nical grounds. But Fermi also participated in preliminary work on the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos as a consultant, and along with Stanislaw Ulam, calculated that the amount of tritium needed for Edward Teller's model of a thermonuclear weapon would be prohibitive.
In his later years, Fermi did important work in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons. He was also known to be an inspiring teacher at the University of Chicago, and was known for his attention to detail, simplicity, and careful preparation for a lecture. On November 28, 1954, Fermi died at the age of 53 of stomach cancer in Chicago, Illinois and was interred there in Oak Woods Cemetery. As Eugene Wigner wrote: "Ten days before Fermi had died he told me, 'I hope it won't take long". p> A recent poll by Time magazine listed Fermi among the top twenty scientists of the century. p> The Fermilab particle accelerator and physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, is named after him in loving memory from the physics community.
Fermi 1 & Fermi 2 nuclear power plants in Newport, Michigan are also named after him.
In 1952, element 100 on the periodic table of elements was isolated from the debris of a nuclear test. In honor of Fermi's contributions to the scientific community, it was named fermium after him.
Personal life
In 1928, Fermi married Laura Capon and later had a son Giulio Fermi (1936-1997) and a daughter Nella Fermi Weiner (1931-1995). His son later worked with the Nobel laureate Max Perutz on the structure of hemoglobin. <В В
Chapter 2. Fermi's golden rule
In quantum physics, Fermi's golden rule is a way to calculate the transition rate (probability of transition per unit time) from one energy eigenstate of a quantum system into a continuum of energy eigenstates, due to a perturbation.
We consider the system to begin in an eigenstate of a given Hamiltonian H 0 . We consider the effect of a perturbing Hamiltonian H '. If H 'is time-independent, the system goes only into those states in the continuum that have the same energy as the initial state. If H 'is oscillating as a function of time with an angular frequency, the transition is into states with energy that differs by from the energy of the initial state. In both cases, the one-to-many transition probability per unit of time from the state to a set of final states is given, to first order in the perturbation, by:
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where ПЃ is the density of final states, and is the matrix element of the perturbation, H', between the final and initial states.
Fermi's golden rule is valid when the initial state has not been significantly depleted by scattering into the final states.
The most common way to derive the equation is to start with time-dependent perturbation theory and to take the limit for absorption under the assumption that the time of the measurement is much larger than the time needed for the transition.
Although named after Fermi, most of the work leading to the Golden Rule was done by Dirac who formulated an almost identical equation, including the three components of a constant, the matrix element of the perturbation and an energy difference. <В
Chapter 3. Discovery of fermium.
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Facts:
Atomic Mass 257.1
Protons/Electrons 100
Nuetrons 157
Type Solid
Class Transitional metal
Group Actinide
Melting Temp. 2781
Oxidation State:
+3
Electron Shell Configuration:
1s 2
2s 2
2p 6
3s 2
3p 6
3d 10
4s 2
4p 6
4d 10
4f 14
