Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2016
Volume 61, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 16–19, 2016; Salt Lake City, Utah
Session U6: Pais Prize Session - Some History You Won't Find In Physics TextbooksInvited Undergraduate
|
Hide Abstracts |
Sponsoring Units: FHP Chair: William Evenson, Brigham Young University Room: 150ABC |
Monday, April 18, 2016 3:30PM - 4:06PM |
U6.00001: Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics: Physics Textbooks Don't Always Tell the Truth Invited Speaker: Allan Franklin Anyone who studies the history of physics quickly realizes that the history of physics presented in physics textbooks is often inaccurate. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The purpose of textbooks is to help students learn physics. An inaccurate history may serve a pedagogical purpose. It may help to explain concepts more clearly than the actual history. I believe, however, that it is important for those of us who teach physics to know the accurate history. In this talk I will discuss two episodes from the history of modern physics, Millikan's experiments on the photoelectric effect and the Ellis-Wooster experiment on the energy spectrum in $\beta $ decay. Everyone knows that Millikan's work established the photon theory of light. The problem is that what everyone knows is wrong. The Ellis-Wooster experiment, on the other hand, is rarely discussed in physics texts, but it should be. In this talk I will present a more accurate history of these experiments. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 4:06PM - 4:42PM |
U6.00002: Newton's Principia: Myth and Reality Invited Speaker: George Smith Myths about Newton's \textit{Principia} abound. Some of them, such as the myth that the whole book was initially developed using the calculus and then transformed into a geometric mathematics, stem from remarks he made during the priority controversy with Leibniz over the calculus. Some of the most persistent, and misleading, arose from failures to read the book with care. Among the latter are the myth that he devised his theory of gravity in order to explain the already established ``laws'' of Kepler, and that in doing so he took himself to be establishing that Keplerian motion is ``absolute,'' if not with respect to ``absolute space,'' then at least with respect to the fixed stars taken as what came later to be known as an inertial frame. The talk will replace these two myths with the reality of what Newton took himself to have established. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 4:42PM - 5:18PM |
U6.00003: Historical Examples of Misrepresentation, Innovation, and Morality in Physical Science and Technology Invited Speaker: Jed Buchwald The pressures of publication, the desire to be first in innovation, and moral convictions have long been at work in the history of science and technology. Historians think and argue best through stories, so I've chosen three examples that exemplify one or more of these aspects. The first involves the discovery of electric waves by Heinrich Hertz in 1888; the second concerns the controlled production of electromagnetic radiation by Marconi and Fleming in the early 1900s; our final case involves a bitter controversy between the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the astronomer Friedrich Z\"{o}llner in the 1890s. [Preview Abstract] |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700