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Author(s) : Franklin Potter, Christopher Jargodzki
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Date : 2005
Pages : 311
Format : PDF
ISBN : 0471448559
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This book of almost 250 puzzles begins where our first book, Mad
About Physics: Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities (2001)
ended—with the physics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. The Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, the
challenges posed by atomic spectra and blackbody radiation, the
unexpected discoveries of X-rays in 1895, radioactivity in 1896, and
the electron in 1897 all loosened the protective belt of ad hoc hypotheses
around the mechanistic physics the nineteenth century had so
laboriously built. Anomalies and paradoxes abounded, ultimately
necessitating a radical rethinking of the very foundations of physics
and culminating in the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Numerous applications of these new and strange concepts followed
very quickly as atomic and nuclear physics led to semiconductor
devices on the small scale and nuclear energy on the large scale. Therefore
we have developed a whole new set of challenges to tickle the
minds of our scientifically literate readers, from science students to
engineers to professionals in the sciences.
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