Chapter 12, Problem 63P

Engineers designing a new semiconductor device measure the potential energy that results when they move an electron to different positions within their device. The device is one-dimensional. so the positions all lie along a line. The table below gives the resulting data. Plot these data and from your plot, determine the approximate positions of any equilibria and whether such equilibria are stable or unstable.

Position x (nm)	0	3.26	5.85	6.41	7.12	9.37	10.5	12.2	14.0	14.5	15.3	17.2
Potential energy U (aJ)	1.5	0.65	0.30	0.47	0.85	2.7	3.3	2.1	−0.47	−0.86	−0.72	3.2