Physics utilizing comp technology or computer tech utilizing Physics (Part 2)

This being the holiday season, I felt incline to just laze
about and read all the old stories that I’d not touched in a long while just to
reminisce about the past. But as I’d
promised in the previous installation that I would be back to initiate you into
the worlds of computer physics, it will be done.

In the previous
installation, we were talking about how computer technology has been one of the
backbones for quantum leap (pun intended) in physics. Neither would computers have gotten very far without the
discoveries made which helped in its evolution. Incidentally, this year’s Nobel Prize for physics had been
awarded to three men that had help to break the boundaries of computing
technology more than 30 years ago, ZHORES I. ALFEROV,
and HERBERT KROEMER for developing
semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed and opto-electronics, such
technologies that had developed the radio-link satellites and mobile phones,
even the now ubiquitous bar-code readers and your CD players. The other half of
the Nobel Prize was awarded to JACK ST. CLAIR
KILBY for
his part in the invention of the integrated circuit that revolutionized
personal computing and allowed computers to pass megabits of information
through and fro in the computer’s IO system at a speed that you are used to
now. If you are interested, you can read more about the background history at http://nobel.sdsc.edu/announcement/2000/phyen.html

Since we’d touched on the
subject of semiconductors, and I’m sure most of you already know what it means,
but just to give you the details
subject itself would require more than one article. Basically, it’s semi-metallic crystals that
have been doped with impurities, which create excesses of holes, that
being the positive charge and electrons, the negative charge. It’s the
manipulation of the molecular structure of the semiconductors that is the basis
of the innovation made with semiconductors and where we get things from
transformers, transistors, integrated circuits and opto-electronic devices. To
truly understand the principles of semiconductors is not to merely study it’s
electronic history but to understand the statistical mechanical workings of the
system. In future installations, I will
touch a bit on what I know about stastistical physics and give you references
from the experts to look up. In the meantime, you might like to try out this
cute site http://britneyspears.ac/basics.htm
. Believe it or not, it does give you
the fundamentals of semiconductors.

What is superconductivity? In other words, it’s conductivity at zero
resistance and with 100% efficiency. When metal is cooled below a sharply
defined temperature of T, of which depends on the external magnetic field H where
the metal is located, the direct current electrical resistance of the metal
falls abruptly to zero. Meanwhile, the
current are set-up in the metal in such a way so that the magnetic induction B
vanishes inside the metal (B=0) irrespective of the applied field H. Therefore, the superconducting state of the
metal continues as long as the temperature is sufficiently low and the applied
field is sufficiently small. Even
though superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by Kammerlingh Onnes, it was
only in 1957 that a successful
microscopic theory of this phenomena was finally proposed. There’s a quantum-mechanical correlated
motion of very many particles obeying Fermi-Dirac
statistics in the microscopic theory.

Quantum computing came about with the application
of Feynman’s probabilistic theory
that incorporates the classical channel of communication utilizing Bayesian
probability and Laplace’s
rule of insufficient reason. To grasp what quantum computing can do, one must
first grasp the workings of the Uncertainty principle and quantum entanglement
that I will devote an article on before giving you the more technical
references. There’s still another story
on quantum teleportation (and it has nothing to do with Star Trek) but has a lot to do how
information might be transported over the Internet not in one bit but in ebit
(don’t you wonder?). I will not be going straight into what quantum computing
can do for us now or in the future or its function but will begin with the
foundations that led to its development. For the time being, do read up for
some idea on it at http://www.sciam.com/explorations/091696explorations.html.

The development of lasers has also been
instrumental in providing cutting-edge way of reading and writing information
on to optical storage devices like CDs and in providing fibre optics link like
the one we are having in Cyberjaya. As I’d already touched on holography that
is related to lasers, I will not go into the details here. For those with no prior knowledge as to what
lasers is, I’ll recommend going to http://members.aol.com/WSRNet/tut/ut1.htm
to find out more.

Finally, one of the development of
physics and computing that was all the while theoretical but that is now
becoming to develop beyond that of the paper is that of cognition and
computing, that is the utilizing of perception where the mechanics of the
co-ordination between the brain and eye is studied to understand how human’s
perceive things. This field is
especially relevant in the development of artificial intelligence and robotics
where by understanding how perception works is a step forward to creating the
ultimate machine that can emulate the human brain. We all wonder about the possibility of it.

In the next installation, I
will be going into depth on each of the topics that I’d mentioned in this
two-part article. After that, I will go
on to topics in physics that might not have direct link with computing yet is
important to its development. Then I might touch a little on the mathematics
that is utilized in physics and computing. Until then, have a Happy New Year!

1.) Little-Known DOS Commands That Have Saved My Ass - madirish
2.) Rampact Piracy on the Sea of Information - xearthed
3.) Physics utilizing comp technology or computer tech utilizing Physics (Part 2) - josette
4.) State of the Hack Awards #2 - madsaxon
5.) Games Industry Syndicate of the web? - OZONE
6.) A brief look at Quantum Mechanics - josette
7.) HardAttack: Review of Voodoo5 5500 - biatch0
8.) A year in the box - L33tdawg