Kathy Joseph's Blog, page 5

How Heinrich Hertz Discovered Radio Waves to Validate Maxwell’s Equation

How was the first radio wave discovered and why?  Well, it all had to do with a pessimistic young German scientist named Heinrich Hertz and a contest that he was too intimidated to try.This is one of the most influential experiments of all time. 

Table of ContentsHermann von HelmholtzHertz’s Early Life How Hert’z Discovered The Photoelectric Effect Hertz’s LegacyReferencesHermann von Helmholtz Hermann von Helmholtz
Practical Physics published 1914...

History of the Telegraph: How Samuel Morse Stole It & Became Famous

A scientist named Joseph Henry and a machinist/inventor named Alfred Vail invented the telegraph that transformed the world.  Samuel Morse put their ideas together and gained the fame and the profit. 

Morse didn’t do it for money, however.  His inspirations were a strange brew of ego, tragedy and xenophobia.  How could ego, tragedy and xenophobia lead to Samuel Morse gaining all the fame for this transformative invention?  Well, I’ll tell you in this short video.

Table of Co...

Niel Bohr’s Nuclear Model: The Nuclear Model That Changed Physics

Niels Bohr said that before 1913 no one expected that the lines of color you get from burning hydrogen would tell you anything about physics even though the colors follow a pattern. Just like butterflies have patterns with the colors on their wings, “but nobody thought that one could get the basis of biology from the coloring [on the] wings of a butterfly.[1]”

However, in February of 1913, 27-year-old Niels Bohrread a book about the spectral lines of hydrogen and everything clicked.  Within ...

The Origin of Rutherford’s Nucleus Model

If you search online for how the nucleus was discovered you will probably find a description of Rutherford’s gold foil experiment, where a beam of alpha particles hit a piece of gold and then the position of the alpha particle is found on a screen that is wrapped around the gold.  Now, an experiment like this was done in 1913. 

However, it wasn’t done by Rutherford nor did it inspire Rutherford to discover the nucleus!  In fact, the 360-degree experiment was actually conducted to verify Ruth...

The Wild Life of the Father of Nuclear Theory

Discover alpha and beta radiation, Radon, and the nucleus!  In 1909, a quirky and engaging New Zealander named Ernest Rutherford gave his co-worker’s new assistant some busywork to get him used to the equipment.  Rutherford wasn’t expecting to find any results.  Instead, the assistant found something startling. 

Rutherford decided that the only way these results made any sense was if almost all the mass was smushed in a tiny area, an area he called the nucleus!  What did this assistant do an...

The Origin of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

I remember when I learned about the second law of thermodynamics: that the total entropy of a closed system can only increase where entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. 

When I learned this I remember thinking: why did anyone make an equation to describe disorder?  How did they make an equation for disorder?  And how and why did scientists start to believe, to quote the singer David Byrne from Talking Heads, “things fall apart, it’s scientific”?  To answer all of those questions...

History of Maxwell’s Equation

In 1865, James Clerk Maxwell wrote his famous (or infamously difficult) Maxwell’s equations. These equations were to transform our world.  For example, when Einstein was asked if he stood on the shoulders of Newton, he replied, “No, on the shoulders of Maxwell”.

But who was James Maxwell, why are his equations important and why did he write them? It all has to do with a great scientist named Michael Faraday who had no math skills and a young Lord Kelvin (of temperature fame) who inspired the...

How Spectroscopy Changed the World

Did spectroscopy, the study of how light is emitted and absorbed by heated objects, really revolutionize the sciences and fundamentally shift our understanding of the world?  In short… yes!  In Chemistry, spectroscopy quickly caused the identification of new elements and infrared spectroscopy is still used in chemical analysis to this very day. 

In Astronomy, spectroscopy allowed us to figure out what the sun and stars are composed of and is still the most powerful tool in an Astronomer’s to...

How Wilhelm Roentgen Started The X-ray Craze

X-ray was the first scientific discovery that wasn’t made famous through scientific publishing.  In fact, despite the fact that Roentgen wrote a startlingly prophetic and accurate paper about the discovery of this new ray in December of 1895, most scientists learned about it through their morning papers! 

Therefore, the discovery of the x-ray should really be dated not from December of 1895, but instead from a few weeks later January 5th, 1896, the date of the first newspaper account.   Why ...

Max Planck’s Quantum Theory

In December of 1900, a conservative German scientist named Max Planck wrote a paper that included, according to the Nobel Prize winning Physicist Max Born, “the most revolutionary idea which ever has shaken physics.[i]”  For in this paper Planck assumed that light came in little energy packets.  Why did he do this and why was it so revolutionary?  Good questions!  Let’s ask Planck.  No, not with a Ouija board silly.  Why don’t we just read his autobiography and his other papers and see what Plan...