The Italian physicist Ettore Majorana mysteriously disappeared in 1938. Majorana was part of the famous Via Panisperna group directed by Enrico Fermi. In those years the model of «heavy atom» (that is, with many electrons) was proposed, and Fermi elaborated a model …

That Damned Equation – The Thomas–Fermi Continua a leggere »

In 1900 Max Planck provided the first step by introducing quantization in the processes of absorption and emission of energy by matter. Five years later, Einstein went one step further, demonstrating that quantization is also present in the propagation of an electromagnetic field, so …

The photoelectric effect Continua a leggere »