Open in TheBrain

The 10 Most Important Physics Effects

Sabine Hossenfelder

115K subscribers

SUBSCRIBE

A count-down of the 10 most important effects in physics that you should all know about: 10: The Doppler Effect (for sound and light) 9. The (real!) Butterfly Effect 8. The Meissner-Ochsenfeld Effect The video is from herehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rokoi...7. The Aharonov-Bohm Effect 6. The Tennis Racket Effect The video is from herhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n-HM...5. The Hall Effect (and the Quantum Hall Effect) 4. The Hawking Effect (and the closely related Unruh Effect) 3. The Photoelectric Effect Einstein, yeah! 2. The Casimir Effect 1. The Tunnel Effect You can help finance my videos by donating here:https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr...

00:00

today I have a countdown of the 10 most

00:03

important effects in physics that you

00:04

should all know about starting with 10

00:08

the Doppler effect the Doppler effect is

00:11

the change in frequency of a wave when

00:14

the source moves relative to the

00:15

receiver if the source is approaching

00:18

the wavelength appears shorter and the

00:20

frequency higher if the source is moving

00:23

away the wavelength appears longer and

00:26

the frequency lower the most common

00:29

example of the Doppler effect is that of

00:31

an approaching ambulance where the pitch

00:33

of the signal is higher when it moves

00:35

towards you and when it moves away from

00:38

you but the Doppler effect does not only

00:41

happen for sound waves it also happens

00:44

to light which is why it's enormously

00:46

important in astrophysics for light the

00:49

frequency is the color so the color of

00:52

an approaching object is shifted to the

00:54

blue and that of an object moving away

00:56

from you is shifted to the red because

00:59

of this we can for example calculate our

01:02

velocity relative to the Cosmic

01:04

Microwave Background the Doppler effect

01:07

is named after the Austrian physicist

01:10

Christian Doppler and has nothing to do

01:12

with the german word double ganger 9 the

01:17

butterfly effect even a tiny change like

01:21

the flap of a butterfly's wings can make

01:23

a big difference for the weather next

01:25

Sunday this is the butterfly effect as

01:28

you have probably heard of it but Edward

01:30

Lorenz actually meant something much

01:32

more radical when he spoke of the

01:34

butterfly effect he meant that for some

01:37

nonlinear systems you can only make

01:39

predictions for a limited amount of time

01:41

even if you can measure the tiniest

01:44

perturbations to arbitrary accuracy I

01:47

explained this in more detail in my

01:50

earlier video 8 the Meissner oxenfurt

01:54

effect the Meissner oxenfurt effect is

01:57

the impossibility of making a magnetic

01:59

field enter a superconductor it was

02:02

discovered by Volta Meisner and his

02:04

postdoc Robert oxenfurt in 1933

02:07

thanks to this effect if you try to

02:10

place a superconductor on the magnet

02:12

it will hover above the magnet because

02:15

the magnetic field lines cannot enter

02:17

the superconductor I assure you that

02:20

this has absolutely nothing to do with

02:22

yogic flying 7 the aharonov-bohm effect

02:27

ok I admit that this is not a

02:30

particularly well known effects but it

02:32

should be the aharonov-bohm effect says

02:35

that the wave function of a charged

02:36

particle in an electromagnetic field

02:39

obtains a phase shift from the potential

02:42

of the background field I know that this

02:44

sounds abstract but the relevant point

02:46

is that it's the potential that causes

02:48

the phase shift not the field in

02:51

electrodynamics the potential itself is

02:54

normally not observable but this phase

02:56

shift in the aharonov-bohm effect can

02:59

and has been observed in interference

03:01

patterns and this tells us that the

03:03

potential is not merely a mathematical

03:05

tool before the aharonov-bohm effect one

03:09

could reasonably question the physical

03:11

reality of the potential because it was

03:13

not observable 6 the tennis record

03:17

effect if you throw any 3-dimensional

03:21

object with the spin then the spin

03:23

around the shortest and longest axis

03:25

will be stable but that around the

03:28

intermediate third axis not the typical

03:31

example for the spinning object is a

03:33

tennis record hence the name it's also

03:36

known as the intermediate axis theorem

03:39

or the Johnny bokov effect you see a

03:41

beautiful illustration of the

03:43

instability in this little clip from the

03:45

International Space Station 5 the Hall

03:51

effect if you bring a conducting plate

03:54

into a magnetic field then the magnetic

03:57

field will affect the motion of the

04:00

electrons in the plate in particular if

04:03

the plate is orthogonal to the magnetic

04:05

field lines you can measure a voltage

04:07

flowing between the opposing ends of the

04:09

plate and this voltage can be measured

04:12

to determine the strength of the

04:14

magnetic field this effect is named

04:17

after Edwin Hall if the plate is very

04:19

thin the temperature very low and the

04:22

magnetic field very strong you can also

04:24

observe that the Condor

04:25

Tivoli makes discrete jumps which is

04:28

known as the quantum Hall effect for the

04:32

hawking effect Stephen Hawking showed in

04:35

the early 1970s that black holes emit a

04:38

thermal radiation was a temperature that

04:41

is inversely proportional to the black

04:42

hole's mass this Hawking effect is a

04:45

consequence of the relativity of the

04:47

particle number an observer falling into

04:50

a black hole would not measure any

04:52

particles and think the black hole is

04:54

surrounded by vacuum but an observer far

04:57

away from the black hole would think the

04:59

horizon is surrounded by particles this

05:02

can happen because in general relativity

05:04

what we mean by a particle depends on

05:07

the motion of an observer like the

05:09

passage of time a closely related effect

05:12

is the Unruh effect named after Bill

05:14

Unruh which says that an accelerated

05:17

observer in flat space will measure a

05:19

thermal distribution of particles with

05:22

the temperature that depends on the

05:23

acceleration again that can happen

05:26

because the accelerated observers

05:28

particles are not the same as the

05:30

particles of an observer at rest three

05:34

the photoelectric effect when light

05:37

falls on a plate of metal it can kick

05:40

out electrons from their orbits around

05:42

atomic nuclei this is called the

05:45

photoelectric effect the surprising

05:48

thing about this is that the frequency

05:49

of the light needs to be above a certain

05:52

threshold just what the threshold is

05:55

depends on the material but if the

05:57

frequency is below the threshold it does

05:59

not matter how intense the light is it

06:02

will not kick out electrons the

06:05

photoelectric effect was explained in

06:07

1905 by Albert Einstein who correctly

06:09

concluded that it means the light must

06:11

be made of quanta whose energy is

06:14

proportional to the frequency of the

06:16

light to the Casimir effect everybody

06:21

knows that two metal plates were tracked

06:23

each other if one plate is positively

06:25

charged and the other one negatively

06:27

charged but did you know the plates also

06:30

attract each other if they are uncharged

06:32

yes they do this is the Casimir effect

06:36

named after Hendrik kasnian it is

06:39

created by quantum fluctuations that

06:41

create a pressure even in vacuum this

06:44

pressure is lower between the plates

06:46

than outside of them so that the two

06:48

plates are pushed towards each other

06:50

however the force from the Casimir

06:53

effect is very weak and can be measured

06:56

only at very short distances one the

06:59

tunnel effect definitely my most

07:02

favorite effect quantum mechanics allows

07:04

the particle that is trapped and

07:06

potential to escape this would not be

07:09

possible without quantum mechanics

07:11

because the particle just does not have

07:13

enough energy to escape however in

07:16

quantum mechanics the wavefunction of

07:19

the particle can leak out of the

07:21

potential and this means that there is a

07:23

small but nonzero probability that a

07:26

quantum particle can do the seemingly

07:29

impossible that's it for today thanks

07:32

for watching see you next week

Attachments