Quantum wells

An approximate model for the band gap in a quantum well is developed and the limitations in the approximate model are discussed

Quantum mechanics with 2 particles

A change of co-ordinates can often be used to simplify the analytic solution of the few-particle Schrodinger equation. Examples are given for the case of 2 interacting particles

Between Art and Social Science: scenic composition as a methodological device

The scenic composition (SC) is a methodological device enabling the synthesis and articulation of researchers' own complex experiences of events witnessed during data collection. Positioned between art and social science, it makes use of literary conventions to synthesise "experience near" accounts of data for interpretation. This article explains how the SC is composed by drawing on associative thinking and illustrates its use within a specific case study. The conceptual basis of the SC is discussed with reference to the work of LORENZER, WINNICOTT and BION. This is the first study in which four compositions, each by a different researcher, have been used to provide a multi-faceted view of a complex event, a live webcast. The compositions are presented along with researchers' reflections. Common themes and significant differences relating to life situations, histories and dispositions of the researchers emerge. The differences were expressed through choice of literary genres, which are common cultural resources. We ask what was achieved through the use of SCs compared with a thematic analysis of the webcast, and find that apart from synthesising and presentational functions, they give access to a multi-sensory range of researchers' experiences, including unconscious elements which were then available for reflexive interpretation by an interpretation panel

Enlightened common sense II: clarifying and developing the concepts of intransitivity and domains of reality

In this article, the second of a series of four articles that engage critically with the arguments of two recent and significant additions to the literature on critical realism (Bhaskar’s Enlightened Common Sense: The Philosophy of Critical Realism and Bhaskar et al.’s Interdisciplinarity and Wellbeing: A Critical Realist General Theory of Interdisciplinarity), I present the results of a critical engagement with other categories of original or basic critical realism. Using the method of immanent critique and focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on the arguments of Enlightened Common Sense, I identify, and propose solutions to, a range of problems pertaining to the concepts of intransitivity, the domains of the real and the subjective, and the domain of the actual. In identifying and resolving these problems, my aim is to clarify and develop the categories of original critical realism and thereby ensure that critical realism as a whole is as effective an underlabourer for science as it can be