New answers tagged history
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There are various systems of units that fall within the family colloquially referred to as the metric system. The SI (formerly known by the more descriptive term mks) is based on the meter, kilogram, and second. The cgs system is based on the centimeter, gram, and second. As far as I know, nobody actually uses an mgs (meter-gram-second) system, although it ...
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Among the base units of the International System, the kilogram is the only one whose name and symbol, for historical reasons, include a prefix. Names and symbols for decimal multiples and submultiples of the unit of mass are formed by attaching prefix names to the unit name "gram", and prefix symbols to the unit symbol "g" (CIPM 1967, Recommendation 2).
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A long time before Maxwell wrote down a unified theory, Oersted discovered a connection between electricity and magnetism. In the development of electromagnetism, there were many bits and pieces of partial knowledge that were discovered and formulated by many different scientists. The popular ones (after whom we've named partial "laws") that immediately come ...
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There is hardly a book covering all physics, but for particular subjects there is some. For example:
Jammer: The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics.
Whittaker: A History of The Theories of Aether and Electricity.
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One chance could be to check some possible "Collected work". So far I found the book
Selected writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, Hermann von Helmholtz, Russell Kahl. Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press [1971]
Here more details: http://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-writings-of-hermann-von-helmholtz/oclc/226116
But it also seems that it's a ...
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We did this experiment in my undergraduate physics class. Search for "Michelson-Morley experiment classroom" and you will find products such as this: http://i-fiberoptics.com/laser_detail.php?id=2120
Before the advent of lasers with a visible beam, the alignment of interferometer components was very difficult to achieve under ordinary laboratory ...
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To me, it seems like there are 3 different concepts being discussed: (1) fine-tuning, (2) wanting unitless constants to be of order unity, and (3) wanting theories to have a simple form. The WP link defines "naturalness" as #2, although I don't think that's universally understood.
A very old example of #3 would be the history of models of the solar system, ...
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In English, I've only found this very limited translation by Yourgrau and Mandelstam.
From these facts we may even now draw the conclusion that the
domain of validity of the principle of least action has reached far beyond the
boundaries of the mechanics of ponderable bodies. Maupertuis’ high hopes for
the absolute general validity of his principle ...
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