Welcome! - Michel Betz

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About
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About the author

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I was born in 1949 in Liège, Belgium, but am now a Brazilian citizen.

I graduated as a Physics Engineer at the Université de Liège, Belgium, in 1972. I got a Ph. D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. I was a research associate at the Argonne National Laboratory, USA, in 1978-79, then at the TRIUMF laboratory, Canada, in 1980-81, and finally at the University of Washington, USA, in 1982.

In 1983, I went to Brazil as a visiting professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre. I remained at that institution until retirement in 2018.

I have taught General Physics, Classical Mechanics, Electromagnetic Theory, Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity and also Nuclear and Particle Physics.

During the last part of my career, I specialized in the use of computers to teach Physics. I have developed some programs in Java, Flash/ActionScript, Python and HTML5/JavaScript.

I am also an amateur sculptor.

This site is meant to constitute a repository of texts and animations I have elaborated throughout my career as a Physics professor. It also presents photographs of my production as an amateur sculptor.

Special Relativity

I have written an elementary introduction to Special Relativity, using the approach proposed by cosmologist Hermann Bondi.

If you are interested in a particular topic of Special Relativity, here is a list of the topics covered in the text. Clicking on an item in this list, will open a page which briefly introduces that topic and indicates the parts of the text in which it is treated.

• Bondi's k factor
• Doppler effect for light
• Time dilation
• Length contraction
• Combination of collinear velocities
• Twin paradox

Besides the text, I have developed a software written in the Java language and intended to present illustrative animations.

Quantum Mechanics

Together with my collaborators Ismael de Lima and Gabriel Mussatto, I have developed a learning object aimed at presenting some aspects of wave-particle duality and of the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Mach-Zehnder interferometer is used as an example.

It consists of a series of six animations with rather short explicative texts and a couple of more extensive complementary documents. It may be accessed by clicking the link: Wave-Particle Duality - Michel Betz.

Sculpture

I took up sculpture as a hobby when I was living in Seattle in 1982. I attended a private school where I did a piece in clay and also studied some metal sculpture at the city´s art school. After a long interruption, and now living in Brasil, I revived my interest in this art form and set up an atelier equipped for sculpture in wood. If you are interested, click the link Sculpture - Michel Betz to access a galery of photograhs of my modest attempts at being an artist.