- Findings from the Islamic world
- Middle Ages
- The Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution
- The cientific method
- Rene Descartes
- Mechanics
- Heat studies
- Theory of electricity and electromagnetism
- Modern physics
- Quantum mechanics
- References
The history of physics can be traced back to antiquity where the philosophers of classical Greece devoted themselves to the study of how the universe works. Many started from observation, as the tool that could lead them to understand the laws that govern the world.
The movements of the Earth, the stars and trying to discover the origin of matter were several of the main research points at the time. Also, many of these arguments served for the development of mechanics.
Albert Einstein, one of the most important figures in the history of physics from the 20th century
Image by Jackie Ramirez from Pixabay
Philosophers like Leucippus and Democritus proposed that matter was made up of atoms, a smaller and indivisible particle. For his part, Aristarchus of Samos was the first to discern that the earth revolved around the sun, carrying out the first heliocentric model of the solar system, an astronomical plane that placed the Sun in the center instead of the Earth, as it used to be thought that it was located.
Aristarchus of Samos
Aristotle argued the importance of the four elements - air, earth, water and fire - in the process of formation of matter. He also stated that everything that moves is driven by an internal or external motor.
Bust of Aristotle, by Internet Archive, via Wikimedia Commons
Other relevant characters such as Archimedes of Syracuse in the third century, made contributions in the study of mechanics, elaborated the bases of hydrostatics and statics.
Archimedes of Syracuse
He could also create a pulley system to reduce the effort when lifting weights. Hipparchus of Nicaea managed to create a map of the movement of the stars through geometry, which allowed the detection of astronomical events such as eclipses.
Hipparchus of Nicea - Source: Transferred from de.wikipedia to Commons by Maksim - Under Public Domain
Findings from the Islamic world
Many of the studies of antiquity were translated into Arabic, at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. Much of the Greek legacy was recovered by the Islamic world, which allowed certain developments to take place within this community as well. Some of them can be mentioned:
-Omar Khayyám (1048-1131), who calculated the length of a solar year and proposed a calendar model 500 years before the current Gregorian calendar.
-Avempace (1085-1138), one of the main precursors of Newton's third law, proposed that for each force used there is a reaction force. He was also interested in speed and was a great commentator on Aristotelian works.
-Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274), described in his work the circular motion of the planets on their orbits.
Middle Ages
All the knowledge that could be inherited from the period before the Middle Ages, was taken first hand by the members of the church. The academic field was limited to the copying of church manuscripts. However, later there would be a clash due to conflicts of faith.
The dilemma of Christians for the translation and acceptance of texts of "pagan" origin from the Islamic world, originated some aversion until the arrival of Thomas Aquinas, who managed to integrate Aristotelian knowledge and much of Greek philosophy with Christianity.
Saint Thomas of Aquino
The Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution
The clamor for the knowledge of the ancients continued during the Renaissance, but closely linked to religion, an aspect that brought various consequences in terms of new discoveries. Anything that opposed Aristotelian thought or the church could be condemned.
Such was the case of Nicolás Copernicus in the 16th century, when he claimed that the Earth and the other planets revolved around the sun. This was immediately qualified as heresy. According to Christian beliefs, the Earth was stationary and was at the center of the universe.
Nicolas Copernicus - Source: UnknownDeutsch: UnbekanntEnglish: UnknownPolski: Nieznany
Copernicus' work would be published just before his death in 1543, based on the heliocentric model of the solar system developed by Aristarco de Samos. The idea of the movement of the Earth managed to be so revolutionary that it would give way to the development of scientific thought in the next centuries.
Galileo Galilei is also among those who opposed the rigid academy imposed by the church. In this way, and taking the works of Copernicus as a reference, after building his own telescope, he managed to discover new elements within the solar system. The mountainous surface of the Moon, the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus.
Galileo Galilei - Source: Domenico Tintoretto
Galileo's appreciation for the studies of Copernicus and his new findings caused the inquisition to condemn him to house arrest at age 68, however, he continued his work from home and went down in the history of the greatest representatives regarding the development of the modern physics.
The cientific method
Rene Descartes
René Descartes is one of the most prominent modern philosophers in history. Source: wikipedia.org
René Descartes is one of the main characters that mark the beginning of the scientific method in the framework of the seventeenth century. He is known for the development of reductionism, a study method that consists of decomposing a problem into its various parts to analyze each of them independently, and thus then understand the phenomenon or problem in its entirety.
Descartes claimed that the only way to understand the principles of nature was through reason and mathematical analysis.
Mechanics
Another of the great fundamental steps for the development of physics is the study of mechanics. Isaac Newton is one of the most influential in this field.
Isaac Newton
His theory of gravitation in his publication Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687, explains how mass is attracted to another mass through a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. A force known as "gravity", which is present throughout the universe.
Newton's three laws are currently the most recognized contributions:
-The first of them establishes that a body cannot alter its movement unless another body acts on it.
-The second, known as the “fundamental law”, states that the net force applied to a body is proportional to the acceleration that the body acquires.
-The third law tells us the principle of action and reaction, establishing that "if a body A exerts an action on another body B, it performs another equal action on A and in the opposite direction on B."
Heat studies
Following inventions such as the steam engine by Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729), studies of physics began to focus on heat. Heat began to be related to work force, through mechanisms such as water wheels.
Later, the American inventor Benjamin Thompson, known as Count Rumford, noted the relationship between work and heat, by observing how the surface of a cannon heated up when it was drilled during construction.
Portrait of Benjamin Thompson. Not specified
Later, the British physicist James Prescott Joule (1818-1889) would establish a mathematical equivalence between work and heat. In addition, discover what is known as Joule's law, which relates the heat generated by the current through a conductor, the resistance of the conductor, the current itself, and its emission time.
James Prescott Joule
This discovery allows us to begin to lay the foundations for the laws of thermodynamics, which study the effect of heat and temperature in relation to labor, radiation and matter.
Theory of electricity and electromagnetism
During the eighteenth century, research on electricity and magnetism was another great point of study for physics. Among the findings, the suggestion of the philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon stands out, that the electric charge has two aspects, a positive and a negative, which, being equal, collide and being different, attract each other.
Francis Bacon
Bacon also developed a new method of study for science in his publication Novum Organum, in which he specified certain steps for empiricism-based research, studies conducted through experience and experience:
- The description of the phenomena.
- The classification of the facts in three categories or tables: first, the circumstances given at the time of carrying out the experiment; second, the absent circumstances, moments in which the phenomenon does not appear; third, the variables present at different levels or degrees of intensity.
- Table of the rejection of those results that are not linked to the phenomenon and the determination of what is related to it.
Another decisive experimentalist in this field was the British Michael Faraday (1791-1867). In 1831 he made his discovery through induced currents. He experimented with a wire circuit whose current was maintained if the wire was moving near a magnet or, if not, if the magnet was moving near the circuit. This would lay the foundations for the generation of electricity by mechanical procedures.
Michael Faraday
For his part, James Clerk Maxwell made a fundamental contribution to electromagnetic theory, defining that light, electricity and magnetism are part of the same field, called "electromagnetic field", in which they remain in motion and are capable of emit transverse waves of energy. Later this theory would appear as an important reference for Einstein's studies.
Modern physics
After the discovery of the subatomic particles, electrons, protons and neutrons and the electromagnetic theory, the entrance to the 20th century would also be composed of theories relevant to contemporary times. This is how Albert Einstein is among the most prominent figures of this time.
Einstein in 1933. By Acme, via Wikimedia Commons
Einstein's studies demonstrated the relativity that exists when measuring speed and its relationship with time, space and the observer. In Einstein's time, the speed of one object used to be measured only in relation to the speed of another object.
Einstein's theory of special relativity revolutionized the concept of space-time that existed until then, and was published in 1905. It determined that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of an observer, that is, this remains constant and that the perception of space-time is relative for each observer.
In this way, an event that occurs in two parts can simultaneously be perceived differently by two observers who are in two different places. The law suggests that if a person could move at high speed, the perception of space-time would be different from that of a person at rest and that nothing is capable of matching the speed of light.
Regarding the theory of general relativity published in 1915, it explains that objects with large volumes such as planets are capable of bending space-time. This curvature is known as gravity and it is capable of attracting bodies towards them.
Quantum mechanics
Finally, within the most recent and significant fields of studies, quantum mechanics stands out, focused on the study of nature at atomic and subatomic levels and its relationship with electromagnetic radiation. It is based on the observable through the liberation of different forms of energy.
The discovery of subatomic particles paved the way for one of the most recent fields in physics, quantum mechanics
SVG by Indolences. Recoloring and ironing out some glitches done by Rainer Klute. / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
In this area, Max Planck stands out, known as the father of quantum theory. He discovered that radiation is emitted in small amounts of particles called "quanta."
Max planck
Later he discovers Planck's law that determined the electromagnetic radiation of a body at a certain temperature. This theory was developed in the early twentieth century almost on par with Einstein's theories.
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