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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Source of cartoon lampooning Felix Klein
There is an interesting cartoon in the book
Lillian Hoddeson, Ernst Braun, Jurgen Teichmann, Spencer Weart (Eds.) Out of the Crystal Maze: Chapters from The History of Solid State Physics. Oxford ...
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Who originally derived the general force law equation of force between current elements?
Wikipedia credits this to Maxwell. This derivation can be found in Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism vol. 2, part 4, ch. 2 (§§502-527). I went through the derivation and found two self ...
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History of the study of indeterminism in classical mechanics
The classic Norton's dome problem, space invaders and other examples, show that Classical Mechanics, held as the paragon of determinism for ages having inspired Laplace's statements on determinism, is ...
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How did Newton prove his third law of motion?
I guess it is an experimental law, so what was the experiment?
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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 ...
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Who was the first person to describe turbulence in mathematical terms?
Here I found that:
Sixty years later, Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov furthered
our mathematical understanding of turbulence when he proposed that
energy in a turbulent fluid at length $R$ ...
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Why couldn't Huygens explain diffraction using his principle?
Huygens' principle seemed quite complete in this description if applied correctly. I noticed that Fresnel was credited in the Huygens-Fresnel principle, as well. I think it is because he was able to ...
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Who was first to observe or detect photons in the double slit experiment, and how did they do that?
In the early 1800s Thomas Young introduced (a thought-?) experiment also known as the two slit experiment. He discovered the strange way photons created a interference pattern on a screen.
There is ...
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Natura non facit saltus (nature does not make jumps), who said that?
The sentence is Latin for nature doesn't make jumps. It refers to the fact that, in most physical processes, quantities vary continuously.
The principle was used by Leibniz, Kant and Darwin among ...
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Why are 'speed' and 'velocity' not given the same name?
Position is a vector. Distance/length is a name of its magnitude.
Velocity is a vector. Speed is a name of its magnitude.
Acceleration is a name of a vector and its magnitude.
Force is a name of a ...
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Corpuscular theory of light and Double slit experiment
I am sure many scientists would initially have attempted to explain Young's double slit experiment's results using the concept of light as a stream of particles. Can somebody tell me what these ...
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How did Källén get his name attached to $x^2 + y^2 + z^2 - 2 x y -2 x z- 2 y z$?
For some reason, everybody refers to the function
$$\lambda(x,y,z) = x^2 + y^2 + z^2 - 2xy -2xz-2yz$$
as "Källén's triangle function." (see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Källén). ...
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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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How did Lagrange get his equation (the so-called Euler-Lagrange equation)
The variational principle is named after Hamilton, instead of Lagrange.
So it seems that he did not derive his equation by the variational method.
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Who coined the term "degenerate star"?
I'm trying to find a good source for the definition of degenerate matter to differentiate it from Fermi gases. For my research a good section on history would be nice. This question is more ...
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Who first wrote down the spin-orbit coupling term in the atom?
Who first wrote down the spin-orbit coupling term in the atom? Was it Dirac himself? The term should be derived from the Dirac equation.
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Why is the thermoelectric figure of merit denoted by $ZT$?
Why is the thermoelectric figure of merit denoted by $Z T$? Does $Z T$ come from the abbreviation of words in some language?
Update: So far, $T$ has been figured out — it is the temperature, to make ...
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Who was first to integrate Newton's equations of motion to derive the conservation laws for mechanical energy and momentum?
I'm wondering who is the first person in the history who came up with an idea to integrate Newton's $F=ma$ to obtain the law of mechanical energy conservation? And When did it happen?
Also I have the ...
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Who popularized the question "why is the sky blue?"
"Why is the sky blue" is a question that everybody seems to know, and in modern times is associated with children's innate curiosity. If I casually flip through a few of the children's science books I ...
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Why did Greek Olympic games take place every fourth year?
I was wondering why Greeks chose to have Olympic games every four years. Now, since we usually every fourth year is a leap one, it makes sense; but the reform of the calendar which stated this is due ...
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When was "Faraday's Law of Induction" first expressed in a quantified form?
An often used definition of "Faraday's Law of Induction" goes something like this (found in Wikipedia)
The electromotive force around a closed path is equal to the negative of the time rate ...
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"Tension" between Electromagnetism and Newton's laws
When talking about the inconsistencies in physics that led up to Einstein's discovery of relativity today's professors always say that Maxwell's discovery of the constant speed of light $c$ created a ...
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Introduction of the Gravitational constant
The constant G in Newton's law $F = G m_1m_2/r^2$ is, as far as I know, absent from Newton's work - who introduced this constant?
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Mathematical interpretation of Aristotelian mechanics
I am looking for books which include a mathematical interpretation of Aristotle's hypotheses about mechanics. I heard that there are a few books which interpret his mechanical ideas mathematically, ...
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Was Joseph Priestley "isolated"
Joseph Priestley is often said to have discovered Oxygen, or not due to calling it Dephlogisticated air - depending on one's preference. However, regardless of this, it is often said in popular ...
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Where is the Foucault pendulum in Mainz?
A Foucault pendulum in Mainz is listed on Wikipedia. The article says that it is in
School for Business and Technique, Mainz
However, I didn't find any information about this pendulum on the ...
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Is there an anthology of classic papers on electricity?
I'm trying to find a book similiar to Stephen Brush "Kinetic Theory of Gases: An Anthology of Classic Papers With Historical Commentary".
The electricity version, let's say!
I like to see how subjects ...
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What are Archimedes's contributions to the principle of the screw pump?
I read that the famous screw pumps were used before Archimedes (in the hanging gardens of Babylon for example), and that the Archimedean screw is named after him because he "developed a rigorous ...
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How did the notion of "time" come in the world of physics?
I was trying to figure out how people came to know about time then I realized that people started keeping track of time to know about sunset and sunrise. But I can't figure out how did time came into ...
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Are there anonymous contributions to physics with large impact?
Based on this question
Are there any anonymous contributions to mathematics that had a great impact? , I would like to ask the same question for physics. Physics is different from mathematics in the ...
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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 ...
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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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On Bryce Seligman DeWitt's Name Change
Weinberg, in his memoir on Bryce Seligman DeWitt (available at https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/dewitt-bryce.pdf) states that
In 1950 two major but totally ...
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What's the origin of the claim that a single uranium atom fissioning would release enough energy to visibly move a grain of sand?
There's a fairly widespread claim that the energy released by the fission of a single atom of uranium would release enough energy to make a grain of sand visibly jump. Richard Rhodes's The Making of ...
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Who introduced the comma notation for partial derivatives?
In general relativity, it is common to use the comma notation for partial derivatives
$$\frac{\partial g_{\mu\nu}}{\partial x_\rho} = g_{\mu\nu_,\rho}$$
Where did this notation first appear? Was it ...
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Origin of the Fourier transform (1878)
I located Joseph Fourier's book, Analytical Theory of Heat (1878), but at first glance it looks like it is all about heat. What did Fourier call the Fourier transform? When did he first use it?
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Why Doesn't Einstein Get More Credit for Being the Father of Quantum Mechanics?
I'm not simply referring to the notion that Einstein treated the discrete emission and transference of energy (and matter) as "real" physical phenomena, but rather his major continuous role in the ...
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How did Ising pronounce his name? [closed]
The surname of Ernst Ising, of Ising model fame, is often pronounced as EYE-zing by non-German speakers, but as EE-zing by German speakers. It is frequently claimed that EE-zing is the correct ...
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Physics Curricula of 19th Century French Universities?
What were the physics curricula for 19th century French universities?
I am looking for something akin to this distribution of courses at the École Polytechnique, but for other French universities, ...
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In which paper did the typical textbook diagrams of the Millikan experiment appear the first time?
There are two typical visualizations for one of the results of the Millikan oil-drop experiment to illustrate that only integer multiples of some elementary charge occur in nature.
The first one is as ...
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How did Einstein know tensors would be needed in the EFEs?
I'd really never studied tensors until I started studying the Einstein Field Equations. Since then, I have realized they are fairly common tool in physics and pretty basic to understanding many areas. ...
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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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Did the Soviet Union emphasize nuclear physics over biology?
Some friend from Georgia told me that in every village of the Soviet Union there was an expert in nuclear physics.
By contrast, the Soviet Union did not invest into biology at all. As a consequence, ...
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When and by whom was the earliest definition of speed given?
Speed is defined to be distance divided by time; when and who by was this definition first put forward?
The obvious guess would be Galileo in early modern physics; is this right, and can it be ...
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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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Did Maxwell discover the distribution of velocities in a gas during an exam set by Stokes?
In some lecture notes I found online it was claimed that Maxwell discovered the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution while in the course of solving a (then unsolved) examination problem given by Stokes. The ...
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Was Planck's Constant a huge leap conceptually? [duplicate]
It must have been observed, for example, that there was no element lighter than hydrogen or that there were not different-charged electrons (I believe the electron was discovered prior to Planck's ...
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Why is distance sometimes abbreviated S?
While distance in physical formulas is often abbreviated as d (which is pretty intuitive), another common abbreviation is s, as seen e.g. here, here or here. It also seems to be used in optics to ...
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Who discovered total internal reflection?
There is no information on wiki. Is it known to Newton?
It seems that this has not been mentioned in most textbooks.
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What were the criticisms against the introduction of "vector analysis"?
Frequently, 19th century physicists—e.g., Helmholtz or Maxwell—did not use modern-day vector notation, which Gibbs contributed in large part to.
For example, Helmholtz in his famous paper on the ...
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