Quantum Tunneling & Why Superman wears a cape
Imagine you can jump and fly off just as superman does. In this quantum world everything is possible.
You might argue.
Well, that seems like a crazy imagination !
Now imagine this even crazier thought. When you jump, What if you can borrow kinetic energy from molecular motions due to temperature by this huge cape you invented using MIM* & QTC*(explained later). Of course it will leave the air in contact with cape colder but give you required kinetic energy to jump off the potential well that is created due to warp of spacetime fabric due to mass of earth.
Well now read the first line again!
What happens in tunnelling of particles like alpha decay or electron is rather simple. Particles at nuclear scales can borrow energy from surrounding every once in a while and can jump across a potential barrier (coulomb barrier) that otherwise is impossible to cross. The odds of this happening increases with the number of particles. Also if we make the potential barrier not that high or wide then we are turning the odds in favour of tunneling and this principle is used in design of the following.
- It is called STM (Scanning Tunneling Microscope) used to see at nm scale. This can be referred swiss army knife of nano scale world. Hitachi is currently in commercial manufacturing of such scopes. They have done their own famous interference experiment.[Link]
Two other research / commercial applications of Quantum tunneling are:
2. *MIM (Metal Insulator Metal Diode) which uses excitation from IR radiation between two metal Junctions to create a tunnel current, which is speculated to give rise to IR based quantum generators.
3. Next is QTC (Quantum Tunneling Composite) which are a family of real composite (i.e: made of one layer of QTC, one layer of Metal & one layer of Plastic). It's conductivity changes drastically with pressure.
4. This one is about star. It's not an application of QT but it's the result of QT that stars like sun shine which is explained lucidly in the video below.
That is the thing with physics. If a model developed for explaining certain behaviour in physics is exploited to make real-life applications based on it, then that model must be true!!
?I recommend watching this famous rolling ball and potential barrier provided by hill analogy beautifully explained in video below.
Also watch the Probability wave (Wave function) model is explained using animation below. Top notch animation!
I will continue with the adventures of Quantum mechanics in next few articles.
Quantum tunneling explained with 3D simulations of Schrodinger’s equation for quantum wave functions. My Patreon page is at https://www.patreon.com/EugeneK
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