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History 181B: Modern Physics

Class 31 (4/9/03)
Advancing physics at home

 
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Outline An American style of physics?
    Experiment: Precision measurement and technical ingenuity
    Theory: Philosophical pragmatism and experimental connections

Berkeley
    Oppenheimer's theories
    Lawrence's experiments
        The cyclotron
        More than a physicist: Big Science
        What Lawrence was good at, and what he was not

The physics of nuclei
    The initial model: Protons plus electrons
    And the problems it raised for quantum mechanics
    The neutron, and Heisenberg's quantum mechanical nucleus
    Fermi's quantum field theoretic nucleus
Names and terms
Primary Secondary
The pragmatist philosophers: Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)
Ernest Lawrence (1901-1958), NP 1939
cyclotron
mass number A, atomic number Z
neutrino (nu)
Fermi interaction (beta decay)
Fermi-field theory of nuclear forces		 Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839-1903)
Henry Rowland (1848-1901)
James Chadwick (1901-1954), NP 1935
Assignment "Lawrence and his Laboratory: A Historian's View of the Lawrence Years," on the web .

    Second assignment: Read ch. 2 and episode 1.
    What tasks occupied Lawrence's growing lab during the 1930s?
    What physical discoveries did the lab make? What did it miss?
    Where did the support come from? Why should this matter?
    What made Lawrence such a leader in his field?

Extra credit: Second Nobel option due.
Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2003