Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Gems from Physics History : Science book auction at Christie’s.
The remarkable collection of a retired physician and amateur astronomer, Richard Green of Long Island, which is offered for sale by Christie’s, contains some of the greatest physics books ever written.
Dr. Green’s library includes works by Galileo, Copernicus, Newton,Gauss, Kepler, and Einstein.
One lot includes 130 reprints from Albert Einstein’s collection of his scientific papers, including his first one on relativity.
Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica explained the universal laws of gravitation and motion for the first time.
Nicolaus Copernicus’s book “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” (“On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres”). In it, the Polish astronomer laid out his theory that the Earth and other planets go around the Sun, contravening a millennium of church dogma that the Earth was the center of the universe.
Estimate for the Copernicus book: about $1M.
BERNOULLI, Jacob (1654-1703). Ars conjectandi, opus posthumum. Accedit tractatus de seriebus infinitis, et epistola gallicè scripta de ludo pilae reticularis. Edited by Nicolaus I. Bernoulli (1687-1759). Basel: Thurneisen Brothers, 1713.
CURIE, Marie Sklodowksa (1867-1934). Recherches sur les substance radioactives. Thèse présentée a la Faculté des Sciences de Paris. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1904. (no image)
DOPPLER, Johann Christian (1803-1853). “Ueber das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des Himmels”. Offprint from: Abhandlungen der k. böhm. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 5th series, vol. 2 (1842). Prague: Borrosch & Andrä, 1842.
FOUCAULT, Léon (1819-1868). “Démonstration physique du movement de rotation de la terre au moyen du pendule.” In: Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences. Volume 32, Number 5. Paris: Bachelier, 3 February 1851. (no image)
FRANKLIN, Benjamin. Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made at Philadelphia in America … to which are added, Letters and Papers on Philosophical Subjects. London: for David Henry and sold by Francis Newbery, 1769
GALILEI, Galileo. Sidereus nuncius magna, longeque admirabilia spectacula pandens. Venice: Tommaso Baglioni, 1610.
GAUSS, Carl Friedrich (1777-1855). Theoria motus corporum coelestium in sectionibus conicis solem ambientium. Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes and I.H. Besser, 1809.
KEPLER, Johannes. Astronomia nova \KAITIOLOGHTOS\k, seu physica coelestis, tradita commentariis de motibus stellae martis, ex observationibus G. V. Tychonis Brahe. [Heidelberg: E. Vögelin,] 1609.
MAXWELL, James Clerk. A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873.
WRIGHT, Wilbur (1867-1912). Some Aeronautical Experiments. Offprint from: Journal of the Western Society of Engineers 6 (December, 1901). [Chicago, 1901].
The auction catalog is like taking a walk through the development of scientific thought; not just in physics but in other fields as well.
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 2 Comments
Soon The entire US Congress would consist of physicists!
NY Times has an interesting article about the inordinate number of physicists in the Congress.
WASHINGTON — According to the Congressional Research Service, there are only about 30 scientists among the 535 senators and representatives in the 110th Congress, and that is counting the psychologist, the psychiatrist, a dozen other M.D.’s, three nurses, an engineer, two veterinarians, a pharmacist and an optometrist.
But physics is on a roll.
“Go back 15 years, and there weren’t any physicists,” said Vernon J. Ehlers, a Republican who taught the subject at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., until he was elected to Congress in 1993.
His was a lone voice until 1998, when Rush Holt, assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory, won election from New Jersey as a Democrat. And today there are three, adding Bill Foster, a physicist at Fermilab and another Democrat, who won a special election in March in Illinois.
“If we continue to reproduce in this manner,” Mr. Foster began, and Mr. Ehlers finished the thought, “the entire Congress would consist of physicists!”
And the reason why there are so many physicists in the congress:
“Physicists are versatile,” Mr. Ehlers said. “We live in the real world.”
And Vernon J. Ehlers also quipped:
“We’ve done the calculation,” Mr. Holt said. “By midcentury, I think, we’ll have a functioning majority.”
I bet it was a back of the envelope calculation, correct within an order of magnitude. So the physicists majority will happen sometime between 2050 and 2550…
great! I can’t wait. I wonder when will we have our first Physicist President?
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 5 Comments
The Anime Laws of Physics
Here are select Anime Laws of Physics:
#3 – Law of Sonic Amplification, First Law of Anime Acoustics
In space, loud sounds, like explosions, are even louder because there is no air to get in the way.
#11 – Law of Inherent Combustibility
Everything explodes. Everything.
#12 – Law of Phlogistatic Emission
Nearly all things emit light from fatal wounds.
#15 – Law of Inexhaustibility
No one *EVER* runs out of ammunition. That is of course unless they are cornered, out-numbered, out-classed, and unconscious.
#26 – Law of Feline Mutation
Any half-cat/half-human mutation will invariably:
1) be female
2) will possess ears and sometimes a tail as a genetic mutation
3) wear as little clothing as possible, if any
Copyright by Ryan Shellito and Darrin Bright.
More can be seen here.
All of these laws are shown in action in this clip:
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Matter of Everything – Teaser and Trailer
Matter of Everything.. Hmmm,
A documentary about “no ordinary matter”..
What could it be?
Yup, it’s a documentary about Dark Matter.
THE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT NO ORDINARY MATTER
The Matter Of Everything is a feature documentary that challenges us to see beyond our everyday sense of experience into the unseen universe. From the quantum to the cosmos, The Matter Of Everything journeys deep out of the foundations of nature to reveal what we are, at billionths of the human scale. At that level, physicists at Fermilab, one of the largest particle research facilities in the world, describe a universe that is more unified than ever imagined.
Click Here to visit their site.
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Relationship between math and physics
XKCD had a comment about the purity of the subject matter:
A similar joke I have heard before:
Sociologists want to be psychologists, because if you understand the brain you can understand society.
Psychologists want to be biologists, because if you understand life you can understand the brain.
Biologists want to be chemists, because if you understand matter you understand life.
Chemists want to be physicists, because if you understand the universe you understand matter.
Physicists want to be God.
God wants to be a mathematician.
Comment by Wingy.
Talk Like a Physicist