Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Science's 10 Most Beautiful Physics Experiments

Science's 10 Most Beautiful Physics Experiments
Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University
of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory,
recently asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time.
Based on href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/24/science/24BEAU.html?ei=5062&en=d110cb64250fdf6a&ex=1033444800&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=all&position=top"
sp_eventWasSet="on">the paper of George Johnson

in The
New York Times
we list below 10 winners of this polling and accompany
the short explanations of the physical experiments with computer animations.

1. Double-slit electron diffraction

2. Galileo's experiment on falling objects

3. Millikan's oil-drop experiment


4. Newton's decomposition of sunlight with a prism

 


5. Young's light-interference experiment

6. Cavendish's torsion-bar experiment


7. Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth's circumference


8. Galileo's experiments with rolling balls down inclined planes


9. Rutherford's discovery of the nucleus

 


10. Foucault's pendulum
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