Questions tagged [physics]
For questions about the scientific discipline that concerns itself with analysing the laws of nature in full generality
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When exactly (and why) did matrices become a part of the undergraduate curriculum?
Let me tell what I know about this. It is well-known that Heisenberg invented matrix multiplication himself, in his great paper that is considered part of the foundation of quantum mechanics. This was ...
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Writing Mathematical Symbols in 20th century
As I was reading some papers written by Schrödinger and Heisenberg back in 1920s, I noticed that the symbols they use such as the integral or summation sign or calligraphic letters are as if printed ...
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Whose shoulders did Newton stand on?
In a letter to Robert Hooke in 1676, Newton wrote:
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Do we know which giants Newton was referring to? And was he referring to a ...
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Why did no one else, except Einstein, work on developing General Relativity between 1905-1915?
Einstein dedicated his time between 1905-1915 to develop general relativity (GR). It seems strange to me that no other physicists attempted to tackle this problem in this ten-year period. After all, ...
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What were the dominant non-atomic theories of matter in the 19th century?
From what I have read, the atomic theory of matter was cemented by a 1905 paper by Einstein in which he explained the erratic motion of a bit of pollen suspended in water using the assumption that ...
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Did physicists around 1900 really believe they were close to "figuring it all out"?
I've encountered the claim that around the end of the 19th century, physicists believed that their understanding of the physical world was close to being complete.
One example of this claim can be ...
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What attracted Einstein to the anomalous precession of Mercury?
The story is usually told starting with Einstein's 1915 paper Explanation of the Perihelion Motion of Mercury from General Relativity Theory, or at least its drafts from 1913-14. It was the first ...
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When did physics texts start to teach Kepler's $3/2$'s power law as a result of Newton's $1/r^2$ law of gravitation, rather than the other way around?
In modern physics textbooks, we teach Newton's laws of motion, then Newton's law of Universal Gravitation, and then Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Specifically, from the $1/r^2$ form of the ...
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How did scientists plot complicated graphs in the 19th century?
I am wondering how did Maxwell in the 19th century draw such figures as the one shown? What tools or procedures did he need?
Is it all compass and ruler drawing?
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What are examples of serendipity in the history of the sciences and math?
Cosmic microwave background radiation was discovered after Penzias & Wilson couldn't get rid of the noise generated by their horn. In fact, the noise was their discovery.
The strings in string ...
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Who discovered the covering homomorphism between SU(2) and SO(3)?
Who discovered this? It is quite nontrivial and very important in quantum mechanics.
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Is Millikan's famous oil drop experiment a fraud?
I read in my mechanics textbook written by Goodstein that Robert Millikan cherry-picked his data in his famous oil drop experiment, and now I'm left wondering about the scientific value of his results....
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What was the vis viva controversy, including its philosophical aspects?
Leibniz's concept of vis visa (literally translated as living force) was a precursor to our modern concept of kinetic energy. His formula for it was close to the modern non-relativistic one: $mv^2$, ...
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How was Einstein led to make a contact with Differential Geometry for his theory of General Relativity?
General Relativity was developed with Differential Geometry as the tool.
How was Einstein led to make a contact with Differential Geometry for his theory of General Relativity? Who suggested him to ...
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Why did Tesla disagree with Einstein?
Both Tesla and Einstein were brilliant scientists. Tesla said the following on the theory of relativity in a 1935 New York Times interview:
"The theory, wraps all these errors and fallacies and ...
user5738
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How soon after or before the development of nuclear applications was waste disposal considered?
Nuclear applications—be it in the form of electricity production, weapon creation, etc.—inevitably involves radioactive waste.
When was it realized that there might be a need for a specialized waste ...
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In ancient times, how did people conclude that the shape of Earth is a sphere?
This is more of a philosophical question, but I want a mathematical explanation. During ancient times, it was well accepted that the surface of Earth was spherical. People first observed this when ...
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Why is there no named unit for momentum but there is one for energy?
Momentum and energy play very similar roles in mechanics, each being changed by the application of force over a interval. For energy the interval is in space and for momentum it is in time. Both have ...
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Did ancient/medieval non-European cultures have a concept of energy? If so, what are the similarities and differences to the modern concept?
For example, do we find something related to the modern energy concept in Ancient China, Ancient India, or the Islamic Golden Age?
Among "similarities and differences", conservation is obviously ...
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What cipher(s) did Isaac Newton use?
A number of sources including this one assert that Isaac Newton used encrypted messages to communicate some of his scientific discoveries, and as a way of establishing priority.
What cipher(s) did he ...
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How did Kepler "guess" his third law from data?
It is amazing that Kepler determined his three laws by looking at data, without a calculator and using only pen and paper. It is conceivable how he proved his laws described the data after he had ...
Joshua Benabou
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Why is kg the standard unit for mass and not g in SI?
Why is $\mathrm{kg}$ the standard unit for mass and not $\mathrm{g}$?
I know that there is the kilogramme des Archives which is a kilogram and not a gram. But originally on April 7, 1795 the gram was ...
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What led to the rise of Göttingen?
this is a counter part to my other question: What led to the fall of Göttingen?.
Göttingen was a major university in which many famous physicists and mathematicians lived. It was located in ...
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What data did Kepler work out his laws from?
It's well known that Kepler worked out his laws by fitting curves to Tycho Brahe's data on the trajectories of planets through the sky. What was this data? How does one record the trajectory of a ...
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Conflict between physics and philosophy
In the old days. stars of physicists like Einstein$^{[1]}$, Poincare, Heisenberg, Pauli, $^{[2]}$ Bohr and so on are quite philosophical mind, and like philosophy. $^{[3]}$
But now, it seems to me a ...
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What did Schroedinger try to say with the cat thought experiment?
In many books one finds different explanations. Specifically popular seems to be that he "argued against the Copenhagen interpretation". But what did he really intend to communicate?
I for ...
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Is this Einstein rejection letter fake?
So I found this on the internet the other day-
Is this fake?
Are there any ways to prove that it's fake?
Does there, if any, exist any real copy of such a rejection letter?(Was Einstein ever ...
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Why isn't Feynman's path integral taught more widely and earlier in today's academic physics curricula?
Anyone who has studied Feynman's path integral will know that it makes quantum mechanics more like classical mechanics. A student who has learned about the Lagrangian will easily understand the ...
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What was different about Planck's quantization of light compared to Einstein's?
In describing black body radiation Planck assumed that the energy that can be absorbed or emitted by charges is quantized, i.e., they can only absorb or emit certain quantities of energy. But it was ...
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Has there been an equivalent in physics to Ramanujan in maths?
Ramanujan's story is a well known story of the Indian young man who turned out to be a mathematical genius without a scholarly education. He was "discovered" by the mathematician Hardy at ...
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Why don't we learn Buridan's laws of motion?
My question is why has Jean Buridan faded into obscurity while Newton is venerated as a God by scientists? Here is a description of Buridan's impetus theory:
The concept of inertia was alien to the ...
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Did light bulb companies commission Planck to study black body radiation?
Background
When introducing Planck's switch to looking at black-body radiation, a number of sources -- like MinutePhysics, the Economist, random online encyclopaedias and even here on HSM.SE (plus ...
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Who was the first to postulate that space was a vacuum?
The fact that space is a vacuum and that the Earth's atmosphere only extends a short way above the surface is accepted as obvious. However, there is nothing a priori obvious about it: you first have ...
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How did the publication feat of Einstein's four 1905 Annus Mirabilis papers get through peer review?
Einstein's early career is well-known for the lack of success he had applying for assistant lecturer positions with universities; he could not get a position, and he ended up working in a Bern patent ...
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Did the Digges Telescope actually exist?
There are many claimants for the first telescope. Amongst these are the claims placed at the doors of Bacon and Digges. The Bacon claim is very sketchy, boiling down to one sentence and is easy to ...
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What became of the Boltzmann-Zermelo debate about the second law of thermodynamics?
At the end of 19th century there was a lively discussion about the nature of the second law of thermodynamics, and its relation to Hamiltonian dynamics. Boltzmann developed a position that the second ...
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Hidden agenda of the Galileo trial?
Redondi argued that Galileo's trial on heliocentrism was merely a show trial concealing the real objection against Galileo among the catholic establishment, which was his atomism thought to be at ...
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Why did 18th century writers think that Mars had 2 satellites?
At least two 18th century writers wrote that Mars has two satellites: Swift in Gulliver's travels (1726) and Voltaire in Micromégas (1752).
How did they guess this? Was Voltaire repeating Swift's ...
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Historical Survey of Statistical Mechanics
Statistical mechanics is a subject with a particularly rich history. I think of the early debates of Boltzmann and Loschmidt, the rather confusing differences between the approaches of Gibbs and ...
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Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
Science fiction here means fiction that tries to explain things in the world rather than speculate about the future or unexplorable ...
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Historical example of research papers being misinterpreted due to poor wording and creating controversy?
Is there any example of major controversy in the scientific community caused due to poor wording and/or misinterpretation of words?
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What is the story behind various uses of the word "spectrum"?
Here are five distinct uses of the word spectrum in physics and mathematics:
Spectrum (optics): The range of colors in the rainbow
Spectrum (particle physics): The range of electromagnetic ...
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Did most or just few physicists think in 1900 that there was nothing important left to discover?
For example, the whole microscopic world was unknown - isn't that a fundamental problem even bigger than the "two clouds" to solve? They could regard atoms, electrons and other discovered ...
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How did quantum mechanics operators come into being?
Now I am starting to learn Quantum Mechanics. In the class I am taught about operators, postulates and all other basic stuff.
I understand operators to be +, -, /, etc; but quantum mechanical ...
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How did we come up with the name "atomic bomb"?
At first, my initiate question was: What is the difference between an atomic and a nuclear bomb?:
Nuclear bombs are of two types — those that depend on fission, like atomic bombs, and those that ...
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What was Einstein's motivation for relativity theory?
I'm a high school student who never studied any relativity before, but I'm just wondering what was the question that Einstein asked himself before going into this field. I knew he has done lots of ...
user40003
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Was Dirac really trying to take the square root of the Klein-Gordon operator?
As a student of physics one will, on several occasions, indubitably hear professors or other physicists (here is an example, from Physics.SE's highest-rep user John Rennie) tell the famous story that ...
Danu♦
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How did Galileo know that objects rolling down a ramp was an accurate model for free fall?
Galileo used balls rolling down ramps to study the relationship between time and distance traveled. However, without any knowledge of physics, it doesn't seem immediately obvious that the time-...
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When was the vector notation in physics and other sciences first introduced?
The vector notation in physics is a very compact and easy way to write things down, and according to Feynman it also saves print. When exactly did scientists realize that they were summarizing things ...
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Which physicists died very young or in a tragic way?
Inspired by Which mathematicians died very young or in a tragic way? , I wonder which physicists had similar fates.
A quick search lead me to Heinrich Hertz who died from a malignant bone condition at ...
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