The historical development of physics concepts: who did what and when.
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10answers
6k views
How did Newton discover his second law?
I've always assumed/been told that Newton's 2nd law is an empirical law — it must be discovered by experiment. If this is the case, what experiments did Newton do to discover this? Is it related to ...
16
votes
2answers
1k views
History of interpretation of Newton's first law
Nowadays it seems to be popular among physics educators to present Newton's first law as a definition of inertial frames and/or a statement that such frames exist. This is clearly a modern overlay. ...
15
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2answers
6k views
Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”
The great russian physicist Lev Landau developed a famous entry exam to test his students. This "Theoretical Minimum" contained everything he considered elementary for a young theoretical physicist. ...
13
votes
4answers
1k views
History of Electromagnetic Field Tensor
I'm curious to learn how people discovered that electric and magnetic fields could be nicely put into one simple tensor.
It's clear that the tensor provides many beautiful simplifications to the ...
12
votes
5answers
895 views
Why did Einstein get credit for formulating the theory of special relativity?
See "The Principle of Relativity" here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Mathematical_Physics This was written by Poincare in 1904, a year before Einstein published his theory of ...
11
votes
1answer
361 views
Why is the partition function called ''partition function''?
The partition function plays a central role in statistical mechanics.
But why is it called ''partition function''?
10
votes
4answers
1k views
What are the details around the origin of the string theory?
It is well-known even among the lay public (thanks to popular books) that string theory first arose in the field of strong interactions where certain scattering amplitudes had properties that could be ...
10
votes
2answers
772 views
How Did Paul Dirac Predict The Existence of Antiproton?
The existence of the antiproton with -1 electric charge, opposite to the +1 electric charge of the proton, was predicted by Paul Dirac in his 1933 Nobel Prize lecture.
Quotation by Wikipedia.
...
10
votes
7answers
3k views
Tesla's theory of gravity
I was reading up on Tesla's Wikipedia page last night, and I came across this:
When he was 81, Tesla stated he had
completed a "dynamic theory of
gravity". He stated that it was
"worked out ...
10
votes
2answers
979 views
Einstein's box - unclear about Bohr's retort
I was reading a book on the history of Quantum Mechanics and I got intrigued by the gendankenexperiment proposed by Einstein to Bohr at the 6th Solvay conference in 1930.
For context, the thought ...
10
votes
1answer
670 views
What came first, Rice Crispy or “Snap,” “Crackle,” and “Pop”? [closed]
The fourth, fifth, and sixth derivatives of position are called "Snap" "Crackle" and "Pop". What came first, the rice crispy characters, or the physics units?
8
votes
8answers
1k views
Myths in the history of Physics
As an example of such a historical myth that we all learned, there is the story that in his confrontation with Cardinal Bellarmine in 1632, Galileo had all the evidence on his side, won the ...
8
votes
2answers
672 views
Did Hilbert publish general relativity field equation before Einstein?
Did Hilbert publish general relativity field equation before Einstein?
8
votes
9answers
1k views
QM without complex numbers
I am trying to understand how complex numbers made their way into QM. Can we have a theory of the same physics without complex numbers? If so, is the theory using complex numbers easier?
8
votes
3answers
140 views
Why did the ancients fail to discover that the Earth orbits the Sun?
The ancients observed that the Sun and the 'fixed' stars rotated about the Earth. They were also aware that the Earth was spherical. They performed many astronomical measurements on the planets - ...
8
votes
5answers
3k views
How was Avogadro's number first determined?
I read on Wikipedia how the numerical value of Avogadro's number can be found by doing an experiment, provided you have the numerical value of Faraday's constant, but it seems to me that Faraday's ...
8
votes
2answers
374 views
How did Halley calculate the distance to the Sun by measuring the transit of Venus?
What numbers did Halley, Cook, et al. have? What was the strategy by which they calculated the AU?
8
votes
1answer
177 views
Has a human ever perished in space?
Apollo 13 returned safely. The Challenger was leaving when it exploded. The Columbia was coming back when it burned up, as was that Russian guy who was profiled on National Public Radio (NPR) and that ...
8
votes
6answers
2k views
Who discovered momentum?
I read some text about momentum in Wikipedia, but I didn't find any information who discovered momentum. Is the momentum a philosophic principle?
8
votes
2answers
273 views
Was Jupiter's mass “guessed at” by Kepler or Galileo?
Following Kepler's publication of his 3rd law of planetary motion1,
$$p^2 / r^3 = 1$$
in 1619, it would have been possible to use telescopic observations to arrive at an estimate of the orbital ...
8
votes
0answers
183 views
How accurate are Mayan astronomical “ephemerides”?
Because of the hype surrounding the "end" of the Mayan calendar (along with the usual cultural relativism and Western guilt) it is nearly impossible to find an objective quantitative assessment of the ...
8
votes
0answers
385 views
What happened to David John Candlin?
This is an ultra-soft question about relatively recent history. While reading some of Mandelstam's papers, I noticed that he cites David John Candlin consistenly whenever he does anything with ...
7
votes
1answer
151 views
Who (and Why) started the “electrons are negative, protons are positive” convention? [duplicate]
For some reason everyone labels electrons using a minus sign and protons using a positive sign, even though the opposite seems more intuitive:
Who started the convention that electrons should be ...
7
votes
2answers
267 views
Was uncertainty principle inferred by Fourier analysis?
I would like to know: did Heisenberg chance upon his Uncertainty Principle by performing Fourier analysis of wavepackets, after assuming that electrons can be treated as wavepackets?
6
votes
5answers
439 views
Why were the SI base quantities chosen as such?
The reasons for choosing length, mass, time, temperature, and amount as base quantities look (at least to me) obvious. What I'm puzzling about is why current (as opposed to resistance, electromotive ...
6
votes
3answers
311 views
What made us think that Earth moves around the Sun?
Trying to observe the night sky for a few weeks, the motion of the Sun and the stars pretty much fits into the Geocentric Theory i.e. All of them move around the Earth.
What then, which particular ...
6
votes
5answers
670 views
Good book on the history of Quantum Mechanics?
Can anyone recommend a good book on the history of Quantum Mechanics, preferably one that is technical and not afraid to explain the maths (I did a degree in Physics many years ago) and also that ...
6
votes
3answers
197 views
Origin of Ladder Operator methods
Ladder operators are found in various contexts (such as calculating the spectra of the harmonic oscillator and angular momentum) in almost all introductory Quantum Mechanics textbooks. And every book ...
6
votes
2answers
773 views
The history and modern understanding of spin
This question was inspired by Abstruse Goose :)
http://abstrusegoose.com/342
It's well known that any attempt to describe the spin (of say an electron) in terms of non-internal spatial coordinates is ...
5
votes
7answers
770 views
Evolution in the interpretation of the Dirac equation
As I understand, Dirac equation was first interpreted as a wave equation following the ideas of non relativistic quantum mechanics, but this lead to different problems.
The equation was then ...
5
votes
2answers
575 views
“Dear radioactive ladies and gentlemen” - Letter by Wolfgang Pauli
In 1930, Wolfgang Pauli wrote a letter to Lise Meitner for a convention in Tübingen, considering the problem of beta decay.
Does anybody know, where to find the original letter online ?
5
votes
3answers
280 views
Why isn't V. A. Fabricant given the credit for the discovery of the laser?
In another question here I asked for help in finding old Russian papers in physics and as an example I gave the founding papers on the laser by Basov and Prokhorov (from 1945 and 1954). In an answer ...
5
votes
2answers
273 views
English translation of Helmholtz' paper: “On the Physical Significance of the Principle of Least Action”
I am asking about an English translation of a Helmholtz paper:
Ueber die physikalische Bedeutung des Princips der kleinsten Wirkung. Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik (Crelle's ...
5
votes
2answers
248 views
Did anyone claim that quantum theory meant lasers would never work
I've been reading 'How the Hippies saved Physics', which describes a design for a superluminal communication device, of which the crucial part was a laser which duplicated an incoming photon many ...
5
votes
2answers
367 views
How Did Newton's Second Law Get Its Definition?
If I've read Newton's Laws of Motion correctly in the Principia, it seems that Newton attributed the "change in motion" (momentum) to the "impressed force". Mathematically this would be read as ...
5
votes
1answer
215 views
What in Newtons three laws of motion original to himself and not a paraphrasing of his predecssors
The three laws are:
First law: The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force.
Second law: The acceleration a of a body is parallel[disambiguation needed ...
5
votes
1answer
120 views
The notion called aether
I am trying to learn relativity theory and going through an introductory text on special relativity. I stumbled on the Michelson-Morley experiment. The book claims (accounts) that the result of this ...
5
votes
1answer
291 views
The origin of femto, atto and zepto SI prefixes
Do you know why the SI prefixes: femto, atto, zepto have been accepted by Scientific Community, if this triad of metric units, is neither greek nor latin?
5
votes
3answers
305 views
Supergravity calculation using computer algebra system in early days
I was having a look at the original paper on supergravity by Ferrara, Freedman and van Nieuwenhuizen available here. The abstract has an interesting line saying that
Added note: This term has now ...
5
votes
2answers
326 views
Accidental benefits of seeking perpetual motion? (Science history)
Newton spent much of his life in the fruitless pursuit of alchemy, but along the way discovered and worked-out much else that was real, practical science. And I was thinking about why it is that we ...
5
votes
1answer
225 views
Historical and philosophical reflexions about the concept of energy? [closed]
Perhaps you know the books:
Concepts of Mass in Contemporary Physics and Philosophy
Concepts of Force: A Study in the Foundations of Dynamics
by Max Jammer, which discusses mass and force from a ...
5
votes
0answers
204 views
Who invented the term “Coulomb logarithm”?
Who is the author of the term "Coulomb logarithm"? In fact, Coulomb logarithm was computed by Langmuir in his paper of 1928 where the term "plasma" was introduced into physics, but the term "Coulomb ...
4
votes
5answers
598 views
Regarding string theory: how to refute the argument “if it cannot be tested experimentally then it is not science”? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What differs string theory from philosophy or religion?
I find a lot of people disbelieve in string theory, saying that since it cannot be tested experimentally then it ...
4
votes
1answer
995 views
Gabriele Veneziano, strong nuclear force and beta-function
Background to the question:
From The History of String Theory:
Gabriele Veneziano, a research fellow at CERN (a European particle accelerator lab) in 1968, observed a strange coincidence - many ...
4
votes
3answers
594 views
Why is the symplectic manifold version of Hamiltonian mechanics used in Newtonian mechanics?
Books such as Mathematical methods of classical mechanics describe an approach to classical (Newtonian/Galilean) mechanics where Hamiltonian mechanics turn into a theory of symplectic forms on ...
4
votes
2answers
141 views
Discovery of $E=hf$?
How was the equation $E=hf$ discovered?
Was the proportional expression between energy and frequency of light $E\propto f$ discovered only by experiment? Or is there some logical(theoretical) senses ...
4
votes
2answers
157 views
How could Horrocks have measured the AU?
I have always understood that the great historical significance of the transits of Venus, and the reason for the expeditions mounted to observe it, were that, by observing it simultaneously from two ...
4
votes
3answers
294 views
Is the historical method of teaching physics a “legitimate, sure and fruitful method of preparing a student to receive a physical hypothesis”? [closed]
The French physicist, historian, and philosopher of physics, Pierre Duhem, wrote:The legitimate, sure and fruitful method of preparing a student to receive a physical hypothesis is the historical ...
4
votes
1answer
304 views
Did Galileo offer an explanation why his law of falling bodies is independent of mass?
Naively, (and endorsed by Aristotle) one expects heavier things to fall more quickly, Galileo Galilei showed in fact this is not correct, and that in fact how they fell as independent of mass (if air ...
4
votes
1answer
92 views
How did Newton find out force has something to do with acceleration?
Its about Newton's second law of motion,
$$F=ma.$$
It says the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force and is inversely proportional to the object's mass. Yes I can ...
