This is your last chance to vote for your favorite experiment.
Category: Experiment
Top Eleven: Early Returns
A preliminary report on the standings in the Greatest Physics Experiment voting: Michelson-Morley: 13 Faraday: 7 (including one vote in the Farady post) Roemer: 5 Aspect: 4.5 (one indecisive person voted for both Cavendish and Aspect) Galileo: 3 Rutherford: 3 Cavendish: 1.5 Hertz: 1 (in the comments to the Hertz post) Newton, Hubble, and Mössbauer […]
Top Eleven: Time to Vote!
The Top Eleven is now complete. Here’s the full list of experiments, with links to my summaries: Galileo Galilei: ~1610: Discovery of the moons of Jupiter, and measurements of the acceleration of falling objects. Ole Roemer ~1675: Measurement of the speed of light by timing the eclipses of Io. Isaac Newton ~1700: Dispersion of light […]
Top Eleven: Alain Aspect
The final and most recent of the Top Eleven is an experiment that goes right to the heart of the weirdness inherent in quantum mechanics. Who: Alain Aspect (1947-present), a French physicist. (Again, Wikipedia is a let-down, but CNRS has useful information.) When: Around 1982 (there are several experiments involved, but the 1982 one is […]
Top Eleven: Rudolf Moessbauer
The penultimate experiment in the Top Eleven brings us up to the first nominee who’s still with us.. Who: Rudolf Moessbauer (1929-present) (that’s Mössbauer with a heavy-metal ö), a German physicist. (The Wikipedia link is for consistency with the other posts, but contains very little information. A better bio is available from the Nobel Prize […]
Top Eleven: Edwin Hubble
The next experiment in the Top Eleven is a set of observations, not an experiment. Who: Edwin Hubble (1889-1953), an American astronomer, and the guy the Hubble Space Telescope is named after. When: He was nominated for two related but different discoveries which were announced in 1924 and 1929. What: Hubble’s most famous work concerns […]
Top Eleven: Ernest Rutherford
The eighth of the Top Eleven is an experiment by the man who set the gold standard for arrogance in physics. Who: Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), a New Zealand-born physicist who famously declared “In science, there is only physics. All the rest is stamp collecting.” He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. When: […]
Top Eleven: Heinrich Hertz
The seventh entry in the Top Eleven is an experiment that leads directly to all forms of wireless communications. Who: Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894), a German physicist. When: 1886 What: Hertz studied electromagnetism, and in particular, the prediction from Maxwell’s Equations that it ought to be possible for electromagnetic waves to travel through free space. […]
Top Eleven: Michelson and Morley
The next experiment in the Top Eleven is probably the most famous failed experiment of all time. Who: Albert Michelson (1852-1931) and Edward Morley (1838-1923), American physicists. When: Their first results were reported in 1887. What: The famous Michelson-Morley experiment, which tried and failed to detect the motion of the Earth through the “luminiferous aether.” […]
Top Eleven: Michael Faraday
Next up in the Top Eleven is a man who is largely responsible for the fact that we have electricity to run the computer you’re using to read this. Who: Michael Faraday (1791-1867) a poor and self-educated British scientist who rose to become one of the greatest physicists of the 19th Century. When: Around 1831. […]