Kent Physics Centre
Evening talks on physics open to the public.
Talks are Tuesday evenings at 7pm in SIBSON Lecture Theatre 3 and will run about once a month.
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Upcoming Talks
19th March 2024
Prof. Emeritus Paul Strange (University of Kent)
Sunlight and Quantum Mechanics
In this talk we discuss how sunlight interacts with water in the atmosphere. This includes a number of atmospheric optical effects such as rainbows, haloes and heiligenschein, all of which can be described in terms of the refractive index of water. Then we explain how to calculate the refractive index of a water droplet from the properties of the individual atoms that make it up. We find that we only need to do the calculations for a cluster of a few molecules, just nanometres in size, to predict these kilometre-sized atmospheric optical phenomena precisely. This demonstrates the power of quantum mechanics. It is predictive over at least twelve orders of magnitude.
You can also see our full schedule of talks for the academic year here.