Q 01/05

Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with which British physicist?

A) Paul Dirac

B) James Chadwick

C) Patrick Blackett

D) Nevill Mott

Answer · why

A) Paul Dirac

Paul Dirac had recast quantum theory to obey relativity, and his equation predicted antimatter before anyone had seen it: the positron turned up in a ...

Q 02/05

Schrödinger's 1933 Nobel Prize citation praised the discovery of 'new productive forms of' what?

A) Nuclear energy

B) Wave optics

C) Atomic theory

D) Statistical mechanics

Answer · why

C) Atomic theory

Atomic theory was the committee's phrase for wave mechanics: one equation now yielded an atom's energy levels, where the older orbit model had to impo...

Q 03/05

Which now-ubiquitous term did Schrödinger coin in 1935?

A) Wave function

B) Quantum entanglement

C) Superposition

D) Uncertainty principle

Answer · why

B) Quantum entanglement

Quantum entanglement, his English for the German Verschränkung, struck him as 'the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics'; the link between distan...

Q 04/05

Which Greek letter stands for the wave function in the Schrödinger equation?

A) Phi

B) Lambda

C) Psi

D) Omega

Answer · why

C) Psi

Psi is the wave function; Schrödinger took it for a real physical wave, but physicists came to read its square as only the odds of finding a particle,...

Q 05/05

Whose 1924 idea that matter behaves as waves inspired Schrödinger's equation?

A) Louis de Broglie

B) Niels Bohr

C) Wolfgang Pauli

D) Ernest Rutherford

Answer · why

A) Louis de Broglie

Louis de Broglie proposed matter waves in his doctoral thesis; Schrödinger read it late in 1925, gave a seminar on it, and within weeks had found a wa...