The Learn Tracker
...life-long learning: structured, organized, searchable...
924
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:
Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:

VIEW ARCHIVE

Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
Notes on video lecture:
Pre-Einstein Physics up to 1905
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on March 24, 2015 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
gravity, Edison, switches, light, 100, railroads, current, ether, times, bar, rethink, special, shocks, signalling, Young, theoretical, wave, Hertz, radiation, real, sustained, straight, compass, reality, nothing, Morley, breeze, electron, rationality, Atlantic, philosophers, inorganic, physics, Maxwell, obituaries, 1840, Munich, Volta, experimental, frog, factory, radio
•
1800 is good place to start talking about               
•
but the term "physicist" was not coined until about         
•
before that people who worked in physics might be called natural                         
•
1800 there was a split based on what "natural philosophers" worked on
•
organic matter
•
                   matter
•
the branch that became physics focused on inorganic matter
•
1800: battery
•
came out of experiments done on animal electricity
•
e.g. how we can stimulate nerves in          legs
•
Alessandro            made an inorganic version of this
•
significance was that you could get a                    electric current
•
before that you could get sporadic electric             
•
you could store limited amounts of electrical current but no sustained electrical current
•
this opened up many kinds of new inventions over the next        years
•
1800:          theory of light
•
before this, Isaac Newton had the theory of               
•
became the greatest mind of the time
•
so scientist followed his lead on his concept of light as well, light being particles, or                  rays
•
around 1800, Thomas            revived the theory of light as waves
•
1820s: electromagnetism
•
shown that if you have a sustained current through a wire and you brought a                needle next to it, it would change directions
•
clearly a connection between electricity and magnetism
•
1830s
•
                   because to carry passengers, connecting cities
•
electromagnetic induction
•
mentioned on the first page of Einstein's paper on the                theory of relativity
•
loop of wire,        magnet closer to loop, you generate an electric current, as you move the bar magnet back and forth
•
1830s
•
telegraph
•
if you have a wire and can send                down it, then you can make a communication device
•
1860s
•
              's equations
•
synthesized and explained the work that people had been doing with electricity in the past half century
•
allowed the prediction of electromagnetic waves traveling through space
•
the classical theory of electromagnetic                   
•
traveled at a speed close to the known speed of light
•
the natural conclusion was that light was an electromagnetic wave
•
telegraph still expanding
•
under                  Ocean
•
expansion of the railroads
•
in U.S., transcontinental railroad
•
telegraph and railroad went together
•
because you need a good                      system for the trains
•
synchronizing of clocks
•
cities before that often had different           
•
1870s-1890s
•
mechanical models
•
water waves travel through something, disturbances through water
•
this analogy applied to light assumes that there must be some median that light waves travel through, referred to as "          "
•
the French thought the British were going off in the wrong direction
•
derided their mechanical models, reminded them of the                system
•
the French physicists prided themselves on clarity and                        of thought
•
interesting to reading                      of these scientists
•
British: creativity
•
French: rationality and clarity of thought
•
physics division of labor
•
today:
•
                       physicist
•
experimental physicist
•
Masters Degree in Engineering from MIT
•
19th century
•
                         physicists were at the top
•
theoretical physicists really didn't exist
•
German universities you typically only had one physics professor
•
they were typically experimental physicist who ran the show
•
perhaps an assistant
•
this was the type of world Einstein was born into
•
by the time he was a physicist things started to change
•
1879: Einstein born
•
1880s
•
Incandescent lighting
•
            's great innovation was the whole system of electric lighting
•
the wires
•
the                 
•
the power
•
Einstein's father and uncle were entrepreneurs in             
•
specialized in incandescent lighting
•
won contract to supply lighting for Oktoberfest
•
discovery of electromagnetic waver
•
Heinrich           
•
conclusively proved the existence of electromagnetic waves theorized by James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light
•
Hertz, became a term for units of cycles per second
•
died in his mid-30s
•
           started almost immediately after this
•
1880s
•
Michelson-             experiment
•
if light waves are going to be traveling through the ether
•
as the Earth moves around the Sun
•
at the surface of the Earth, we should have an "ether             " in our face
•
therefore if you shine a light in that direction and in the opposite direct
•
they found               
•
there was not "ether breeze" effect
•
made people                their theories
•
1890s
•
the electromagnetic worldview
•
attempt to "get to the really         " and explain almost everything in terms of electromagnetism
•
looking at electromagnetism as the basis of physical               
•
the                  was discovered in the 1890s
•
1896-1900
•
Einstein in college
•
nature of           
•
time and space
•
came at this from a different direction
•
1900-1905
•
career up to delivery of his most influential papers

People:

######################### (1773-1829)
An English polymath who established the wave theory of light, overcoming the century-old view, expressed in the Isaac Newton's "Optics", that light is a particle
  • "The experiments I am about to relate may be repeated with great ease, whenever the sun shines, and without any other apparatus than is at hand to every one."
  • made notable scientific contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology
  • he made a number of original and insightful innovations on the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs (specifically the Rosetta Stone) before Jean-François Champollion eventually expanded on his work
  • he was the eldest of ten children in a Quaker family
  • by the age of fourteen Young had learned Greek and Latin and was acquainted with French, Italian, Hebrew, German, Aramaic, Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Amharic

Spelling Corrections:

phycisist ⇒ physicist
assistent ⇒ assistant
Pre-Einstein Physics up to 1905
Einstein's Life Up To 1905
The Annus Mirabilis Papers of 1905
Dirac, Einstein, and Mathematical Beauty
Events, Clocks, and Observers