# Tag Info

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To begin, lets go over the basics again. Any ensemble of two body decays in which the parents and children have the same masses in each event has a delta-function energy spectrum, or violates at least one of energy- or momentum-conservation. The fact that the beta decay spectrum is broad and continuous implies that at least one of the pre-conditions is ...

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The book's "derivation" is unusual. Usually, Plank's energy distribution is derived by considering the energy in a large cavity, which tells you about the energy that would be emitted through a small hole in the cavity. That energy has the blackbody spectrum. I think the book is trying to whitewash away a bunch of details by talking about "oscillators ...

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First of all, you can look at the translation of his paper here. As was already noted Planck firstly discovered the correct blackbody radiation formula by simple interpolation of $R=-\Bigl(\frac{\partial^2 S}{\partial U^2}\Bigr)^{-1}$ where $S$ is entropy and $U$ - mean energy of the oscillator in the bath. He knew that $R=\alpha U$ gives Wien law for ...

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Planck published several works on the theory of blackbody radiation based on different ideas, but generally the use of integer counting of energy he meant to be used for the energy of material oscillators. He did not believe the quantization applied to light itself - he assumed Maxwell's theory with its differential equations and derived his spectral ...

1

Benjamin Franklin proposed electric fluid theory and considered electric current to be flow of a charged fluid. He meant to use positive to denote a surplus of the fluid, negative as a deficit of it. No one knows how he came up with the choice, but it became the convention and as a result lead also to the labeling of charge. I know of no fact that could ...

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That there are two distinct types of electric charge is a metaphysical fact. But nature is indifferent to what we choose to label these charges; up / down, left / right, positive / negative, black / white, etc. Electrons will still flow to the plate in a CRT regardless of how we choose to label the polarity of the charge on the electron and plate. ...

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I'd like to add two points to describe the history after the events and people described in Svetlana'a answer: After James Joule discovered the relationship between mechanical work and the generation of heat in about 1850, in the hands of the nineteenth century thermodynamicists (Clausius, Gibbs and especially Thomson (Lord Kelvin)) the notion of a budget ...

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Newton's law of cooling is an empirical observation not a fundamental law. The cooling of a body in air is a formidably complicated process because the cooling is dominated by the air flow, and the air flow is complicated to model. However we find from experiment that over a limited range of temperatures the cooling rate is proportional to the temperature ...

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The below seems to be a candidate for the first use of the term 'Majorana fermion'. (I'm not sure if it satisfies your other criteria.) Salam, Abdus, and J. Strathdee. Super-symmetry and non-Abelian gauges. International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste (Italy), 1974.

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