Portal:Physics
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Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.
Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest. Over much of the past two millennia, physics, chemistry, biology, and certain branches of mathematics were a part of natural philosophy, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, these natural sciences branched into separate research endeavors. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new avenues of research in these and other academic disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy.
Advances in physics often enable new technologies. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism, solid-state physics, and nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons; advances in thermodynamics led to the development of industrialization; and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus. (Full article...)
The eye is a region of mostly calm weather at the center of a tropical cyclone. The eye of a storm is a roughly circular area, typically 30–65 kilometers (19–40 miles; 16–35 nautical miles) in diameter. It is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather and highest winds of the cyclone occur. The cyclone's lowest barometric pressure occurs in the eye and can be as much as 15 percent lower than the pressure outside the storm.
In strong tropical cyclones, the eye is characterized by light winds and clear skies, surrounded on all sides by a towering, symmetric eyewall. In weaker tropical cyclones, the eye is less well defined and can be covered by the central dense overcast, an area of high, thick clouds that show up brightly on satellite imagery. Weaker or disorganized storms may also feature an eyewall that does not completely encircle the eye or have an eye that features heavy rain. In all storms, however, the eye is where the barometer reading is lowest. (Full article...)Did you know -
- ... that, in the Large Hadron Collider, protons move at 99.9999991% the speed of light when accelerated with the energy of 7 TeV?
- ... that, at a speed of 299,792,458 m/s, light can travel from the Earth to the Moon in 1.2 seconds?
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In modern physics, the double-slit experiment demonstrates that light and matter can satisfy the seemingly incongruous classical definitions for both waves and particles. This ambiguity is considered evidence for the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. This type of experiment was first performed by Thomas Young in 1801, as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light. In 1927, Davisson and Germer and, independently George Paget Thomson and his research student Alexander Reid demonstrated that electrons show the same behavior, which was later extended to atoms and molecules. Thomas Young's experiment with light was part of classical physics long before the development of quantum mechanics and the concept of wave–particle duality. He believed it demonstrated that the Christiaan Huygens' wave theory of light was correct, and his experiment is sometimes referred to as Young's experiment or Young's slits. (Full article...)
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September anniversaries
- 6 September 1809 - Sir George Cayley identifies the four aerodynamic forces
- 3 September 1821 - Faraday discovers electromagnetic rotation (the principle behind the electric motor).
- - September 1911 - The Sackur-Tetrode Equation is published in Annalen der Physik.
- 29 September 1904 - Nature publishes Wood's letter discrediting N-rays.
- 27 September 1905 - E=mc2 --- Annalen der Physik publishes the Mass–Energy equivalence
- 9 September 1934: The American Rocket Society (ARS) launched Rocket No. 4 to 400 feet.
- 17 September 1959 - The first powered X-15 flight.
- 9 September 1959 - The Atlas 10-D rocket is launched.
- 1 September 1974 - Pioneer 11 sends polar images of Jupiter.
- 20 September 1979 - The High Energy Astronomical Observatory (HEAO) 3 is launched.
- - September 1981 - Invention of the scanning tunneling microscope.
Births
- 22 September 1791 Michael Faraday (d.1867)
- 29 September 1901 Enrico Fermi
Deaths
- 5 September 1906 - Ludwig Boltzmann
- 7 September 1783 - Leonhard Euler
- 9 September 2003 - Edward Teller
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Categories
Fundamentals: Concepts in physics | Constants | Physical quantities | Units of measure | Mass | Length | Time | Space | Energy | Matter | Force | Gravity | Electricity | Magnetism | Waves
Basic physics: Mechanics | Electromagnetism | Statistical mechanics | Thermodynamics | Quantum mechanics | Theory of relativity | Optics | Acoustics
Specific fields: Acoustics | Astrophysics | Atomic physics | Molecular physics | Optical physics | Computational physics | Condensed matter physics | Nuclear physics | Particle physics | Plasma physics
Tools: Detectors | Interferometry | Measurement | Radiometry | Spectroscopy | Transducers
Background: Physicists | History of physics | Philosophy of physics | Physics education | Physics journals | Physics organizations
Other: Physics in fiction | Physics lists | Physics software | Physics stubs
Physics topics
Classical physics traditionally includes the fields of mechanics, optics, electricity, magnetism, acoustics and thermodynamics. The term Modern physics is normally used for fields which rely heavily on quantum theory, including quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, particle physics and condensed matter physics. General and special relativity are usually considered to be part of modern physics as well.
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- ^ In this Polish name, the surname is Skłodowska.