History of Science
Category archives for History of Science
Critical Pronunciation Poll
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 1, 2012 I’m using Dava Sobel’s Longitude this week in my timekeeping class. The villain of the piece, as it were, is the Reverend Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, who promoted an astronomical method for finding longitude, and played a major role in delaying the payment to John Harrison for his marine chronometers. It’s a good story, with lots…
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Schrödinger
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 22, 2011 Newton’s birthday (in the Julian calendar) is Sunday, so we’re in the final days of the advent calendar. Which means it’s time for the equations that are least like anything Newton did, such as today’s: This is the Schrödinger equation from non-relativistic quantum mechanics. If you want to determine the quantum state of an object…
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Hydrogen
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 21, 2011 Today’s equation in our march to Newton’s birthday is actually a tiny bit out of order, historically speaking: This is the Rydberg formula for the wavelengths of the spectral lines in hydrogen (and hydrogen-like ions), with R a constant having the appropriate units, and the two n‘s being two dimensionless integers. This equation was developed…
Experiment vs. Theory: Where Did It All Go Wrong?
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 20, 2011 Over at Backreaction, Bee is running an advent calendar of her own, with amusing anecdotes about famous physicists. Apparently, it’s a good year for advent calendars. A couple of days ago, her story was a famous one about Heisenberg nearly failing to get his Ph.D. because he disdained experiment: Wien wanted to fail Heisenberg, but…
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Science Works
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 19, 2011 Moving along in our countdown to Newton’s birthday, we come to 1900, and one of the most revolutionary moment in the history of physics, represented in today’s equation: This is Max Planck’s formula for the spectrum of the “black-body” radiation emitted by a hot object at temperature T. It’s also the equation highlighted on what…
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Ideal Gas
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 17, 2011 Once again, the advent calendar is delayed until late at night by a busy day with SteelyKid– soccer in the morning, playing with a trebuchet after lunch, then Arthur Christmas at the Colonie mall. We’re running low on days to honor great milestones in physics, though, so I don’t want to skip a day entirely.…
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Ampère and Maxwell
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 16, 2011 To end this week, we wrap up electricity and magnetism with the fourth and final of Maxwell’s equations. this one includes Maxwell’s own personal contribution to these: This is sort of the mirror image of Faraday’s Law from yesterday, with the curl of the magnetic field on the left, and stuff related to a change…
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Faraday
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 15, 2011 Moving along through our countdown to Newton’s birthday, we have an equation that combines two other titans of British science: This is the third of Maxwell’s equations (named after the great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell), but it originates with Michael Faraday, one of the greatest experimentalists of the day. Faraday was a fascinating guy,…
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Gauss and Maxwell
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 13, 2011 As the advent calendar moves into the E&M portion of the season, there are a number of possible ways to approach this. I could go with fairly specific formulae for various aspects, but that would take a while and might close out some other areas of physics. In the end, all of classical E&M comes…
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Newton’s Gravity
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 12, 2011 We kicked off our countdown to Newton’s birthday with his equations of motion, so it seems fitting to close out the section on classical mechanics with another of Newton’s equations, this time the Law of Universal Gravitation: Like all the other equations to this point, I’m cribbing this from the formula sheet for my just-completed…
