Unit 3 · The Mathematical Machinery
Chapter12
Quantum Tunneling
Walking through walls you don't have the energy to climb
Quantum Academy · presented by Dr. Quincy Quantenstein
CH 12X–Y
0:00 / 43:12OpeningTitle
Watch the lesson · Unit 3: The Mathematical Machinery
Quantum Tunneling
Walking through walls you don't have the energy to climb
- ≈ 43 min
- 55 scenes
- Narrated by Dr. Q
- Captions
Generated from the same script as the written lesson, so every word matches the text. Uses your device's voice when it has one; without one, the lesson plays silently with captions. Keys: Space play · ← → scenes · C captions · F full screen.
By the end you'll be able to
- Explain why a wavefunction decays exponentially, rather than stopping, inside a classically forbidden region where V exceeds E, and compute its decay length 1/κ.
- Estimate transmission probabilities with T ≈ e^(−2κL), compare them with the exact rectangular-barrier result, and predict how T responds to changes in barrier width, energy deficit and particle mass.
- Describe how Gamow's 1928 tunnelling model explains alpha decay and its enormous range of half-lives, and why fusion in the Sun's core depends on tunnelling.
- Explain how the scanning tunnelling microscope turns an exponentially sensitive current into images of individual atoms.
- Connect tunnelling to flash memory, tunnel diodes and Josephson junctions, including the macroscopic tunnelling recognized by the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Explain why tunnelling drills no holes, lets no person walk through walls, and sends no signal faster than light.