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One of the biggest controversies in physics over the past three decades is whether “cold fusion” is a thing. In 1989 a couple of physicists discovered an electrolysis experiment that produced way more energy than any chemical reaction could. They thought the energy had to come from the Binding Energy between two Deuterium nuclei forming… Continue reading 14. Cold Fusion

We want to digress for a moment to pick up something important that we glossed over earlier. You will remember our discussion about the measured size of the Hydrogen nucleus, which only contains a proton: We want to explain the symbol we used for the average measured size, which we called λproton. It turns out… Continue reading 13. Particle wave

There are a few more things to consider to arrive at a bracing structure for neutrons. A free neutron (outside the nucleus) decays in 14.75 minutes into a proton, an electron, an anti-neutrino, and energy in the form of motion of these three particles. So, the neutron is demonstrably unstable compared to the proton. On… Continue reading 12. Neutrons

What, then, can we say about this bubble in space that we call a proton? For one thing we know it is mostly hollow. When a proton disintegrates in a collision with another particle, the only things that emerge are three quarks having together only 0.5% of the energy of the proton. Where does the… Continue reading 11. Protons

Mysteries can hang around in physics for decades. One of these is the 90-year-old Case of the Baffling Binding Energy. When two particles, like a proton and a neutron, fuse together into a nucleus, they lose a bit of mass. This lost mass has the name Mass Defect. Because of our old friend E =… Continue reading 10. Binding Energy

Einstein claimed his happiest thought was that inertia and gravitation had identical effects. That is, a person in space in an elevator which was accelerating with the same acceleration as imparted by gravity on earth could not tell whether they were standing in a stationary elevator on earth or were out in space far from… Continue reading 9. Inertia

Why do things fall? We know: gravity. But what causes gravity? Normally we think of really large objects like the earth, moon or sun having gravity. But Isaac Newton realized that any two objects attract each other due to gravity. In Newton’s day it was known that the north pole of a magnet was attracted… Continue reading 8. Gravitation

A little over100 years ago, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford performed an important experiment. He shot a beam of alpha particles at a foil of gold. Now alpha particles are just the nucleus of a Helium atom: two protons and two neutrons. Turns out this is a very stable nucleus so you can shoot… Continue reading 7. Mass no mas

We’ve been talking about creating particles but we haven’t said anything about how this is accomplished. Particles are created when a whole bunch of energy is concentrated in one place in space. This usually occurs when two high-speed particles with a lot of energy collide. Most of us are familiar with this famous formula for… Continue reading 6. Particle Bubbles

It’s fair to ask if there is any evidence for this new idea. Luckily, one of the great mysteries of modern physics has been pointing to this model all along, just no one realized it until now. This mystery is: why is the nucleus of Hydrogen larger than a proton when the only thing in… Continue reading 5. Size of Hydrogen