Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2005 APS April Meeting
Saturday–Tuesday, April 16–19, 2005; Tampa, FL
Session K11: History of Physics I |
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Sponsoring Units: FHP Chair: Kenneth Ford, Retired Room: Marriott Tampa Waterside Room 7 |
Sunday, April 17, 2005 1:15PM - 1:39PM |
K11.00001: The rotational specific heat of molecular hydrogen in the old quantum theory Clayton Gearhart ``Astonishing successes'' and ``bitter disappointment'': Thus did the German physicist Fritz Reiche portray the state of quantum theory in his 1921 text. His words apply in miniature to early descriptions of the fall in the specific heat of hydrogen gas at low temperatures---among the first systems studied in the old quantum theory. The earliest measurements were made in 1912 by Arnold Eucken in Walther Nernst's laboratory in Berlin. The possibility of applying a theory of quantized rotators to diatomic gases had emerged even earlier, at the first Solvay conference in 1911. Eucken's experiment was the first of many. Paul Ehrenfest, Erwin Schr\"{o}dinger, Edwin C. Kemble, and John Van Vleck, among others, attempted theoretical descriptions of the rotational specific heat, as did Reiche himself in a widely cited 1919 paper. Despite these efforts, the problem proved intractable---its explanation involves identical particles in ways unsuspected before modern quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, the older theory worked reasonably well to describe the infrared spectra of other diatomic molecules. I will sketch the history of this intriguing problem in early quantum theory. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 17, 2005 1:39PM - 2:03PM |
K11.00002: To Wise King Ehrenfest: Humorous Writings by Oskar Klein and Others from 1930s Copenhagen Paul Halpern In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Copenhagen, the center of the development of quantum physics, was also the home of abundant humor. As a respite from the intensive and highly competitive efforts taking place to characterize fundamental interactions on an atomic scale, physicists took the time to develop satirical letters, articles, plays and other works. Written in German, English and other languages, many of these efforts were quite pointed and clever. This paper will focus on several examples of these humorous contributions, including letters exchanged between Oskar Klein and Paul Ehrenfest in 1930, articles written for the ``Journal of Jocular Physics,'' and a well-known parody of Faust. We'll show how these pieces reflect the political and scientific climate of the era, and attempt to characterize the personal styles of the some of the researchers involved. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 17, 2005 2:03PM - 2:27PM |
K11.00003: Historic Objections to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics---How They Veered Close to Chaos Theory Wm. C. McHarris Ever since the Einstein-Bohr debates there have been sporatic challenges to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, but these have rarely gained widespread credence. Quantum mechanics has always been regarded as the very epitome of a linear science, but in other presentations I have raised the possibility of nonlinear or chaotic elements in quantum theory [abstract for This Meeting; J. Opt. B: Quantum and Semiclass. Opt. {\bf 5} S442 (2003)]. Neither the founders of quantum mechanics nor its primary critics---e.g., Einstein, de Broglie, Bohm---had access to modern chaos theory. Even those who have attempted more recently [e.g., Weinberg, Gisin, Mielnik] to incorporate nonlinear elements into quantum theory have done so in the context of perturbations to a basically linear system---where chaos cannot develop. Many of these workers have toyed with ideas that fall tantalizingly close to chaotic behavior, so one wonders what would have been the result had they known full-fledged chaos theory. Even strong adherents of the Copenhagen interpretation such as Feynman bring up ideas akin to sensitive dependence on initial conditions leading to classical uncertainty. I summarize and comment on some of these prior investigations. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 17, 2005 2:27PM - 2:51PM |
K11.00004: Likelihood of women vs. men to receive bachelor's degrees in physics at Stanford, 1900-1929. Anthony Nero Work by K. Tolley indicates that girls in mid to late 19th century U.S. high schools were more likely to study mathematics and natural philosophy (i.e., physics and astronomy) than were boys (who pursued the classics).* She also found that after the turn of the century women were more likely than men to receive bachelor's degrees in math and biological sciences at Stanford, but her sampling of every fifth year yielded too few data to be conclusive about physics. Reexamination of graduation lists at Stanford, yielding data for each year from 1900 to 1929, shows that, while absolute numbers were small, women were as likely as men to receive bachelor's degrees in physics during the first decade of the century, in the second decade they were notably more likely, and in the third their likelihood decreased substantially, while that of men rose to exceed that of women. (Women were much more likely to receive bachelor's degrees in math, exceeding the likelihood for men by an order of magnitude during the second and third decades.) *K. Tolley, The Science Education of American Girls: A Historical Perspective (Routledge, N.Y.), 2003. [Preview Abstract] |
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