As seen in a recent links dump, gg at Skulls in the Stars posted a fun challenge for science bloggers:
My “challenge”, for those sciencebloggers who choose to accept it, is this: read and research an old, classic scientific paper and write a blog post about it. I recommend choosing something pre- World War II, as that was the era of hand-crafted, “in your basement”-style science. There’s a lot to learn not only about the ingenuity of researchers in an era when materials were not readily available, but also about the problems and concerns of scientists of that era, often things we take for granted now!
This does sound like a neat idea, as the level of ingenuity required to carry out some of the classic experiments of physics is really impressive. I’ve been toying with taking up the challeneg, but there’s one question remaining, which I’ll throw open to the audience:
What pre-WWII paper should I read for the Skulls in the Stars challenge?
My inclination would be to go with the Michelson-Morley experiment, conveniently available through the AIP’s collection of classic papers by American physicists, as it was voted the greatest experiment ever a couple of years ago. I’m open to other suggestions, though, provided that they’re in English and available online somewhere (anything in the Physical Review is fine, for example).
So, if you have a suggestion, leave it in the comments.
MM is a good choice. I also like the original EPR paper.
Another fun idea, related to MM, is Lorentz’s interpretation of their negative result. It turns out that his 1904 paper is in English and freely available as well. The paper is interesting because it gives the complete “Lorentz transformations” but is lacking the ‘big picture’ theory that Einstein would provide only a year later.
Oh, I can think of a great one in my field. I’m sure I have it in the basement. I should dig it up. Hmmm….there’s probably no DOI associated with it, and it wouldn’t get picked up by ResearchBlogging.
I’ve always been impressed with the rigor of the Cavendish experiment, personally.
Who cares about relativity when you are a quantum mechanic! How about the Stern-Gerlach experiment. Interferometer experiments are a dime a dozen these days, but you’ll notice there aren’t any undergraduate versions of the classic spin 1/2 experiment.
#2 gg: Thanks for the link, that’s a rather nice site!
Quite a lot of stuff by Onnes is available there as well. The one on the liquefaction of helium is a very engrossing read. It’s got the whole “basement science” aspect – just check out the photo of the liquefaction apparatus!
The Compton effect paper (available on the website) is interesting because the argument is based on new data from an experiment that Compton did but had not published! The experimental result was supported only by an “I will publish this when I get around to it” footnote.
The convoluted argument of Lorentz (a mass that arose from electromagnetic self-energy, and increased in any frame other than the preferred rest-frame of the aether due to the deformation of the electron due to Lorentz contraction when it moved relative to the aether) is fascinating when you are familiar with QED and renormalization of mass and charge, and really does put the Einstein paper in a clear light. For that matter, compare it to the QED papers in PR 76.
If you have the big centennial Phys Rev collection, just thumb through it for inspiration. (Be sure to look at one or two of the early particle physics papers, where there are only 3 or 4 authors!) I happen to like the Bohr and Wheeler paper on fission for its amazing predictions, but it is extremely detailed to work through. If you know a bit about resonances (as I suspect you do) and related theory (e.g. the Wigner-Eckart theorem), the Breit and Wigner paper (PR 49, 510) from 1936 and Wigner’s paper on resonance reactions (PR 70, 606) from 1946 might interest you on the theory side.
HOWEVER, the paper I’d suggest to you is Kusch and Foley on measuring the magnetic moment of the electron (PR 74, 250) from a 1948 experiment with molecular beams and RF excitation and/or the experimental papers cited therein.