Related papers: The Physics of baking good Pizza
An account is given of the methods of working of Experimental High Energy Particle Physics, from the viewpoint of statisticians and others unfamiliar with the field. Current statistical problems, techniques, and hot topics are introduced…
This book includes my lectures, together with their problem sets and solutions, on 1) classical mechanics (one semester), 2) thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (one semester), and 3) quantum mechanics (one semester), which I have been…
A simplified, but non trivial, mechanical model -- gas of $N$ particles of mass $m$ in a box partitioned by $n$ mobile adiabatic walls of mass $M$ -- interacting with two thermal baths at different temperatures, is discussed in the…
Experiments on solid-state materials and atomic quantum gases are increasingly investigating similar concepts in many-body quantum physics. Yet, the flavor of experiments on the gaseous atomic materials is different from that of…
For the ideal Fermi gas that fills a quantum well confined by two parallel planes, there are calculated the thermodynamic characteristics in general form for arbitrary temperatures, namely: the thermodynamic potential, energy, entropy,…
We present a statistical mechanics approach to the protein folding problem. We first review some of the basic properties of proteins, and introduce some physical models to describe their thermodynamics. These models rely on a random…
We present our first attempts to formulate a thermodynamics-like description of explosions. The motivation is partly a fundamental interest in non-equilibrium statistical physics, partly the resemblance of an explosion to the late stages of…
We describe a course designed to help future educators build an integrated understanding of the different elements of physics education research (PER), including: research into student learning, content knowledge from the perspective of how…
A primary goal of physics is to create mathematical models that allow both predictions and explanations of physical phenomena. We weave maths extensively into our physics instruction beginning in high school, and the level and complexity of…
We demonstrate that embedding physics-driven constraints into machine learning process can dramatically improve accuracy and generalizability of the resulting model. Physics-informed learning is illustrated on the example of analysis of…
Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have previously documented…
We conducted simple experiments and derived physics equations to explain the working principle of a bamboo rifle. This toy is often played by children in many places that have bamboo plants, such as in ASEAN countries. We identified two…
Thermodynamics and information have intricate inter-relations. The justification of the fact that information is physical, is done by inter-linking information and thermodynamics - through Landauer's principle. This modern approach towards…
Physics Education Research frequently investigates what students studying physics do on small time scales (e.g. single courses, observations within single courses), or post-education time scales (e.g., what jobs do physics majors get?) but…
Thermodynamics originated in the need to understand novel technologies developed by the Industrial Revolution. However, over the centuries the description of engines, refrigerators, thermal accelerators, and heaters has become so abstract…
The purpose of this review is to analyze the physics at play in particle resuspension in order to bring insights into the rich complexity of this common but challenging concern. Following the more-is-different vision, this is performed by…
A quasi-static process is realized in a purely quantum-mechanical model which is described by oscillator (or particle) systems having relative-phase interactions. Time development of a mixture of two oscillator (or particle) systems which…
The purpose of this note is to see to what extent ideal gas laws can be obtained from simple Newtonian mechanics, specifically elastic collisions. We present simple one-dimensional situations that seem to validate the laws. The first…
We present and discuss a selected set of problems of classical mechanics and thermodynamics. The discussion is based on the use of the impulse-momentum equation simultaneously with the centre-of-mass (pseudo-work) equation or with the first…
A review of the theoretical and computational aspects of plasma-wall transition is presented. The conditions for the existence of plasma sheaths in front of a solid surface are established. Various regimes are analyzed -collisionless and…