History 181B - Class 18

History 181B: Modern Physics

Class 18 (3/3/03)
Einstein and relativity (2)

Navigation

Home

Schedule

< Previous Class

Next Class >

Outline

Building up the paper: kinematics, electromagnetics

The background
    Philosophical: Operational definitions and observable consequences
        Principle 1: Trace everything back to sensations and measurements
        Principle 2: Avoid postulating things without experimental effects
    Experimental: Attempts to detect the aether
        Light on a planet rushing through the aether
        Michelson's apparatus
        Interpreting a null result
    Theoretical: Lorentz's electron theory
        Lorentz's results on the electrodynamics of moving bodies
        Einstein's relation to Lorentz (and to the aether experiments)
    Practical: Einstein in the patent office

The reception of relativity
Electromagnetism
Mechanics

Names and terms

Primary	Secondary
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), NP 1921 Ernst Mach (1838-1916) conventionalism Albert Michelson (1852-1931), NP 1907 Michelson-Morley experiment interferometer H. A. Lorentz (1853-1928), NP 1902 Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction	Galilean transformations Lorentz transformations David Hume (1711-1776) Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) second-order effect: (v/c)²

Assignment

Werner Heisenberg, "The Theory of Relativity," in Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 110-127.

    First assignment: Read through p. 120.
    What did Heisenberg mean by a "principle of relativity" (p. 113)?
    What did it have to do with the Michelson-Morley experiment? That is, what was the result of that experiment, and what did it have to do with a "principle of relativity"?
    How does Heisenberg describe what was radical about what Einstein did?
    How did the result change the meaning of the term "simultaneity"?