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Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.
Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest. Over much of the past two millennia, physics, chemistry, biology, and certain branches of mathematics were a part of natural philosophy, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century these natural sciences emerged as unique research endeavors in their own right. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new avenues of research in these and other academic disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy.
Advances in physics often enable new technologies. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism, solid-state physics, and nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons; advances in thermodynamics led to the development of industrialization; and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus. (Full article...)
Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. MWT (11:29:21 GMT) on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, nicknamed the "gadget", of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Concerns about whether the complex Fat Man design would work led to a decision to conduct the first nuclear test. The code name "Trinity" was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, inspired by the poetry of John Donne.
The test, both planned and directed by Kenneth Bainbridge, was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range (renamed the White Sands Proving Ground just before the test). The only structures originally in the immediate vicinity were the McDonald Ranch House and its ancillary buildings, which scientists used as a laboratory for testing bomb components.
Fears of a fizzle prompted construction of "Jumbo", a steel containment vessel that could contain the plutonium, allowing it to be recovered; but ultimately Jumbo was not used in the test. On May 7, 1945, a rehearsal was conducted, during which 108 short tons (98 t) of high explosive spiked with radioactive isotopes was detonated. (Full article...)Did you know -
- ... that it is estimated that The Sun burns around 620 million metric tons of Hydrogen per second into 616 million metric tons of Helium?
- ... that the Big Bang was secured as the best theory for the origin of the universe by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964?
- ... that neutron stars are so dense (10¹⁷ kg/m³) that a teaspoonful (5 mL) would have ten times the mass of the total human population?
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In modern physics, the double-slit experiment demonstrates that light and matter can satisfy the seemingly incongruous classical definitions for both waves and particles. This ambiguity is considered evidence for the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. This type of experiment was first performed by Thomas Young in 1801, as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light. In 1927, Davisson and Germer and, independently George Paget Thomson and his research student Alexander Reid demonstrated that electrons show the same behavior, which was later extended to atoms and molecules. Thomas Young's experiment with light was part of classical physics long before the development of quantum mechanics and the concept of wave–particle duality. He believed it demonstrated that Christiaan Huygens' wave theory of light was correct, and his experiment is sometimes referred to as Young's experiment or Young's slits. (Full article...)
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May anniversaries
- May 1, 1960 - U-2 spy plane shot down
- May 6, 1937 - Hindenburg fire
- May 9, 1012 BC – Solar Eclipse seen at Ugarit, 6:09–6:39 PM.
- May 9, 1904 – City of Truro, a steam locomotive exceeds 100 mph (160 km/h).
- May 10, 1946 – V-2 rocket's first successful launch at White Sands Proving Ground
- May 10, 1960 – The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes Operation Sandblast, the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth.
- May 11, 1862 – American Civil War: The ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled in Virginia.
- May 11, 1995 – In New York City, over 170 countries extend Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely, without conditions.
- May 11, 1998 – India conducts three underground nuclear tests, including a thermonuclear device.
- May 14, 2018 - Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan died.
- May 16, 1960 - Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
- May 16, 1969 – Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus.
- May 17, 1865 – The International Telegraph Union is established.
- May 18, 1974 - India conducts underground nuclear tests, named Smiling Buddha.
- May 18, 1998 - Microsoft sued by US Government
- May 19, 1943 - RAF uses bouncing bombs in combat
- May 20, 1932 - Amelia Earhart crosses Atlantic Ocean
- May 26, 1972 - President Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign nuclear weapon non-proliferation pact.
- May 24, 1844 - First official telegraph message is sent by Samuel Morse.
- May 27, 1937 - Grand opening, Golden Gate Bridge
- May 28, 1998 – Pakistan conducts five underground nuclear tests, named Chagai-I.
Births
- May 6, 1872 - Willem de Sitter, physicist, mathematician, and astronomer
- May 9, 1931 – Vance Brand, astronaut
- May 10, 1746 – Gaspard Monge, mathematician
- May 10, 1788 – Augustin-Jean Fresnel physicist
- May 10, 1963 – Lisa Nowak, astronaut
- May 11, 1918 – Richard Feynman, physicist
- May 14, 1686 - Gabriel Fahrenheit, physicist and engineer
- May 21, 1921 - Andrei Sakharov, nuclear physicist
Deaths
- May 10, 1482 – Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, mathematician and astronomer
- May 16, 1830 – Joseph Fourier, French scientist
- May 17, 1916 – Boris Borisovich Galitzine, Russian physicist
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Fundamentals: Concepts in physics | Constants | Physical quantities | Units of measure | Mass | Length | Time | Space | Energy | Matter | Force | Gravity | Electricity | Magnetism | Waves
Basic physics: Mechanics | Electromagnetism | Statistical mechanics | Thermodynamics | Quantum mechanics | Theory of relativity | Optics | Acoustics
Specific fields: Acoustics | Astrophysics | Atomic physics | Molecular physics | Optical physics | Computational physics | Condensed matter physics | Nuclear physics | Particle physics | Plasma physics
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Classical physics traditionally includes the fields of mechanics, optics, electricity, magnetism, acoustics and thermodynamics. The term Modern physics is normally used for fields which rely heavily on quantum theory, including quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, particle physics and condensed matter physics. General and special relativity are usually considered to be part of modern physics as well.
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