Hydrogen: The Essential ElementSeduced by simplicity, physicists find themselves endlessly fascinated by hydrogen, the simplest of atoms. Hydrogen has shocked, it has surprised, it has embarrassed, it has humbled--and again and again it has guided physicists to the edge of new vistas where the promise of basic understanding and momentous insights beckoned. The allure of hydrogen, crucial to life and critical to scientific discovery, is at the center of this book, which tells a story that begins with the big bang and continues to unfold today. |
Contents
Prologue | 1 |
Hydrogen and the Big Bang | 6 |
The Prout Hypothesis | 12 |
A Swiss High School Teacher Finds a Pattern | 19 |
A Paradigm for the Structure of Atoms | 27 |
Chapter 5 Relativity Meets the Quantum in the Hydrogen Atom | 43 |
A Strange Numberwith Universal Significance | 52 |
The Hydrogen Atom Answers the Crucial Question | 59 |
Quantum Electrodynamics as the Prototype Physical Theory | 150 |
Chapter 16 The Hydrogen Atom Portends an Anomaly with the Electron | 161 |
Chapter 17 Hydrogen Maps the Galaxy | 171 |
A HighPrecision Clock | 183 |
A Fundamental Constant | 197 |
A Check on Big Bang Cosmology | 211 |
The First Antiatom | 223 |
Chapter 22 The BoseEinstein Condensate for Hydrogen | 234 |
Midwife to the Birth of Wave Mechanics | 74 |
Chapter 9 The Hydrogen Atom and Diracs Theory of the Electron | 87 |
The Discovery of Deuterium | 96 |
The Magnetic Moment of the Proton | 103 |
The Origin of Magnetic Resonance Imaging | 113 |
The Discovery of the Quadrupole Moment of the Deuteron | 125 |
Chapter 14 Magnetic Resonance in Bulk Matter NMR | 137 |