NMR spectroscopy, which helps identify what a sample is made of.
Basically measures the concentration of certain isotopes in a region of space.
Video 1.
Introduction to NMR by Allery Chemistry
. Source.
Video 2.
How to Prepare and Run a NMR Sample by University of Bath (2017)
Source. This is a more direct howto, cool to see. Uses a Bruker Corporation 300. They have a robotic arm add-on. Shows spectrum on computer screen at the end. Shame no molecule identification after that!
Video 3. Source.
This video has the merit of showing real equipment usage, including sample preparation.
Says clearly that NMR is the most important way to identify organic compounds.
Video 4.
Introductory NMR & MRI: Video 01 by Magritek (2009)
Source. Precession and Resonance. Precession has a natural frequency for any angle of the wheel.
Video 5.
Introductory NMR & MRI: Video 02 by Magritek (2009)
Source. The influence of temperature on spin statistics. At 300K, the number of up and down spins are very similar. As you reduce temperature, we get more and more on lower energy state.
Video 6.
Introductory NMR & MRI: Video 03 by Magritek (2009)
Source. The influence of temperature on spin statistics. At 300K, the number of up and down spins are very similar. As you reduce temperature, we get more and more on lower energy state.
Video 7.
NMR spectroscopy visualized by ScienceSketch
. Source. 2020. Decent explanation with animation. Could go into a bit more numbers, but OK.
Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom Updated +Created
Is the only atom that has a closed form solution, which allows for very good predictions, and gives awesome intuition about the orbitals in general.
It is arguably the most important solution of the Schrodinger equation.
In particular, it predicts:
The explicit solution can be written in terms of spherical harmonics.
Video 1.
A Better Way To Picture Atoms by minutephysics (2021)
Source. Renderings based on the exact Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom that depict wave function concentration by concentration of small balls, and angular momentum by how fast the balls rotate at each point. Mentions that the approach is inspired by de Broglie-Bohm theory.
Stern-Gerlach experiment Updated +Created
Originally done with (neutral) silver atoms in 1921, but even clearer theoretically was the hydrogen reproduction in 1927 by T. E. Phipps and J. B. Taylor.
Video 1.
The Stern-Gerlach Experiment by Educational Services, Inc (1967)
Source. Featuring MIT Professor Jerrold R. Zacharias. Amazing experimental setup demonstration, he takes apart much of the experiment to show what's going on.