h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nice technically meaty article.
Explains what the PE is and why it happens.
The only bit that could be clearer was the second equation about the electron energy, E=hf-f, could be written a bit clearer E=hf-f' or even E=hf-W where f' or W would be labeled as the work function.

I'll try and re-read it again and see if I can think of any other comments later.

A good article, explaining quite a hard concept I think, well done.

Sorry... its meant to be a phi... I did it in symbol, assuming glibly that the rest of the world has that font installed... sorry

I've changed it now, though

It certainly looks better now, and that bit reads more clearly as a result.
As for using fonts and symbols that not every one can see, well it happens all the time for me, I use a unix system for web access, so trying to decipher what people are trying to say is an art form learnt over many years.
What really gets me going is people who send MSWord attachements for a simple one page memo, when text would do.

Word is of the devil
I bet that's irritating
Thank you for the positive feedback on my page. I appreciate it lots...
Its hard to believe that the rest of the world isn't running Netscape on Windows NT, I can just about imagine IE5 and windoze 98, as that's what I use at home, but having a perrenial fear of Unix-which-I-don't-understand, I avoid the unix machines like the plague.

There's no need to fear unix. It's not that bad really.
OK unix doesn't lead you by the hand and treats you like an adult (if you delete the wrong file, well that's what you told it to do).
I had to get to learn unix when I was at uni, then in all the jobs I've had since I've ended up working in front of a unix workstation.

If you manage to overcome this fear then you'll probably find that you won't have to worry about getting to a free computer again

I thought I'd put a word of encouragement in, cos it'll make you think about submitting the article, cos it's good enough. It did remind me of physics lessons of many years ago, when I had to learn that stuff.
The strange bit is I've not forgotten it (well I've forgotten an awfull lot of things over the years).

I tried unix once... perhaps I'll reread that thing they gave us at the beginning of the year about the IT service and see if it has anything to tell me....
This article may well remind you of physics lessons, its the text of a talk I gave in my tutorial group, so its very lessonish. But its a surprising (well more than most) effect, which may make it memorable.

PS I posted a request to Peta that H2G2 host some little graphics of the greek letters, then I could use phi all I liked!

I had the problem when the article on Pi came out as well, so it's not an isolated instance. If it happens well and good, but I can wait, I'm patient.

Having just read that article, I see a question mark where I assume pi should be...
I guess I'll have to keep changing my variable/constant names.... maybe I won't try writing an entry on the Scroedinger equation!

The Schrodinger Eqn. I was told about that, then told that we didn't need to know too much about it (ie how to solve it ).
We did get to learn all sorts of other stuff though, a lot of it I can still remember and have found useful over the years in my various jobs.

Did you read the entry on Solitons that I did?
Just something else that might interest you. Its at
http://www.h2g2.com/A253649
Its good to know that physics is useful. Be glad you didn't have to study the Scroedinger equation. Its nasty.. I don't think that its actually possible to derive from first principles, or if it is, the Professor of Particle physics at Durham doesn't know how!

One of my best friends (who did a Physics degree at Durham funnily enough) told me that Schrodinger's Eqn was nasty.

Physics is very useful, but I did an engineering degree. Electronics and communications so some material science and waves etc type stuff came was taught (well quite a lot of specific stuff really).

I have looked at the soliton stuff and that is well put. The big application that people are looking as is as you say telecoms, put a modulated solitonic wavetrain into an optical fibre, and well oh look, you've just removed the need for a lot of expensive optical amplifiers.

I don't know if you studies any partial differntial equations, but the problem with the Shr. equation is that there are very few cases that one can solve it for, its a complex wave function, and a bad thing... this is stuff I may put into an entry at some point, greek letter psi permitting...
What area are you working in now, if you don't mind my asking?

We had to at least know what partial diff eqns were if not what to do with them. Then again, I'm supposed to know all about fourier and laplace transforms and what one can do with them. I didn't understand those bits when I was taught them.

I used to work as an IC (silicon chip) designer. Not the computer chips which these days is more about programming, but doing stuff that was used in mobile phones and pagers. It required a knowledge of circuit theory and semiconductor device physics. I then went to try and work doing the electronics for optical comms stuff, but it didn't come off. Now I work as a systems administrator for an internet service provider. (hey I should say it's all on my home page or something, but what the hell).

So thats in the bit I didn't read properly... I've developed this terrible scanning habit at some point, and have stopped reading things... sorry!
I had a short (5 lectures) course on semiconductors etc, but we didn't get past the p-n junction... I guess I'll study more of it in the future.
Isn't being a sys admin. for an ISP a bit of a jump? it seems so to me, having little to no idea what it involves.
I've only made it to Fourier series so far... the second years say I have many things to "look forward" to.

No wories, I just expect people don't even look at my page

I've got lots of lecture notes and books on semiconductor theory and practice. It's a lot more practical than some other stuff I had to do.
The p-n juction is about all there is in semiconductors, it's just how they're put together (on their own, in pairs, metal-semiconductor junction) The only other thing of note is the MOS (metal-oxide -semiconductor) junction but I could go on for a long while about that, so I won't.
The being a sys admin isn't really that far a jump, cos it's about the only other thing I could do without too much extra training. If I hadn't got into electronics when I left uni I probably would have ended up doing a similar job to the one I've now got.
I only ended up doing this because the places I wanted to work didn't want me (poor interviews at the time).

It always gets more interesting the further you go. And next year when you're doing all this stuff, you can tell the new first years what "interesting" things they'll be doing next year

Judging by my quantum mechanics course, it gets more mind-bogglingly scary the further you go... I know this isn't true of everything, though
I'll look up the MMOS junction at some point, it's bound to be in my textbook. (or ought to be, anyway)
I look forward to showing next years first years the things that they'll have to do in second year (evil glint in eye)

Einstein didn't like quantum mechanics either...(what's the probability that I'll tunnel through to the lower energy state that's my bed?)

The really scary thing in physics is that the ideas which dictate what happens on the sub-atomic scale (quantum mechanics) have to work when you put lots of atoms together on the super-macroscopic scale and create a galaxy (or universe) or else there's something wrong.

Quantum tunnelling is very strange indeed... Its so *hard* not to think of all these little billiard balls flying around...
I was just wondering this morning about solving a Schrodinger equation for every single particle in my body simultaneously, and finding out the probability of me being here. I wonder two things... how probable am I, and how much computer power would it take?

From my quantum mechanics, I find it hard to believe that we know anything about anything ever. But obviously we do! I suppose we're lucky that we can see around as many orders of magnitude smaller and bigger than ourselves, so we get to look at the problems from both end, although making them meet in the middle...