Believing in Atoms - From Brownian Motion to the AFM: A New Upper-Level Interdisciplinary Physics Lab Course

9452099 Boness我们将为我们的物理、化学和工程学科的专业提供一门跨学科的高级实验室课程，作为基础，学生们将积极参与物质原子理论的确认。本课程的大部分内容将建立在此基础上，并将由学生项目组成，其中包括原子力显微镜(AFM)和空气中导电和非导电材料表面的原子尺度表征，但学生们也将实验研究(斯特凡-玻尔兹曼定律、维恩位移定律和相对发射率)黑体辐射，量子物理的鼻祖，以及布朗运动(检查爱因斯坦从1905年发表的论文中推导出来的内容，佩林也检查了爱因斯坦从1905年发表的论文中得出的结论，这篇论文对批评原子观的恩斯特·马赫和威廉·奥斯瓦尔德做出了很大贡献)，所有这些都在讲座、阅读资料中提供了更多的历史背景和批判性的写作作业比平时的实验课要多。贯穿整个课程的一条主线是关于什么是“看到”原子的持续讨论，以及实验“证据”的性质。本课程将提供所需的校园高级实验室经验，包括具有历史和教学重要性的仪器，以及比扫描隧道显微镜(STM)更新的设备。扫描隧道显微镜是1982年开发的，并导致1986年获得诺贝尔奖。此外，物理专业高级合成项目将广泛使用原子力显微镜。

9452099 Boness We will offer our majors in Physics, Chemistry, and in the engineering disciplines an interdisciplinary upper-level laboratory course that has as foundation an active involvement by students in the confirmation of the atomic theory of matter. The bulk of the course will build on this foundation and will consist of student projects with an atomic force microscope (AFM) and the atomic-scale characterization of conducting and non-conducting material surfaces in air, but the students will also experimentally investigate (Stefan-Boltzmann Law, Wien's Displacement Law, and relative emissivity) black body radiation, the birth mother of quantum physics, and Brownian motion (checking, as did Perrin, Einstein's derivations from his 1905 paper that did so much to silence the critics of the atomic viewpoint, Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Ostwald), all with more historical context provided in lectures, readings, and critical writing assignments than is usual in a lab course. One thread running through the whole course will be an on-going discussion of what is meant by "seeing" atoms, and the nature of experimental "proof." This course will provide needed on-campus upper-level laboratory experience with apparatus of historical and pedagogical importance as well as equipment invented even more recently than the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which was developed in 1982 and led to the 1986 Nobel prize. In addition, Physics major Senior Synthesis projects will make extensive use of the AFM.