An ad-lib from yesterday's lecture about interactions between electric fields and neutral matter, paraphrased:
So, we can divide macroscopic objects into two categories, based on what happens when you bring large numbers of atoms together. In materials that are insulators, the electrons aren't free to move. The atoms hold onto their electrons very tightly. They're kind of like Republicans.
In materials that are conductors, on the other hand, the electrons are free to move. The atoms share their electrons freely through the whole material. They're basically Communists.
Semiconductors are like Democrats, but that's beyond the scope of this class.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Dr. What Now? has a nice and timely post about helping students prepare for oral presentations, something I'll be doing myself this morning, in preparation for the annual undergraduate research symposium on campus Friday. Of course, being a humanist, what she means by oral presentation is a…
Alex Palazzo offers a taxonomy of biologists, and takes some heat in the comments for leaving people out or mischaracterizing subdisciplines. This reminded me that I did a similar post about physics quite some time ago-- almost four years! That's, like, a century in blog-time...
I'll reproduce the…
I'm still feeling pretty lethargic, but I hope that will improve when I get to lecture about the EPR paradox in Quantum Optics today (it's going to be kind of a short lecture, unless I can ad-lib an introduction to Bell's Theorem at the end of the class, but then I've been holding them late for…
I was scheduled for a deeply unpleasant medical test yesterday, which I thought was going to leave me lots of time for blogging. yesterday afternoon and this morning. The preliminary test turned out to be so unpleasant (if anybody ever offers to stick a tube through your nose into your stomach,…
Absolutely brilliant.
...hold onto their electrons very tightly. They're kind of like Republicans.
hmmm, are you sure about that?
Kind of wondering how appropriate this is.
I'm saving my ammo for the really big issues, not pissing it away on cheap shots, that aren't entirely accurate in any case.
Shouldn't a truly Republican material concentrate all of the electrons on the top 1% of the molecules, and tell the other molecules that's just natural and they deserve it because they work harder?
So, there are n- and p- type Democrats? And does this correspond to the current primary battle?
I'm not sure that there's as much difference between Republicans and Democrats as all that; maybe semi-conductors are more like... Canadians.
That said, still a delightful analogy.
I like it.
But what political party do superinsulators belong to?
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/33643
Maybe superinsulators=right wing wackos who set up militias and compounds in the middle of nowhere. They hold on to everything they have for a very long time.
Clever. I'll have to work that variant into my summer class.
For years I have used a similar explanation starting from the types of chemical bonds and their relation to electrical and physical properties as well as chemical ones.
Metals are, indeed, communists (lower c) ... but more in the form seen in a hippie commune or kibbutz where shared resources help hold the community together in a way quite unlike State Socialism or Communism. I often use a kids in day-care analogy where lots of toys are shared by lots of kids. Again, communal ownership.
Covalent bonds are more like two kids hanging onto a pair of prized toys with each hand or a family with one car. They have no choice but to travel together. Ionic bonds involve theft, and chasing the thief (give me my toy back), rather than sharing.
I have found it quite effective in the majors class as well, when I remind them of what they learned in chemistry (ha!) about metallic bonds when asking them why "metals" conduct.
Perhaps Europe is like a superconductor: the countries become more and more socialist as temperature decreases.