Questions tagged [physics]
For questions about the scientific discipline that concerns itself with analyzing the laws of nature in full generality. It is one of the largest branches of natural science. Before applying this tag to a question, please consider using the "theoretical-physics" or "experimental-physics" tags instead, as they are more descriptive.
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Does Heliocentrism predate Copernicus?
I have seen this mentioned on the interwebs a few times. people have mentioned that some Greek thinkers and Islamic astronomers came up with heliocentrism before Copernicus and that Copernicus copied ...
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21 views
How did Gibbs discover Gibbs entropy?
I have read and I think that I agree with the idea that if we have to choose probability distribution for an unknown system then it is a good idea to choose a distribution that has the least bias.
I ...
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1answer
44 views
What was this experiment tainted by the observer effect?
I once heard a cautionary tale about the dangers of the observer-expectancy effect. It was at least presented as a true example from the history of science, but I'm having trouble identifying the ...
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0answers
91 views
Who discovered Maxwell-Faraday equation, $\nabla\times E=-\frac{\partial B}{\partial t}$? Was it Maxwell or Neumann?
I have been trying to find out who discovered Maxwell-Faraday equation, $\nabla\times E=-\frac{\partial B}{\partial t}$. Was it Maxwell himself, or was it Franz Ernst Neumann who derived it?
The ...
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40 views
Did Ludwig Boltzmann ever go to Copenhagen or any other part of Denmark?
Did Ludwig Boltzmann ever go to Copenhagen or any other part of Denmark?
I also read that he was appointed "Honorary Doctor" by the university of Oslo. Does this mean that he went to Norway?
https://...
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1answer
70 views
Are Wheeler's It from Bit/Participatory Universe and the Multiverse related?
Could I ask you for the relation between Wheeler's ideas and the multiverse? Do you know if these are related?
I ask you this because I found this very interesting article written by Kip Thorne with ...
6
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1answer
197 views
When and how did the notion/idea of physical constant emerge?
Physical constants (e.g. c, h, G, alpha and so on) play a central role in our scientific theories and they have yet drawn much of controversial flavor into questions concerning the foundational status ...
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1answer
207 views
How were negative numbers first used in physics?
The use of negative numbers in most of today's calculations is natural. But how did the use of negative numbers began in physics? What physical quantity required the introduction of negative numbers ...
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1answer
70 views
Did John von Neumann ever go to any Nordic Country? Did Eugene Paul Wigner ever go to any other Nordic Country apart from Sweden?
I'm researching about the presence of important scientists in Nordic Countries (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland).
I was hoping that someone could help me since I've not been able to find ...
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2answers
2k views
Which physicist is this quote attributed to?
There is a quote from a 19-20th century scientist that goes (and I am paraphrasing):
New scientific theories are never accepted until old scientist die.
Who is this cynical quote attributed to, ...
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2answers
118 views
What are the great works of Richard Phillips Feynman? [closed]
What are the prerequisites to read his book? Why Richard Phillips Feynman is so famous? What are great works of Richard Phillips Feynman?
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2answers
100 views
How did Henry Cavendish deduce the inverse square law in electrostatics from his experiment in 1772?
An elegant experiment in 1772 by Henry Cavendish. Cavendish charged a spherical conducting shell that contained within it, and temporarily connected to it, a smaller sphere. The outer shell was then ...
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2answers
158 views
What animals or plants were used to illustrate ideas of physics?
This crossed my mind today...
There is Schrödinger's cat and Newton's apple.
Are there any other famous animals/plants featured in physics in a similar way?
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1answer
63 views
What was Isaac Newton's contribution to optics?
What was Isaac Newton's contribution to optics? I know that he believed in the corpuscular theory of light. Did he know about the laws of reflection ad refraction?
5
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1answer
71 views
Refraction in Newton's Corpuscular Theory of Light [duplicate]
Newton's theory of light stated that a light travelled in a straight line as small particles. When these particles travelled in a medium, they experienced an attractive force with the particles of the ...
2
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0answers
81 views
Were notable physicists great at math or computing? [closed]
Were famous or popular physicists like Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Feynman predominantly mathematicians or scientists (computing, experimenting, engineering, etc.)?
I am curious if people like the ...
3
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1answer
136 views
How did philosophers and scientists in the 18th century view mathematical explanation?
The 18th century saw a rise in the use of mathematical formalisms to account for natural phenomena. Works of Lagrange, Euler, d'Alembert, etc., were groundbreaking in the history of mechanics and ...
5
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1answer
100 views
Equivalence principle before Einstein [duplicate]
In a German interview some physicists were asked, what they would ask Einstein, if he were alive today. One of them wanted to know how Einstein came up with the idea of the equivalence principle, that ...
7
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2answers
188 views
Was there early opposition to Newton's mechanics?
Scientific theories are rarely accepted immediately. Even if the evidence for a theory is impeccable, there will be some stragglers who resist it for lack of understanding. More interesting is when a ...
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0answers
39 views
Does anyone know articles or books about what the notion of difficulty in science, especially physics?
In physics, many problems were known at their time to be very challenging, for example the notion of heat, or how to understand the ideal gaz law, or the phase transition criticial behaviors, etc. And ...
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1answer
123 views
Is Newton going to be the new Aristotle? [closed]
As general relativity and quantum mechanics become more accessible, is Newton going to become the new Aristotle, as the example of being wrong and misleading humanity for centuries? (as opposed to the ...
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6answers
244 views
Remarkable numerical calculations before electronic computers
I know the story that Cole found the factoring of the big number $2^{67}-1$.
Is there any other remarkable achievement of hand calculation?
3
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1answer
51 views
Did old Crookes Radiometers ever have a pair of terminals?
This is a question about old physics lab equipment.
This and this question led to the question in SciFi SE Crookes Radiometer at the end of a telescope in old movie scene, something about a comet? ...
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2answers
89 views
Can anybody identify an appropriate radio for this game?
This is quite a specific question about radio, but it has been rejected on the Amateur Radio and History Stack Exchanges, so I will ask it here...
I'm a complete radio ignoramous, but I've been ...
3
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1answer
67 views
How was the notion of the metacenter of a floating body discovered?
Does anybody knows how this important notion of hydrostatics was discovered?
I have read that it is about someone walking up and down the mountains of Latin America trying to disprove Cartesian ...
3
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0answers
34 views
Looking for references to an experiment on the evaporation rate of water in sunlight
I remember reading a long time ago about some experiments measuring evaporation rate of water in large open containers (tubs) sitting on open ground. It was a simple experiment, each day the water ...
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1answer
507 views
Why didn't Lorentz conclude that no object can go faster than light?
Based on Lorentz factor $\gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt {1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}$ it is easy to see $v < c$ since otherwise $\gamma$ would be either undefined or a complex number, which is non-physical. Also, ...
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2answers
226 views
Did the Idea of Universal Gravitation predate Newton?
"Baba wrote over 60 books, almost everyone on a different topic, writing on issues from astronomy, identified stars that European scientists technology could not discover until the late 1800s, ...
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2answers
112 views
What experiments led to the sign of the electron's charge?
The famous Millikan's oil drop experiment in 1908 determined the magnitude of charge of the electron to be 1.59*10^(-19) C. However, it was well known that electron has a negative charge. Although ...
2
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0answers
92 views
Is it a historical coincidence that relative atomic weights by chemical methods and mass spectrometry are very close?
The concept of relative atomic weight originated from measuring the combining weight of hydrogen with a certain element. In the simplification process H was taken as unity (18th, 19th and 20th century)...
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1answer
130 views
Why is electric dipole moment represented by “p”?
"I recently came across a text where the electric dipole moment was represented as "d" instead of the more commonly used "p". The reason behind using "d" here is probably that "dipole moment" begins ...
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1answer
73 views
What's the relationship between Aristotle's theory of elements and motion and geometry?
I'm having a hard time gathering my thoughts about this.
I'm trying to find a connection or some sort of relation between the first 3 axioms (postulates) of Euclidean geometry (though around Aristotle'...
4
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1answer
85 views
High voltage / current sources in 19th century cathode ray experiments
In modern chemistry textbooks, a DC source (battery symbol) is usually shown for cathode ray tube experiments by Thomson and others. Certainly, no battery can provide very high voltages needed for gas ...
3
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1answer
130 views
Who associated the sharp, principal, diffuse, fundamental spectral terms with electron's momentum?
It is well documented that the notation for the electronic configuration (s,p,d,f) of atoms as used today originates from the words sharp, principal, diffuse, fundamental from alkali metal spectra (...
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1answer
195 views
What are some references that Lev Landau was atheist?
In Wikipedia and many other sources copying it, it is claimed that Lev Landau was an atheist (I have no problem to believe the claim), however the (two) sources are not satisfying at all, to me.
I ...
2
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1answer
161 views
How did the early chemists determine the atomic weight of hydrogen?
In early history, the relative atomic weight of hydrogen was assigned as 1 (exactly) and all other elements were compared against hydrogen. What is difficult to find who determined the absolute atomic ...
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1answer
256 views
What new physics was discovered or needed as a result of the Manhattan Project?
I originally asked this question on the Physics StackExchange and was told to migrate it here. I've tightened up the question a bit.
I recently got into a discussion with colleagues regarding ...
4
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3answers
190 views
How did Huygens derive the conservation law for of kinetic energy?
In the book 'Energy - The Subtle Concept' by Energy, the Subtle Concept by Jennifer Coopersmith the author says that Huygens was the first to use the term $mv^2$ in physics. He was considering elastic ...
3
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1answer
100 views
How close was Hooke to developing a comprehensive system of gravity?
Was Hooke close to developing a physical system of gravity on the same level as Newton. looking at Luka Trkanjec's post on Quora, he insists that Newton was quite overrated in this regard, and that ...
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1answer
106 views
What was Newton's view of theory of matter?
Did Newton believe in infinitely small particle theory of matter? Because when he talks about axis of rotation, which is locus of the centers of the circles of the rotating body and particle on the ...
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0answers
36 views
Rocket & drag equation?
i'm writing an assignment on firework rockets and their trajectory. Now of course im doing this with a lot of limitation as a realistic rocket calculation would be impossible to execute, at least for ...
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2answers
139 views
If John Michell was more well known, would he rank above Isaac Newton in the history of science? [closed]
John Michell proposed black holes in the 18th century, hundreds of years before Schwarzschild and Einstein.
His ideas were said to to be away head of his time, that he died in obscurity. I assume ...
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1answer
82 views
How was the historical definition of the meter used in practice?
The meter was initially defined as $10^{-7}$ times the distance of the north pole to the equator. How exactly was this definition used to fabricate the actual meter sticks from which the standard ...
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1answer
225 views
How did people measure electric charge at the time of Coulomb?
Around the time that Coulomb gave Coulomb's law, how did people measure electric charge?
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3answers
343 views
How was gravity explained in Ancient Greek and Roman times?
Gravity is of course something that we can all observe. Stuff falls towards the ground. But not everything: some things like steam or smoke defy this force and instead float up.
During Ancient Greek ...
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3answers
227 views
What are some good references elucidating the discovery/creation of Fourier Series?
I've always grappled with the topic of anything Fourier during my undergrad days. Until recently when revisiting why I learned what I did, I discovered how Fourier's desire to understand the flow of ...
2
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3answers
118 views
Origin of the coulomb and ampere
What is the historical origin of the size of the coulomb (and in turn, ampere)?
Currently (pardon the pun), the coulomb is defined in terms of the ampere. The ampere is in turn effectively defined by ...
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2answers
166 views
Was Newton's successful calculation of precession of equinoxes a fluke?
I have looked at several sources, and Newton was right about the fact that the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but an ellipsoid caused the precession of equinoxes, as the Moon's gravitational ...
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45 views
How was the term speed treated in the 16 and 17 century?
What do the the people in 16 an 17 century meant by the term speed? Were they having the relation speed=distance/time back then or were they having some other notion for it and this relation came into ...
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1answer
67 views
Metre definition using a seconds pendulum
I have always heard that the first and most prominent definition of the metre was to use the length of the seconds pendulum - pendulum with the period of exactly 2 seconds. However, in the end it was ...
