MAGIC through TWO MILLENNIA

The Storyline
This is a story of humanity's search for an understanding of the universe we inhabit, a search that
has its roots in pre-history. Early communities had a very good understanding of those cyclical
changes of Nature that had an immediate effect on their lives, such as the seasons of the year, the
phases of the moon and the consequent ebb and flow of ocean tides. However this was very far
from what we would now consider a scientific understanding, since the behaviours of Nature were
usually considered to be of supernatural or divine origin, inscrutable to humankind.
In the astonishing burst of civilization which emerged in Asia Minor several centuries before the
birth of Christ, a few individuals emerged in Ancient Greece who began to inquire into the
workings of the natural world. Their views held sway for sixteen centuries. This ancient learning
was preserved through the Dark Ages by Arab and European mediaeval scholars who, for the most
part, restricted their work to annotating and commenting on it. The Renaissance
For convenience we can consider two main streams of enquiry; both were motivated by practical
considerations. The first was the study of the motion of the stars and planets which aided the
increasingly popular navigation of the globe; the second was the motion of earthbound objects
which was important for many aspects of daily life and in military applications.
The revolutionary work of Galileo and Newton demonstrated that an astonishingly few hypotheses
solved all the problems in both of these two streams of research. Newton's Principia, one of the
great books of all time, laid out fundamental principles of mechanics, gravitation and optics that
remained unquestioned till the early part of the 20th century.
The systematic study of electricity and its connection to magnetism culminated in the synthesis of
all electromagnetic phenomena in Maxwell's four equations at the end of the 19th century. At that
time, many believed that science was on the verge of uncovering all of Nature's secrets. Ironically,
the very experiment that triumphantly confirmed the prediction by these equations of
electromagnetic waves contained the seeds of a complete re-evaluation of all of the "classical"
physics up to that point.
In his annus mirabilis of 1905, Einstein published three papers of immense significance. The first
established beyond a doubt that molecules had a real existence. The second showed that Newton's
ideas on kinematics were only approximations, and introduced the revolutionary theory of Special
Relativity. The third demonstrated that light, conclusively proven by Young to be wavelike in
nature, had also particle-like properties, thus ushering in the whole new field of Quantum
Mechanics.
The succeeding three decades saw an explosion of creativity which ushered in modern physics. The
secrets of the atom were uncovered, the field of nuclear physics was born, and the understanding of
these fields had reached suffient clarity that the new science was available to the makers of the
Second World war which broke out in 1939.
Since then, the pace of advance of science has been extraordinarily rapid. The advances of Solid

State Physics and Modern Optics have transformed our world, and the discoveries in Particle
Physics, Cosmology and Astronomy are changing for ever our view of ourselves and our place in
the Universe.

The Ancient Greeks

Introduction
The religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity have provided one foundation of Western
civilization, while the philosophy of the ancient Greeks has provided another.
The ancient era is dominated by the Greeks, some of whom were influenced by ideas developed
much earlier in Egypt and Mesopotamia. During the ancient era Greek philosophy was the most
creative. The Romans derived most of their thought from it and built upon it, but they did not add
much that was new. During the time of Aristotle, there was a flowering of mathematics and natural
philosophy, spurred by the conquests of Alexander the Great, Aristotle's most famous pupil.
Alexander accumulated one of the largest empires the world had ever seen, stretching from Egypt to
the Punjab and covering most of what is now known as Asia Minor. The information acquired by
the engineers and surveyors whom Alexander took on his military campaigns initiated a shift away
from theoretical speculation and towards more empirical investigation. This development was aided
by the conquering of Mesopotamia by the Greeks, which gave them access to Babylonian
mathematics and science.
The period of Greek philosophy may conveniently be divided into three parts: the pre-Socratics; the
work of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; and the schools that followed these three giants.
We will concentrate on two of the fields of enquiry that concerned the natural philosophers of the
ancient world. The first, cosmology, attempts to understand the nature of the universe, of the sun,
the moon, the planets and the stars. The second, mechanics, investigates the motion of terrestrial
bodies and the action of forces upon them. Having virtually no experimental apparatus and a
philosophy that often discouraged experimentation, the conclusions of the ancient Greeks are
sometimes wildly inaccurate. Yet so influential was their thought that it was not called into question
for more than 1500 years later, when the methods of true scientific enquiry were developed. Only
then, with the work of Galileo and Newton, did it became clear that cosmology and mechanics were
subject to the same universal laws of motion.
The ideas of the Greek philosophers are worth investigating, if only because they give a context to
the extraordinary accomplishments of later scientific understanding. In addition, the progression of
scientific thought from the ideas of the Greek philosophers to the theories of Galileo and Newton
often seems to mirror our own development in understanding as we grow from childhood to
maturity. However, since this is a course in Physics rather than Philosophy, I will concentrate only
on those philosophers whose ideas can be directly traced to the later developments we will be
studying.
In order to understand the views of the Greek philosophers it is important to appreciate the
background to their thought. It was believed that gods ruled the universe and often interfered in

human affairs. While we tend to explain the movement of animals by mechanical models, the
Greeks rather attempted to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies by analogy to that of the
animals. Early Greek religion, for example, demanded that the sun and moon were alive. Even
when this view was no longer widely accepted, the regular movements of the stars and planets in
contrast to the irregular movements of earth-bound animals were seen as a manifestation of divine
control. The nature of terrestrial objects was base, while that of the planets, moving under the
control of a divine mover, was perfect and indestructible.

The Miletian School. (7th and early 6th centuries BC)

It was in Miletus in Ionia that the seeds of Greek philosophy were planted. The destruction of
Miletus by the Persians in the middle of the 6th century BC encouraged the emergence of Athens as
the intellectual and commercial centre of the Western world. Thales was a well-known Miletian
mathematician who was interested in natural phenomena and attempted to explain the world
without the contemporary appeal to the deities. His discovery of sea fossils found far from the
Mediterranean Sea led him to suggest that water is the basic building block of the world. He
believed that the earth is a cylinder or a disc that floats in water, inside the sphere of the heavens.
Slightly later, Anaximander explained the sun, moon and stars as holes in fiery rings which were
left over from a primeval conflict between the basic elements, water and hot. Anaximenes has the
distinction of having made the first known formulation of what is now close to as the conservation
of energy, in his statement that nothing can be created from nothing. One of Anaximenes pupils,
Anaxagoras, had a surprisingly modern view of the universe. He believed that the sun was a small
red-hot stone, around which the (inhabited) moon and earth orbited. He discovered that the moon
shines by light reflected from the sun, and gave an explanation for the eclipses of the sun and moon
that were correct in essence. Unlike many of his contemporaries and intellectual descendants, he
believed that earth and the heavens were made of similar material; for this revolutionary view he
was prosecuted for impiety.

Pythagoras (6th century BC)

Pythagoras probably could lay claim to be called the very the First Mathematician, although his
interests were much wider than pure mathematics. His influence in founding the rational intellectual
tradition of the West is enormous and his name lives on in every mathematics school book. He was
the first to indicate the intimate connection between physics and mathematics. For example, he
discovered that musical notes produced by vibrating strings are associated with the lengths of the
strings. He was thus led to conclude that real numbers are the true essence of the universe, and that
material objects are but pale copies. This view was called into question by his discovery of
irrational numbers (a discovery his disciples attempted to hide!). Pythagoras was probably the first
to suggest that the earth was spherical, although his reasons were more probably mystical than
scientific. He is rumoured to have had a poor view of sex.

Socrates (470?-399 BC)

Socrates was certainly one of the most interesting and enormously influential philosophers of
ancient Greece. His ideas were passed on through his famous pupil, Plato, who in turn passed them
on to Aristotle. His contributions to scientific development were small; his importance lay in his

non-materialist philosophy and his method of teaching which carries his name. Socratic dialogue
aims to force the questioner to think for himself. His probing questions, his impatience with faulty
arguments, and his disdain of power or fame did not endear him to the politicians of his time, who
finally forced him to commit suicide.

Plato (428?-348? BC)

The influence of Plato on the development of our understanding of the natural world has been
immense. He believed that the world was fixed and immutable, but that this world was not available
to our senses. "True" reality lies in a transcendental world of unchanging Forms, at whose pinnacle
is the Good, an immutable and eternal being. Our senses contact this world only imperfectly
through the mediation of the Demiurge, which is locked within the world of senses. Our
impressions are the results of the Demiurge's attempts to fashion the world using the Forms as a
blueprint. Imagine being imprisoned within a cave, your back to the entrance, outside of which is a
source of light. Objects passing in front of the cave will have their shadows projected on to the back
wall of the cave; this shadow world is all we can ever see. This metaphor has had immense
influence throughout the ages on the way in which we in the West view ourselves and our place in
the universe.

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

The separation of cosmology from physics which continued until the time of Newton started with
Aristotle. His ideas about astronomy are laid out in his book De Caelo. He was one of the earliest
philosophers to construct a systematic formulation of physical phenomena, and possible the first
true experimentalist. He is Plato's most famous student and had a huge influence, not always
benign, on the development of science well into the 17th century. Indeed there is considerable
research evidence that over half of all first year university students hold Aristotelian ideas about
motion!
Aristotle believed that everything on Earth, which is composed of a mixture of the four elements,
earth, fire, air and water, is subject to decay; the heavens are perfect and eternal, as are the heavenly
bodies, which are composed of a fifth element (from this theory comes our word "quintessence").
Bodies on Earth move naturally in straight lines, but the natural movement of the heavenly bodies,
which are attached to perfect spheres, is circular. The base Earth, which is spherical, is stationary
and sits at the centre of the Universe.
Aristotle believed that the world is infused with purpose, moving toward a fixed goal. Terrestrial
objects, both animate and inanimate, possess souls that determine the "nature" of the objects. The
"natural state" of terrestrial material is one of rest, and since there exists a tendency for every body
to reach its natural state every motion must have a cause (in modern terms, a force). There are two
kinds of cause (or force): (a) those inherent in the body ("levity" for air or fire, "gravity" for
material bodies) : (b) contact forces exerted by an external agent. Thus motion is only possible
when forces are applied to them. Since the latter type of force requires physical contact with the
object, it is difficult to explain how an arrow can continue to move after it leaves the bow.
Aristotle's explanation was that the arrow is propelled by air which rushes in behind it to fill the
void that would otherwise form as it moved forward; motion in a vacuum is thus impossible. Since

the natural motion of earth-bound objects is rectilinear, the arrow moves horizontally for a while,
until it begins to fall vertically. Motion is seen as a balance between propulsion (a pushing force)
and a resistance to motion, occasioned by the natural tendency of the body to attain a state of rest.
The speed of a falling body is considered to be proportional to weight, inversely proportional to the
resistance. Heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones.
Aristotle also believed that matter is continuous, in disagreement with the Atomists , of whom
Democritus is the most famous example; they believed that matter consisted of indivisible particles
called atoms. However, Aristotle's influence was so great that any enthusiasm for atomism was
dampened for many centuries, until the physical evidence became compelling at the end of the 19th
century.
Aristotle's most famous pupil was Alexander the Great, who accumulated one of the largest empires
the world had ever seen, stretching from Egypt to the Punjab. During this period there was a
flowering of mathematics and natural philosophy, and the information acquired by the engineers
and surveyors whom Alexander took on his military campaigns initiated a shift away from
theoretical speculation and towards more empirical investigation. This development was aided by
the conquering of Mesopotamia by the Greeks, which gave them access to Babylonian mathematics
and science.

Aristarchus of Samos (3rd/4th century BC)

Aristarchus is interesting since he was one of the few early natural philosophers who hypothesized
that the Earth, and all the planets, revolves around the sun and rotates on its own axis once a day;
this is essentially the complete Copernican view. This hypothesis was so contrary to the Greek view
of the entirely different natures of the Earth and the heavens that one of Aristarchus' contemporaries
suggested that he be indicted for impiety. So great was the authority of Aristotle, backed up by
Hipparchus, that the heliocentric view of Aristarchus had virtually no influence in the development
of cosmology although it is probable that Copernicus knew of his hypothesis, and was presumable
somewhat encouraged. Aristarchus was an observational astronomer of great talent, who made the
first realistic measurement of the distances from the earth to the sun, and to the moon and the
magnitude of the earth's diameter.

Archimedes of Syracuse (387-212 BC)

If Pythagoras can lay claim to be the first mathematician and Aristotle the first Natural Philosopher,
Archimedes may be called the first engineer. As a result he contributed greatly to our understanding
of the mechanical world, but only marginally to the developing philosophy of that understanding.
An inventor of considerable talent, he invented the water screw for raising water, which is still used
in Egypt today, and constructed a mechanical model of the solar system which reproduced the
apparent movement of the planets. According to legend the enunciation of the famous principle
which bears his name arose from his successful attempt to determine if King Herod's crown was
made of pure gold or had been debased with a less dense, baser metal. He was also a geometer of no
mean ability, originating a method of estimating the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its
radius (pi) to any required accuracy.

Euclid (3rd/4th century BC).

A discussion of the scientific and mathematical development of the ancient Greeks would not be
complete without a mention of the Elements of Geometry by Euclid that, for the first time,
presented in a systematic fashion the principles and proofs of geometry. This work had enormous
influence, and continues to form the basis of high school geometry. Euclid was a younger
contemporary of Aristarchus

Hipparchus of Nicaea (2nd century BC).

Sometimes described as the greatest astronomer of antiquity, Hipparchus agreed with the
Aristotelian view that the stars, the sun and the planets revolve in circular orbits around the
stationary Earth, which lies at the centre of the Universe. The difficulty with this view is that it fails
to explain the observations. Certainly the stars move in perfect spheres across the heavens.
However, the planets, though their orbits repeat themselves, move much more erratically, even
reversing direction for a few months. Further, the observed variation in brightness of such planets as
Mars and Venus indicates that the distances of these planets from Earth is not constant as would be
required by a circular orbit centred on the Earth. In order to explain this behaviour a geometrical
construction was invented. If a planet moves in a circle whose centre moves around the Earth on a
larger one, both of these observations could be explained. The smaller circle is called an epicycle.

Claudius Ptolemy (85-165 AD)

Ptolemy was the last important astronomer of antiquity. He was also a mathematician, a physicist
and a geographer. He published data on the rising and setting of stars, he studied optical
phenomena, and produced a wildly inaccurate set of maps, but his main work was his compilation
of Greek astronomy, which included a catalogue of over 1,000 stars. He believed that the planets
and fixed stars moved inside crystalline spheres which revolved around the earth. The "motive
force" for these spheres was a "prime mover". Although his observations were less accurate than
those of Hipparchus who preceded him by two centuries, he developed and extended the system of
epicycles thereby giving his name to the geocentric view of the Universe. With the large number of
reasonably accurate observations now available, the Ptolemaic universe required an epicycle system
containing no less than eighty epicycles. This view of the universe dominated the ideas of Christian
Europe until the 16th century.

From the Dark Ages to Mediaeval Europe.

Introduction
With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasion of the West, the
development of philosophy slowed to a crawl. The resurgence of intellectual concerns had to await
the formation of the more established social order which began to be established around the later
centuries of the first millenium. Although there was little advance in what we would call natural
philosophy in Europe during the early Middle Ages (roughly between the ninth and thirteenth
centuries) there were many technological inventions - water wheels and windmills, advanced

ploughs and the spinning wheel to name but a few. By the end of the fourteenth century gunpowder,
increasingly sophisticated firearms and the printing press had been developed or had been imported
from the Chinese or the Muslim world. The crafts which these developments supported were
correspondingly strong, but, the craftspeople lacked the skills of reading and writing and could thus
contribute little to the development of a systematic science.
The Christian church, following the teachings of St Augustine, tended to view the physical world as
a mere preparation for the life hereafter; correspondingly, empirical study of the world was
pointless, if not sacriligeous. Although some of the classical works were available to the mediaeval
monasteries, it was only with increasing contact with the Islamic and Byzantine cultures, following
Charlemagnes conquests in the late eighth century, that they began to have an influence on
educated thought. Indeed it was not until the twelfth century that the majority of classical works
were generally available. All intellectual developments had still to be measured against the
theological stand of the Catholic church, which reached all-encompassing dominance in the West
during this time.
The tension between the classical affirmation of the natural world and the Christian tradition of
inner contemplation and meditation began to be resolved in the late Middle Ages, notably by
Albertus Magnus and his pupil Thomas Aquinas, paving the way for the beginning of an
experimental and scientific investigation of the world.
Several universities were founded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, winning their right to
independence from the church, and began to contribute importantly to the development of
philosophy. However the university scholars were isolated from the world of commerce and crafts,
and so their ideas often missed the healthy infusion of practicality needed for scientific
development.

Aurelius Augustine (354-430).

After a libidinous youth, Augustine underwent a dramatic reformation; one of his early prayers was
said to be give me chastity and continence, only not yet. He was the author of one of the most
famous of autobiographies of all time, the Confessions. After pursuing a variety of spiritual
philosophies, he embraced Christianity and the Catholic church, coming to believe that, in the
tradition of Paul, since God was perfect the imperfections in this world were due to humanitys sins.
The only hope for mans redemption was in the after life, and, as a result, any studies of the natural
world simply took time away from the more important task of meditation and preparation for life
after death. The body was base, the spirit supreme. This attitude, which dominated Christian
thought during the Dark Ages and well into the Middle Ages, proved an obstacle to the development
of scientific studies of nature since it tended to equate experimental enquiry with heresy.

Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1294).

Bacon was a Franciscan monk who spent much of his life at Oxford University. With a passion for
mathematics and science, he believed strongly in the importance of experimentation in the
exploration of the natural world. Informed by current belief in alchemy and astrology, his many
experiments and theoretical speculations led to contemporary suspicions of heresy and black magic.

-He knew about lenses, suggesting that they could be used to construct telescopes, he gave a theory
of rainbow formation, and, based on his experiments proposed self-propelled boats and carriages,
submarines and flying machines! His work was one of the earliest steps towards what has since
become the scientific method.

Thomas Aquinas (ca 1225 - 1274).

Aquinas was responsible for bringing Aristotles empirical ideas back into the mainstream of
Western thought. For Aquinas, the natural world was a beautiful part of Gods creation, and study of
this natural world could only lead to a greater knowledge and reverence for God. Aquinas had what
would today be called a holistic view of humanity, since he believed that human beings
encompassed in themselves the two realms of spirit (soul) and nature. This was in clear distinction
from the later Cartesian division between mind and matter. Sensory experience was valuable in its
own right. The use of our empirical reason, as exemplified by Greek thought, could now be used to
serve the Christian world view. Aquinas ideas did not upset the prevailing Aristotelian view of the
universe, in which the base earth was situated at the centre of the universe; the eternal and perfect
motion of the heavenly bodies was, however, now provided by angels.

William of Ockham (c. 1290-1349).

A philosopher and priest who taught at Oxford and Paris, he believed, in contradiction to Aristotle,
that logic could be divorced from metaphysics thus opening the way for scientific enquiry outside
of religious dogma. With a similar passion as that of Aquinas for rationality, he taught that concrete
particularity was the most important; only the particular exists, and universals are merely constucts
abstracted by the mind. He believed that there was a limit to mans knowledge of God. His
remarkably modern view, which was pivotal for the development of modern Western view of
nature, had an important influence on universities throughout the fourteenth century. He claimed
that It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer, which is now known as Ockhams
razor; inasfar as it suggests that if several hypotheses fit the facts, the simplest should be chosen, it
has been a valuable guiding light for scientific enquiry.

Jean Buridan (1295?-1366?)

Buridan was one of the most influential teachers of his time, whose ideas were still being taught at
universities as late as the 17th century. He was a scholar of wide interests, publishing textbooks on
almost every subject taught at the University of Paris where he was rector. Much of his work in the
area of natural philosophy consisted of interpretations and commentaries on the works of Aristotle,
which he attempted to assimilate to contemporary ideas. His work was prohibited from 1474 to
1481. It is probable that he died of the plague. He is well-known in philosophical circles for his
discussion of Buridan's ass which, placed equidistant from two bales of hay, died from an inability
to decide which one to eat first.
Buridan was a strong proponent of the Impetus Theory of motion, which had been recently revived
by William of Occam. In much the same way as a body that has been heated possesses a quantity of
heat, the impetus theory suggested that a moving body possessed a quantity of motion (the

impetus), imparted to it by the original force, and proportional to the mass of the body and its initial
imparted speed. Thus a body would continues to move though a fluid until its impetus was
exhausted by the resistance of the fluid. The Impetus Theory allowed motion in a vacuum (which
Aristotle's did not). It also predicted that a body, moving in a circle under the influence of a
centripetal force (e.g. think of whirling a mass tied to a string around your head) would continue to
move in a circle for a short time after the force was removed. According to this theory, projectile
motion would consist of three parts: (i) the body would move horizontally, the impetus suppressing
any effect of gravity: (ii) a brief period of compromise between the impulse and gravity: (iii) the
projectile falls vertically in "natural" motion. God was supposed to have given the planets a starting
(circular) impetus, which, in the absence of air resistance, kept them going for ever. Buridan's is a
good example of the many different versions of the Impetus theory that held sway during the
Middle Ages.

The Renaissance and the Birth of Modern Physics

Introduction
By the middle of the 15th century, the wealth of Europe allowed the resurgence of interest in
science, which was seen as an aid to trade and commerce. Much of the early ideas had been
preserved by Islamic scholars; with the decline of Arab power in Europe, the torch of learning was
passed on.

Francis Bacon(1561-1626).
As Lord Chancellor of England under James I, Francis Bacon was a strong proponent of science as
a fount of support for human well-being. He believed that true knowledge of the natural world had
to be based on unbiassed observations by objective observers. He saw mediaeval crafts as imporant
untapped sources of knowledge, the uncovering of which could lead to the conquest of Nature for
the advantage of mankind and the greater glory of God. A philosopher rather than a scientist - he
underestimated the power of mathematics, and failed to understand the importance of the
heliocentric model of the solar system - Bacon's visionary ideas were nevertheless enormously
influential in the burgeoning development and perceived importance of the scientific method.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

The initiator of the revolution which occurred in cosmology was born in a small town near the
border between Prussia and Poland. His father died when he was young and he was adopted by his
uncle, the bishop of the small principality of Ermland, recently won by Poland from the crusading
order of Teutonic Knights. Copernicus, on his return from his studies in Italy, was kept busy aiding
his uncle in resisting the attempts of the Teutonic Knights to re-occupy Ermland, until, in 1512, his
uncle died, possibly by poisoning by the Knights. Copernicus moved to Frauenberg on the Baltic
Sea to take up the post of a canon of the Cathedral. He spent the next thirty years there, as an
ecclesiastic administrator, politician, physician, and scholar.
Copernicus's aim was to remove some of the many inconsistencies of the Ptolemaic system of the

universe. He first suggested that the sun was at the centre of the universe in a short publication
entitled Commentariolus. After several years, this theory reached the attention of Georg Rheticus,
Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy of Wittenberg. Rheticus came to study for two years in
Frauenberg, and in 1540, in a work entitled Narratio Primo, gave the first published account of the
Copernican theory. Three years later Copernicus finally published a full account of his life's work in
De Revolutionibus Orbicum Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).
The history of the publication of this work is interesting. Apparently embittered by Copernicus's
lack of acknowledgement of his efforts, Rheticus left the supervision of the printing to Andreas
Osiander, a Lutheran pastor. When the book was printed, Osiander had inserted an unauthorised
preface which stated that the theory it contained was to be considered to be no more than a
convenient mathematical method for calculating the motions of the heavenly bodies. According to
legend, Copernicus collapsed and died on reading this preface that certainly misrepresented his own
belief in the truth of his theory.
Copernicus believed that a scientific theory of the heavens should both account for the observations
and also preserve the Pythagorean belief that the motions of the heavenly bodies should be circular
and uniform. The absurdly complicated system of eighty or so epicycles which were needed in the
Ptolemaic system seemed to break at least this latter requirement. Copernicus realised that this
system could be simplified by assigning a daily rotation to the earth, and allowing it and the other
planets to orbit a stationary sun (a suggestion made many years earlier by Aristarchus.) Although he
was able to break away from the ancients' mystical belief that the earth was somehow different from
the planets in its motion, he continued to maintain a belief in the uniform and circular nature of the
orbits of the heavenly bodies. It was left up to Kepler to remove this final prejudice.
With our advantage of hindsight, it is may seem surprising that Copernicus's theory did not sweep
European science by storm. Yet it was not until 76 years after the publication of De Revolutionibus
that church declared its theories to be heretical and banned them. There seem to be several reasons
for this; Copernicus was of a shy and retiring nature, very different in personality from the
exuberant and combative Galileo; his magnum opus, published only at the end of his life was
obscurely written, filled with long computational tables, and opened with a preface that seemed to
disavow its main thesis. Although it did make computation easier, it still required forty eight
epicycles to arrive at results which attained an accuracy of one percent or so, no better than that of
the Ptolemaic system. With little support from scientists or scholars it did not become a threat to the
established order decreed by the church until it was reinforced by the work of Kepler and Galileo.
One of the objections to the Copernican view of the earth and the solar system was that, if the earth
truly rotated, a stone thrown vertically upwards should be left behind by the rotation of the earth,
and would fall some distance away from the point of projection. With no true theory of mechanics
or gravitation, Copernicus was unable to provide a convincing explanation, which had to wait the
developments of Galileo and Newton.

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)

*Three years after the death of Copernicus, one of the greatest observational astronomers was born
in Copenhagen. His name was Tycho Brahe. His interest in Astronomy was decided at the age of
fourteen when he observed a partial eclipse of the sun which had been predicted by contemporary

astronomers. In 1572, as a student at the University of Copenhagen, he observed the sudden

appearance of a very bright star, probably a supernova. Brahe was able to prove, using his own
observations, that the supernova had to lie a long way outside the solar system. Such a phenomenon
was unthinkable in the ancients' understanding of the heavens, which were supposed to be fixed for
ever in a system of perfect harmony, and Brahe's fame began to spread. In 1575 the King of
Denmark gave him the island of Hven, which is within sight of Hamlet's Elsinore, with sufficient
funds to establish the most advance astronomical observatory of its day. Without a telescope (which
was to be invented only after his death) he accumulated the most comprehensive and wonderfully
accurate measurements that the world had ever seen.
Brahe seems to have been quarrelsome, opinionated and conceited. During his student days, he lost
his nose in a duel and wore a gold and silver replacement for the rest of his life. During his very
productive time in Hven, he was a tyrannical dictator to his tenants, and the subject of a petition to
the King who had recently succeeded to the throne. This king was less inclined to put up with
Brahe's offensive ways than had been his father, and thelatter left Hven for good in . He moved to
Prague, under the protection of Rudolph II, the king of Bohemia. Soon after the young Johannes
Kepler joined him and the course of science was changed forever. Initially he was not keen on
sharing his observations with this young competitor, and it was only after Brahe's death, and a
threatened lawsuit that Kepler, was able to obtain access to the full range of Brahe's wonderful
measurements. Brahe finally succumbed to his over-indulgence in food and drink by contracting a
urinary infection, from which he expired.
Interestingly, Brahe did not believe in the Copernican system. The phenomenon of "parallax" occurs
when you line up your finger with an object across the room; then when you move your head to
right or left, your finger appears to move relative to the object. In a similar way, if the earth orbited
the sun, Brahe argued that the apparent position of nearer stars should change relative to that of the
distant ones. His observations showed no such change. Accordingly he believed in a system in
which the planets moved around the sun; however, both sun and planets were considered to orbit the
stationary earth. This system had the advantage that it avoided the problems associated with a
spinning earth. This system is mathematically very close to the Copernican but avoids the problems
associated with a spinning earth.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

The man whose work led to the correct model of the solar system was born in Weil, Germany. After
a somewhat unhappy childhood he was educated at a theological seminary and the University of
Tubingen. During much of his life he was on the move to avoid the religious persection and the
wars which were ravaging Europe. He believed that the planets influence earthly events, and all his
life he attempted to find a divine order in the Universe. One of his theories suggested that the
planetary orbitals fitted in to Pythagoras's five "perfect" solids; yet another, published in The
Harmony of the World was that the ratios of the speeds of the planets were dictated by the notes of
the musical scale. In 1600 he moved to Prague to join Tycho Brahe, twenty five years his senior.
The meeting of these two geniuses must rank as one of the most perfect collaborations in the history
of physics, although it was fraught with jealousy from Brahe and bad temper and childishness from
Kepler. Although Brahe had the temperament and experimental ability to make the most
comprehensive and precise astronomical measurements the world had ever seen, he lacked the

organisational skills and the mathematical ability which allowed Kepler to unravel the three laws of
planetary motion which bear his name.
Contrary to the heavenly perfection he had hoped to prove, his detailed and astonishingly careful
analysis of Brahe's observations led him to realize that:
I. planets revolve around the sun, in ellipses with the sun at one focus;
II. the area swept out by a line from the sun to the planet is the same in equal time intervals;
III. the square of the length of each planet's year is proportional to the cube of the major axis
of the orbit.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Sometimes called the "Father of Modern Physics", Galileo Galilei was born in Padua, Italy. His
influence on the development of experimental physics continues to this day, although he cannot be
credited with all that is sometimes claimed for him. Indeed one writer has pointed out that he is
famous for having dropped weights off the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which he almost certainly did
not, for inventing the telescope, which he certainly did not, and for developing the Law of Inertia,
which, in the way he stated it, is wrong ! Nonetheless his insistence on the experimental method
laid the foundations of modern mechanics, and his willingness to fly in the face of the Pope's
displeasure ensured the final acceptance of a heliocentric view of the solar system.
Galileo was an excellent student and began his university studies as a medical student at the
University of Pisa. However his interests lay more in the direction of mathematics and science, in
which he was sufficiently successful that he was appointed to the professorship of mathematics first
at the University of Pisa, and subsequently at the University of Padua. After he became famous, he
was appointed as the Philosopher-in-residence at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in
Florence.
Galileo seems to have been a bellicose and outspoken man, who made little attempt to conceal his
contempt for those of his contemporaries who did not agree with him. He was also an unabashed
showman, who adored the limelight and the fame that his discoveries brought him. Although the
Church was both narrow minded and oppressive, Galileo almost seems to have gone out of his way
to provoke a confrontation which came to a head with the publication of his book Dialogues on the
Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems. The Pope took offence at what he believed was Galileo's
portayal of him as a simpleton, and Galileo was finally forced by the Inquisition to recant the
"heresies" of the heliocentric view. His book was placed on the Index of banned books, to be
removed from the list only in 1835. He ended his life under house arrest, where he completed his
Dialogue on Two New Sciences which summarised his work on mechanics.
According to legend his first discovery came as he watched the huge chandeliers in the Pisa
Cathedral oscillate back and forth. Using his pulse as a timer, he realised that the time for one
oscillation of the chandelier was independent of the amplitude of the swing - a fact which explains
why pendula are still used as markers of time. His other work in mechanics was even more far
reaching. He disproved Aristotle's assertion that a heavier body would fall faster than a lighter one
by asking what would happen if the two bodies were lightly joined together. In this case Aristotle's
theory could not decide whether the joined body would fall faster than either or that it would fall

with a speed intermediate between the speeds of the two. This "thought experiment" was confirmed
by a variety of ingenious experiments using inclined planes to slow down the fall of the bodies so
that his crude water clocks could make measurements of the times of fall. (Simon Stevin of Bruges
was probably the first to actually drop two weights from a high place to disprove the Aristotelian
view).
He first gained fame through his exploitation of the idea of the Dutchman Lippershey who had
invented the telescope. Galileo built his own, and trained it on the heavens. To his delight, he saw
the craters on the moon, the phases of Venus, and the moons of Jupiter. This was far from the
perfect heavens that the ancients had required, and immediately converted Galileo to the
Copernican view of the solar system. Legend has it that some of the scholars declined his invitation
to use his telescope on the grounds that it might shake their faith!
However it was his earthbound experiments that were his most important contribution to the
development of physics. By letting balls roll down inclined planes, the effect of gravity could be
sufficiently moderated to allow Galileo to time their passage using the primitive water clocks at his
disposal. He showed that the speed of the balls as they accelerated down a smooth graduated
inclined plane increased uniformly with time (or, what is the same thing, the distance they travelled
was proportional to the square of the time) but independent of the weight of the balls. By allowing
the balls to roll up an opposed inclined plane, he found that they reached almost the same height as
the one they had started from. By reducing the angle of the second plane, and hypothesising a
situation with no friction, he deduced that in the limiting case in which the second inclined plane
was horizontal, the ball would continue to move on the horizontal surface for ever. Thus he
propounded his Law of Inertia. Galileo's great genius in this development was to realize that the
local effects of friction or air resistance masked the universal nature of the motion, and that a body
which had no net force on it would continue to move without further intervention. However, he
imagined that, in the absence of friction, the inertia of the body would make it move in a curved
path on the surface of the earth; his law was finally corrected by Newton.
In addition to this Law, Galileo understood that that each influence on a body acted independently
of any others; this was an early statement of what we would now call the Principle of Superposition.
Using these results, Galileo was finally able to give a correct description of the path of a projectile.
In the absence of air resistance, two independent motions combine; the constant speed in the
horizontal direction, and the vertical motion in which the projectile rises vertically until the
deceleration caused by gravity causes it to stop and to accelerate back to earth. The resultant path is
a parabola.
Even in its slightly incorrect form, Galileo's Law of Inertia and the Principle of Superposition did
allow for the resolution of two problems associated with the Copernican view of the solar system.
One of the objections was that, if the earth truly rotated, a stone thrown vertically upwards would be
left behind by the rotation of the earth, and would fall to the west of the the point of projection.
Galileo's Law explained that the stone would retain its initial inertia in the direction of the earth's
rotation, irrespective of its vertical direction. In fact he suggested that, for example, an object
dropped from the top of the mast of a ship would still fall to the bottom of the mast; this
experiment, performed in 1640, triumphantly confirmed Galileo's prediction. The other objection to
the Copernican view was that some divine intervention was necessary to keep the planets moving

around their orbits - in fact one theory had posited that this was the work of God's angels. Galileo
had only to assume that God started things off; thereafter the planets would continue to move under
their own inertia. Since Galileo did not have a theory of gravity this was as far as he could go in
cosmology.

Ren Descartes (1596-1650).

Born in Bretagne, Descartes spent much of his life in Holland. Although the Cartesian view of the
split between the mind and the body has come under criticism in an age in which holistic thought is
more fashionable, it nonetheless allowed philosophers to disassociate the material world from
religious belief. Such a departure from Aristotle's view of nature offended the church and Descartes'
books were prohibited from 1663 till 1740, when the French reclaimed them as an alternative to the
work of Newton.
Descartes attempted to develop a system of philosophy starting from first principles. He decided
that the only thing he could be sure of was that he existed; cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am),
and from this certainty he attempted to develop an understanding of nature, using this as a basis for
all further deductions and his intuition. In the spirit of this enquiry he made outstanding
developments in mathematics in an attempt to give a complete mechanical understanding of the
physical world: give me motion and extension, and I will construct the world; the rules of nature
are the rules of mechanics were two of his oft-quoted sayings. His work in mathematics was
brilliant - he was the originator of co-ordinate geometry, in which geometrical principles can be
expressed purely in algebraic terms - and the x-y axes that we use today for most graphs still bear
his name.
He was more of a mathematician than an experimental scientist and, as a result, some of his physics
is incorrect. However he gave us two of the most fundamental principles of physics. He was the
first scientist to enunciate what we now call the Law of Inertia: namely that the 'natural' motion of
bodies is in a straight line. In addition he was the first to realize that the most important measure of
a body's motion is what we now call its 'momentum' - the product of its mass by its speed, and that
this momentum is conserved in collisions between bodies.
Descartes is seldom given his fair place in most English-language science education: Newton fares
almost as badly in the French language!

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Isaac Newton was arguably the most influential physicist that ever lived. His contributions to
physics were both wide-ranging and revolutionary. The Mechanics he developed is still the
foundation of many fields of Physics and his three Laws are even more important today than they
were when they were first written down. Only at the end of the 19th century was it superseded, and
then only for speeds close to that of light. His work on Optics showed for the first time that light is
composed of many colours. His theory of Gravitation cleared away the mists that had surrounded all
previous versions of cosmology, completely explained Keper's laws of planetary motion, and was
the only accepted version until Einstein's development of General Relativity three hundred years
later; even now the simplicity of the Newtonian approach still makes it the basis of choice for any
calculations which do not require the sophistication of Einstein's theory. His invention of calculus

(which he called fluxions), was developed almost as a sideline to his work on gravity. The fact that
we now use the notation of Leibniz who developed calculus independently does not take away from
the monumental nature of Newton's achievement. His Principia Mathematica published when he
was forty-four years of age, has been called the greatest achievement of the human intellect. A
statement of his Laws of Motion and their implication is given in the section on Mechanics.
Newton's earliest work was on optics. He was interested in reducing chromatic aberrations in glass
lenses. After many experiments he discovered that white light is composed of a spectrum of colours
from red to violet. His work on optics was published only later in his life (1704) and led, finally, to
his knighting by Queen Anne.
The story goes that one of Newton's friends, Edmund Halley, asked him what would be the shape of
planetary orbits under the action of a force that was inversely proportional to the square of the
distance over which it acts. Newton answered that he had solved this problem and that the answer
would be an ellipse. Apparently Newton had realised that the gravitational force was universal - i.e.
that it was a force which existed between any two bodies - and that as a result it could describe the
motion of an apple falling towards earth just as well as it could explain the orbit of the moon around
the sun. He had also calculated that the force had to be an inverse square which produced the
required agreement with Kepler's three laws of planetary motion. it was in order to do these
calculations, he developed calculus, one of the greatest advances in mathematics since the time of
the Ancient Greeks. At Halley's urging he prepared to publish his discovery, and in the process had
to lay out his entire scheme of mechanics.
In spite of being the initiator of a system of mechanics which ushered in Modern Physics, Newton
had still one foot in mediaeval times. In later life, he devoted most of his time to alchemy and a
chronological study of the bible, most of which would now be considered to be worthless.

Thomas Young (1773-1829).

Thomas Young was an English physician and physicist, with a brilliant mind and eclectic interests.
By the age of fourteen it is said that he was acquainted with Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Hebrew,
Arabic and Persian. So great was his knowledge that he was called called Phenomena Young by his
fellow students at Cambridge. He studied medicine in London, Edinburgh, and Gttingen and set up
medical practice in London. His initial interest was in sense perception, and he was the first to
realize that the eye focusses by changing the shape of the lens. He discovered the cause of
astigmatism, and was the initiator, with Helmoltz, of the three colour theory of perception, believing
that the eye constructed its sense of colour using only three receptors, for red, green and blue. In
1801 he was appointed Professor of Physics at Cambridge university. His famous double-slit
experiment established that light was a wave motion, although this conclusion was strongly opposed
by contemporary scientists who believed that Newton, who had proposed that light was corpuscular
in nature, could not possibly be wrong. However Young's work was soon confirmed by the French
scientists Fresnel and Arago. He proposed that light was a transverse wave motion (as opposed to
longitudinal) whose wavelenght determined the colour. Since it was thought that all wave motions
had to be supported in a material medium, light waves were presumed to travel through a so-called
aether, which was supposed to fill the entire universe. He became very interested in Egyptology,
and his studies of the Rosetta stone, discovered on one of Napoleon's expeditions in 1814,

contributed greatly to the subsequent deciphering of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. He
did work in surface tension, elasticity (Young's modulus, a measure of the rigidity of materials, is
named after him), and gave one of the earliest scientific definitions of energy.

NEWTON'S MECHANICS - a brief summary

I. Definitions.
Firstly let us define the following quantities:

1. Force. - a push or a pull.

2. Speed. - distance covered per unit of time.
3. Velocity. - speed in a given direction.
4. Uniform Velocity. - constant speed in a straight line.
5. Acceleration. - change of velocity per unit of time.

II. Gravitation.
Newton's work on Gravitation can be summarised as follows:
(i) every body in the universe attracts every other body
(ii) the gravitational force between two bodies is directly proportional to the mass of each and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

III. Motion.
Newton's work in mechanics can be summarised in a statement of his three laws. The first tells us
what happens in the case of a body on which the net force is zero.
I. Every body continues in a state of rest or of uniform velocity unless acted on by an external force.
The second law tells us how to deal with bodies that have a non-zero net force:
II. The acceleration of a body under the action of a net force is directly proportional to that force
and inversely proportional to the mass of the body.
In mathematical terms, if F is the force, m the mass and a the acceleration, Newton' Second Law
can be stated succintly as F = ma - probably the most famous equation in all of Physics!
The third law talks about the mutual forces that two bodies in contact exert on each other, and can
be stated thus:
III. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
The third law will not have much impact on the progress of this course, so we will not consider it
further. However, if this confuses you (e.g. how can a body ever move if it experiences equal and
opposite forces?) remember that the action and the reaction mentioned in the third law act on
different bodies - I push on the earth (action) and the earth pushes back on me (reaction).

To give you an idea of the application of this new understanding of mechanics, let us look at the old
question of whether, when two bodies are dropped from the same height, the heavier would reach
the ground first, a question answered in the affirmative by Aristotle.
Let us consider the case of an elephant falling out of a tree. As Galilieo showed, every falling body
experiences the same acceleration in the absence of air resistance. However, when there is air
resistance, the situation changes. Initially the elephant experiences only the force due to gravity,
pulling it towards the centre of the earth. As its speed increases, however, air resistance also
increases, opposing the force of gravity, which does not change. Eventually the force of the air
resistance upwards equals the force of gravity downwards so that the net force on the elephant
becomes zero. Newton's first Law then tells us that the elephant will continue from that point on
with a constant speed. This speed is called the terminal velocity.
Now suppose that a feather drops from the tree at the same time as the elephant. In this case the
gravitational force on the feather will be much less than it was on the elephant. So the air resistance
on the feather will very quickly become equal to the force of gravity and the feather's terminal
velocity will be much smaller than that of the elephant. Thus, in this case, Aristotle is correct, and
the elephant will reach the ground long before the feather. Of course, in the absence of air resistance
the situation is quite different. Although the force of gravity on the elephant is much greater than
that on the feather, the elephant has a much greater inertial mass; and since acceleration is inversely
proportional to the mass, it turns out that the acceleration of both is identical.

WAVES AND WAVE MOTION - a summary

General.
1. Waves come in a variety of types:
Longitudinal or Transverse ; Periodic or Aperiodic ; Travelling or Standing
In this course we will deal mainly with travelling, periodic, transverse waves.
2. For Periodic waves, we can define:
A : the amplitude (the maximum oscillation, measured from the "zero" position).
: t wavelength (the distance in which the wave repeats itself)
f : the frequency (the number of oscillations in one second)
V : the speed (the length of the wave passing a given point in one second)
I : the intensity of the wave (the amount of energy it carries).
Periodic waves come in many shapes and sizes - square, sinusoidal, sawtooth, to name but a few.
3. Due to these definitions, there is a relationship between wavelength, frequency and speed;
Speed = wavelength times frequency ( or V =

f)

4. Since the speed of a wave in a given medium is constant, dependent on the elastic constants (at a
given temperature, pressure, etc.) of the medium, this means that a wave with a low value of
frequency has a long wavelength, and vice-versa.
5. One of the most important features of waves arises because of the Superposition Principle which

states that the total effect of any number of waves at a point is due to a simple algebraic sum (i.e.
the sign of the oscillation at that point has to be taken into account) of the individual contributions
from each wave arriving at that point. Due to this principle, waves exhibit interference - examples
are the double slit experiment, diffraction of waves; also standing waves can be thought of as the
sum of two travelling waves going in opposite directions.
This means that waves can interfere with each other. An example is given in Figure I : here the
waves lie exactly on top of each other and are said to be in phase - as a result their waves and
troughs add up to provide an example of constructive interference. In Figure II however, the waves
and troughs cancel each other out : the waves are said to be out of phase, and in this case they
exhibit destructive interference so that their sum is zero.

The ability to interfere in this manner is an important signature of waves.

6. The Intensity, I, of a wave is proportional to the square of its amplitude; I = A2 .
7. When a wave encounters a physical object (e.g. an aperture in a barrier, or a small obstacle in the
path of the wave) its effect depends on the relative size of the object d and the wavelength of the
wave. (e.g. when a wave passes through an aperture in a barrier, the diffraction, or spreading out of
the wave will be greater for small apertures). Specifically, note that if the wavelength is much
smaller than d ( << d ), wavelike behaviour (interference) will not be noticed. If however the
wavelength approaches d, interference effects will begin to be observed. In fact, this effect sets the
limit on the resolution of optical instruments; for example, if two small objects are closer together
than a distance which is about the size of the wavelength used to observe them, the interference
effects make it hard or impossible to distinguish between them.

THE NATURE OF LIGHT - the classical view.

Isaac Newton suggested that light, in view of its ability to travel in straight lines and form sharp
shadows round opaque objects, was corpuscular in nature. This hypothesis, supported by Newton's
authority and the lack of any contrary evidence, held sway till the 19th century when improved
measurements allowed the observation of what appeared to be wave-like properties. The most
famous of these experiments was that of Thomas Young. Young illuminated a pair of closely
spaced slits in an opaque screen with a monochromatic beam of light (light containing only one
colour). On another screen, placed at some distance away from the first, on the other side of the
light source, he observed interference fringes which are the unmistakeable sign of a wave process
(see Figure III).
Assuming that light was a wave, the simple classical theory of waves could be used to give a
complete description of the intensity distribution of the interference pattern. The calculation of
where the the maxima and minima of this pattern should occur is so simple that it is worth repeating
here.

The argument is quite simple. Imagine that you were situated exactly at the center of the detecting
screen shown in Figure IV. If you were to look back at the double slit system, the distance the two
rays from each slit would have to travel exactly the same distance to reach you. They would thus
arrive exactly in phase, and would add constructively. If now you were to move a little to the side of
the centre of the detecting screen, one ray would have to travel a slightly longer distance than the
other to reach you. If the two distances from the slits differed by exactly one half wavelength, the
two light waves would arrive exactly out of phase and would destructively interfere, so that you saw
no light at that position on the screen. As you moved further away from the centre of the screen, the
two rays would successively pass into and out of phase, and you would see maxima and minima in
the intensity pattern.

Assume that the wavelength of the light is , the spacing between the slits in the first screen is d, and the
perpendicular distance between the two screens is L, as shown in Figure III. For convenience the two slits are labelled
as 1 and 2. Consider an arbitrary point, P, on the detecting screen. Only if P were at the exact centre of the detecting
screen would the length of the light rays from slit 1 be exactly the same as the length of the light ray arriving at P from
slit 2. In the general case, the lengths of these two light rays will be different. Consider the case shown in Figure IV
where the length of the ray from slit 1 (call it 1) is less than the length of the ray coming from slit 2 (call it 2). If, then,
the difference between these two lengths ( 2 - 1 ) is an exact number of wavelengths, the effect of the two rays will
add up - we say that they interfere constructively - and we would expect a maximum of the light intensity. On the other
hand, if the difference in lengths ( 2 - 1 ) is an odd number of half wavelengths, the two rays will cancel, or interfere
destructively, and we expect a minimum (zero) of light intensity reaching the point P. At other places, where ( 2 - 1 )
lies between these two values, we would expect intermediate values of intensity.
If we call the distance ( 2 - 1 ) = e, we can express these conditions succintly (where n is an integer, 0,1,2,3,....) : if e
= n , there will be a maximum at P: if e = {(2n +1) /2} = (n + 1/2) , there will be a minimum at P. Thus the
central maximum will occur when e = 0 (at the centre of the detecting screen), the first zero at e = /2, the next
maximum at e = , the next zero at e = 3 /2, and so on. Now, in Figure II, let us draw in a perpendicular line from
slit 1 to the light ray from slit 2 to P; let this line meet the line 2P in Q as shown. If the detecting screen is sufficiently
far away from the double slits, to a very good approximation triangles 1CP, 2CP, and 1Q2, are similar (i.e. they have
the same shape). Therefore the ratios PC/L = 2Q/d ; but PC is just x, the distance from the centre of the detecting
screen to the point P, and the distance 2Q is just the distance we have defined above as e. Thus x = Le/d. But the
different values of e give us the positions of the zeroes and maxima of the interference pattern observed on the detecting
screen. Thus, for example, the first zero is at x1 = Le/d = L /2d ; and the next zero is at x2 = Le/d = 3L /2d
(substituting the values of e given above). So we can predict exactly where the maxima and minima of the interference
pattern will occur, if we know the value of the wavelength of the light we are using.
Alternatively, knowing the dimensions of our apparatus, we can calculate the wavelength of the light. For example, the
distance between the first two zeroes is given by (x2 - x1) = 3L /2d - L /2d = L /d. So, knowing the values of the
distances involved, we can calculate the wavelength. It turns out that the wavelength of visible light is in the range of
4x10-7 (violet) to 7.5x10-7 (red) meters. In a similar, and almost as simple a fashion, the magnitude of the intensity of
light at each point on the detecting screen can be calculated; that this simple assumption that light is a wave can yield
such an accurate description of observation goes a long way to assuring us that we are on the right track.

ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM - a brief historical

overview
The Ancients.
The effects of Magnetism and Electrostatics were known from ancient times; Thales of Miletus
discussed the lodestone, which he believed contained a soul, and ancient Greeks knew that amber
rods, rubbed with fur, developed a charge. In the early 1200's, lodestones were being used as
compasses (they always point to the magnetic North). The development of understanding was
speeded up by the establishment of the scientific method (via Mechanics).
William Gilbert (1540-1603). Gilbert has been called "the Galileo of magnetism". Apparently his
duties as personal physician to Queen Elizabeth I of England allowed him time to study several
scientific questions. He was the first to make a truly systematic study of magnetism, summarized in
his famous treatise, De Magnete, he concluded that each magnet has two poles, that forces
between poles can be attractive or repulsive, and suggested that the earth is a large magnet. He
studied electricity and its difference from magnetism, developing a list of substances which he
found became charged upon rubbing. He also demonstrated that the earth spins about its own axis
(in opposition to Brahe's views).
Charles Francois du Fay (1698-1739), superintendent of the gardens of the King of France,
discovered that rubbing two different objects together produced two types of electric charge. He
adhered to the view that matter contained two types of fluid, normally in exact balance; when two
bodies were rubbed together, however, this balance was disturbed, and each body acquired an
excess of one or the other type of fluid.
Benjamin Franklin. (1706-1790) A Freemason, a printer, an inventor, a politician, a statesman and
a scientist, Benjamin Franklin was one of the several extraordinary men who emerged in America
around the time of its struggle from independence from England. Although he initially wished to
keep America an English colony his time as ambassador to France during the American war of
independence changed his mind and he was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and a
major contributor to the Declaration of Independence; "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal" is largely his work. He was much loved in France as a "son of Nature",
and when he died the Assembly Gnrale closed for three days. He was a strong proponent of basic
science - "of what use is a new-born baby?" he is rumoured to have asked of a sceptic - and he was
particularly fascinated by electricity. He did a series of very dangerous experiments which involved
flying a kite into thunder clouds; several of his imitators were killed. He invented the lightning rod,
pointing out that a pointed end would be more valuable than a rounded one. He was one of the first
to propose the "one fluid" theory of what gets rubbed off when bodies charge by friction; this theory
proposed that only one of the charges moves. Unfortunately for generations of students, his chosen
direction of flow was chosen to be opposite to that which we now call electron flow.
Charles August Coulomb(1763-1806). Coulomb was born in Angouleme, France. As a military
engineer, he constructed the Bourbon fort in Martinique, where he worked for 9 years. His health
deteriorated and, at the beginning of the French revolution, he returned to France to retire. He
invented the torsion balance, which allowed him to study the very small forces between
electrostatically charged objects. He showed that the force between two charges is proportional to

the size of the charge, and inversely to the square of the distance between them.
Alessandro Volta. (1745-1827) Invented the battery, using layers of zinc and copper with wet
pasteboard between them (more modern ordinary commercial batteries consist of a shell of zinc the cathode - which holds a moist paste of ammonium chloride - the electrolyte - with a carbon rod the anode - inserted in the middle. There are now many different combinations, such as mercury,
Nickel-Cadmium, etc.). Moving charges (electric currents) could now be studied. He also realized
that the "galvanic" effects (so called after Galvani, who, in 1780, noticed that frog's legs responded
by contracting when given an electric impulse) arose from the fact that nerves conduct electricity.
Hans Christian Oersted. (1777-1851). In 1820, during one of his advanced lectures at the
University of Copenhagen, this Danish physicist made the fundamental discovery concerning the
connection between magnetism and electricity. After studying the effect for three months using a
battery he had constructed, he announced his discovery in a paper written in Latin, following a
time-honoured tradition. By connecting his copper-zinc batteries to a straight section of conducting
wire, he demonstrated the deflection of a magnet aligned parallel to the wire. Thus he showed that
uniformly moving charges produce constant magnetic fields; as a corollary, we can see that
accelerating charges produce changing magnetic fields. Andr-Marie Ampre (1775-1836)
quickly repeated Oersted's experiment, and formulated them mathematically. Ampre also showed
that wires carrying electric currents exert forces on each other, thus demonstrating that magnetic
fields exert forces on electric currents.
Michael Faraday. The son of a blacksmith, Michael Faraday was almost entirely self-taught. In
1812 he attended the lectures of Sir Humphry Davy, director of the Royal Institution. He submitted
his notes of these lectures to Davy with a request for a position, however menial. Davy took him
under his wing at the Institution where he remained for the rest of his scientific career, eventually
ascending to the post of director. Davy's support enabled him to pursue a most productive series of
experimental investigations, initially in Chemistry, and then, for 40 years, in Physics. To him we
owe the concept of field and field lines. His name is also associated with electromagnetic induction;
spurred by Oersted's realisation that electricity produces magnetism, he successfully showed the
converse, that magnetism produces electricity. After a series of investigations spanning over six
years, he discovered that a moving magnet induces electric current in a neighbouring wire.
Maxwell. (1831-1879). Achieved a synthesis of all the experimentally observed data on electricity
and magnetism in his four equations. By a brilliant insight he saw the need for an extra term in one
of the equations; its existence led to the prediction of electro-magnetic waves, which were
discovered in 1895 by Hertz, and exploited by Marconi in 1896. In a sense Maxwell's work was the
final capstone in classical physics. Indeed, at the end of the 19th century one physicist proclaimed
the impending death of physics; since all fundamental physical phenomena were now understood,
physicists could leave the working out of the details and the mopping up of a few remaining but
trivial questions to lesser scientists, such as chemists and engineers. How wrong he was! It is one of
the great ironies of science that the very experiments performed by Hertz, triumphantly verifying
Maxwell's prediction using the photo-electric effect, turned out to have no obvious classical
explanation. The exploration of this question was to lead to the first assault on the classical view,
and a radical and extraordinary shift in our understanding of Nature. On to quantum mechanics!

Electricity and Magnetism.

Magnetostatics.
1. There are two types of poles, "North" and "South".
2. Like poles repel: unlike poles attract.
3. The behaviour of compasses can be explained by imagining that the Earth is a large magnet.
4. Around each system of magnets a "magnetic field" exists (Faraday).
5. Magnetic poles, unlike electric charges, always appear in pairs on North and South "dipoles";
isolated poles (monopoles) do not exist (have not been found).

Electrostatics.
1. There are two types of charges, "positive" and "negative".
2.. Like charges repel: unlike charges attract.
3. The force between two isolated point charges varies inversely as the square of the distance
between them (Coulomb's Law).
4. Around each system of charges an "electric field" exists (Faraday).
5. Materials are made of atoms, which consist of massive nuclei made of neutrons, which have zero
charge; protons, which are positively charged; and the very much lighter electrons which are
negatively charged. Normal matter contains equal amounts of both types of charge, and is therefore
neutral (has no net charge).
6. It is the electrons which are mobile. Negative charges on bodies are caused by an excess of
electrons, and positively charged bodies have a deficit of electrons.
7. In materials which are conductors, the electrons can be easily moved by electric fields. In
insulators, the electrons are more closely bound to their atoms, and can be moved only with
difficulty.
8. A source of electric charges is called a battery.(Volta)
9. When a conductor is connected to a battery electrons will flow along the conductor to produce
what is called an "electric current".

The Generation of Electromagnetic Waves

1. A moving charge produces a magnetic field (Oersted) yields A uniformly moving electric field
produces a constant magnetic field and finally ... An oscillating electric field produces an oscillating
magnetic field.
2. A moving magnet produces an electric field (Faraday) yields A uniformly moving magnetic field
produces a constant electric field and finally .....an oscillating magnetic field produces an oscillating
electric field.
3. SO ... An oscillating electric field will produce an oscillating magnetic field ....which, in turn, will

produce an oscillating electric field ....which, in turn, will produce an oscillating magnetic field .....
and so on .... and so on..... These fields thus become self-sustaining and self-generating; they then
disengage themselves from the source of oscillating electric field, and move off at high speed into
space, oscillating madly!
By the way ... the easiest way to get an source of oscillating electric field is to wave an electric charge around - which is
what radio stations (and TV) stations do when they broadcast their signals. The sound is transformed into electrical
impulses in the station's antenna that thus sends off electromagnetic waves (radio waves) which, in turn, make the
electrons in your antenna move to produce an electrical impulse that is transformed by your sound system back into
sound.

James Clerk Maxwell showed that the speed with which the waves move was directly calculable
from the electric and magnetic properties of the vaccuum, and turned out to be 3x108 metres per
second - the speed of light.

SPECIAL RELATIVITY - an introduction

" ... the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of
reference for which the laws of mechanics hold good. We will raise this conjecture
(the purport of which will hereafter be called the Principle of Relativity) to the
status of a postulate, and also introduce another postulate . . . namely that light is
always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of
the state of motion of the emitting body. These two postulates suffice for the
attainment of a simple and consistent theory of the electrodynamics of moving
bodies based on Maxwell's theory for stationary bodies."
Albert Einstein (Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter K'rper,Ann. d. Phys 4,17,891 1905)

Introduction.
The Principle of Relativity states that:
The laws of mechanics are the same in all inertial reference frames
or, in different words,
All inertial frames are equivalent; there is no preferred inertial frame ...
(An early form of this principle was first enunciated by Galileo in "The Dialogue on the Great World Systems". )

What's an Inertial Reference Frame? One in which the Law of Inertia holds (circular
definition??).
Meaning that ----A non-spinning frame, isolated in deep space, with no local sources of gravitation
or other forces is an inertial frame. All other frames of reference which are moving uniformly (i.e.
with constant velocity) with respect to this one are inertial frames. Any frame that is accelerating in
any way with respect to such inertial frames, is not an inertial frame.
All inertial frames are equivalent ---- means that there is no way to determine which frame is

"moving" or which is "at rest". Which, in turn, implies that the laws of physics are the same for
observers in all inertial frames.
Where can I find an Inertial Frame? Rather surprisingly, in spite of the fact that we are more or less
fixed on the surface of a spinning planet, which is orbiting a star which is itself orbiting the centre
of our galaxy, which itself is moving through the universe, frames fixed in our earth-bound
laboratories are good approximations to inertial frames.
What does it all mean? Of course observers in different frames would see different things if they
were both observing the same phenomena - e.g. the speed of the ball in one frame would be
different from the speed of the ball measured by an observer in another frame. The Principle of
Relativity says only that if observers in different frames perform the same experiment, they must
arrive at identical conclusions. Newton's Laws would be the same in all inertial frames, a game of
billiards played on a uniformly moving train would obey the same laws as one in the local pool hall,
table tennis played on a smoothly moving ship would be obey the same rules as that in the local
gymnasium, etc.
Technical Note: The Principle of Relativity seems unexceptional for the laws of mechanics, since it corresponds to our
everyday experience. In fact it was assumed to be true by all classical physicists for all mechanical phenomena.
However it is more problematical for electromagnetism. We might expect that two observers in different frames would
still get identical results if they did the same experiment; e.g. the same amount of current would flow in a wire subject
to the same voltage, the forces between two charged objects would still obey Coulomb's Law etc. - and indeed the
Principle of Relativity does hold for these phenomena. Thus two observers in two different uniformly moving frames
would be expected to find that Maxwell's equations, in exactly the same form, would hold in their own frames - and
indeed they do.
BUT, the astonishing thing about Maxwell's equations is that they predict the speed of electromagnetic radiation (the
speed of light, c) to be a product of two constants of nature (remember c=1/ (square root of product of two universal
constants?) which depend not at all on the relative speed between observers. So Maxwell's theory tells that all observers
would measure the same value of c, whereas classical mechanics would insist that the measurement of a speed of any
object must take into account the motion of the observer. This discrepancy between mechanics and electromagnetism
led Einstein to enunciate two postulates on which the theory of Special Relativity rests.

We can restate Einstein's postulates as follows:

I Einstein's Postulate I:
All inertial frames are completely equivalent for all physical phenomena.
I IEinstein's Postulate II:
The speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames.
ALL THE RESULTS OF THE SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY
FOLLOW FROM THESE TWO POSTULATES

We will now follow through on the consequences of these two hypotheses by a series of
examples which will lead us very far from the views of classical physics.

Example 1: Some Lengths are Invariant. We can use Postulate I to prove that a meter stick moving
with a constant speed perpendicular to its length will have the same length as a stationary one. (Of
course, Newtonian physics would take this statement to be self-evident; however, in the world of
Special Relativity we cannot make such assumptions). Suppose both sticks are upright, one each
held by observers Jack and Jill. Suppose Jack hypothesises that the length of meter sticks moving
perpendicular to their lengths decrease; let us then attach a paint brush to the top end of Jill's stick.
Then let Jill, holding her stick, move past Jack at a constant speed. The brush on Jill's stick will
make a mark on Jack's stick, at some point below the top end of his stick (since, by hypothesis,
moving sticks shrink); the existence of this mark can be confirmed by both Jack and Jill. However,
from Jill's point of view, it is Jack who is moving; the appearance of the mark on Jack's stick
indicates that his stick has grown. Thus both Jack and Jill have performed an identical experiment the observation of a moving stick, and have not reached the same result, as the Principle of
Relativity says they must. (Alternatively you could say that they disagree on a "law" of physics
which states that sticks moving perpendicular to their lengths shrink: the Principle of Relativity
doesn't allow this sort of disagreement). The only solution is that Jack's hypothesis is wrong.
[You might like to check that you understand this argument by repeating it for yourself, but with the
hypothesis that a meter stick moving with a constant speed perpendicular to its length will increase
in length; then you might compare this argument with the one we develop later for a meter stick
moving parallel to its length.]
Example 2: Time Dilation. A clock is just a device which gives a periodic signal (a "tick"!) to note
the passage of time. Suppose that we have a clock which we will call a Light Clock. It consists of a
flashing light bulb a distance w from a mirror; when a flash of light from the bulb reflects back
from the mirror it triggers the next flash of light. Thus the "tick"(the basic time unit) of this clock is
given by the time taken for the light to leave the bulb, bounce off the mirror, and return to the bulb
(see Figure I). Now suppose that Jack and Jill each have identical Light Clocks. Suppose that Jill is
sitting with her Light Clock on a train that is speeding towards a station, on whose platform Jack is
sitting (Jack and Jill are thus in relatively moving Inertial frames of reference).

Figure I

Figure II

If the clocks are oriented so that the direction of the light is perpendicular to that of the train's
motion, Jack's view of Jill's clock will be that of Figure II. It is clear from this figure that Jack will
observe that the light in Jill's clock takes longer to complete its trip to the mirror and back again
than does the light in his clock, since, in his frame of reference, it has further to go. Since the speed

of the light he measures is not affected by the movement of Jill's clock (by Einstein's second
postulate), he must conclude that the "ticks" of Jill's clock, moving with respect to him, will be
longer than the ticks of his (identical) clock. Of course the system is symmetric, since Jill could
consider herself at rest, and Jack rushing towards her. Thus we conclude that moving clocks run
slow.
Question: Does this Happen with ALL clocks? We might argue that these are rather strange clocks,
and this odd effect, called Time Dilation is merely an artifact of their strange construction.
However, suppose that Jill has another clock, of a quite different construction - for the sake of
discussion, let's suppose she owns a modern quartz crystal watch. Let her calibrate this watch with
respect to her Light Clock, when both are at rest in her frame of reference. Then she knows exactly
how many ticks of the Light Clock correspond to a second on her watch. As time goes by, the clock
and the watch will remain exactly in step, as long as they remain at rest in her frame of reference.
However Jack certainly sees the Light Clock running slow. Since both Jack's and Jill's observations
must be believed - why would they lie?? - the only way we can avoid a contradiction is by
accepting that Jill's watch, as viewed by Jack, slows down by exactly the same amount as her Light
Clock.
If this doesn't entirely convince you, consider the following argument. Give Jack an identical quartz
watch, and suppose that quartz watches don't exhibit this strange relativistic effect, but keep exactly
the same time in all inertial frames. Then Jack's watch and Light Clock will of course keep the same
time, whereas Jill's clocks will tick at different rates (according now to both Jack and Jill). Thus we
have a way of defining a special inertial frame - one in which the quartz clock and the Light Clock
keep the same time - in contradiction to the Principle of Relativity. Or, we could say, equivalently,
that Jack and Jill have performed the same experiment - observation of the Light Clock and the
quartz watch - and have come up with a different result. Again, not allowed by Einstein's second
postulate. Thus all clocks, including biological ones, exhibit time dilation. The above arguments
could be restated thus: if Jill observes that she ages at a different rate from her clocks, she would
have to agree that she was in motion relative to another observer who aged at the same rate as his
clocks.
For those of you who want to see the mathematics of time dilation, consider Jack's view of things when Jill approaches
him at a speed v (see Figure II). Let the unit of time measured on his Light Clock (at rest with respect to him) be t 0 ; let
the unit of time measured by him on Jill's Light Clock (moving with respect to him at a speed v) be t m . Then t0 = 2w/c
and tm = 2d/c where c is the speed of light and d is shown in Figure II. In the time the light takes to make its round trip
from the bulb to the mirror and back again, the moving clock has moved forward a distance v tm. By Pythagoras'
Theorem, d2 = w2 + (v tm/2)2. If we substitute for d and w in this expression, we obtain (ctm)2 = (ct0)2 + (v tm)2.
Rearranging yields tm =g t0 , where g = (1-(v/c)2)-1/2 .

Example 3. The Relativity of Simultaneity. Consider the following situation. Jill is sitting at the
centre of a train which is moving relative to Jack, who waits on the station platform. Thus both are
in relatively moving Inertial frames of reference. Suppose that there are two clocks situated one at
each end of the train, exactly equidistant from Jill; let us call them the Front Clock and the Back
Clock. Both are identical, and can be started by hitting them with a pulse of light.
At some time before she reaches Jack, Jill sends out a light pulse. Since she is equidistant from each

clock and since the speed of light is the same in all directions, the clocks will be hit, and thus
started, at exactly the same time in Jill's frame of reference. For Jill, then, the clocks are exactly
synchronised. For Jack, however, the situation is different. He also knows that the speed of light is
the same whether the pulse is speeding towards the Front Clock or the Back Clock. However, in his
frame, the Back Clock is moving up to meet the pulse of light, which thus has to go a shorter
distance before it hits (and starts) the Back Clock; similarly, since the Front Clock is moving away
from the origin of the pulse of light, it will be hit (and started) at a later time. Thus, from Jack's
point of view, the clocks have not been started simultaneously; in fact, according to him, the Front
Clock is set slow compared to the Back Clock, since it was started later.
Question: Suppose Jill organised another method of synchronising her clocks. For example,
suppose she has a new pair of clocks (for convenience let's call the original ones Set A, and the new
ones Set B). The Set B clocks are different from the Set A clocks but identical to each other; they
don't need a light beam to start them, but can be started by pushing on a button on the top of the
clock. Suppose now that Jill has long but exactly equal length arms, and that she sits sideways on
the train with her arms stretched out, with one Set B clock in each hand. At a given moment, she
pushes the button on each clock; surely now Jack must agree that the clocks have been
synchronised?
It turns out that we do not need to get into the mechanism whereby the nerve impulses leave Jill's
brain and travel along her arms to activate her fingers. There is a general argument which proves
that any method of synchronising two clocks will lead to disagreement between Jack and Jill.
Suppose Jill sets up both sets of clocks as before, and arranges to start all four clocks in Set A and
Set B at exactly the same time (in her frame, of course). Then she will observe that the Set A clocks
are exactly synchronised with the Set B clocks. In particular both Front Clocks (one from each set)
will read the same time, and both Back Clocks will read the same time. But Jack observes that the
Set A Front Clock is set slow compared to the Set A Back Clock. Now Jill's belief is undeniable; as
indeed, by our earlier argument, is Jack's. Thus the only way these two (correct) views of the
situation can be reconciled is if the Set B clocks behave in exactly the same way as the Set A
clocks.
Question: But suppose that Jill synchronises Set B clocks by starting them both at the centre of the
train where she sits; she then walks along the train and puts one clock at the Front, and then walks
back to place the other clock at the Back. Surely Jack must agree that she has synchronised the
clocks correctly this time?
Of course we know that moving clocks run slow, so we might expect that each clock loses a little
time during its passage from the middle of the train to each end. However, Jill can certainly time her
walk to the Back and Front so that both clocks were moved to their final positions at exactly the
same speed, so that their rate of slowing and thus their synchronisation remains identical. For Jack,
on the other hand, the situation of both clocks is far from symmetric. The clock that was moved to
the Front had a greater speed relative to him than the one that was moved to the Back; the Front
clock thus lost more time and now reads behind the Back clock.
Note. Both clocks, initially at rest at the centre of the train, do experience some acceleration and deceleration when they
are moved; however we can, in principle, make this effect arbitrary small, and thus exclude such non-Special
Relativistic effects from consideration.

Of course we could also have used the argument developed in the previous Question to arrive at the
same result. In fact it is clear that this argument can be applied to any sort of clock, and any sort of
synchronising mechanism. Jack will always find that Jills' Front Clock is set behind her Back
Clock. The judgement of simultaneity is relative - it depends on the observer's reference frame.
Example 4: Length Contraction. Now suppose that Jack and Jill measure the length of Jill's train.
For Jill, of course, it is easy; she can just pace it out, since it is at rest with respect to her. However
Jack has a more difficult task, since he has to measure the position of both ends at the same time in
his frame of reference. Jill offers to help him by stationing a friend at the Front of the train, and
another at the Back of the train. At the moment she, sitting at the centre of the train, is directly
opposite Jack, she will emit a pulse of light; this will be the signal for her friends to drop markers
on the station. Since both friends are exactly equidistant from Jill, they will drop their markers at
exactly the same time (in Jill's frame). Jill now tells Jack that the distance between the markers is
the length of the rod. Jack, however, objects to this arrangement. He notes that, in his frame of
reference, Jill's friend at the Back of the train received the light signal before the friend at the Front;
according to him, the back marker was dropped first, then, after the train had moved on a little, the
second marker was dropped. Thus he informs Jill that the markers are too far apart to indicate the
correct length. According to him, Jill's measurement of lengths stationary with respect to her is too
great, which means that his measurement of a length which is moving with respect to him would
yield a value less than that of Jill. Moving lengths contract. See Figure III for a diagram of Jack's
view of things.

Figure III
For those of you who would like to see the mathematics of length contraction, one (deceptively)easy way is the
following. Let the relative speed of Jack and Jill be v. Suppose they are both measuring a rod which is fixed in Jack's
frame with its length parallel to the direction of relative motion; suppose that the length of the rod in Jack's rest frame is
L0. We are interested in Jill's measure- ment of this rod, which, in her frame, is moving with a speed v. Suppose Jack
chooses the (odd!) method of measuring this length by measuring the time that Jill, travelling at a speed v, takes to
move from the beginning of the rod to the end; i.e. he measures the time between "Event 1" (Jill is opposite one end of
the rod) and "Event 2" (Jill is opposite the other end of the rod). Let this time be t0, so that Jack's measurement of the
length is L0 = vt0. Now let Jill measure the length of the rod by observing the time the rod takes to pass her; she thus
measures the time between the same two events as Jack. However, since Jack sees her moving, he will claim that her

clock is running slow and that her measurement of the time between the two events must be less than his by the factor g
(remember, g is always greater than 1). Thus Jack finds that her measurement of the time the rod takes to pass her is t 0
/g and her measurement of the length of the rod must be L m = v t0/g = L0 /g . The length of the rod, moving in the
direction of its length, is less than its length when stationary.

Example 5: Distortion of High Speed Objects. How would objects moving past us at very high
speeds look? Again suppose that Jill is sitting at the centre of a train which is rushing towards Jack,
who is standing at rest on the platform of the next station. Consider Jack's view of the train just at
the moment when Jack and Jill are opposite each other, Jill at the centre of the train, Jack on the
platform; call this moment "now". What will Jack see?
Suppose it is daytime so that it is the Sun's reflected light from the train that enables Jack to see it.
The light coming from the centre of the train will reach him (almost) immediately, since he is
directly opposite it. However the light coming from the back of the train which reaches him at the
same time, has had to come from a much longer distance, and therefore had to set out much earlier,
when the back of the train was further away than it is now. Jack's eyes, since they have had no
experience with such events, will not make the correction, but will treat the current view of the
centre and the earlier view of the back of the train as if they were both current. Since he is seeing
the back of the train when it was much further away, the back half of the train will appear to him to
be greatly stretched out.
Using similar arguments, a little thought will convince you that the front half of the train will appear
to Jack to be compressed. Note that this is a different question from that concerning the length of
the train that Jack would actually measure. Although his eyes may be not capable of making the
required corrections for the time the light reaches him, his brain is able to do the necessary
calculations (let's assume that he is an PHY100F graduate!) Jack's measurement of the entire length
of the train will always yield a value which is less than the length that Jill measures, since the
overall effect must be that of length contraction in the direction of motion; of course dimensions at
right angles to the direction of motion will look the same to both observers (see Example 1).
Example 6: The Twin Paradox. One of the most famous "paradoxes" of Special Relativity concerns
the fate of a pair of twins; suppose they are again the ubiquitous Jack and Jill. One day Jill leaves
earth and moves off at a very high speed to visit a distant planet. During her trip, her clocks
(including her biological one) run more slowly than those of earth-bound Jack, and when she
returns she will find that poor old Jack has aged much more than she has.
But wait a minute: from Jill's point of view, it is Jack who has moved off, away from her. It is thus
his clocks that run slowly compared to hers; when they meet again it will be she who has aged
much more than her travelling twin! Obviously, this is nonsense, but wherein lies the difficulty?
The resolution of this "paradox" comes about when we realise that the situation is not symmetric.
Jack remains in one inertial frame throughout the period whereas Jill must change inertial frames at
the half-way point. She starts off by moving away from Jack, but finishes her journey rushing
towards him, and it is in this change of frames that the dominating effect lies. (It is not simply that
the aging effect is caused by her acceleration and deceleration. This is because, at least in principle,
we can make the time of her acceleration at the start of her journey as she moves from rest, at the
halfway point when she turns around and at the end as she slows down (negative acceleration) as

small a fraction of her entire journey as we choose.)

Let us look at a specific example.
Suppose that Jill sets off one day to a distant space station, call it Dravidia, which is 25 light years
from Earth (i.e. measured in the system in which Earth and Dravidia are at rest). A light year is a
measure of distance equal to the distance light can travel in a year.
Suppose that she speeds up almost immediately to a speed of 99.98% of the speed of light; this
means that her Lorentz factor is close to 50. In order to discuss what happens let us imagine instead
that she starts her trip jumping instantaneously on to a spaceship (call it Enterprise) which is
speeding past Earth with 99.98% of the speed of light, headed directly for Dravidia. At Dravidia,
she instantaneously jumps on to Enterprise's sister ship, Voyager, which is speeding towards Earth
with 99.98% of the speed of light, and just happens to be at Dravidia at exactly the time Jill and the
Enterprise reach there. So from her point of view, the Earth-Dravidia distance is length-contracted
to be only 25/50 = half a light year. Since she is travelling at very close to the speed of light, it takes
her just over 6 months by her clock to reach Dravidia, and 6 more to return. Thus, Jill's biological
clock will have advanced by only one year.
Stay-at-home Jack sees things slightly differently. For him, Jill's clocks are running slow by a factor
of 50. From his vantage point, she has to cover 50 light years for the return journey, which, at
99.98% of the speed of light, will take her just a fraction over 50 years as measured on Jack's clock.
However, according to Jack, Jill's time-keeping is slow by a factor of 50, so he will agree that her
clocks will only read 50/50 = one year, and that therefore she has aged by only one year compared
to his fifty. So far, both Jack and Jill agree.
However, the apparent paradox arises when we consider what view Jill has of Jack's aging process.
She sees Jack moving away from her at 99.98% of the speed of light. Thus, from her point of view,
it is Jack's clocks that are running slow by a factor of 50. In her one year of travel, she will surely
estimate that only 1/50 years have passed on Earth. So apparently she expects that Jack will have
aged by just over one week, while she has aged by one year. Wherein lies the discrepancy?
The answer lies in the setting of clocks as viewed by a moving frame. Suppose that two clocks are
set up, one on Earth and one on Dravidia, and that they are synchronised to read the same time on
both Earth and Dravidia. However they will not be so synchronised as viewed from the Enterprise
or from the Voyager. Remember that in Example 3 above the "Back" clock is seen to be set ahead of
the "Front" clock from the point of view of an observer moving with respect to both clocks. In the
present case, as viewed by the Enterprise, the "Back" clock is that on Dravidia. Suppose Jill sets her
clock to agree with Jack's Earth-bound clock. Then, with a Lorentz factor of 50, it can be shown
that the clock on Dravidia, as viewed by Jill at the start of her outgoing trip aboard the Enterprise,
will appear to her to be set very nearly 25 years ahead of the one on Earth. When she reaches
Dravidia, she will find that the Dravidia clock reads just over 25 years ahead of her clock.
A similar effect occurs on her return journey. When she jumps on to the Voyager, the "Back" clock
is now the one on Earth, which is thus, according to Jill, set ahead of her clock (and the one on
Dravidia) by almost 25 years. Thus when she finally returns to Earth she will find that the Earth
clock reads very slightly over 50 years ahead of hers. Indeed she will agree that Jack has aged by
about 50 years during her trip.

In fact, this effect has been measured by taking an atomic clock round the world on commercial
airlines. The travelling clock indeed lost time, exactly as predicted by Special Relativity. We must
conclude that indeed, travel keeps you young!
Example 7: The Shrinking Garage. Another subtle "paradox" is the following. Jill races at high
speed towards her garage, which is exactly the same length as her car when it is parked inside. Jack,
standing inside the garage, measures the length of the speeding car to be less than that of the garage,
so he will believe that the car can totally fit into the garage for a brief instant. However from Jill's
point of view, it is the garage which shrinks, so she will find that the garage is too small to contain
all of her car for even a brief instant. This time the resolution of the paradox arises from an
extension of the results of Example 4. There we saw that two events which are simultaneous in one
frame need not be so in another frame which is moving relative to it. Similarly, if the time between
two events is extremely close in one frame their order may even be reversed in the other.
Example 8: The Relativistic Mass Increase. These notes would not be complete without at least a
mention of the most famous of all equations which arise out of Special Relativity -- E = mc2. It is
difficult without at least a little algebra to fully demonstrate what this equation means. However, the
following brief discussion might convince you of its plausibility, and intrigue you enough to read
more widely. One of the most sacred principles of Physics is that of Momentum Conservation. In
the present context this means that the sum of momenta of two particles is the same before and after
a collision between them. Now momentum is just the product of mass and velocity, and velocity is
the quotient of distance and time. Since both distance and time have different values when
measured from different frames of reference, it is perhaps not too surprising that velocity
demonstrates a relativistic effect. But if the value of velocity depends on the frame in which it is
measured, so must the value of mass, so that the product of mass and velocity has the same value in
any frame. In fact the mass of a moving object can be shown to be greater than the mass of the same
object when measured at rest.
But what can this mean? It turns out that the relativistic change in mass is due to the fact that mass
and energy turn out to be exactly the same physical quantity. The definition of mass must therefore
include all forms of energy associated with the object. Mass and energy turn out to be completely
equivalent. However, the units used in their original definitions are quite different, so to convert
from one to the other, a conversion factor is necessary; it turns out to be just the square of the speed
of light, c2. The rest mass of an object is the mass we measure when the object is at rest in our
frame of reference. This is the mass that we are accustomed to use in our "normal", non-relativistic
environment.

Gravity and Time.

Consider three clocks. Clocks 1 and 2 are mounted on a rotating disk, with clock 1 exactly at the
centre, and clock 2 fixed on the rim, and clock 3 is sitting at rest with respect to the centre of the
disk. Note that the disk exerts a force
on clock 2 which forces it to follow a
circular path; since, without this
force, clock 2 would move in a
straight line, it is clear that the force
and the resultant acceleration are
both directed towards the centre of
the disk. Clocks 1 and 3 are not
moving relative to one another (there
is some rotation involved, but their
relative position in space does not
change with time); thus, as far as
Special Relativity is concerned, they
keep the same time. However, clock
2 is moving with respect to clock 3;
thus clock 2 is running slow as seen
by clock 3. Since clocks 1 and 3 keep
the same time, this means that clock
2 runs slow compared to clock 1, even though clocks 1 and 2 have no relative translatory motion.
(Note that, since clock 2 is not in an inertial frame, Special Relativity does not make any statement
about its timekeeping - this is a new effect). Finally, consider a clock situated on the disk
somewhere between clocks 1 and 2; the acceleration of such a clock is less than that of clock 2, and
since it is also moving more slowly than clock 2, it is running less slowly.
Generalising this result, we see that clocks undergoing acceleration will run slow compared to nonaccelerating clocks; and the greater the acceleration, the greater will be this time dilation. Now
according to the Equivalence Principle, an accelerating frame of reference cannot be distinguished
from a frame in which there is a gravitational field. Thus the above result implies that clocks in a
gravitational field run slow; and the greater the gravitational field, the greater the time dilation.
Clocks on the ground floor of a tall building will run slower than those in the upper floors; if you
want to keep (relatively) young, find a job in the basement - or become a miner!

Gravity and Space.

Now consider the following: suppose we measure the circumference of the rotating disk. We could
do this by laying a series of measuring rods along it. Relative to the centre of the disk, the
measuring rods will appear contracted. Of course, if we measure the radius of the rotating disk,
since the measuring rods are moving perpendicular to their length, there will be no length
contraction. Thus the ratio of the circumference to the radius of a rotating disk (equal to 2 Pi in
Euclidean geometry) will not be fixed, but will depend on the speed of rotation. By the Equivalence
Principle, it is clear that measurements of distance will depend on the value of the local
gravitational field, even if no relative motion is involved. The normal (Euclidean) geometry that we

learnt at our mother's knee is no longer valid when strong gravitational fields are present. Gravity
causes space to be non-Euclidean. The exact relationship between gravity and space is complicated.
However it implies that the geometry of our universe is that of a curved, four dimensional spacetime. Gravity is a manifestation of this space-time geometry; a gravitational field is nothing but the
warping of this geometry. Mass causes the geometry to curve and warp, and the curvature is the
gravitational field, which reveals itself as mass.

Bending of Light in a Gravitational Field.

A brief review of the difference between constant speed and

acceleration::
Something that moves with constant speed covers the same
distance in every time interval; for instance a rocket travelling at
one third the speed of light will cover 10 cm in 1 nanosecond. An
accelerating rocket, on the other hand, will cover a distance that
increases in each successive interval of time; e.g. in the first
nanosecond it might cover 10cm, in the second 11cm, in the third 12 cm, in the fourth 13 cm, etc. The difference
between the two cases is demonstrated in the graph.

Consider now what happens to a beam of light which is directed through the window of an
accelerating rocket; suppose that both mission control (on the ground) and the astronauts (in the
rocket) can observe the light at several
points in its path (indicated on the
diagram). Mission control will see the
light beam moving in a straight path;
however the astronauts in the rocket
will detect the light at points which lie
on a curve. (Note: it is instructive to
consider what will happen if the rocket
is simply moving with constant speed
relative to mission control; a little
thought should convince you that the
light will move in a straight line in
both frames). Thus, by the Principle of
Equivalence, since an accelerating
frame looks the same as a frame in a gravitational field, light appears to bend in a gravitational
field. According to our new understanding of General Relativity, we interpret this to mean that light
follows the quickest (or "straightest") path in curved space-time; this path is called a geodesic.

Experimental Verification.
By now, there have been very many quite precise verifications of the predictions of the General
Theory of Relativity, and a full coverage of these would take many pages. However, to give you the

flavour of the sorts of tests which are possible, I mention below some of the first - and therefore
most exciting - experiments that have been done.

I. The Bending of Light.

A) The General Theory predicts that light is bent by a gravitational field. In fact such an effect is
also predicted by Newtonian theory and the of the deflection of light passing close to the sun was
done as early as 1801, by considering the effect that Newtonian gravity would have on an object
passing close to the sun with the speed of light. The prediction of General Relativity yields a value
that is twice as large as the classical calculation.
To observe this effect, Eddington, in 1919 measured the apparent displacement of the distant stars
as their light passed close to the sun; of course the stars can't normally be seen when the sun is
shining, so Eddington had to wait for a total eclipse of the sun. The amount a body moving at the
speed of light would deflect is calculated to be 0.84 seconds of arc using Newtonian mechanics; the
prediction of General Relativity is 1.74 seconds of arc. Eddington confirmed the latter value to
within 20%, and later measurements made in a similar manner now give agreement to within 0.1%.
B) The observation of very distant objects can be distorted by the bending of light if the light from
them passes close to a large mass, such as a galaxy. In this case the galaxy acts as a lens would, and
multiple images of the distant object may be observed. In some cases the light from the distant
object is shaped into a ring, called an Einstein ring. Several observations of such gravitational
lensing have been observed; several beautiful examples are shown here.

This is one of the first multiply-imaged sources

discovered in 1979 (by Walsh, Carswell and
Weymann). Points A and B are images of the same
distant source (quasar 0957+561), produced by light
bending round a closer massive object that produces
no image on this photograph.

This is one of the first so-called 'giant arcs', C1224402, viewed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

In this case the foreground galaxy, shown by the

bright spot at the centre of the picture is so perfectly
aligned with the distant galaxy that the image of the
latter becomes an almost perfect Einstein Ring. This
picture was taken using the Hubble Space Telescope,
by J.L. King, University of Manchester.

II. Time Dilation - or the Gravitational Redshift.

Both Special and General Relativity predict the slowing down of clocks under certain
circumstances, and experiments to test the predictions of either theory must take account of the
predictions of the other, since the effects of both theories are often present. Most General Relativity
tests use atomic clocks that emit gamma or X-rays at specific frequencies; these frequencies provide
the time scale. General Relativity predicts that clocks in greater gravitational fields will run more
slowly than those in weaker gravitational fields; thus an atomic clock in a higher gravitational field
will emit light of a lower frequency compared to a clock in a lower gravitational field. Since lower
frequencies correspond to longer wavelengths and, for visible light, shifts to the red part of the
spectrum, the effect predicted by the General Relativity is usually called the Gravitational Redshift.
A) In 1959 Pound and Rebka placed an atomic clock at the top of a seven storey office building at
Harvard University and compared its frequency with that of a similar clock placed in the basement.
Using an effect named after the German physicist, Mossbauer, they confirmed the prediction of
General Relativity to within 1%. More recent experiments along these lines have improved the
precision to 0.02%.
B) In 1971 Hafele and Keating tested relativistic predictions by comparing the time measured on an
atomic clock flown around the world on commercial airlines to that of a stay-at-home clock. Here
both General and Special Relativity come into play.
Let's consider first the effects of Special Relativity. As seen by a distant observer at rest with respect
to the centre of the earth, the clock at rest on the earth will run slow. If the other clock is placed in a
plane flying Eastwards, its speed will add to that of the Earth's rotation (which is in an Easterly
direction; remember that the plane's speed is relative to the atmosphere which moves with the
Earth). Thus Special Relativity predicts that the flying clock will run slower than the stay-at-home
clock, since it is moving faster. However, for a clock flying Westwards, its speed will subtract from

that of the Earth, and it will gain time on the stay-at-home clock.
For General Relativity, however, the speed of the plane is irrelevant. The sole effect is due to
gravity, and since the plane will experience less gravity when it is 10,000 metres in the air, the
flying clock will always gain time compared to the clock on the ground.
The Hafele and Keating found that the flying clock lost (59+/-10) nanoseconds when flying East
and gained (273+/-7) nanoseconds when flying West. It can be seen that their measurements agree
well (within statistics) with the predictions.

THEORY

EASTWARDS WESTWARDS
EFFECT
flight
flight
(nanoseconds) (nanoseconds)

General
Gravity
Relativity
Special
Kinematic
Relativity
Sum of
Net
Both

144

179

-184

96

-40+/-23

275+/-21

III. Other Tests.

There have been many other successful tests of General Relativity. However the following two were
among the first to truly establish the theory, and are good examples of later, more precise tests.
A) The Perihelion of Mercury. As you know, planets move in ellipses around the sun. However
due to the influence of other planets their orbits are not quite closed; their perihelions (the line
between the sun and the point of closest approach of the planet) will not be stationary in space but
moved around the sun in a motion called precession. There is a contribution to this precession
predicted by General Relativity. Mercury, the planet nearest the sun, should show this effect most of
all, since it experiences the greatest gravitational effect. Indeed the Newtonian calculations of the
perturbing effects of the other planets account for only 531 out of the observed 574 seconds of arc
per century; General Relativity has to be invoked to explain the remaining 43 seconds.
B) Gravitational Waves. When a mass moves, it causes "ripples" in curved space-time as the
geometry changes to accommodate the movement of the mass. (Think of the motion of the surface
of your waterbed when you change position!). Remember what happens when we move a charge;
electromagnetic waves are emitted. In just the same way, we expect that gravitational waves may be
produced by accelerating masses, though the effect is very weak. For example, gravitational waves
should be emitted by stars that are orbiting each other; the energy carried off by the waves will
cause the orbiting bodies to lose kinetic energy, and the time for each orbit will gradually decrease
(remember classical physics expected just such an effect for an electron orbiting a nucleus; it took
Quantum Mechanics to explain why this didn't happen).

Such an orbiting star has been

identified - the binary pulsar PSR
1913+16) and the measured decrease
in its period caused by the emission of
gravitational wave energy agrees
exactly with the calculations of
General Relativity for this case. This is
strong evidence for the existence of
gravitational waves. The results of
Taylor and Hulse, shown at right, won
them the Nobel Prize for 1993: the
blue curve is the time delay caused by
the loss of energy by gravitational
radiation, calculated from General Relativity, knowing the measured properties of the binary pulsar.

A large effort is currently being mounted in the US to detect the arrival of gravitational waves on
earth; LIGO (the Large Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory) will be operational by the
end of the decade.

WAVE-PARTICLE DUALITY
QUOTABLE QUOTES
1. Common sense is the deposit of prejudice laid down in the mind before the age of 18. A. Einstein
2. God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the Universe.
P.A.M. Dirac
3. If you are not confused by Quantum Physics then you haven't really understood it. N.Bohr

What is the Photo-Electric Effect?

In the Photo-Electric effect, a metal is
illuminated with light. Under certain
circumstances, electrons are emitted from the
illuminated surface. We can vary the
intensity of the light and its frequency (its
colour).

Expectations of Classical Physics.

These expectations are based on the belief that light is an electromagnetic wave; if we increase the
intensity of the light this is equivalent to increasing the amplitude of the oscillating electric field of
which the light wave is composed. Since the energy of the light beam is spread uniformly over the
beam, it is transferred continuously to the electrons, which require a certain minimum of energy to
escape the attractive forces of the metal. In the following, "The maximum energy of the electrons"
means "The energy of the most energetic electrons".
a. Whatever the frequency of the incident light, electrons will be emitted from the metal
surface as long as the light carries enough energy - i.e. if it is sufficiently intense.
b. If the intensity of the light is increased the maximum energy of the electrons should also
increase.
c. There may be a time delay between the switching on of the light and the appearance of the
first electrons; the lower the light intensity, the longer will be this time delay.

Experimental Observations.
a. Not one electron is emitted if the frequency of the light is below a certain value (called the
"threshold frequency", which is dependent on the type of the metal). Above this threshold
frequency, the maximum energy of the emitted electrons increases in direct proportion to the
frequency of the light.
b. The maximum energy of the emitted electrons is independent of the intensity of the light.
c. No matter how weak the light, as long as its frequency is above the threshold frequency,
the emission of electrons starts IMMEDIATELY the light is switched on.
(In case you were wondering; an increase in the light intensity increases the number of electrons emitted per second,
while leaving the energy of each electron unchanged).

Einstein's Explanation.
a. Light comes in LUMPS which we call photons.
b. The energy of each photon is directly proportional to the frequency of the light.
c. The interaction between a photon and an electron in the metal is a unique, elemental act,
in which the photon can give up some, or all of its energy to the electron, which then might
have enough energy to escape from the metal.
Why does this explain the observations?
The electron is kept in the metal by the electric forces, and can only escape if a certain minimum
amount of energy is given to it. If the photon energy (i.e. frequency) is too low to overcome this
attractive force between the electrons and the metal, the electron can't escape. Thus the frequency of
the photon must be above a certain value (which depends on the particular metal). Once we are
above this threshold, the photon either hits an electron or it doesn't. If it does, and if enough energy
is transferred to the the electron from the photon, the electron will have enough energy to escape
IMMEDIATELY, with no time delay. Also, if we increase the energy of the photon by increasing its

frequency, the electrons which interact with these electrons can come off with increased energy).
Einstein's conjecture that the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency can be written
Ephoton = h f ; here h is Planck's constant.

Particles are also Waves.

The great success of Einstein's theory for the photoelectric effect stimulate de Broglie to postulate
in his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Paris, that particles might exhibit wave-like properties.
Starting from Einstein's relation, Ephoton = h f and using the relation given by Maxwell's equations
for the momentum of a light wave, Elight = pc (where p is the momentum of the light, and c is the
speed of light), de Broglie derived the expression p =h/ , where is the wavelength of light; he
proposed that this relation could be taken over to refer to particles, whose "wavelength" (whatever
that means!) would be given by = h/p.
[Note the deliciously schizophrenic appearance of these formulae; on the right hand side there is a "particle" property energy or momentum, while on the right hand side there is a "wave" property - frequency or wavelength.]

How could these particle wavelengths be observed? Remember that one identifying feature of
waves is their ability to interfere, as in the double slit experiment. However, for electrons, for
instance, this wavelength turns out to be very small. Now remember (see Waves) that wave effects
(i.e. diffraction effects or interference) are difficult to see if we use measuring devices which are
much larger than the wavelengths involved. So it was not surprising that the first confirmation of de
Broglie's apparently fantastic proposal should find experimental support in the study of the
interaction of electrons with metals. For the regular planes of atoms which are found crystals turn
out to be just of the correct order of magnitude to allow observation of interference effects of
electrons which are being reflected from metal crystal surfaces. In fact such crystal planes had
already been used to show the effects of interference for X-rays - which are just very short
wavelength electromagnetic waves; the wavelength of X-rays is around a few Angstroms - 1A = 1010m

- so we need a "diffraction grating" which has line spacing between the slits of the same order
of magnitude as this wavelength, and crystal planes do the job!
In 1927, three years after de Broglie's proposal, Davisson and Germer, working at Bell Labs in the
US, and, independently G.P. Thomson working at Cambridge University, observed interference
patterns in the scattering of electrons. The "wavelength" of the electrons, calculated from the
observed interference patterns, agreed exactly with de Broglie's formula.

QUANTUM INTERFERENCE
AND HEISENBERG'S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
The Double Slit Experiment Revisited
Remember Young's double slit experiment ? If, instead of a light beam, we sent a beam of electrons

into this double slit system, what would we see? Let us replace the source of light with an electron
oven, which sends a stream of electrons towards the double slit system; at a good distance beyond
the double slits lies a screen which can record the arrival of each electron. Let us suppose that the
set-up has been carefully arranged so that of the electrons which reach the detection screen, exactly
50% of them have arrived from each slit.
Firstly we notice that electrons are truly point particles; those that get through the double slit system
and reach the detection screen arrive at one place and one place only on that screen.
If we were to close one slit and wait for some time to
allow a large number of electrons to reach the detection
screen, the distribution of electrons would look somewhat
as shown opposite. The intensity pattern is spread out
somewhat, presumably because some of the electrons are
scattered off the edges of the slit. Note that, as expected,
the centre of the intensity pattern lies at a point in the
direct line-of- sight back to the electron oven, and is
displaced slightly from the exact centre of the detection screen.

In a similar way, if we were to close off the other hole,

and open the first for the same amount of time, we would
expect (given that our experiment has been set up with
exact symmetry) that the intensity pattern would be
identical in shape to the first case, but displaced an equal
amount to the other side of the centre of the detection
screen.

So if both slits were left open for the same amount of

time, what would we expect ? Obviously, if electrons
were classical particles, we would expect that the total
intensity pattern is simply the sum of the two previous
intensity patterns, shown opposite.

Astonishingly, this is not at all what we observe. In fact

the observed intensity pattern shows interference bands,
very similar to those produced by light passing through
the double slit system; there are places on the detection
screen where no electrons land, and other places where
more electrons than the number we would expect from
simply adding the contributions from each slit acting
alone.

NOTE: Dr David Harrison teaches the second half of the course JPU200Y that covers some of the material also
covered in PHY100F. He has constructed a beautiful description of the Double Slit experiment on the web pages of that
course. I do urge you to look at these pages - just click on

http://faraday.physics.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/DoubleSlit/DoubleSlit.html

What is going on ??
The astonishing thing is that the electrons, which each arrive individually as "particles", do so in
such a way as to form an intensity pattern which we can only make sense of in terms of "waves".
Indeed, using the very simple theory of waves which gives a description of the double slit
experiment for waves, we get a complete description of the entire intensity pattern of this double slit
experiment for electrons. To drive the point home, let's look at a couple of modifications to the
experiment which may help dispel any lingering doubts that this is truly what is happening.
We might be concerned that some sort of interference effect may be going on between different
electrons as they traverse the experimental system. To check this, we could reduce the intensity of
the electron beam (by turning down the oven, for example) so that at any one time there was only
one electron in the system. The extraordinary result is that, although it takes much longer for the
interference pattern to develop, exactly the same pattern does develop.
But how can each individual electron "know" where it is supposed to land up, since the experiments
tell us that this depends only on whether one or both slits are open. So maybe the electron somehow
splits itself up and goes through both holes at once, recombining before it reaches the detection
screen. To check this, we could design an apparatus to check whether the electron goes through one
slit or the other, or both, when both slits are open .
Let us suppose that we have a small light placed just behind the double slit system. It sends out

photons to bounce off the electrons that are coming through the slits; if an electron is hit, it deflects
the photons into our eyes, and we observe the electron and can determine its position. (Of course
this is a very crude piece of equipment to make such a measurement; in reality we would design
things much better. However this "gedanken" experiment makes the discussion simpler, and
represents the essentials of a real experiment). Now we can see which slit each electron comes
through. What is the result? It turns out that indeed, every time theelectron comes through one slit
or the other. However we notice to our dismay that when we are making this observation, the
interference pattern disappears!
Perhaps we have so many photons around that they are somehow interfering with the electrons'
paths? Well, we can reduce the intensity of the light source (i.e. the number of photons flooding the
system) to check this out. However, if we reduce the intensity too much, we will begin to miss some
of the electrons, because there aren't enough around to ensure that every photon is struck, and thus
observed. If we look at the distribution of the electrons that we miss, indeed the interference pattern
is again observed. However, for those electrons for which we can determine which slit they have
passed through (and, when detected, they are always seen to come through one slit or the other!), no
interference pattern is observed.
Perhaps, we might suggest, the photons we are using in this experiment are too energetic, so that
their impact on the fragile electrons is too large. Well, we can reduce their impact by reducing their
momentum; since their wavelength is inversely proportional to the momentum, that means we
increase their wavelength. And indeed as we increase the wavelength of the observing photons, we
do begin to
notice that the interference pattern re-establishes itself. However, to our dismay, just at that point we
find that our resolution (which, remember, is proportional to the wavelength of the observing light)
has become so poor that our ability to determine which slit these electrons have come through
disappears!
In the words of Richard Feynman (in The Character of Physical Law. (MIT Press)):
"If you have an apparatus which is capable of telling which hole the electron goes through ... then
you can say that it either goes through one hole or the other. It does; it is always going through one
hole or the other - when you look. But when you have no apparatus to determine through which
hole the thing goes, then you cannot say it goes through one hole or the other ... to conclude that it
goes through one hole or the other when you are not looking is to produce an error in prediction.
That is the logical tightrope on which we have to walk if we wish to interpret Nature."
Now it may be thought that our inability to pin the electron down to one slit or the other at the same
time as we are observing the interference pattern is simply due to the fact that our observation of the
system disturbs it too much. There is indeed some truth to this; most modern scientists would now
accept that the old idea that the observer can stand outside of Nature in order to observe it is no
longer tenable. John Wheeler has put this nicely, by saying that indeed there is no such thing as an
"observer" - only "participants". However, there is something even deeper going on here: for if we
had any method whatsoever to determine which slit each electron came through, simple logic would
insist that the observed distribution would simply be the sum of the distributions of electrons from
each slit, taken separately. That is, we should observe

Nature would then be placed in an irresolvable paradox. So the implication here is that indeed the
future is unpredictable; we can never predict which slit the electron is going to go through.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

There is a more formal mathematical statement of this fact, called the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle, which sets clear limits on what we can observe. A simple "sort of proof" goes as follows:
Consider our attempt to view the electrons in the double slit system by shining light of
wavelength on them. The photons of this light will have momenta pphoton = h/ . If we manage to
see an electron it will be because one of these photons has struck it. Clearly the electron momentum
will have been affected by this interaction with the photon. Let us call the change we have so
induced in the electron's momentum pelectron (meaning a small change in pelectron). Obviously, the
greater the momentum of the photon, the greater this change in the momentum of the struck
electron. Certainly pelectron is proportional to pphoton; the constant of proportionality will depend to
some extent on the experimental set-up, but might typically be of the order of 0.1 or so. However, to
the order of our present calculation, we can assume it is 1. Thus we can write that pelectron =
pphoton = h/ .
Now we know that the precision with which we can determine a distance is limited by the size of
the wavelength of the light which we use to measure the distance. In fact this uncertainty in position
is directly proportional to the wavelength of the light; again, at our present level of accuracy, we can
set the proportionality constant to 1. In the double slit experiment, let us call this uncertainty in
position x. So, using the above arguments, we can write the uncertainty in our knowledge of the
position of the electron, determined by shining a photon of wavelength L on it, to be xelectron = .
Combining the two equations for the uncertainty of the electron's momentum and its position, we
obtain the following expression for their product: pelectron. xelectron = (h/ ) = h. It turns out that
this expression is generally true for all particles, and we can write it finally as p . x = h. This is
one way of writing Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
The difficulty with this derivation of the Uncertainty Principle is that it may encourage you to think
that the uncertainty in the result, and indeed an explanation of the whole odd behaviour that we
observe in the Double Slit experiment is entirely due to the unavoidable disturbance that we make
when we observe the experiment.
However this is simply not true. The Uncertainty Principle implies a built-in, unavoidable limit to
the accuracy with which we can make measurements. NOR is it similar to experimental uncertainty

as understood in Classical Physics. There, for example, when we want to measure the temperature
of a beaker of water, it is certainly true that we disturb the temperature we want to measure by
introducing a cold thermometer into it, so the temperature we measure is thus not exactly that of the
beaker alone. However, in principle, we can remove this error, by measuring with smaller and
smaller ther mometers and extrapolating to zero size; in principle (if not in practice) we can thus
measure to arbitrarily high accuracy. This is not possible in the Quantum world, thanks to
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. A further implication is that the future is not predictable in the
classical sense; for if we do not know the initial conditions exactly - and Heisenberg's principle tells
us that we cannot - we cannot make accurate predictions about the future, no matter how precise
and pre-determined are our equations.

A POOR PERSON'S QUANTUM THEORY

The Wave Function
The observation of the world lets us know that something very odd is going on. The Double Slit
Experiment is the prototypical experiment of Quantum Physics. Guided by this experiment and
others like it, a mathematical theory, called Quantum Theory has been developed to give results
which are in agreement with our observations; the "weirdness" we find in Nature is reflected in the
way in which the Quantum Theory is constructed. It goes a bit like this.
The state of a physical system is described by a "wave function", usually denoted by the symbol ..
In particular cases, we will know more or less exactly what function this is - e.g a sine or a cosine, a
quadratic expression, etc. This wave function can depend on time, spatial coordinates, etc. Quantum
Theory tells us that to make calculations about real measurements that could be made on the
system, we must take the square of the wave function. The value so obtained will give us the
probability of obtaining, through measurement on the system, a particular value of the quantity we
are interested in. We would expect a theory from Classical Physics to give us an exact value of the
quantity we were interested in; here, however, the best we can do is calculate a probability of
obtaining the value. The wave function is also called a Probability Amplitude, for this reason.
For example, if, on the basis of our knowledge of conditions in which a particle might find itself (in
a box, with a magnetic field, for example) we knew how to write down the particle's wave function;
and let's say this wave function depended on its position (call that x) and the time measured from
some starting time (call that t). In that case, we would write its wave function as (x,t). x could
take any values of position that the particle could reach. If then, we wanted to know the chance, or
probability, of finding the particle at a particular value of x, say x = 45 cm, at a particular time of,
say 7 seconds, Quantum Theory tells us that the answer is (45,7) 2. Note that this is very different
from Classical Physics; there, we might know that the "equation of motion" of the particle was, e.g.
x = 6t; then the answer to our question would be that the position of the particle at time 7 seconds,
would be the exactly x = 42 cm.
Now let us look at the odd way in which Quantum Theory does its calculations about the world.
Suppose we have an experiment about a physical process which can happen in more than one way,

and we know the Probability Amplitude (or wave function) for each way. To calculate what results
we would expect in an experiment which does not distinguish which way actually happens, we have
to first add the Probability Amplitudes; then we square the result of this addition to get the answer
to compare to measurement. If, on the other hand, the experiment does distinguish which way
actually happens, we square the Probability Amplitudes before adding them. To see how this
works, let's look at the Double Slit Experiment for electrons.

The Double Slit Experiment Again

Suppose that 1 is the Probability Amplitude for the electron's going through one slit, and 2 is the
Probability Amplitude for its going through the other slit; then the Probability Amplitude to
calculate the results of an experiment which does not determine through which slit the electron goes
(call it Experiment I) is written as I = 1 + 2. [This is called a "(linear) superposition of probable
states"]. Now, if we want to make a theoretical calculation of the results of a real experiment we
might carry out (e.g. the distribution of the electrons on the detecting screen), we have to take the
square of this total Probability Amplitude, i.e.
written as

2+

+2

={

}2. Multiplying out, this result can be

. (In this not-quite-correct formulation,

can equal -

).

Suppose we have a set-up which has equal size slits, located at the same distance from the source of
electrons, then the probability that the electron goes through slit number 1 is equal to the probability
that it goes through slit number 2. We express this fact by writing

Then :

EITHER
OR

=-

=+

= 0.5 (or 50%).

and the result is 1 (or 100%);

, and the result is 0 (or 0%).

For the Double Slit Experiment, this is obviously (??) a calculation of the interference pattern, with
its maxima ( 1, in some arbitrary units) and minima ( 0) which we observe. However, if our
experiment has some means for detecting, even in principle, which hole the electron goes through
(Experiment II), the result of this experiment must be written as
(??) the case in which no interference is observed.

II

2+

2. This

is clearly

Thus the Quantum Theory has managed to come up with a recipe to give calculations which agree
with the observations we make on this weird world in which we live.
What can we say about the wave function (Probability Amplitude) of the electron after it has gone
through the slit system, but just before we look at it to decide which slit it went through? In this
case, Nature tells us we must write its wave function as . = 1 + 2 , as explained above. But if we
make a measurement to determine which slit the electron did go through, we know we must get the
result 1 (if it went through slit number 1) OR 2 (if it went through slit number 2). Then we say
that the wavefunction has collapsed on to its final value.

What is an Electron?
According to Schrdinger, the electron can be represented by a wave-function, which contains all
the information we can know about the particle. If an electron looks like anything we are familiar
with (and it doesn't!!), it comes closest to a small "packet" of waves confined to a region of space
x. This wavefunction obeys a wave equation first written down by Schrdinger. The square of the
wavefunct ion gives the probability of finding it at a given place (and time).
(MATH NOTE: To represent such a function, we need a superposition of many wave forms, with a "spread" of
wavelengths. Since p = h/ this implies a corresponding spread in momentum; this can be calculated to be p = h/
x - as we might have expected from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle).

Schrdinger's Cat ( or Is the Moon There when Nobody Looks?)

By analogy, in the case of Schrdinger's cat, the state of the cat before we open the box is :
cat =
alive +
dead. If we have designed the experiment so that there is equal probability for finding
the cat alive or dead, we must have alive2 = dead2. When we open the box, since the cat must be
alive OR dead, the total wave function, cat must be EITHER = alive OR = dead; we don't know
which before we open the box. However, it appears that just before we open the box, the cat is
NEITHER alive OR dead, but a superpostition of the two states! Just try telling that to your grand
mother!

The Implications of the Quantum

Quantum Physics forces us to the conclusion that:
a. there are no certainties, only probabilities - and the future is unpredictable.
b.Physical properties have no objective reality independent of the act of observation OR the
act of measurement can, in principle, act instantaneously over enormous distances (i.e. nonlocal interactions exist). (Bell's Theorem and the experiments of Aspect et al.)

INTERPRETATIONS OF THE QUANTUM WORLD

Albert Einstein - Einstein objected to the Quantum Theory on several grounds. Firstly it does not
seem to give objective reality to individual events; he believed that an objective world exists,
independent of any observer or observing process. Yet Quantum theory seems to imply that our
method of observation determines what we will see. Secondly it does not seem to be a complete
theory; it is essentially statistical in its predictions and cannot completely describe individual
quantum events. His other objections were formalised in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper, and
concerned what he called "spooky actions at a distance". ( NOTE: in this area at least, Einstein

seems to have been wrong. Bell's Theorem and the experiments of Aspect et al have proven
conclusively that EITHER there is no objective reality OR that these "spooky" non-local
interactions exist).
Neils Bohr - the Copenhagen collapse. Bohr believed that the wave function represents our
knowledge of the physical phenomena we are studying, not the phenomena itself. In this sense, it is
a potential which is realised only when we make an observation; this observation causes the wave
function to "collapse" into the actual manifestation of the route taken.
David Bohm - A Higher Multi-Dimensional Order. In his book "Wholeness and the Implicate
Order" Bohm suggests that the strange effects of the Quantum world may imply the existence of a a
deeper, non-local level of reality. At this level - called the implicate order - all things are
interconnected in an unbroken whole; "everything interpenetrates everything". Our observational
world - which Bohm calls the explicate order - has access to this underlying reality in only a partial
and incomplete fashion. Bohm's view has been likened to the suggestion that the Universe is a
multi-dimensional hologram; any little piece of the hologram will recover the image, but not the full
reality. We are reminded of Blake's wish - "to see the world in a grain of sand".
Eugene Wigner - Human consciousness. Wigner goes even further than Bohm by claiming that it is
the entry of human consciousness into the picture that causes the wave function to collapse. The
Cartesian mind-body dualism is re-established and the influence of the mind on the physical world
is explicit. Wigner believes that the Newtonian concept of action-reaction and quantum physics both
are evidence for this belief.
John Wheeler - The Participatory Universe. The renowned mathematician, John von Neumann
was also an adherent to this view, which claims that the universe does not exist
until a human mind is there to observe it. In this view, the universe is a selfobserving system; the early stages of the universe can be promoted to concrete
reality through its later observation by conscious ness, which itself depends on that
reality (!!)
Hugh Everett and Bryce de Witt - The Many Worlds Interpretation. Far-fetched
though this sounds it provides one of the cleanest explanations of the wave function collapse. The
idea is that at each observation of the world ALL possibilities allowed by the wave function of the
system are actually realised. The universe splits into branches, each corresponding to one of the
possibilities available to it. Each branch is completely independent of the others, and no
communication can take place between branches.