Talk:Particle in a box

From Citizendium
Revision as of 18:00, 23 October 2007 by imported>Michael Underwood (→‎Readability)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is developing and not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
To learn how to update the categories for this article, see here. To update categories, edit the metadata template.
 Definition A system in quantum mechanics used to illustrate important features of quantum mechanics, such as quantization of energy levels and the existence of zero-point energy. [d] [e]
Checklist and Archives
 Workgroup category Physics [Categories OK]
 Talk Archive none  English language variant Canadian English

Do we need the 3D case?

I think this page is starting to approach complete, besides the currently empty sections on the 3D spherical and cubic wells. I believe that the cubic will isn't really needed, but what are people's thoughts on the spherical well? It is definitely important but perhaps a separate page for it would serve to keep this page simpler, as well as making it nearly done.

Michael Underwood 20:50, 4 July 2007 (CDT)

The simplest 3D case is a cube, which is worth treating here. The ball case is an exercise in spherical coordinates, maybe better suited for a different article. What I would like to do here is to make an animation of the probability density of a simple non-stationary state. /Pieter Kuiper 04:13, 23 October 2007 (CDT)
I agree, I was getting ready to move the spherical well to its own page anyway and have now done so. Michael Underwood 14:31, 23 October 2007 (CDT)
Excellent. I made the animation that I was thinking of, and I put it in below your image, but that is probably not the best place. Of course one should write an explanation, but I do not have the time now. /Pieter Kuiper 17:36, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Readability

Not sure what the 'accessibility' test is for maths articles so I apologise if the following comments seem ridiculously simple and silly - I did A-level pure and applied maths 20 odd years ago, but that's when I said goodbye to calculus and 'hard sums'. There's a few instances of acronyms that aren't explained or linked to which I found made the article presuppose quite a bit of knowledge, nothing too testing - I put (1D) in brackers after one-dimensional to aid reading for non-mathematicians such as myself. Is an ODE some kind of differential equation? perhaps we could spell it out in the first instance and contract it for later instances? --Russ McGinn 17:44, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Russ, ODE is indeed some kind of DE. It stands for ordinary differential equation. Thanks for pointing that out; I've changed it in the text. You mention "a few instances" - do you have any other input on how the article reads in general or sections that aren't as clear as they could be, or did you already list them all? Michael Underwood 18:00, 23 October 2007 (CDT)