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Name-Arpit Goyal REG. NO.-20BIT0054 Course Code-Phy1701: TOPIC: Importance of Quantum Mechanics in The Modern World

Quantum mechanics is fundamental to modern physics and has many applications in everyday life. It explains phenomena at the atomic and subatomic scale that classical physics cannot. Some key ways it is important include: - Many electronic devices like computers, smartphones, and lasers rely on quantum effects like band structure and tunneling. - Quantum cryptography and computing are areas of active research that could yield more secure communication and more powerful computers. - Common appliances like fluorescent lights and toasters emit light through quantum processes like electrons moving between atomic energy levels. - Quantum mechanics provides insight into biological systems like smell and photosynthesis. It accurately describes previously unexplained phenomena.

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89 views5 pages

Name-Arpit Goyal REG. NO.-20BIT0054 Course Code-Phy1701: TOPIC: Importance of Quantum Mechanics in The Modern World

Quantum mechanics is fundamental to modern physics and has many applications in everyday life. It explains phenomena at the atomic and subatomic scale that classical physics cannot. Some key ways it is important include: - Many electronic devices like computers, smartphones, and lasers rely on quantum effects like band structure and tunneling. - Quantum cryptography and computing are areas of active research that could yield more secure communication and more powerful computers. - Common appliances like fluorescent lights and toasters emit light through quantum processes like electrons moving between atomic energy levels. - Quantum mechanics provides insight into biological systems like smell and photosynthesis. It accurately describes previously unexplained phenomena.

Uploaded by

arpit
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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NAME- ARPIT GOYAL

REG. NO.-20BIT0054
COURSE CODE-PHY1701

DIGITAL ASSIGNMENT 1

TOPIC: Importance of quantum mechanics in the modern world

1.INTRODUCTION: Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that


provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms
and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum
chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information
science.
Quantum Physics also known as quantum theory or quantum mechanics is a major
part of modern physics along with general relativity. Classical physics, the
description of physics that existed before the theory of relativity and quantum
mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale,
while quantum mechanics explains the aspects of nature at small (atomic
and subatomic) scales, for which classical mechanics is insufficient. Most theories in
classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid
at large (macroscopic) scale.
Quantum mechanics differs from classical physics in
that energy, momentum, angular momentum, and other quantities of a bound system
are restricted to discrete values (quantization), objects have characteristics of
both particles and waves (wave-particle duality), and there are limits to how
accurately the value of a physical quantity can be predicted prior to its measurement,
given a complete set of initial conditions (the uncertainty principle).
These two theories are believed to explain virtually all about the universe.
It explains the theory of every object being isolated from their surroundings.
It essentially becomes a theory of the microscopic world of an atom and sub-atomic
particles.
Quantum theory is used in many ways in everyday life including lasers, CDs, DVDs,
solar cells, fibre-optics etc.
Quantum physics is arguably the greatest intellectual triumph in the history of human
civilization, but to most people it seems like it's too remote and abstract to matter.
This is largely a self-inflicted wound on the part of physicists and pop-science
writers: when we talk about quantum physics, we usually emphasize the weird and
counter-intuitive phenomena: Schrödinger's cat in a superposition of "alive" and
"dead," Einstein's objection to God playing dice, the weird long-distance correlations
of quantum entanglement. These things are exciting because they're exotic, but
investigating them in the lab requires isolating very simple quantum systems, and it
can be hard to see any connection between these phenomena and everyday life.

2. IMPORTANCE IN MODERN WORLD:


Today, every other thing is influenced by quantum physics.
For example:
Computers and Smartphone: The entire working process of computers is based on
quantum physics.
The phenomenon of band structure, which supports the modern semiconductor-
based electronics, is fundamentally a quantum mechanism.
Lasers and Telecommunication: The base of fibre optic telecommunication is
quantum physics.
The light sources that are used to send messages down the fibre optic cables are
lasers that are quantum devices.

(A) ELECTRONIC: Many modern electronic devices are designed using quantum
mechanics. Examples include the laser, the transistor (and thus the microchip), the
electron microscope, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The study of
semiconductors led to the invention of the diode and the transistor, which are
indispensable parts of
modern electronics systems, computer and telecommunication devices. Another
application is for making laser diodes and light-emitting diodes, which are a high-
efficiency source of light.
Many electronic devices operate using the effect of quantum tunneling. It even exists
in the simple light switch. The switch would not work if electrons could not quantum
tunnel through the layer of oxidation on the metal contact surfaces.

(B)CRYPTOGRAPHY: Researchers are currently seeking robust methods of


directly manipulating quantum states. Efforts are being made to more fully
develop quantum cryptography, which will theoretically allow guaranteed secure
transmission of information.
An inherent advantage yielded by quantum cryptography when
compared to classical cryptography is the detection of passive eavesdropping. This
is a natural result of the behavior of quantum bits; due to the observer effect, if a bit
in a superposition state were to be observed, the superposition state would collapse
into an eigenstate

(C) QUANTUM COMPUTING : Quantum computing is the use


of quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to
perform computation. Computers that perform quantum computations are known
as quantum computers.
Quantum programmers are able to manipulate the superposition of qubits in order to
solve problems that classical computing cannot do effectively, such as searching
unsorted databases or integer factorization. IBM claims that the advent of quantum
computing may progress the fields of medicine, logistics, financial services, artificial
intelligence and cloud security.[4]
Another active research topic is quantum teleportation, which deals with techniques
to transmit quantum information over arbitrary distances.

(D)TOASTERS: The red glow of a heating element as you toast a slice of bread
or a bagel is a very familiar sight for most of us. It's also the place where quantum
physics got its start. The fact that the light was independent of the composition
suggested a simple universal approach: You tally up all the colors of light that an
object might emit, and give each of them an equal share of the heat energy
contained in the object. The problem with this is that there are a lot more ways to
emit high-frequency light than low-frequency light, which suggests that rather than a
pleasant warm res glow, your toaster should be spraying x-rays and gamma rays all
over the kitchen. That's clearly not happening so something else must be going on.

The solution to this problem was found by Max Planck, who introduced
the "quantum hypothesis" that the light could only be emitted in discrete chunks of
energy, integer multiples of a small constant times the frequency of the light. For
high-frequency light, this energy quantum is larger than the share of heat energy
allotted to that frequency, and thus no light is emitted at that frequency. This cuts off
the high-frequency light, and leads to a formula that matches the observed spectrum
of light from hot objects to great precision.

So, every time you toast bread, you're looking at the place where quantum physics
got its start.

(E) Fluorescent Lights: If you have fluorescent bulbs around either the long
tubes or the newer twisty CFL bulbs, you're getting light from another revolutionary
quantum process.

Way back in the early 1800's, physicists noticed that every element
in the periodic table has a unique spectrum: if you get a vapor of atoms hot, they
emit light at a smallish number of discrete frequencies, with a different pattern for
every element. These "spectral lines" were quickly used to identify the composition
of unknown materials, and even to discover the presence of previously unknown
elements-- helium, for example, was first detected as a previously unknown spectral
line in light from the Sun. The frequency of the light absorbed or emitted depends on
the energy difference between states in the way introduced by Planck, thus giving a
set of discrete frequencies for any particular atom.

This was a radical idea, but it worked brilliantly to explain the spectrum of light
emitted by hydrogen, and also the x-rays emitted by a wide range of elements, and
quantum physics was off to the races. While the modern picture of what's going on
inside an atom is very different than Bohr's initial model, the core idea is the same:
electrons move between the special states inside atoms by absorbing and emitting
light of particular frequencies.

This is the core idea behind fluorescent lighting: Inside a fluorescent bulb (either long
tube or CFL) there's a little bit of mercury vapor that's excited into a plasma. Mercury
happens to emit light at frequencies that mostly fall in the visible spectrum in a way
that can fool our eyes into thinking the light looks white. If you look at a fluorescent
bulb through a cheap diffraction grating like you'll find in novelty glasses, you'll see a
few distinct colored images of the bulb, where an incandescent bulb gives a
continuous rainbow smear.

(F)MARCOSCALE QUANTUM SCALE: While quantum mechanics primarily


applies to the smaller atomic regimes of matter and energy, some systems
exhibit quantum mechanical effects on a large scale. Superfluidity, the frictionless
flow of a liquid at temperatures near absolute zero, is one well-known example. So is
the closely related phenomenon of superconductivity, the frictionless flow of an
electron gas in a conducting material (an electric current) at sufficiently low
temperatures. The fractional quantum Hall effect is a topological ordered state
which corresponds to patterns of long-range quantum entanglement.[5] States with
different topological orders (or different patterns of long range entanglements)
cannot change into each other without a phase transition.

(G) OTHER PHENOMENA : Quantum theory also provides accurate


descriptions for many previously unexplained phenomena, such as black-body
radiation and the stability of the orbitals of electrons in atoms. It has also given
insight into the workings of many different biological systems, including smell
receptors and protein structures.[6] Recent work on photosynthesis has provided
evidence that quantum correlations play an essential role in this fundamental
process of plants and many other organisms. Even so, classical physics can often
provide good approximations to results otherwise obtained by quantum physics,
typically in circumstances with large numbers of particles or large quantum numbers.
Since classical formulas are much simpler and easier to compute than quantum
formulas, classical approximations are used and preferred when the system is large
enough to render the effects of quantum mechanics insignificant.

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