9NOSIS · the press
The Count Replaces the Material
The Count Replaces the Material
Macroscopic physics teaches that electrical resistance is a bulk property of the material—copper conducts, rubber insulates. But as a wire narrows to the nanoscale, Ohm’s law collapses. The Landauer formula reveals that conductance is not a property of the material at all, but a strict matter of geometry and counting. A quantum point contact conducts electricity purely based on how many one-dimensional transverse standing-wave modes fit through the gap. The material vanishes; only the number of open turnstiles remains.
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