Historical Definition and 91 Threads

Ritz proposed in 1908 that SR was wrong, and that the speed of light would depend on the speed of the source according to Galilean addition of velocities, c+v. The review linked to from PF's sticky on the experimental basis of SR has a nice section on this...

Just last week I relieved myself of a mathematical burden, freeing up some time for myself. Coincidentally I came across the following passage by Arnol'd around the same time: So, having a bit of free time & the ability to understand old textbooks on mathematics, both of which I'd previously...

Does anyone know who first posed the energy relation E2=m2c4+p2c2 and where its original appearance can be found?

Does anyone know of any history forums run along the lines of pf?

Hello, Recently I've been attempting to put together a brief book on mathematics. The first section is short and introductory as I lead up into calculus. I kind of feel bad that I skipped over conics, geometric series, permutations and combinations, transformations of functions, and so many...

Hello, I am apprentice in quantum physics and physics generally. When Rutherford posted his model, he was strongly negated because of the fact that electrons will fall in nucleus. Well i got that part quiet well but when i learned that planet goes around its sun mainly because inertia (losing...

Physics Grad School with "Historical Method" Pedagogy? Are there graduate schools in physics that teach physics with a history and philosophy (HPS) emphasis? http://sites.huji.ac.il/science/stc/staff_h/galili_h.htm" and optics that adopted this approach remain to be valuable and interesting...

Without knowing much specific war history, it seems to be common knowledge that war was often used for imperialist economic purposes in the past. Presumably, the winning army would either kill any surviving opponents and take their land and property or enslave them. My question is whether...

http://www.vindy.com/news/2010/dec/29/registry-selects-25-films/ •Airplane (1980) •All the President’s Men (1976) •The Bargain (1914) •Cry of Jazz (1959) •Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967) •The Empire Strikes Back (1980) •The Exorcist (1973) •The Front Page (1931)...

I was just reading the old document by H.A. Lorentz " The Einstein Theory of Relativity" which is freely available in ebook and text format. I find it interesting to read some of the comments from those times, and Lorentz provides a nice summary of the thoughts of the days soon after a second...

This is a historical moment – CERN and Switzerland did not turn into a Black Hole! :biggrin: Here are some pictures and video from the event: The two beams getting aligned for collision...

Hi all, I am looking for either (or both) a non-technical historical account of linear algebra (the closest I've found is Crowe's "A History of Vector Analysis") or an introductory (first course) book that develops the basic ideas in roughly the order they were developed. Do such books exist?

I would like to see a detailed comparative analysis of specific historical events from the 1600"s, 1700's, and 1800's over 25 year intervals. Does anyone know of such a study?

Hi everybody! After some time reading you I decided to join the forum. Since a few days ago I'm looking for information but I cannot find anyting... hope you can give me a hand! What I'm trying to do is a list of the farthest known astronomical object per year of record...

As stated below, Toyota will lose over 2 billion dollars due to their car pedal/brake design problem. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8502894.stm Were there any disasters in the past occurred solely in the engineering design process? Tacoma bridge could be one but I do not know the...

What is Historical Materialism? Historical Materialism is the application of Marxist science to historical development. The fundamental proposition of historical materialism can be summed up in a sentence: ""it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the...

I am starting this for a couple reasons. First is that I wanted to post a link to a tech article on Smokey Yunicks engine. Popular mechanics article on good, old, google books, search: smokeys engine. link below (hope it works)...

Hello. I've just found this forum as I am looking for an answer to a question. For what it's worth, by way of introduction, I am a software and telephony engineer, with interests in aviation, boat design, and energy-efficient houses. I also write when I can. Here's my question. Plenty...

Hi, I have to write an essay for a class and I'm a little overwhelmed. My topic of choice is how different cultures and societies interpret historical events. (For example, how do the Japanese interpret WWII in comparison to how we interpret WWII?) It's somewhat of a research paper, but I have...

This is one of my favorite boards on PF, but it doesn't have a lot of posts, and I do not know enough about history & historical humanities to ask questions or make many posts. Are there any quality forums that I might like?

I realize that the understanding of physics and the perferred description or mathematical representation of our understanding evolves over time. So I have a feeling that the answer to my question is strongly a mix of history and physics. Please, when at all possible add some of the historical...

I've noticed in most cultures, there is mention of a "great flood." in Native American legend, the Earth was created from a flood, Christianity has the story of Noah...and thoughts on this?

This question may be beyond the scope of this forum, but I'll give it a go anyway. Moseley's landmark experiments in 1913 related the square root of the frequency of characteristic X-rays of an element to integer values, which he equated to the element's atomic number. He measured the...

This appears to be a rather useful overview of the history of high energy/particle physics. I glanced through it quickly, but can someone who is more familiar with this field of study verify that there's nothing obviously erroneous with this? If there isn't, this could be a very good intro to...

If Darvin knew about genetics or even about what mendel was researching, how do you think it would have changed his theories?

what are in the history the big disasters that have taken due to material failure...like i some somewhere there was an huge ship which can carry 20 planes but it was passing/standing in a very cold water,,so that it breaked exactly in the middle...

Now, to be clear, when I say "figures", i mean pretty much anything such as people, books... ok that's about it haha. Why do we listen to historical figures so much? Now let's ignore the fact that in many cases, quotes and ideals are taken way out of context. Why are we so quick to be in awe...

Historical Meeting: Astro & Clausius in SD! Yeah man! Although it was a very fast meeting, we were talking in my new place at San Diego!. A nice guy!. And yeah, his beard is original (I tried to pull out his beard hair and after some Astro screams I realized is beard is true!). Behind a...

I had little interest in some thing written by Homer 500yrs after the fact, prefering to think the Trojan war a myth, however archealogical evidence is giving some bones to the the myth, i guess we will never know if there was a "wooden horse" or if the characters in Homers story took part in...

This may or may not be the correct forum to ask this, but let's ask it anyway. I am looking for historical information on density. It is so that densities can not be added lineary: A material containing 10% of material 1 and 90% of material 2 will not have a density of 10% * the density of...

Can someone recommend some good history forums?

There are quite a lot around the world that survives from times gone by. Some of these things are amazing, but it doesn't surprise me that they are still here (A pyramid isn't exactly going to just dissapear...) but some of it I'm really surprised still exists. For example, the city of York...

I have spun this thread off from the movie review on to discuss theories and evidence for the proposition that the legendary figure King Arthur was or was not based on one or more historical prototypes. We can also include posts on the various sources for the legends and their comparison...

Is it possible to review some of movies which concerns a particular period of history? I mean we can discuss art and history at the same time. Talking about the movie itself and the historical facts. And how much the movie was successful in telling the facts! I think "A man for all seasons"...

Hi! I am currently in a Honors US history class with a teacher who seriously pushes us to our very limits (seriously!) with his evil ID tests. These tests require us to learn about 20-30 key terms in US history starting from the beginning (1700's) each week. Right now, in week 3 we've gotten to...

I'm not exactly sure where to post this, but does anybody know of a website that has different historical papers from Physics history, i.e. Einstein's 1905 papers, Plank's Paper on Blackbody Radiation etc. (translated hopefully) I think I would enjoy the opportunity to look through some of those...

Who do you believe to be the most unappreciated person in recorded history, or history overall?

Hi there, I am currently trying to write an essay on "Was the cuban missile crisis the closest the world ever came to nuclear war?" I was hoping you crazy cats could suggest other minor or major historical conflicts... I already have the Quemoy-Matsu crisis and the India-Pakistan ones...

What historical figure does George W. Bush remind you of, and why?

a historical question! I have a question about galileo's experiment on top of the pizza ! (maybe it seems a bit silly!) Can anyone tell me how did he say from this experiment that: mass of gravity and inertia are identical? Thanks a lot. Somy :smile:

Hello everyone. My name is Renaud Guilbert and I need some specific documentation for a work based on the history of physics. To achieve it, I need the original papers of 4 experiments that are now classics of modern physics. By original papers, I mean the first report of the experiment...