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Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines. 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.
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The Hubble Deep Field
The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is an image of a small region in the constellationUrsa Major, constructed from a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers an area about 2.6 arcminutes on a side, about one 24-millionth of the whole sky, which is equivalent in angular size to a tennis ball at a distance of 100 metres. The image was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 over ten consecutive days between December 18 and 28, 1995.
The field is so small that only a few foreground stars in the Milky Way lie within it; thus, almost all of the 3,000 objects in the image are galaxies, some of which are among the youngest and most distant known. By revealing such large numbers of very young galaxies, the HDF has become a landmark image in the study of the early universe. (Full article...)
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Chien-Shiung Wu, after whom the Wu experiment is named, designed the experiment and led the team that carried out the test of the conservation of parity in 1956. The Wu experiment was a particle and nuclear physics experiment conducted in 1956 by the Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu in collaboration with the Low Temperature Group of the US National Bureau of Standards. The experiment's purpose was to establish whether conservation of parity, which was previously established in the electromagnetic and strong interactions, also applied to weak interactions. If parity conservation were universal, particle decays governed by the weak interaction would behave similarly to particle decays involving the other interactions. A parity transformation negates the coordinates in a theory. If the predictions of the theory are not altered, it is said to "conserve parity". A parity transformation creates a mirror image. In mirror images, objects spinning clockwise appear to spin counterclockwise. The Wu experiment created an atomic system with spin, then compared weak-interaction particle decay for spins clockwise and anti-clockwise.
The experiment established that conservation of parity was violated by the weak interaction, thus providing a way to operationally defineleft and right. This result was not expected by the physics community, which had previously regarded parity as a symmetry that applied to all forces of nature. Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, the theoretical physicists who originated the idea of parity nonconservation and proposed the experiment, received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for this result. While not awarded the Nobel Prize, Chien-Shiung Wu's role in the discovery was mentioned in the Nobel Prize acceptance speech of Yang and Lee, but she was not honored until 1978, when she was awarded the first Wolf Prize. (Full article...)
The atmosphere of Uranus is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. At depth, it is significantly enriched in volatiles (dubbed "ices") such as water, ammonia, and methane. The opposite is true for the upper atmosphere, which contains very few gases heavier than hydrogen and helium due to its low temperature. Uranus's atmosphere is the coldest of all the planets, with its temperature reaching as low as 49 K.
The Uranian atmosphere can be divided into three main layers: the troposphere, between altitudes of −300 and 50 km and pressures from 100 to 0.1 bar; the stratosphere, spanning altitudes between 50 and 4000 km and pressures of between 0.1 and 10−10 bar; and the hot thermosphere (and exosphere) extending from an altitude of 4,000 km to several Uranian radii from the nominal surface at 1 bar pressure. Unlike Earth's, Uranus's atmosphere has no mesosphere. (Full article...)
An Andrea Amati violin, which may have been made as early as 1558, making it one of the earliest violins in existence Violin acoustics is an area of study within musical acoustics concerned with how the sound of a violin is created as the result of interactions between its many parts. These acoustic qualities are similar to those of other members of the violin family, such as the viola.
The energy of a vibrating string is transmitted through the bridge to the body of the violin, which allows the sound to radiate into the surrounding air. Both ends of a violin string are effectively stationary, allowing for the creation of standing waves. A range of simultaneously produced harmonics each affect the timbre, but only the fundamental frequency is heard. The frequency of a note can be raised by the increasing the string's tension, or decreasing its length or mass. The number of harmonics present in the tone can be reduced, for instance by the using the left hand to shorten the string length. The loudness and timbre of each of the strings is not the same, and the material used affects sound quality and ease of articulation. Violin strings were originally made from catgut but are now usually made of steel or a synthetic material. Most strings are wound with metal to increase their mass while avoiding excess thickness. (Full article...)
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Figure 2: The radius r of the green and blue planets are the same, but their angular speed differs by a factor k. Examples of such orbits are shown in Figures 1 and 3–5.
In classical mechanics, Newton's theorem of revolving orbits identifies the type of central force needed to multiply the angular speed of a particle by a factor k without affecting its radial motion (Figures 1 and 2). Newton applied his theorem to understanding the overall rotation of orbits (apsidal precession, Figure 3) that is observed for the Moon and planets. The term "radial motion" signifies the motion towards or away from the center of force, whereas the angular motion is perpendicular to the radial motion.
Isaac Newton derived this theorem in Propositions 43–45 of Book I of his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687. In Proposition 43, he showed that the added force must be a central force, one whose magnitude depends only upon the distance r between the particle and a point fixed in space (the center). In Proposition 44, he derived a formula for the force, showing that it was an inverse-cube force, one that varies as the inverse cube of r. In Proposition 45 Newton extended his theorem to arbitrary central forces by assuming that the particle moved in nearly circular orbit. (Full article...)
Maxwell graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1854, where he earned distinction in mathematics and the Smith’s Prize. He remained at Cambridge briefly, publishing early mathematical work and investigations into optics, particularly the principles of colour combination and colour-blindness. He later held the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College, where he studied the rings of Saturn and correctly proposed that they were composed of numerous small particles, work that earned him the Adams Prize in 1859. During this time he married Katherine Mary Dewar, who assisted him in his laboratory work. From 1860 to 1865, he served as the Professor of Natural Philosophy at King’s College London, where he developed his theory of electromagnetic fields. His publication of "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" in 1865 demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves moving at the speed of light, proposing that light is an undulation in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. His unification of light and electrical phenomena led to his prediction of the existence of radio waves. (Full article...)
A graduate of the University of South Dakota and University of Minnesota, Lawrence obtained a PhD in physics at Yale in 1925. In 1928, he was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, becoming the youngest full professor there two years later. In its library one evening, Lawrence was intrigued by a diagram of an accelerator that produced high-energy particles. He contemplated how it could be made compact, and came up with an idea for a circular accelerating chamber between the poles of an electromagnet. The result was the first cyclotron. (Full article...)
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Decision tree for shapes of particles, adapted from Boukouvala, Daniel and Ringe Extended Wulff constructions refers to a number of different ways to model the structure of nanoparticles as well as larger mineral crystals. They can be used to understand the shape of gemstones and crystals with twins, and in other areas such as understanding both the shape and how nanoparticles play a role in the commercial production of chemicals using heterogeneous catalysts. Extended Wulff constructions are variants of the Wulff construction, which is used for a solid single crystal in isolation. They include cases for solid particles on substrates, those with internal boundaries and also when growth is important. Depending upon whether there are twins or a substrate, there are different cases as indicated in the decision tree figure. The simplest forms of these constructions yield the lowest Gibbs free energy (thermodynamic) shape, or the stable growth form for an isolated particle; it can be difficult to differentiate between the two in experimental data. The thermodynamic cases involve the surface energy of different facets; the term surface tension refers to liquids, not solids. The shapes found due to growth kinetics involve the growth velocity of the different surface facets. (Full article...)
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Peierls in 1966
Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, CBEFRS (/ˈpaɪ.ərlz/; German:[ˈpaɪɐls]; 5 June 1907 – 19 September 1995) was a German-born British physicist who played a major role in Tube Alloys, Britain's nuclear weapon programme, as well as the subsequent Manhattan Project, the combined Allied nuclear bomb programme. His 1996 obituary in Physics Today described him as "a major player in the drama of the eruption of nuclear physics into world affairs".
The first nuclear power plant was built in the 1950s. The global installed nuclear capacity grew to 100GW in the late 1970s, and then expanded during the 1980s, reaching 300GW by 1990. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union resulted in increased regulation and public opposition to nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants supplied 2,602 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2023, equivalent to about 9% of global electricity generation, and were the second largest low-carbon power source after hydroelectricity. As of November 2025, there are 416 civilian fission reactors in the world, with overall capacity of 376GW, 63 under construction and 87 planned, with a combined capacity of 66GW and 84GW, respectively. The United States has the largest fleet of nuclear reactors, generating almost 800TWh per year with an average capacity factor of 92%. The average global capacity factor is 89%. Most new reactors under construction are generation III reactors in Asia. (Full article...)
The mobility analogy, also called admittance analogy or Firestone analogy, is a method of representing a mechanical system by an analogous electrical system. The advantage of doing this is that there is a large body of theory and analysis techniques concerning complex electrical systems, especially in the field of filters. By converting to an electrical representation, these tools in the electrical domain can be directly applied to a mechanical system without modification. A further advantage occurs in electromechanical systems: Converting the mechanical part of such a system into the electrical domain allows the entire system to be analysed as a unified whole.
The mathematical behaviour of the simulated electrical system is identical to the mathematical behaviour of the represented mechanical system. Each element in the electrical domain has a corresponding element in the mechanical domain with an analogous constitutive equation. All laws of circuit analysis, such as Kirchhoff's laws, that apply in the electrical domain also apply to the mechanical mobility analogy. (Full article...)
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (/ɡaʊs/ⓘ; German: Gauß; [kaʁlˈfʁiːdʁɪçˈɡaʊs]ⓘ; Latin: Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer, geodesist, and physicist, who contributed to many fields in mathematics and science. His mathematical contributions spanned the branches of number theory, algebra, analysis, geometry, statistics, and probability. Gauss was director of the Göttingen Observatory in Germany and professor of astronomy from 1807 until his death in 1855.
Image 4The Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The inscriptions on the edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE) display this number system being used by the Imperial Mauryas. (from History of physics)
Image 5Classical physics is usually concerned with everyday conditions: speeds are much lower than the speed of light, sizes are much greater than that of atoms, yet very small in astronomical terms. Modern physics, however, is concerned with high velocities, small distances, and very large energies. (from Modern physics)
Image 6Hydrogen emission spectrum is discrete (here in log scale). The lines can only be explained with quantum mechanics. (from History of physics)
Image 10Computer simulation of nanogears made of fullerene molecules. It is hoped that advances in nanoscience will lead to machines working on the molecular scale. (from Condensed matter physics)
Image 32One possible signature of a Higgs boson from a simulated proton–proton collision. It decays almost immediately into two jets of hadrons and two electrons, visible as lines. (from History of physics)
Fundamentals: Concepts in physics | Constants | Physical quantities | Units of measure | Mass | Length | Time | Space | Energy | Matter | Force | Gravity | Electricity | Magnetism | Waves
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