"If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." –
Isaac Newton [1]
Physics (from the
Ancient Greek φύσις
physis meaning "
nature") is the fundamental branch of
science that developed out of the study of nature and
philosophy known, until around the end of the 19th century, as "
natural philosophy". Today, physics is ultimately defined as the study of
matter,
energy and the relationships between them.
[citation needed] Physics is, in some senses, the oldest and most basic pure science; its discoveries find applications throughout the
natural sciences, since matter and energy are the basic constituents of the natural world. The other sciences are generally more limited in their scope and may be considered branches that have split off from physics to become sciences in their own right. Physics today may be divided loosely into
classical physics and
modern physics.
Ancient history
Elements of what became physics were drawn primarily from the fields of
astronomy,
optics, and
mechanics, which were methodologically united through the study of
geometry. These mathematical disciplines began in
antiquity with the
Babylonians and with
Hellenistic writers such as
Archimedes and
Ptolemy.
Ancient philosophy, meanwhile – including what was called "
physics" – focused on explaining nature through ideas such as
Aristotle's
four types of "cause".
Ancient Greece
The move towards a rational understanding of nature began at least since the
Archaic period in Greece (650–480
BCE) with the
Pre-Socratic philosophers. The philosopher
Thales of Miletus (7th and 6th centuries BCE), dubbed "the Father of Science" for refusing to accept various supernatural, religious or mythological explanations for natural
phenomena, proclaimed that every event had a natural cause.
[2] Thales also made advancements in 580 BCE by suggesting that water is
the basic element, experimenting with the attraction between
magnets and rubbed
amber and formulating the first recorded
cosmologies.
Anaximander, famous for his proto-
evolutionary theory, disputed the Thales' ideas and proposed that rather than water, a substance called
apeiron was the building block of all matter. Around 500 BCE,
Heraclitus proposed that the only basic law governing the
Universe was the principle of change and that nothing remains in the same state indefinitely. This observation made him one of the first scholars in ancient physics to address the role of
time in the universe, a key and sometimes contentious concept in modern and present-day physics.
[citation needed] The early physicist
Leucippus (
fl. first half of the 5th century BCE) adamantly opposed the idea of direct
divine intervention in the universe, proposing instead that natural phenomena had a natural cause. Leucippus and his student
Democritus were the first to develop the theory of
atomism, the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called
atoms.
During the
classical period in Greece (6th, 5th and 4th centuries BCE) and in
Hellenistic times,
natural philosophy slowly developed into an exciting and contentious field of study.
Aristotle (
Greek:
Ἀριστοτέλης,
Aristotélēs) (384 – 322 BCE), a student of
Plato, promoted the concept that observation of physical phenomena could ultimately lead to the discovery of the natural laws governing them. Aristotle's writings cover physics,
metaphysics,
poetry,
theater,
music,
logic,
rhetoric,
linguistics,
politics,
government,
ethics,
biology and
zoology. He wrote the first work which refers to that line of study as "Physics" – in the 4th century BCE, Aristotle founded the system known as
Aristotelian physics. He attempted to explain ideas such as
motion (and
gravity) with the theory of
four elements.
Aristotle believed that all matter was made up of aether, or some combination of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. According to Aristotle, these four terrestrial elements are capable of inter-transformation and move toward their natural place, so a stone falls downward toward the center of the cosmos, but flames rise upward toward the
circumference. Eventually,
Aristotelian physics became enormously popular for many centuries in Europe, informing the scientific and scholastic developments of the
Middle Ages. It remained the mainstream scientific paradigm in Europe until the time of
Galileo Galilei and
Isaac Newton.
Early in Classical Greece, knowledge that the Earth is
spherical ("round") was common. Around 240 BCE, as the result
a seminal experiment,
Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE) accurately estimated its circumference. In contrast to Aristotle's geocentric views,
Aristarchus of Samos (
Greek:
Ἀρίσταρχος; c.310 – c.230 BCE) presented an explicit argument for a
heliocentric model of the
Solar system, i.e. for placing the
Sun, not the
Earth, at its centre.
Seleucus of Seleucia, a follower of Aristarchus' heliocentric theory, stated that
the Earth rotated around its own axis, which, in turn,
revolved around the Sun. Though the arguments he used were lost,
Plutarch stated that Seleucus was the first to prove the heliocentric system through reasoning.
In the 3rd century BCE, the
Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (
Greek:
Ἀρχιμήδης (287–212 BCE) – generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time – laid the foundations of
hydrostatics,
statics and calculated the underlying mathematics of the
lever. A leading scientist of classical antiquity, Archimedes also developed elaborate systems of pulleys to move large objects with a minimum of effort. The
Archimedes' screw underpins modern hydroengineering, and his machines of war helped to hold back the armies of Rome in the
First Punic War. Archimedes even tore apart the arguments of Aristotle and his metaphysics, pointing out that it was impossible to separate mathematics and nature and proved it by converting mathematical theories into practical inventions. Furthermore, in his work
On Floating Bodies, around 250 BCE, Archimedes developed the law of
buoyancy, also known as
Archimedes' Principle. In mathematics, Archimedes used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a
parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of
pi. He also defined the
spiral bearing his name, formulae for the
volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers. He also developed the principles of equilibrium states and
centers of gravity, ideas that would influence the Islamic scholars, Galileo, and Newton.
Hipparchus (190–120 BCE), focusing on astronomy and mathematics, used sophisticated geometrical techniques to map the motion of the stars and
planets, even predicting the times that
Solar eclipses would happen. In addition, he added calculations of the distance of the Sun and Moon from the Earth, based upon his improvements to the observational instruments used at that time. Another of the most famous of the early physicists was
Ptolemy (90–168 CE), one of the leading minds during the time of the
Roman Empire. Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the
Almagest (in Greek, Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, "The Great Treatise", originally Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις, "Mathematical Treatise"). The second is the
Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the
Greco-Roman world.
Much of the accumulated knowledge of the ancient world was lost. Even of the works of the better known thinkers, few fragments survived. Although he wrote at least fourteen books, almost nothing of
Hipparchus' direct work survived. Of the 150 reputed
Aristotelian works, only 30 exist, and some of those are "little more than lecture notes".
India and China
The Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The inscriptions on the
edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE) display this number system being used by the Imperial
Mauryas.
Important physical and mathematical traditions also existed in
ancient Chinese and
Indian sciences.
In
Indian philosophy, Maharishi
Kanada was the first to systematically develop a theory of atomism around 200 BCE
[3] though some authors have allotted him an earlier era in the 6th century BCE.
[4][5] It was further elaborated by the
Buddhist atomists Dharmakirti and
Dignāga during the 1st millennium CE.
[6] Pakudha Kaccayana, a 6th-century BCE Indian philosopher and contemporary of
Gautama Buddha, had also propounded ideas about the atomic constitution of the material world. These philosophers believed that other elements (except ether) were physically palpable and hence comprised minuscule particles of matter. The last minuscule particle of matter that could not be subdivided further was termed
Parmanu. These philosophers considered the atom to be indestructible and hence eternal. The Buddhists thought atoms to be minute objects unable to be seen to the naked eye that come into being and vanish in an instant. The
Vaisheshika school of philosophers believed that an atom was a mere point in
space. Indian theories about the atom are greatly abstract and enmeshed in philosophy as they were based on logic and not on personal experience or experimentation. In
Indian astronomy,
Aryabhata's
Aryabhatiya (499 CE) proposed the
Earth's rotation, while
Nilakantha Somayaji (1444–1544) of the
Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics proposed a semi-heliocentric model resembling the
Tychonic system.
The study of
magnetism in
Ancient China dates back to the 4th century BCE. (in the
Book of the Devil Valley Master),
[7] A main contributor to this field was
Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a
polymath and statesman who was the first to describe the
magnetic-needle compass used for navigation, as well as establishing the concept of
true north. In optics, Shen Kuo independently developed a
camera obscura.
[8]
Muslim scientists
During the period of time known as the
Dark Ages (5th to 15th centuries) in Europe, much scientific progress occurred in the Muslim world. The scientific research of the Islamic scientists is often overlooked due to the conflict of the
Crusades and "it's possible, too, that many scholars in the
Renaissance later downplayed or even disguised their connection to the Middle East for both political and religious reasons."
[9] The
Islamic Abbasid caliphs gathered many classic works of antiquity and had them translated into
Arabic within the
House of Wisdom in
Baghdad,
Iraq.
Islamic philosophers such as
al-Kindi (
Latin name: "Alkindus"),
al-Farabi ("Alpharabius") and
Ibn Rushd (Rušd) ("Averroes") reinterpreted Greek thought in the context of their religion.
Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), known as "Avicenna", was a polymath from
Bukhara (now in present-day
Uzbekistan) responsible for important contributions to physics, optics, philosophy and
medicine. He is most famous for writing
The Canon of Medicine, a text that was used to teach student doctors in Europe until the 1600s.
Important contributions were made by
Ibn al-Haytham (965–1040), a mathematician from
Basra (in present-day Iraq) considered one of the founders of modern
optics. Ptolemy and Aristotle theorised that light either shone from the eye to illuminate objects or that light emanated from objects themselves, whereas al-Haytham (known by the Latin name Alhazen) suggested that light travels to the eye in rays from different points on an object. The works of Ibn al-Haytham and
Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī eventually passed on to
Western Europe where they were studied by scholars such as
Roger Bacon and
Witelo.
[10][note 2] Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian scientist, calculated the length of a solar year to ten decimal places and was only out by a fraction of a second when compared to our modern day calculations. He used this to compose a calendar considered more accurate than the
Gregorian calendar that came along 500 years later. He is classified as one of the world's first great science communicators, said, for example to have convinced a
Sufi theologian that the world turns on an axis.
Muḥammad ibn Jābir al-Ḥarrānī al-Battānī (858 – 929), from
Harran, Turkey, further developed
trigonometry (first conceptualised in Ancient Greece) as an independent branch of mathematics, developing relationships such as tan
θ = sin
θ / cos
θ. His motivation was to obtain the ability to locate
Mecca from any given geographical point so that participants in Muslim rituals could fulfil the requirement to face Mecca and to aid pilgrimages to Mecca itself (
hajj).
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274), an astronomer and mathematician from Baghdad, authored the
Treasury of Astronomy, a remarkably accurate table of planetary movements that reformed the existing planetary model of Roman astronomer Ptolemy by describing a uniform circular motion of all planets in their
orbits. This work led to the later discovery, by one of his students, that planets actually have an elliptical orbit. Copernicus later drew heavily on the work of al-Din al-Tusi and his students, but without acknowledgment.
[9] The gradual chipping away of the Ptolemaic system paved the way for the revolutionary idea that the Earth actually orbited the Sun (
heliocentrism).
Jābir ibn Hayyān (721–815) was a proto-
chemist (an
alchemist) from
Iran who, in his quest to make
gold from other metals, discovered strong acids such as
sulphuric,
hydrochloric and
nitric acids. He was also the first person to identify the only substance that can dissolve gold:
aqua regia ("royal water"), a
volatile mix of
hydrochloric and
nitric acid. It is disputed whether Jabir was the first to use or describe
distillation, but there is definite evidence that he was the first to perform distillation using an
alembic (a
still, from the Arabic
al-inbiq). The most famous Persian mathematician is considered to be
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (780–850), who produced a comprehensive guide to the numbering system developed from the ten-digit ("0", "1", ... "9") Indian
Brahmi system. The term "
algebra" is derived from the Arabic word
al-jabr ("balancing") that al-Khwārizmī used to describe the mathematical operations he introduced.
Medieval Europe
Awareness of ancient works re-entered the West through
translations from Arabic to Latin. Their re-introduction, combined with
Judeo-Islamic theological commentaries, had a great influence on
Medieval philosophers such as
Thomas Aquinas.
Scholastic European scholars, who sought to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with
Christian theology, proclaimed Aristotle the greatest thinker of the ancient world. In cases where they didn't directly contradict the Bible, Aristotelian physics became the foundation for the physical explanations of the European Churches.
Based on Aristotelian physics, Scholastic physics described things as moving according to their essential nature. Celestial objects were described as moving in circles, because perfect circular motion was considered an innate property of objects that existed in the uncorrupted realm of the
celestial spheres. The
theory of impetus, the ancestor to the concepts of
inertia and
momentum, was developed along similar lines by
medieval philosophers such as
John Philoponus and
Jean Buridan. Motions below the lunar sphere were seen as imperfect, and thus could not be expected to exhibit consistent motion. More idealized motion in the "sublunary" realm could only be achieved through
artifice, and prior to the 17th century, many did not view artificial experiments as a valid means of learning about the natural world. Physical explanations in the sublunary realm revolved around tendencies. Stones contained the element earth, and earthly objects tended to move in a straight line toward the centre of the earth (and the universe in the Aristotelian geocentric view) unless otherwise prevented from doing so.
Scientific revolution
During the 16th and 17th centuries, a large advancement of scientific progress known as the
Scientific revolution took place in Europe. Dissatisfaction with older philosophical approaches had begun earlier and had produced other changes in society, such as the
Protestant Reformation, but the revolution in science began when
natural philosophers began to mount a sustained attack on the
Scholastic philosophical program and supposed that mathematical descriptive schemes adopted from such fields as mechanics and astronomy could actually yield universally valid characterizations of motion and other concepts.
Nicolaus Copernicus
A breakthrough in
astronomy was made by Polish astronomer
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) when, in 1543, he proposed a
heliocentric model of the
Solar system, ostensibly as a means to render tables charting planetary motion more accurate and to simplify their production. In heliocentric models of the Solar system, the Earth orbits the Sun along with other bodies in
Earth's galaxy, a contradiction according to the Greek-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (2nd century CE; see above),
whose system placed the Earth at the center of the Universe and had been accepted for over 1,400 years. The Greek astronomer
Aristarchus of Samos (c.310 – c.230 BCE) had suggested that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but Copernicus' theory was the first to be accepted as a valid scientific possibility. Copernicus' book presenting the theory (
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres") was published just before his death in 1543 and, as it is now generally considered to mark the beginning of modern astronomy, is also considered to mark the beginning of the Scientific revolution.
[citation needed] Copernicus' new perspective, along with the accurate observations made by
Tycho Brahe, enabled German astronomer
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) to formulate
his laws regarding planetary motion that remain in use today.
Galileo Galilei
The Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was the central figure in the Scientific revolution and famous for his support for Copernicanism, his astronomical discoveries, empirical experiments and his improvement of the telescope. As a mathematician, Galileo's role in the
university culture of his era was subordinated to the three major topics of study:
law,
medicine, and
theology (which was closely allied to philosophy). Galileo, however, felt that the descriptive content of the technical disciplines warranted philosophical interest, particularly because mathematical analysis of astronomical observations – notably, Copernicus' radical analysis of the
relative motions of the Sun, Earth, Moon, and planets – indicated that philosophers' statements about the nature of the universe could be shown to be in error. Galileo also performed mechanical experiments, insisting that motion itself – regardless of whether it was produced "naturally" or "artificially" (i.e. deliberately) – had universally consistent characteristics that could be described mathematically.
Galileo's early studies at the
University of Pisa were in medicine, but he was soon drawn to mathematics and physics. At 19, he discovered (and,
subsequently, verified) the
isochronal nature of the
pendulum when, using his pulse, he timed the oscillations of a swinging lamp in
Pisa's cathedral and found that it remained the same for each swing regardless of the swing's
amplitude. He soon became known through his invention of a
hydrostatic balance and for his treatise on the
center of gravity of solid bodies. While teaching at the University of Pisa (1589–92), he initiated his experiments concerning the laws of bodies in motion that brought results so contradictory to the accepted teachings of Aristotle that strong antagonism was aroused. He found that bodies do not fall with velocities
proportional to their weights. The famous story in which Galileo is said to have
dropped weights from the
Leaning Tower of Pisa is apocryphal, but he did find that the
path of a projectile is a
parabola and is credited with conclusions that anticipated
Newton's laws of motion (e.g. the notion of
inertia). Among these is what is now called
Galilean relativity, the first precisely formulated statement about properties of space and time outside
three-dimensional geometry.
[citation needed]
Galileo has been called the "father of modern
observational astronomy",
[11] the "father of
modern physics",
[12] the "father of science",
[12] and "the father of
modern science".
[13] According to
Stephen Hawking, "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science."
[14] As religious orthodoxy decreed a
geocentric or
Tychonic understanding of the Solar system, Galileo's support for
heliocentrism provoked controversy and he was tried by the
Inquisition. Found "vehemently suspect of heresy", he was forced to recant and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
The contributions that Galileo made to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the
phases of Venus; his discovery, in 1609, of
Jupiter's four largest moons (subsequently given the collective name of the "
Galilean moons"); and the observation and analysis of
sunspots. Galileo also pursued applied science and technology, inventing, among other instruments, a military
compass. His discovery of the Jovian moons
was published in 1610 and enabled him to obtain the position of mathematician and philosopher to the
Medici court. As such, he was expected to engage in debates with philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition and received a large audience for his own publications such as the
Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (published abroad following his arrest for the publication of
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) and
The Assayer.
[15][16] Galileo's interest in experimenting with and formulating mathematical descriptions of motion established experimentation as an integral part of natural philosophy. This tradition, combining with the non-mathematical emphasis on the collection of "experimental histories" by philosophical reformists such as
William Gilbert and
Francis Bacon, drew a significant following in the years leading up to and following Galileo's death, including
Evangelista Torricelli and the participants in the
Accademia del Cimento in Italy;
Marin Mersenne and
Blaise Pascal in France;
Christiaan Huygens in the Netherlands; and
Robert Hooke and
Robert Boyle in England.
René Descartes
The French philosopher
René Descartes (1596–1650) was well-connected to, and influential within, the experimental philosophy networks of the day. Descartes had a more ambitious agenda, however, which was geared toward replacing the Scholastic philosophical tradition altogether. Questioning the reality interpreted through the senses, Descartes sought to re-establish philosophical explanatory schemes by reducing all perceived phenomena to being attributable to the motion of an invisible sea of "corpuscles". (Notably, he reserved human thought and
God from his scheme, holding these to be separate from the physical universe). In proposing this philosophical framework, Descartes supposed that different kinds of motion, such as that of planets versus that of terrestrial objects, were not fundamentally different, but were merely different manifestations of an endless chain of corpuscular motions obeying universal principles. Particularly influential were his explanations for circular astronomical motions in terms of the vortex motion of corpuscles in space (Descartes argued, in accord with the beliefs, if not the methods, of the Scholastics, that a
vacuum could not exist), and his explanation of
gravity in terms of corpuscles pushing objects downward.
[17][18][19]
Descartes, like Galileo, was convinced of the importance of mathematical explanation, and he and his followers were key figures in the development of mathematics and geometry in the 17th century. Cartesian mathematical descriptions of motion held that all mathematical formulations had to be justifiable in terms of direct physical action, a position held by
Huygens and the German philosopher
Gottfried Leibniz, who, while following in the Cartesian tradition, developed his own philosophical alternative to Scholasticism, which he outlined in his 1714 work,
The Monadology. Descartes has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent
Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. In particular, his
Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the
Cartesian coordinate system — allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system — was named after him. He is credited as the father of
analytical geometry, the bridge between
algebra and
geometry, important to the discovery of
calculus and
analysis.
Isaac Newton
The late 17th and early 18th centuries saw the achievements of the greatest figure of the Scientific revolution:
Cambridge University physicist and mathematician
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived. Newton, a fellow of the
Royal Society of England, combined his own discoveries in mechanics and astronomy to earlier ones to create a single system for describing the workings of the universe. Newton formulated
three laws of motion and the
law of universal gravitation, the latter of which could be used to explain the behavior not only of falling bodies on the earth but also planets and other celestial bodies in the heavens. To arrive at his results, Newton invented one form of an entirely new branch of mathematics:
calculus (also invented independently by
Gottfried Leibniz), which was to become an essential tool in much of the later development in most branches of physics. Newton's findings were set forth in his
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), the publication of which in 1687 marked the beginning of the modern period of mechanics and astronomy.
Newton was able to refute the Cartesian mechanical tradition that all motions should be explained with respect to the immediate force exerted by corpuscles. Using his three laws of motion and law of universal gravitation, Newton removed the idea that objects followed paths determined by natural shapes and instead demonstrated that not only regularly observed paths, but all the future motions of any body could be deduced mathematically based on knowledge of their existing motion, their
mass, and the
forces acting upon them. However, observed celestial motions did not precisely conform to a Newtonian treatment, and Newton, who was also deeply interested in
theology, imagined that God intervened to ensure the continued stability of the solar system.
Newton's principles (but not his mathematical treatments) proved controversial with Continental philosophers, who found his lack of
metaphysical explanation for movement and gravitation philosophically unacceptable. Beginning around 1700, a bitter rift opened between the Continental and British philosophical traditions, which were stoked by heated, ongoing, and viciously personal disputes between the followers of Newton and Leibniz concerning priority over the analytical techniques of
calculus, which each had developed independently. Initially, the Cartesian and Leibnizian traditions prevailed on the Continent (leading to the dominance of the Leibnizian calculus notation everywhere except Britain). Newton himself remained privately disturbed at the lack of a philosophical understanding of gravitation, while insisting in his writings that none was necessary to infer its reality. As the 18th century progressed, Continental natural philosophers increasingly accepted the Newtonians' willingness to forgo
ontological metaphysical explanations for mathematically described motions.
[20][21][22]
Newton built the first functioning
reflecting telescope[23] and developed a theory of color, published in
Opticks, based on the observation that a
prism decomposes
white light into the many colours forming the
visible spectrum. While Newton explained light as being composed of tiny particles, a rival theory of light which explained its behavior in terms of waves was presented in 1690 by
Christiaan Huygens. However, the belief in the mechanistic philosophy coupled with Newton's reputation meant that the wave theory saw relatively little support until the 19th century. Newton also formulated
an empirical law of cooling, studied the
speed of sound, investigated
power series, demonstrated the
generalised binomial theorem and developed
a method for approximating the
roots of a function.
His work on infinite series was inspired by
Simon Stevin's decimals.
[24] Most importantly, Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, which were neither capricious nor malevolent. By demonstrating the consistency between
Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his own theory of gravitation, Newton also removed the last doubts about heliocentrism. By bringing together all the ideas set forth during the Scientific revolution, Newton effectively established the foundation for modern society in mathematics and science.
Other achievements
Other branches of physics also received attention during the period of the Scientific revolution.
Wilbert Gilbert, court physician to
Queen Elizabeth I, published an important work on magnetism in 1600, describing how the earth itself behaves like a giant magnet.
Robert Boyle (1627–91) studied the behavior of gases enclosed in a chamber and formulated the
gas law named for him; he also contributed to physiology and to the founding of modern chemistry.
Another important factor in the scientific revolution was the rise of learned societies and academies in various countries. The earliest of these were in Italy and Germany and were short-lived. More influential were the
Royal Society of England (1660) and the
Academy of Sciences in France (1666). The former was a private institution in London and included such scientists as
John Wallis,
William Brouncker,
Thomas Sydenham,
John Mayow, and
Christopher Wren (who contributed not only to architecture but also to astronomy and anatomy); the latter, in Paris, was a government institution and included as a foreign member the Dutchman Huygens. In the 18th century, important royal academies were established at Berlin (1700) and at St. Petersburg (1724). The societies and academies provided the principal opportunities for the publication and discussion of scientific results during and after the scientific revolution. In 1690,
James Bernoulli showed that the
cycloid is the solution to the tautochrone problem; and the following year, in 1691,
Johann Bernoulli showed that a chain freely suspended from two points will form a
catenary, the curve with the lowest possible
center of gravity available to any chain hung between two fixed points. He then showed, in 1696, that the cycloid is the solution to the
brachistochrone problem.
Early thermodynamics
A precursor of the engine was designed by the German scientist
Otto von Guericke who, in 1650, designed and built the world's first
vacuum pump and created the world's first ever
vacuum known as the
Magdeburg hemispheres experiment. He was driven to make a vacuum to disprove
Aristotle's long-held supposition that
'Nature abhors a vacuum'. Shortly thereafter, Irish physicist and chemist Boyle had learned of Guericke's designs and in 1656, in coordination with English scientist
Robert Hooke, built an air pump. Using this pump, Boyle and Hooke noticed the pressure-volume correlation for a gas:
PV =
k, where
P is
pressure,
V is
volume and
k is a constant: this relationship is known as
Boyle's Law. In that time, air was assumed to be a system of motionless particles, and not interpreted as a system of moving molecules. The concept of thermal motion came two centuries later. Therefore Boyle's publication in 1660 speaks about a mechanical concept: the air spring.
[25] Later, after the invention of the thermometer, the property temperature could be quantified. This tool gave
Gay-Lussac the opportunity to derive
his law, which led shortly later to the
ideal gas law. But, already before the establishment of the ideal gas law, an associate of Boyle's named
Denis Papin built in 1679 a bone digester, which is a closed vessel with a tightly fitting lid that confines steam until a high pressure is generated.
Later designs implemented a steam release valve to keep the machine from exploding. By watching the valve rhythmically move up and down, Papin conceived of the idea of a piston and cylinder engine. He did not however follow through with his design. Nevertheless, in 1697, based on Papin's designs, engineer
Thomas Savery built the first engine. Although these early engines were crude and inefficient, they attracted the attention of the leading scientists of the time. Hence, prior to 1698 and the invention of the
Savery Engine, horses were used to power pulleys, attached to buckets, which lifted water out of flooded salt mines in England. In the years to follow, more variations of steam engines were built, such as the
Newcomen Engine, and later the
Watt Engine. In time, these early engines would eventually be utilized in place of horses. Thus, each engine began to be associated with a certain amount of "horse power" depending upon how many horses it had replaced. The main problem with these first engines was that they were slow and clumsy, converting less than 2% of the input
fuel into useful work. In other words, large quantities of coal (or wood) had to be burned to yield only a small fraction of work output. Hence the need for a new science of engine
dynamics was born.
18th-century developments
During the 18th century, the mechanics founded by Newton was developed by several scientists as more mathematicians learned calculus and elaborated upon its initial formulation. The application of mathematical analysis to problems of motion was known as rational mechanics, or mixed mathematics (and was later termed
classical mechanics).
Mechanics
In 1714,
Brook Taylor derived the
fundamental frequency of a stretched vibrating string in terms of its tension and mass per unit length by solving a
differential equation. The Swiss mathematician
Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) made important mathematical studies of the behavior of gases, anticipating the kinetic theory of gases developed more than a century later, and has been referred to as the first mathematical physicist.
[26] In 1733, Daniel Bernoulli derived the fundamental frequency and
harmonics of a hanging chain by solving a differential equation. In 1734, Bernoulli solved the differential equation for the vibrations of an elastic bar clamped at one end. Bernoulli's treatment of
fluid dynamics and his examination of
fluid flow was introduced in his 1738 work
Hydrodynamica.
Rational mechanics dealt primarily with the development of elaborate mathematical treatments of observed motions, using Newtonian principles as a basis, and emphasized improving the tractability of complex calculations and developing of legitimate means of analytical approximation. A representative contemporary textbook was published by
Johann Baptiste Horvath. By the end of the century analytical treatments were rigorous enough to verify the stability of the
solar system solely on the basis of Newton's laws without reference to divine intervention—even as deterministic treatments of systems as simple as the
three body problem in gravitation remained intractable.
[27] In 1705,
Edmond Halley predicted the periodicity of
Halley's Comet,
William Herschel discovered
Uranus in 1781, and
Henry Cavendish measured the
gravitational constant and determined the mass of the Earth in 1798. In 1783,
John Michell suggested that some objects might be so massive that not even light could escape from them.
In 1739,
Leonhard Euler solved the ordinary differential equation for a forced harmonic oscillator and noticed the resonance phenomenon. In 1742,
Colin Maclaurin discovered his uniformly rotating self-gravitating spheroids. British work, carried on by mathematicians such as Taylor and Maclaurin, fell behind Continental developments as the century progressed. Meanwhile, work flourished at scientific academies on the Continent, led by such mathematicians as Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, and
Legendre. In 1743,
Jean le Rond d'Alembert published his "Traite de Dynamique", in which he introduces the concept of generalized forces for accelerating systems and systems with constraints. In 1747,
Pierre Louis Maupertuis applied minimum principles to mechanics. In 1759, Euler solved the partial differential equation for the vibration of a rectangular drum. In 1764, Euler examined the partial differential equation for the vibration of a circular drum and found one of the Bessel function solutions. In 1776,
John Smeaton published a paper on experiments relating power,
work,
momentum and
kinetic energy, and supporting the
conservation of energy. In 1788, Joseph Louis Lagrange presented
Lagrange's equations of motion in
Mécanique Analytique. In 1789,
Antoine Lavoisier states the law of
conservation of mass. Newton's mechanics received brilliant exposition in both Lagrange's 1788 work and the
Celestial Mechanics (1799–1825) of
Pierre-Simon Laplace.
Thermodynamics
During the 18th century, thermodynamics was developed through the theories of weightless
"imponderable fluids", such as heat ("caloric"),
electricity, and
phlogiston (which was rapidly overthrown as a concept following
Lavoisier's identification of
oxygen gas late in the century). Assuming that these concepts were real fluids, their flow could be traced through a mechanical apparatus or chemical reactions. This tradition of experimentation led to the development of new kinds of experimental apparatus, such as the
Leyden Jar; and new kinds of measuring instruments, such as the
calorimeter, and improved versions of old ones, such as the
thermometer. Experiments also produced new concepts, such as the
University of Glasgow experimenter
Joseph Black's notion of
latent heat and Philadelphia intellectual
Benjamin Franklin's characterization of electrical fluid as flowing between places of excess and deficit (a concept later reinterpreted in terms of positive and negative
charges). Franklin also showed that lightning is electricity in 1752.
The accepted theory of heat in the 18th century viewed it as a kind of fluid, called
caloric; although this theory was later shown to be erroneous, a number of scientists adhering to it nevertheless made important discoveries useful in developing the modern theory, including
Joseph Black (1728–99) and
Henry Cavendish (1731–1810). Opposed to this caloric theory, which had been developed mainly by the chemists, was the less accepted theory dating from Newton's time that heat is due to the motions of the particles of a substance. This mechanical theory gained support in 1798 from the cannon-boring experiments of Count Rumford (
Benjamin Thompson), who found a direct relationship between heat and mechanical energy.
While it was recognized early in the 18th century that finding absolute theories of electrostatic and magnetic force akin to Newton's principles of motion would be an important achievement, none were forthcoming. This impossibility only slowly disappeared as experimental practice became more widespread and more refined in the early years of the 19th century in places such as the newly established
Royal Institution in London. Meanwhile, the analytical methods of rational mechanics began to be applied to experimental phenomena, most influentially with the French mathematician
Joseph Fourier's analytical treatment of the flow of heat, as published in 1822.
[28][29][30] Joseph Priestley proposed an electrical inverse-square law in 1767, and
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb introduced the inverse-square law of
electrostatics in 1798.
At the end of the century, the members of the
French Academy of Sciences had attained clear dominance in the field.
[22][31][32][33] At the same time, the experimental tradition established by Galileo and his followers persisted. The
Royal Society and the
French Academy of Sciences were major centers for the performance and reporting of experimental work. Experiments in mechanics, optics,
magnetism,
static electricity,
chemistry, and
physiology were not clearly distinguished from each other during the 18th century, but significant differences in explanatory schemes and, thus, experiment design were emerging. Chemical experimenters, for instance, defied attempts to enforce a scheme of abstract Newtonian forces onto chemical affiliations, and instead focused on the isolation and classification of chemical substances and reactions.
[34]
19th century
In 1800,
Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery (known of the
voltaic pile) and thus improved the way electric currents could also be studied. A year later,
Thomas Young demonstrated the wave nature of light—which received strong experimental support from the work of
Augustin-Jean Fresnel—and the principle of interference. In 1813,
Peter Ewart supported the idea of the conservation of energy in his paper
On the measure of moving force. In 1820,
Hans Christian Ørsted found that a current-carrying conductor gives rise to a magnetic force surrounding it, and within a week after Ørsted's discovery reached France,
André-Marie Ampère discovered that two parallel electric currents will exert forces on each other. In 1821,
William Hamilton began his analysis of Hamilton's characteristic function. In 1821,
Michael Faraday built an electricity-powered motor, while
Georg Ohm stated his law of electrical resistance in 1826, expressing the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance in an electric circuit. A year later, botanist
Robert Brown discovered
Brownian motion: pollen grains in water undergoing movement resulting from their bombardment by the fast-moving atoms or molecules in the liquid. In 1829,
Gaspard Coriolis introduced the terms of
work (force times distance) and
kinetic energy with the meanings they have today.
In 1831, Faraday (and independently
Joseph Henry) discovered the reverse effect, the production of an electric potential or current through magnetism – known as
electromagnetic induction; these two discoveries are the basis of the electric motor and the electric generator, respectively. In 1834,
Carl Jacobi discovered his uniformly rotating self-gravitating
ellipsoids. In 1834,
John Russell observed a nondecaying solitary water wave (
soliton) in the
Union Canal near
Edinburgh and used a water tank to study the dependence of solitary water wave velocities on wave amplitude and water depth. In 1835, William Hamilton stated
Hamilton's canonical equations of motion. In the same year,
Gaspard Coriolis examined theoretically the mechanical efficiency of waterwheels, and deduced the
Coriolis effect. In 1841,
Julius Robert von Mayer, an
amateur scientist, wrote a paper on the conservation of energy but his lack of academic training led to its rejection. In 1842,
Christian Doppler proposed the
Doppler effect. In 1847,
Hermann von Helmholtz formally stated the law of conservation of energy. In 1851,
Léon Foucault showed the Earth's rotation with a huge
pendulum (
Foucault pendulum).
There were important advances in
continuum mechanics in the first half of the century, namely formulation of
laws of elasticity for solids and discovery of
Navier–Stokes equations for fluids.
Laws of thermodynamics
In the 19th century, the connection between heat and mechanical energy was established quantitatively by
Julius Robert von Mayer and
James Prescott Joule, who measured the mechanical equivalent of heat in the 1840s. In 1849, Joule published results from his series of experiments (including the paddlewheel experiment) which show that heat is a form of energy, a fact that was accepted in the 1850s. The relation between heat and energy was important for the development of steam engines, and in 1824 the experimental and theoretical work of
Sadi Carnot was published. Carnot captured some of the ideas of thermodynamics in his discussion of the efficiency of an idealized engine. Sadi Carnot's work provided a basis for the formulation of the
first law of thermodynamics—a restatement of the
law of conservation of energy—which was stated around 1850 by
William Thomson, later known as Lord Kelvin, and
Rudolf Clausius. Lord Kelvin, who had extended the concept of absolute zero from gases to all substances in 1848, drew upon the engineering theory of
Lazare Carnot, Sadi Carnot, and
Émile Clapeyron–as well as the experimentation of James Prescott Joule on the interchangeability of mechanical, chemical, thermal, and electrical forms of work—to formulate the first law.
Kelvin and Clausius also stated the
second law of thermodynamics, which was originally formulated in terms of the fact that heat does not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a hotter. Other formulations followed quickly (for example, the second law was expounded in Thomson and
Peter Guthrie Tait's influential work
Treatise on Natural Philosophy) and Kelvin in particular understood some of the law's general implications. The second Law was the idea that gases consist of molecules in motion had been discussed in some detail by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738, but had fallen out of favor, and was revived by Clausius in 1857. In 1850,
Hippolyte Fizeau and
Léon Foucault measured the
speed of light in water and find that it is slower than in air, in support of the wave model of light. In 1852, Joule and Thomson demonstrated that a rapidly expanding gas cools, later named the
Joule–Thomson effect or Joule–Kelvin effect.
Hermann von Helmholtz puts forward the idea of the
heat death of the universe in 1854, the same year that Clausius established the importance of
dQ/T (
Clausius's theorem) (though he did not yet name the quantity).
James Clerk Maxwell
In 1859,
James Clerk Maxwell discovered the
distribution law of molecular velocities. Maxwell showed that electric and magnetic fields are propagated outward from their source at a speed equal to that of light and that light is one of several kinds of electromagnetic radiation, differing only in frequency and wavelength from the others. In 1859, Maxwell worked out the mathematics of the distribution of velocities of the molecules of a gas. The wave theory of light was widely accepted by the time of Maxwell's work on the electromagnetic field, and afterward the study of light and that of electricity and magnetism were closely related. In 1864 James Maxwell published his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field, and stated that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon in the 1873 publication of Maxwell's
Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. This work drew upon theoretical work by German theoreticians such as
Carl Friedrich Gauss and
Wilhelm Weber. The encapsulation of heat in particulate motion, and the addition of electromagnetic forces to Newtonian dynamics established an enormously robust theoretical underpinning to physical observations.
The prediction that light represented a transmission of energy in wave form through a "
luminiferous ether", and the seeming confirmation of that prediction with Helmholtz student
Heinrich Hertz's 1888 detection of
electromagnetic radiation, was a major triumph for physical theory and raised the possibility that even more fundamental theories based on the field could soon be developed.
[35][36][37][38] Experimental confirmation of Maxwell's theory was provided by Hertz, who generated and detected electric waves in 1886 and verified their properties, at the same time foreshadowing their application in radio, television, and other devices. In 1887, Heinrich Hertz discovered the
photoelectric effect. Research on the transmission of electromagnetic waves began soon after, with many scientists and inventors conducting experiments during the 1890s leading to the first successful commercial
wireless telegraphy system developed by
Guglielmo Marconi at the end of that decade
[39] (see
invention of radio).
The atomic theory of matter had been proposed again in the early 19th century by the chemist
John Dalton and became one of the hypotheses of the kinetic-molecular theory of gases developed by Clausius and James Clerk Maxwell to explain the laws of thermodynamics. The kinetic theory in turn led to the statistical mechanics of
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) and
Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903), which held that energy (including heat) was a measure of the speed of particles. Interrelating the statistical likelihood of certain states of organization of these particles with the energy of those states, Clausius reinterpreted the dissipation of energy to be the statistical tendency of molecular configurations to pass toward increasingly likely, increasingly disorganized states (coining the term "
entropy" to describe the disorganization of a state). The statistical versus absolute interpretations of the second law of thermodynamics set up a dispute that would last for several decades (producing arguments such as "
Maxwell's demon"), and that would not be held to be definitively resolved until the behavior of atoms was firmly established in the early 20th century.
[40][41] In 1902,
James Jeans found the length scale required for gravitational perturbations to grow in a static nearly homogeneous medium.
20th century: birth of modern physics
At the end of the 19th century, physics had evolved to the point at which
classical mechanics could cope with highly complex problems involving macroscopic situations; thermodynamics and kinetic theory were well established; geometrical and physical optics could be understood in terms of electromagnetic waves; and the conservation laws for energy and momentum (and mass) were widely accepted. So profound were these and other developments that it was generally accepted that all the important laws of physics had been discovered and that, henceforth, research would be concerned with clearing up minor problems and particularly with improvements of method and measurement. However, around 1900 serious doubts arose about the completeness of the classical theories—the triumph of Maxwell's theories, for example, was undermined by inadequacies that had already begun to appear—and their inability to explain certain physical phenomena, such as the energy distribution in
blackbody radiation and the
photoelectric effect, while some of the theoretical formulations led to paradoxes when pushed to the limit. Prominent physicists such as
Hendrik Lorentz,
Emil Cohn,
Ernst Wiechert and
Wilhelm Wien believed that some modification of Maxwell's equations might provide the basis for all physical laws. These shortcomings of
classical physics were never to be resolved and new ideas were required. At the beginning of the 20th century a major revolution shook the world of physics, which led to a new era, generally referred to as
modern physics.
[42]
Radiation experiments
In the 19th century, experimenters began to detect unexpected forms of radiation:
Wilhelm Röntgen caused a sensation with his discovery of
X-rays in 1895; in 1896
Henri Becquerel discovered that certain kinds of matter emit radiation on their own accord. In 1897,
J. J. Thomson discovered the
electron, and new radioactive elements found by
Marie and
Pierre Curie raised questions about the supposedly indestructible atom and the nature of matter. Marie and Pierre coined the term "
radioactivity" to describe this property of matter, and isolated the radioactive elements
radium and
polonium.
Ernest Rutherford and
Frederick Soddy identified two of Becquerel's forms of radiation with electrons and the element
helium. Rutherford identified and named two types of radioactivity and in 1911 interpreted experimental evidence as showing that the atom consists of a dense, positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Classical theory, however, predicted that this structure should be unstable. Classical theory had also failed to explain successfully two other experimental results that appeared in the late 19th century. One of these was the demonstration by
Albert A. Michelson and
Edward W. Morley—known as the
Michelson–Morley experiment—which showed there did not seem to be a preferred frame of reference, at rest with respect to the hypothetical luminiferous ether, for describing electromagnetic phenomena. Studies of radiation and radioactive decay continued to be a preeminent focus for physical and chemical research through the 1930s, when the discovery of
nuclear fission opened the way to the practical exploitation of what came to be called
"atomic" energy.
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity
In 1905 a young, 26-year-old German physicist (then a Bern patent clerk) named
Albert Einstein (1879–1955), showed how measurements of time and space are affected by motion between an observer and what is being observed. To say that Einstein's radical theory of relativity revolutionized science is no exaggeration. Although Einstein made many other important contributions to science, the theory of relativity alone represents one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. Although the concept of relativity was not introduced by Einstein, his major contribution was the recognition that the
speed of light in a vacuum is constant, i.e. the same for all observers, and an absolute physical boundary for motion. This does not impact a person's day-to-day life since most objects travel at speeds much slower than light speed. For objects traveling near light speed, however, the theory of relativity shows that clocks associated with those objects will run more slowly and that the objects shorten in length according to measurements of an observer on Earth. Einstein also derived the famous equation,
E =
mc2, which expresses the
equivalence of mass and energy.
Special relativity
Einstein argued that the speed of light was a constant in all
inertial reference frames and that electromagnetic laws should remain valid independent of reference frame—assertions which rendered the ether "superfluous" to physical theory, and that held that observations of time and length varied relative to how the observer was moving with respect to the object being measured (what came to be called the "
special theory of relativity"). It also followed that mass and energy were interchangeable quantities according to the equation
E=mc2. In another paper published the same year, Einstein asserted that electromagnetic radiation was transmitted in discrete quantities ("
quanta"), according to a constant that the theoretical physicist
Max Planck had posited in 1900 to arrive at an accurate theory for the distribution of
blackbody radiation—an assumption that explained the strange properties of the
photoelectric effect.
The special theory of relativity is a formulation of the relationship between physical observations and the concepts of space and time. The theory arose out of contradictions between electromagnetism and Newtonian mechanics and had great impact on both those areas. The original historical issue was whether it was meaningful to discuss the electromagnetic wave-carrying "ether" and motion relative to it and also whether one could detect such motion, as was unsuccessfully attempted in the Michelson–Morley experiment. Einstein demolished these questions and the ether concept in his special theory of relativity. However, his basic formulation does not involve detailed electromagnetic theory. It arises out of the question: "What is time?" Newton, in the
Principia (1686), had given an unambiguous answer: "Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration." This definition is basic to all classical physics.
Einstein had the genius to question it, and found that it was incomplete. Instead, each "observer" necessarily makes use of his or her own scale of time, and for two observers in relative motion, their time-scales will differ. This induces a related effect on position measurements. Space and time become intertwined concepts, fundamentally dependent on the observer. Each observer presides over his or her own space-time framework or coordinate system. There being no absolute frame of reference, all observers of given events make different but equally valid (and reconcilable) measurements. What remains absolute is stated in Einstein's relativity postulate: "The basic laws of physics are identical for two observers who have a constant relative velocity with respect to each other."
Special Relativity had a profound effect on physics: started as a rethinking of the theory of electromagnetism, it found a new
symmetry law of nature, now called
Poincaré symmetry, that replaced the old Galilean (see
above) symmetry.
Special Relativity exerted another long-lasting effect on
dynamics. Although initially it was credited with the "unification of mass and energy", it became evident that
relativistic dynamics established a firm
distinction between
rest mass, which is an invariant (observer independent) property of a
particle or system of particles, and the
energy and
momentum of a system. The latter two are separately
conserved in all situations but not invariant with respect to different observers. The term
mass in
particle physics underwent a
semantic change, and since the late 20th century it almost exclusively denotes the
rest (or invariant) mass.
General relativity
By 1916, Einstein was able to generalize this further, to deal with all states of motion including non-uniform acceleration, which became the general theory of relativity. In this theory Einstein also specified a new concept, the curvature of space-time, which described the gravitational effect at every point in space. In fact, the curvature of space-time completely replaced Newton's universal law of gravitation. According to Einstein, gravitational force in the normal sense is a kind of illusion caused by the geometry of space. The presence of a mass causes a curvature of space-time in the vicinity of the mass, and this curvature dictates the space-time path that all freely-moving objects must follow. It was also predicted from this theory that light should be subject to gravity - all of which was verified experimentally. This aspect of relativity explained the phenomena of light bending around the sun, predicted black holes as well as properties of the
Cosmic microwave background radiation — a discovery rendering fundamental anomalies in the classic Steady-State hypothesis. For his work on relativity, the photoelectric effect and blackbody radiation, Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921.
The gradual acceptance of Einstein's theories of relativity and the quantized nature of light transmission, and of Niels Bohr's model of the atom created as many problems as they solved, leading to a full-scale effort to reestablish physics on new fundamental principles. Expanding relativity to cases of accelerating reference frames (the "
general theory of relativity") in the 1910s, Einstein posited an equivalence between the inertial force of acceleration and the force of gravity, leading to the conclusion that space is curved and finite in size, and the prediction of such phenomena as
gravitational lensing and the distortion of time in gravitational fields.
Quantum mechanics
Although relativity resolved the electromagnetic phenomena conflict demonstrated by Michelson and Morley, a second theoretical problem was the explanation of the distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a
black body; experiment showed that at shorter wavelengths, toward the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, the energy approached zero, but classical theory predicted it should become infinite. This glaring discrepancy, known as the ultraviolet catastrophe, was solved by the new theory of
quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the theory of
atoms and subatomic systems. Approximately the first 30 years of the 20th century represent the time of the conception and evolution of the theory. The basic ideas of quantum theory were introduced in 1900 by
Max Planck (1858–1947), who was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918 for his discovery of the quantified nature of energy. The quantum theory (which previously relied in the "correspondence" at large scales between the quantized world of the atom and the continuities of the "
classical" world) was accepted when the
Compton Effect established that light carries momentum and can scatter off particles, and when
Louis de Broglie asserted that matter can be seen as behaving as a wave in much the same way as electromagnetic waves behave like particles (
wave–particle duality).
In 1905, Einstein used the quantum theory to explain the photoelectric effect, and in 1913 the Danish physicist
Niels Bohr used the same constant to explain the stability of
Rutherford's atom as well as the frequencies of light emitted by hydrogen gas. The quantized theory of the atom gave way to a full-scale quantum mechanics in the 1920s. New principles of a "quantum" rather than a "classical" mechanics, formulated in
matrix-form by
Werner Heisenberg,
Max Born, and
Pascual Jordan in 1925, were based on the probabilistic relationship between discrete "states" and denied the possibility of
causality. Quantum mechanics was extensively developed by Heisenberg,
Wolfgang Pauli,
Paul Dirac, and
Erwin Schrödinger, who established an equivalent theory based on waves in 1926; but Heisenberg's 1927 "
uncertainty principle" (indicating the impossibility of precisely and simultaneously measuring position and
momentum) and the "
Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum mechanics (named after Bohr's home city) continued to deny the possibility of fundamental causality, though opponents such as Einstein would metaphorically assert that "God does not play dice with the universe".
[43] The new quantum mechanics became an indispensable tool in the investigation and explanation of phenomena at the atomic level. Also in the 1920s, the Indian scientist
Satyendra Nath Bose's work on
photons and quantum mechanics provided the foundation for
Bose–Einstein statistics, the theory of the
Bose–Einstein condensate.
The
spin–statistics theorem established that any particle in quantum mechanics may be either a
boson (statistically Bose–Einstein) or a
fermion (statistically
Fermi–Dirac). It was later found that all
fundamental bosons transmit forces, such as the photon that transmits light.
[clarification needed (Is light a "force"?)]
Fermions are particles "like electrons and nucleons" and are the usual constituents of
matter. Fermi–Dirac statistics later found numerous other uses, from astrophysics (see
Degenerate matter) to
semiconductor design.
Contemporary and particle physics
Quantum field theory
As the philosophically inclined continued to debate the fundamental nature of the universe, quantum theories continued to be produced, beginning with
Paul Dirac's formulation of a relativistic quantum theory in 1928. However, attempts to quantize electromagnetic theory entirely were stymied throughout the 1930s by theoretical formulations yielding infinite energies. This situation was not considered adequately resolved until after
World War II ended, when
Julian Schwinger,
Richard Feynman and
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga independently posited the technique of
renormalization, which allowed for an establishment of a robust
quantum electrodynamics (QED).
[44]
Meanwhile, new theories of
fundamental particles proliferated with the rise of the idea of the
quantization of fields through "
exchange forces" regulated by an exchange of short-lived
"virtual" particles, which were allowed to exist according to the laws governing the uncertainties inherent in the quantum world. Notably,
Hideki Yukawa proposed that the positive charges of the
nucleus were kept together courtesy of a powerful but short-range force mediated by a particle with a mass between that of the
electron and
proton. This particle, the "
pion", was identified in 1947 as part of what became a slew of particles discovered after World War II. Initially, such particles were found as
ionizing radiation left by
cosmic rays, but increasingly came to be produced in newer and more powerful
particle accelerators.
[45]
Outside particle physics, significant advances of the time were:
Unified field theories
Einstein deemed that all
fundamental interactions in nature can be explained in a single theory. Unified field theories were numerous attempts to "merge" several interactions. One of formulations of such theories (as well as field theories in general) is a
gauge theory, a generalization of the idea of symmetry. Eventually the
Standard Model (see below) succeeded in unification of strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions. All attempts to unify
gravitation with something else failed.
Standard Model
The interaction of these particles by
scattering and
decay provided a key to new fundamental quantum theories.
Murray Gell-Mann and
Yuval Ne'eman brought some order to these new particles by classifying them according to certain qualities, beginning with what Gell-Mann referred to as the "
Eightfold Way". While its further development, the
quark model, at first seemed inadequate to describe
strong nuclear forces, allowing the temporary rise of competing theories such as the
S-Matrix, the establishment of
quantum chromodynamics in the 1970s finalized a set of fundamental and exchange particles, which allowed for the establishment of a "
standard model" based on the mathematics of
gauge invariance, which successfully described all forces except for
gravitation, and which remains generally accepted within its domain of application.
[43]
The Standard Model groups the
electroweak interaction theory and
quantum chromodynamics into a structure denoted by the
gauge group SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1). The formulation of the unification of the electromagnetic and
weak interactions in the standard model is due to
Abdus Salam,
Steven Weinberg and, subsequently,
Sheldon Glashow. Electroweak theory was later confirmed experimentally (by observation of
neutral weak currents),
[46][47][48][49] and distinguished by the 1979
Nobel Prize in Physics.
[50]
Since the 1970s, fundamental particle physics has provided insights into early universe
cosmology, particularly the
Big Bang theory proposed as a consequence of Einstein's
general theory of relativity. However, starting in the 1990s, astronomical observations have also provided new challenges, such as the need for new explanations of galactic stability ("
dark matter") and the
apparent acceleration in the expansion of the universe ("
dark energy").
While accelerators have confirmed most aspects of the Standard Model by detecting expected particle interactions at various collision energies, no theory reconciling general relativity with the Standard Model has yet been found, although
supersymmetry and
string theory were believed by many theorists to be a promising avenue forward. The
Large Hadron Collider, however, which began operating in 2008, has failed to find any evidence whatsoever that is supportive of supersymmetry and string theory.
[51]
Cosmology
Cosmology may be said to have become a serious research question with the publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in 1916 [1915?] although it did not enter the scientific mainstream until the period known as the "
Golden age of general relativity".
About a decade later, in the midst of what was dubbed the "
Great Debate", Hubble and Slipher discovered the expansion of universe in the 1920s measuring the redshifts of Doppler spectra from galactic nebulae. Using Einstein's general relativity, Lemaître and Gamow formulated what would become known as the big bang theory. A rival, called the steady state theory was devised by Hoyle, Gold, Narlikar and Bondi.
Cosmic background radiation was verified in the 1960s by Penzias and Wilson, and this discovery favoured the big bang at the expense of the steady state scenario. Later work was by Smoot et al. (1989), among other contributors, using data from the Cosmic Background explorer (CoBE) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe (WMAP) satellites that refined these observations. The 1980s (the same decade of the COBE measurements) also saw the proposal of inflation theory by Guth.
Recently the problems of dark matter and dark energy have risen to the top of the cosmology agenda.
Higgs boson
One possible signature of a Higgs boson from a simulated
proton–proton collision. It decays almost immediately into two jets of
hadrons and two
electrons, visible as lines.
On July 4, 2012, physicists working at CERN's
Large Hadron Collider announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle greatly resembling the
Higgs boson, a potential key to an understanding of why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe.
[52] For now, some physicists are calling it a "Higgslike" particle.
[52] Joe Incandela, of the
University of California, Santa Barbara, said, "It's something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years, going way back to the discovery of
quarks, for example."
[52] Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago and the chairman of the physics center board, said:
"This is a big moment for particle physics and a crossroads — will this be the high water mark or will it be the first of many discoveries that point us toward solving the really big questions that we have posed?"
Peter Higgs was one of six physicists, working in three independent groups, who, in 1964, invented the notion of the Higgs field ("cosmic molasses"). The others were
Tom Kibble of
Imperial College, London;
Carl Hagen of the
University of Rochester;
Gerald Guralnik of
Brown University; and
François Englert and
Robert Brout, both of
Université libre de Bruxelles.
[52]
Although they have never been seen, Higgslike fields play an important role in theories of the universe and in string theory. Under certain conditions, according to the strange accounting of Einsteinian physics, they can become suffused with energy that exerts an antigravitational force. Such fields have been proposed as the source of an enormous burst of expansion, known as inflation, early in the universe and, possibly, as the secret of the dark energy that now seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe.
[52]
Physical sciences
With increased accessibility to and elaboration upon advanced analytical techniques in the 19th century, physics was defined as much, if not more, by those techniques than by the search for universal principles of motion and energy, and the fundamental nature of
matter. Fields such as
acoustics,
geophysics,
astrophysics,
aerodynamics,
plasma physics,
low-temperature physics, and
solid-state physics joined
optics,
fluid dynamics,
electromagnetism, and
mechanics as areas of physical research. In the 20th century, physics also became closely allied with such fields as
electrical,
aerospace and
materials engineering, and physicists began to work in government and industrial laboratories as much as in academic settings. Following World War II, the population of physicists increased dramatically, and came to be centered on the United States, while, in more recent decades, physics has become a more international pursuit than at any time in its previous history.
Seminal physics publications
Influential physicists
The following is a gallery of highly influential and important figures in the history of physics. For a list that includes even more people, see
list of physicists.
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Alhazen (965–1040): made significant improvements in optics, physical science, and the scientific method. In his book,
Book of Optics, he showed through experiment that light travels in straight lines, and carried out various experiments with lenses, mirrors, refraction, and reflection, which earned him the title of the "Father of Modern Optics".
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Galileo Galilei (1564–1642): discovered the uniform acceleration rate of falling bodies, improved on the refracting telescope, discovered the
four largest moons of
Jupiter, described projectile motion and the concept of weight; known for championing of the Copernican theory of heliocentrism against Church opposition.
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Blaise Pascal (1623–62): experimented with
fluids, formulated
Pascal's law in the 1650s stating that the
pressure applied to a fluid taken in a closed container is transmitted with equal force throughout the container, proved that air has weight and that air pressure can produce a
vacuum, namesake of the unit of pressure: the
pascal (Pa)
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Robert Hooke (1635–1703): formulated the
law of elasticity, invented the balance spring, the spiral spring wheel in watches, the Gregorian telescope, and the first screw-divided quadrant, constructed first arithmetical machine, improved cell theory with the microscope
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Henry Cavendish (1731–1810): greatest English chemist and physicist of his age, researched composition of
the atmosphere, the properties of different gases, the synthesis of water, the law of electrical attraction and repulsion, a mechanical theory of heat, calculated the weight of the Earth in the
Cavendish experiment, determined the universal
gravitational constant
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Thomas Young (1773–1829): established the principle of interference of light, resurrected the century-old theory that light is a wave, helped decipher the
Rosetta Stone
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André-Marie Ampère (1777–1836): main founder of
electrodynamics, showed how an electric current produces a magnetic field, stated that the mutual action of two lengths of current-carrying wire is proportional to their lengths and to the intensities of their currents (
Ampère's law), namesake of the unit of electric current (the
ampere)
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Georg Ohm (1789–1854): found that there is a direct proportionality between the
electric current I and the potential difference (
voltage) V applied across a conductor, and that this current is inversely proportional to the
resistance R in the circuit, or
I =
V/R, known as
Ohm's law, namesake of the unit of electrical resistance (the
ohm)
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Michael Faraday (1791–1867): showed how a changing magnetic field can be used to generate an electric current (
Faraday's law of induction), applied this knowledge to the development of several electrical machines, described principles of
electrolysis, early pioneer in the field of low temperature study
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Christian Doppler (1803–53): first described how the observed frequency of light and sound waves is affected by the relative motion of the source and the detector, a phenomenon which became known as the
Doppler effect.
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Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928): clarified electromagnetic theory of light, shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect, developed concept of local time, derived the
transformation equations subsequently used by Albert Einstein to describe space and time.
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Max Planck (1858–1947): founded
quantum mechanics in 1900, showed how the energy of a
photon is directly proportional to its frequency, won him the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics. He then used his quantum hypothesis to formulate
Planck's Law, thereby resolving the ultraviolet catastrophe.
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Marie Curie (1867–1934): discovered the existence of radioactivity with
Henri Becquerel and her husband
Pierre Curie, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911), found techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, isolated
plutonium and
radium
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Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937): considered "Father of
Nuclear Physics", showed how the
atomic nucleus has a positive charge, first to change one element into another by an artificial nuclear reaction, differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation, awarded Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908
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Niels Bohr (1885–1962): used quantum mechanical model (known as the
Bohr model) of the atom which theorized that electrons travel in discrete orbits around the nucleus, showed how electron energy levels are related to spectral lines, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
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Louis de Broglie (1892–1987): researched quantum theory, discovered the wave nature of electrons, awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics, ideas on the wave-like behavior of particles used by Erwin Schrödinger in his formulation of wave mechanics.
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Georges Lemaître (1894–1966): first person to propose the theory of the
expansion of the Universe, first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law, made the first estimation of what is now called the
Hubble constant which he published in 1927 (two years before Hubble's article), proposed the
Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe
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Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976): developed method to express ideas of quantum mechanics in terms of matrices in 1925, published his famous
uncertainty principle in 1927, awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932
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Paul Dirac (1902–1984): made fundamental contributions to the early development of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, formulated the
Dirac equation describing the behavior of
fermions, predicted the existence of
antimatter, shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger
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Peter Higgs (1929–present): Along with
François Englert,
Robert Brout,
Gerald Guralnik,
C. R. Hagen, and
Tom Kibble, he developed the theory of Higgs field and Higgs boson, which together form the
higgs mechanism that explains how subatomic particles gain their mass. However CERN have been cautious with the results, stating that new tests are needed to confirm the discovery. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013 for his work on the mentioned mechanism.
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