Top Ten Physics Experiments Of All Times

MarkedMan writes "The New York Times is running an article about the top ten physics experiments of all time. You may disagree with the order, but it is hard to imagine pulling any one of these from the top ten. And most of them could be done by a patient amateur, at least one with access to cannonballs." The Times article wraps up the work by Robert P. Crease mentioned a few weeks ago.

Comments

Re:What about the Michaelson-Morley experiment?

[pmc]

Not really - MM experiment completely destroyed the worldview at the time. Depending on you criteria this has to be one of the top ten.

Other ones missing are

JJ Thompsons backscattering of alpha particles from gold foil - changed to model of the atom from the plum pudding model to the nuclear model

Penzia and Wilson discovery of the microwave background - changed the model of the universe.

Discovery of superconductivity.

Any of Faraday's electromagnetism experiments - lead directly to Maxwell's field theory of electromagnetism, and hence to moden field based physics.

There are load more - the NYT list is poor.

Re:Summary of the article

[shren]

Science lived in Aristotle's shadow for a long time. This was both good and bad. Good, becuase Aristotle was quite clever and there was a lot of useful stuff in his shadow. Bad, because his work was taken as gospel, complete and correct in all areas.

I think it's very easy to forget about how different the minds of people are between now and then. Concepts we take for granted - uniform space, causality, the scientific method, non-contact forces - wern't even a part of the intellectual landscape. I think if anyone ever actually invented a time machine, going back far enough would encounter humans almost alien in thought. We all share premises from growing up in this era. They had different premises, perhaps different enough to hinder communication even if a common language was found.

Every time you read something obvious in one of Aristotle's works, remember - it's only obvious now because he wrote it then. Imagine, perhaps, a world where it's not obvious and think about how we got from there to here.