Abstract
An important question in education nowadays is how to convey some concepts of Modern Physics to students in high school, secondary education or the sixth form. This article presents an approach to atomic collisions suitable for intermediate level students. We describe an alternative way of measuring the area of a coin using a macroscopic analogy of the scattering of radiation by an atom or molecule—the collision cross section. We hope this article will help educators to illustrate such an important procedure and related concepts of Modern Physics. © 2003 IOP Publishing Ltd.
Recommended Citation
A. C. Santos and A. Fröhlich, "Collision Cross Sections and the Size of a Coin," Physics Education, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 336 - 339, IOP Publishing, Jan 2003.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1088/0031-9120/38/4/308
Department(s)
Physics
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1361-6552; 0031-9120
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2024 IOP Publishing, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2003
