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I have come across the term renormalization in a physics book I am reading and i wish to know more about it.

Qmechanic
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user8839370
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    Related: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/2596/2451, https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/19330/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Nov 01 '17 at 19:57
  • Have you tried Wikipedia? – Kyle Kanos Nov 01 '17 at 22:52
  • @KyleKanos have you seen wikipedia's physics pages lately? I'd hardly describe them as explaining stuff at a high school level. College physics major or Gradschool level is more like it. That said, renormalization is a tricky subject to explain at the HS level. These are the best I found and I wouldn't call either HS level. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/renormalization.html and https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/renormalisation-made-easy/ Also, user8839370, some indication of research you've done and where you're stuck would improve your question. – userLTK Nov 01 '17 at 23:50
  • @userLTK guess I didn't mean to imply it should be understood by a HS student, but it would be a good place to start in order to narrow down this rather boat request. – Kyle Kanos Nov 01 '17 at 23:53

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Renormalization can be used to ask how phenomena depend on what scale they are probed. The following does not represent a full description of renormalization, but is only meant to give you some intuition.

Firstly, higher energy scales correspond to shorter length scales (think of wavelength vs energy), so basically we ask what happens at different length scales.

Secondly, in the quantum world sometimes a virtual electron-positron pair can be created out of nothing, exist for a little while, and then annihilate each other again.

Now let's see what happens if I look at some naked electron at a distance. Between me and the electron, there are constantly electron-positron pairs created and annihilated, and they 'screen' the charge of the electron. However, if I go closer and closer to the electron, there will be less virtual pairs between us, and I can see the electron charge more clearly. As a result, the electron charge depends in a sense on the distance (and thus energy level) at which it has been probed.

This is a very naive view, but it is the best I could do on a high school level

RK1
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