Hundreds of physicists on a remote island: we visit the ultimate quantum party
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Shortly after de Broglie published his ideas that the electron in a hydrogen atom could be better thought of as being a circular standing wave instead of a particle moving in quantized circular orbits, Erwin Schrödinger extended de Broglie’s work by deriving what is now known as the Schrödinger equation. When Schrödinger applied his equation to hydrogen-like atoms, he was able to reproduce Bohr’s expression for the energy and, thus, the Rydberg formula governing hydrogen spectra.

Dalton was only partially correct about the particles that make up matter. All matter is composed of atoms, and atoms are composed of three smaller subatomic particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons. These three particles account for the mass and the charge of an atom.
The Discovery of the Electron
The first clue about the subatomic structure came at the end of the 19th century when J.J. Thomson discovered the electron using a cathode ray tube. This apparatus consisted of a sealed glass...

It is said that the energy of an electron in an atom is quantized; that is, it can be equal only to certain specific values and can jump from one energy level to another but not transition smoothly or stay between these levels.
The energy levels are labeled with an n value, where n = 1, 2, 3, etc. Generally speaking, the energy of an electron in an atom is greater for greater values of n. This number, n, is referred to as the principal quantum number. The principal quantum number defines the...

Werner Heisenberg considered the limits of how accurately one can measure properties of an electron or other microscopic particles. He determined that there is a fundamental limit to how accurately one can measure both a particle’s position and its momentum simultaneously. The more accurate the measurement of the momentum of a particle is known, the less accurate the position at that time is known and vice versa. This is what is now called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. He...

The arrangement of electrons in the orbitals of an atom is called its electron configuration. We describe an electron configuration with a symbol that contains three pieces of information:
The number of the principal quantum shell, n,
The letter that designates the orbital type (the subshell, l), and
A superscript number that designates the number of electrons in that particular subshell.
For example, the notation 2p4 indicates four electrons in a p subshell (l = 1) with a principal...

Physics is concerned with the interactions of energy, matter, space, and time, in order to discover the underlying mechanisms that underpin all phenomena. The word "physics" comes from the Greek word "phúsis", which means nature. Physics seeks to comprehend the natural world around us at its most fundamental level. It emphasizes the use of quantitative laws to do this, which could be valuable in other fields that want to push the performance boundaries of present...