FAMOUS PHYSICIST

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English physicist and mathematician, considered by many to be the greatest physicist of all time. His most famous contributions to physics are his law of gravitation and laws of motion. He also invented calculus, and made important discoveries in the field of optics (for example, the discovery that white light may be split into the colours of the rainbow by a prism). The SI unit of force is named after him.

Andr-Marie Ampre (1775-1836) French physicist most famous for investigating the magnetic fields produced by current-carrying wires. His work extended that of the Danish physicist Hans Oersted, who discovered in 1819 that a compass needle was deflected by a current-carrying wire. He also invented the solenoid. Today, the law that governs the magnetic fields produced by electric currents is called Ampre's Law, and the SI unit of electric current is named in his honour.

Carl Friederich Gauss (1777-1855) German mathematician who is most famous for his discoveries in pure mathematics. Indeed, he has been dubbed the 'prince of mathematics'. However, he also made a number of important contributions to physics. He invented the magnetometer and with the German physicist Wilhelm Weber measured the intensity of magnetic forces. He also took Coulomb's famous inverse-square law for the electric field of a point charge and generalized it to an arbitrary charged distribution. This more general law is now known as Gauss's Law.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) English physicist who was one of the greatest experimentalists in the history of physics. This is remarkable as he had no formal training. Instead he learned about physics and chemistry by working as an assistant to Sir Humphrey Davy. Faraday made many important contributions to the study of electricity and magnetism, including the discovery of electromagnetic induction (now known as Faraday's Law), the invention of the electric motor, and the laws of electrolysis. The SI unit of capacitance is named after him.

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) Scottish mathematician and physicist who, in the 1860s, took the laws of electricity and magnetism that had been discovered over the previous century or so, and united them into one theory called electromagnetism. This theory is neatly summarized in 4 simple equations known as Maxwell's equations. One consequence of this was the demonstration that light is an electromagnetic wave. Maxwell also developed the kinetic theory of gases, deriving the distribution of molecular speeds in a gas at a given temperature.

James Prescott Joule (1818-1889) English physicist who made many meticulous experiments that demonstrated that heat and work are equivalent. Although he was not the first to do this, it was his demonstration that eventually came to be accepted. The SI unit of work is named in his honour.

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) British physicist who published many important papers on the conservation and dissipation of energy. Kelvin also made contributions to other branches of physics (such as fluid mechanics), and was in charge of laying the first successful transatlantic cable in 1866. The SI unit of absolute temperature is named after him.

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) Austrian physicist who founded the branch of physics known as statistical mechanics, which involves describing large numbers of atoms using averages. He showed that the entropy of a system was a measure of how disordered it is, and that the amount of disorder in the Universe tends to increase.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) In 1905, Einstein published a paper on what he called the Special Theory of Relativity, which correctly describes the motion of particles travelling at speeds close to the speed of light. The theory is based upon the simple postulates that the laws of physics are the same for all inertial (i.e. non-accelerating) observers, and that the speed of light is the same for all inertial observers (regardless of their motion relative to the source of the light). This theory includes the famous formula E =mc2. He subsequently developed the General Theory of Relativity, which is effectively a theory of gravitation. Einstein also contributed to the development of quantum theory. In 1905 he published a paper explaining the photoelectric effect, by postulating that light consists of particles (now known as photons). For this work, Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Neils Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist who, in 1913, developed a successful quantum theoretical model of the hydrogen atom. It was an extension of Rutherford's model of the atom, in which the electron orbits the nucleus. In particular, Bohr's model correctly predicted the frequencies of the spectral lines that had been observed by such men as Lyman, Balmer and Paschen. Bohr received the 1922 Nobel Prize for Physics for this work. By the late 1920s, Bohr was very much regarded as an elder statesman of quantum theory. Many of the young physicists who made important discoveries in the early days of quantum mechanics studied under him at Copenhagen.

Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) French physicist who, in 1923, proposed that all particles have wave-like properties (just as Einstein had shown that light has particle-like properties). He came up with this theory while working on his PhD. As it was such a radical idea, the examiners wrote to Einstein to ask his opinion. Einstein realized what a brilliant idea it was, and de Broglie got his PhD. De Broglie's theory was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics a few years later. For his work, de Broglie received the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physics. The wave-like nature of electrons was confirmed experimentally in the late 1920s when George Thomson and Clinton Davisson independently discovered electron diffraction. For this work they shared the 1937 Prize.

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist who, in 1925, created quantum mechanics. One important aspect of Heisenberg's theory was that it only dealt with properties of a system that can in theory be measured (for example, the frequency of the radiation emitted by a hydrogen atom). He said we cannot assign a position in space at a given time to the electron, nor can we follow an electron in its orbit. This means we cannot assume the orbits postulated by Bohr actually exist. Mechanical quantities such as position and velocity cannot be represented by ordinary numbers, but instead must be represented by matrices. As a result, Heisenberg's version of quantum mechanics is sometimes called matrix mechanics. The following year, the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli showed that Heisenberg's theory correctly predicted the hydrogen spectrum. In 1927 Heisenberg published his famous Uncertainty Principle, which states one cannot measure the position and momentum of a particle with arbitrary precision. Heisenberg received the 1932 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on quantum mechanics.

Erwin Schrdinger (1887-1961) Austrian physicist who, in 1926, created a version of quantum mechanics that involved waves, rather than the somewhat abstract matrices of Heisenberg's theory. Schrdinger's theory also correctly predicted the hydrogen spectrum. In the same year, Schrdinger showed that his theory (sometimes called wave mechanics) is equivalent to Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. Schrdinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Paul Dirac for his work on quantum mechanics.

Paul Dirac (1902-1984) English physicist who created a version of quantum mechanics very similar to Heisenberg's at about the same time. He also made early contributions to quantum electrodynamics (the study of the interaction of charged particles with electromagnetic fields). However, he is probably best known for his equation for the electron that encompassed both quantum mechanics and special relativity, which led to the discovery of antimatter. Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Erwin Schrdinger for this work.

Philip Jeffry D. OBrien BSED/BLOCK B

LAWS OF PHYSICS
Ampere's Law The line integral of the magnetic flux around a closed curve is proportional to the algebraic sum of electric currents flowing through that closed curve; or, in differential form curl B = J. This was later modified to add a second term when it was incorporated into Maxwell's equations. Archimedes' Principle A body that is submerged in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal in magnitude to the weight of the fluid that is displaced, and directed upward along a line through the center of gravity of the displaced fluid. Avogadro's Hypothesis (1811) Equal volumes of all gases at the same temperature and pressure contain equal numbers of molecules. It is, in fact, only true for ideal gases. Bernoulli's Equation In an irrotational fluid, the sum of the static pressure, the weight of the fluid per unit mass times the height, and half the density times the velocity squared is constant throughout the fluid.

Biot-Savart Law A law which describes the contributions to a magnetic field by an electric current. It is analogous toCoulomb's law.

Boyle's Law (1662); Mariotte's law (1676) The product of the pressure and the volume of an ideal gas at constant temperature is a constant.

Bragg's Law (1912) When a beam of X-rays strikes a crystal surface in which the layers of atoms or ions are regularly separated, the maximum intensity of the reflected ray occurs when the complement of the angle of incidence, theta, the wavelength of the X-rays, lambda, and the distance between layers of atoms or ions, d, are related by the equation 2 d sin theta = n lambda,

Brownian Motion (1827) The continuous random motion of solid microscopic particles when suspended in a fluid medium due to the consequence of ongoing bombardment by atoms and molecules.

Casimir Effect A quantum mechanical effect, where two very large plates placed close to each other will experience an attractive force, in the absence of other forces. The cause is virtual particleantiparticle pair creation in the vicinity of the plates. Also, the speed of light will be increased in the region between the two plates, in the direction perpendicular to them.

Causality Principle The principle that cause must always preceed effect. More formally, if an event A ("the cause") somehow influences an event B ("the effect") which occurs later in time, then event B cannot in turn have an influence on event A. That is, event B must occur at a later time t than event A, and further, all frames must agree upon this ordering.

Centrifugal Pseudoforce A pseudoforce on an object when it is moving in uniform circular motion. The "force" is directed outward from the center of motion.

Charles' Law (1787) The volume of an ideal gas at constant pressure is proportional to the thermodynamic temperature of that gas.

Cherenkov Radiation Radiation emitted by a massive particle which is moving faster than light in the medium through which it is traveling. No particle can travel faster than light in vacuum, but the speed of light in other media, such as water, glass, etc., are considerably lower. Cherenkov radiation is the electromagnetic analogue of the sonic boom, though Cherenkov radiation is a shockwave set up in the electromagnetic field.

Complementarity Principle The principle that a given system cannot exhibit both wave-like behavior and particle-like behavior at the same time. That is, certain experiments will reveal the wave-like nature of a system, and certain experiments will reveal the particle-like nature of a system, but no experiment will reveal both simultaneously.

Compton Effect (1923) An effect that demonstrates that photons (the quantum of electromagnetic radiation) have momentum. A photon fired at a stationary particle, such as an electron, will impart momentum to the electron and, since its energy has been decreased, will experience a corresponding decrease in frequency.

Conservation Laws Conservation of mass-energy The total mass-energy of a closed system remains constant. Conservation of electric charge The total electric charge of a closed system remains constant. Conservation of linear momentum The total linear momentum of a closed system remains constant. Conservation of angular momentum The total angular momentum of a closed system remains constant. There are several other laws that deal with particle physics, such as conservation of baryon number, of strangeness, etc., which are conserved in some fundamental interactions (such as the electromagnetic interaction) but not others (such as the weak interaction).

Constancy Principle One of the postulates of A. Einstein's special theory of relativity, which puts forth that the speed of light in vacuum is measured as the same speed to all observers, regardless of their relative motion.

Continuity Equation An equation which states that a fluid flowing through a pipe flows at a rate which is inversely proportional to the cross-sectional area of the pipe. It is in essence a restatement of the conservation of mass during constant flow.

Copernican Principle (1624) The idea, suggested by Copernicus, that the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of the Universe. We now know that neither idea is correct.

Newton's Laws of motion Newton's first law of motion A body continues in its state of constant velocity (which may be zero) unless it is acted upon by an external force. Newton's second law of motion For an unbalanced force acting on a body, the acceleration produced is proportional to the force impressed; the constant of proportionality is the inertial mass of the body. Newton's third law of motion In a system where no external forces are present, every action force is always opposed by an equal and opposite reaction force. Einstein Field Equation The cornerstone of Einstein's general theory of relativity, relating the gravitational tensor G to the stress-energy tensor T by the simple equation G = 8 pi T.

Einstein's Mass-Energy Equation The energy E of a particle is equal to its mass M times the square of the speed of light c, giving 2 rise to the best known physics equation in the Universe: E = M c .

Equivalence Principle The basic postulate of A. Einstein's general theory of relativity, which posits that an acceleration is fundamentally indistinguishable from a gravitational field. Faraday's Law The line integral of the electric field around a closed curve is proportional to the instantaneous time rate of change of the magnetic flux through a surface bounded by that closed curve; in differential form curl E = -dB/dt, where here d/dt represents partial differentiation.

Faraday's Laws of electrolysis Faraday's first law of electrolysis The amount of chemical change during electrolysis is proportional to the charge passed. Faraday's second law of electrolysis The charge Q required to deposit or liberate a mass m is proportional to the charge z of the ion, the mass, and inversely proportional to the relative ionic mass M; mathematically Q = F m z /M,