spin : Stern and Gerlach experiment
Why Physics Stack Exchange recommends it
Physics Stack Exchange users link it as a quick visual of the Stern-Gerlach experiment when explaining that spin is quantized and behaves like angular momentum.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2015 to 2016.
What it is
A 91-second French-made animation that illustrates the Stern-Gerlach experiment, showing how a beam of particles passing through an inhomogeneous magnetic field splits into discrete spots, revealing quantized spin. It comes from the Toutestquantique.fr series of quantum physics animations.
What people said
Cites Ray Kay · 2015-01 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “In the stern-Gerlach experiement how do we know that the magnets don't change orientation of the electrons to up or down?”
I watched this video: [this video] Say the electron's north pole started off 60 degrees from the south pole, since the electron has little mass wouldn't that make it easy for the magnet to turn it perpendicular to the south pole?
Cites biryani · 2016-02 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Why do we think Spin is angular momentum as opposed to some other quantity?”
By treating spin as angular momentum a lot of phenomenon could be explained. Conservation of angular momentum makes sense only if you include spin with the orbital angular momentum. Spin-orbit coupling [LINK] will mix these quantities even if the system is isolated. The algebra of the spin operators (which can be represented by the Pauli matrices) is analogous to the angular momentum algebra. Charged systems that have an angular momentum will have a magnetic moment. They act like little magnets. The magnetic moment of electrons can be measured using Stern-Gerlach [LINK] -like experiments. These experiments also elucidate the quantum nature of spin [this video] . The idea that electrons may have a
Cites glS · 2016-11 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Does spin have anything to do with a rate of change?”
(...) my question is, can spin be related to a rate of change of anything at all with respect to time? Spin may not be related to rotation in $\mathbb{R}_3$ , but can we relate it to a rotation or other kind of motion in some other space, possibly a non-Euclidean space? It really depends on what you mean by "change of anything with respect to time", but the general answer is no , not in the way you are probably thinking of it. No , because it is not correct to think of the spin angular momentum [LINK] ( SAM ) of a particle as due to any kind of "rotation" or other "movement" in any (Hilbert) space. An electron with spin $+1/2$ is not rotating, nor changing, for the sole fact of having a SAM.