Portal:Physics
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Physics (from Ancient Greek: φυσική (ἐπιστήμη), romanized: physikḗ (epistḗmē), lit. 'knowledge of nature', from φύσις phýsis 'nature') is the natural science that studies matter, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, and its main goal is to understand how the universe behaves.
Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest. Over much of the past two millennia, physics, chemistry, biology, and certain branches of mathematics were a part of natural philosophy, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century these natural sciences emerged as unique research endeavors in their own right. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new avenues of research in academic disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy.
Advances in physics often enable advances in new technologies. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism, solid-state physics, and nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons; advances in thermodynamics led to the development of industrialization; and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus. (Full article...)
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The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its exact value is defined as 299792458 metres per second (approximately 300000 km/s, or 186000 mi/s). It is exact because, by international agreement, a metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1⁄299792458 second. According to special relativity, c is the upper limit for the speed at which conventional matter, energy or any signal carrying information can travel through space.
Though this speed is most commonly associated with light, it is also the speed at which all massless particles and field perturbations travel in vacuum, including electromagnetic radiation (of which light is a small range in the frequency spectrum) and gravitational waves. Such particles and waves travel at c regardless of the motion of the source or the inertial reference frame of the observer. Particles with nonzero rest mass can approach c, but can never actually reach it, regardless of the frame of reference in which their speed is measured. In the special and general theories of relativity, c interrelates space and time, and also appears in the famous equation of mass–energy equivalence, E = mc2. In some cases objects or waves may appear to travel faster than light (e.g. phase velocities of waves, the appearance of certain high-speed astronomical objects, and particular quantum effects). The expansion of the universe is understood to exceed the speed of light beyond a certain boundary. (Full article...)Did you know -
- ... that, in the Large Hadron Collider, protons move at 99.9999991% the speed of light when accelerated with the energy of 7 TeV?
- ... that, at a speed of 299,792,458 m/s, light can travel from the Earth to the Moon in 1.2 seconds?
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Hubble Space Telescope discovery of Styx, Pluto's fifth moon.[a] (also informally known as P5) is a small natural satellite of Pluto whose discovery was announced on 11 July 2012. It is the fifth confirmed satellite of Pluto, and was found approximately one year after S/2011 (134340) 1 (or "P4"), Pluto's fourth discovered satellite. The moon is estimated to have a diameter of between 10 and 25 kilometers (6 and 16 mi), and orbital period of 20.2 ± 0.1 days.
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In particle physics, quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved. QED mathematically describes all phenomena involving electrically charged particles interacting by means of exchange of photons and represents the quantum counterpart of classical electromagnetism giving a complete account of matter and light interaction.
In technical terms, QED can be described as a perturbation theory of the electromagnetic quantum vacuum. Richard Feynman called it "the jewel of physics" for its extremely accurate predictions of quantities like the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and the Lamb shift of the energy levels of hydrogen. (Full article...)April anniversaries
- 1 April 1997 – Comet Hale-Bopp at perihelion
- 12 April 1633 – Galileo Galilei's trial starts
- 15 April 1707 – Leonhard Euler's birthday
- 18 April 1955 – Albert Einstein's death
- 22 April 1904 – J. Robert Oppenheimer's birthday
- 23 April 1858 – Max Planck's birthday
- 24 April 1990 – Hubble Space Telescope launched
- 25 April 1990 – Hubble Space Telescope deployed from the shuttle Discovery
- 30 April 1777 – Carl Friedrich Gauss's birthday
Categories
Fundamentals: Concepts in physics | Constants | Physical quantities | Units of measure | Mass | Length | Time | Space | Energy | Matter | Force | Gravity | Electricity | Magnetism | Waves
Basic physics: Mechanics | Electromagnetism | Statistical mechanics | Thermodynamics | Quantum mechanics | Theory of relativity | Optics | Acoustics
Specific fields: Acoustics | Astrophysics | Atomic physics | Molecular physics | Optical physics | Computational physics | Condensed matter physics | Nuclear physics | Particle physics | Plasma physics
Tools: Detectors | Interferometry | Measurement | Radiometry | Spectroscopy | Transducers
Background: Physicists | History of physics | Philosophy of physics | Physics education | Physics journals | Physics organizations
Other: Physics in fiction | Pseudophysics | Physics lists | Physics software | Physics stubs
General images
J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) discovered the electron and isotopy and also invented the mass spectrometer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906.
Classical physics is usually concerned with everyday conditions: speeds are much lower than the speed of light, sizes are much greater than that of atoms, yet very small in astronomical terms. Modern physics, however, is concerned with high velocities, small distances, and very large energies.
James Clerk Maxwell
(1831–1879)
The quantum Hall effect: Components of the Hall resistivity as a function of the external magnetic field
Alessandro Volta
(1745–1827)
Albert Einstein (1879–1955), photographed here in around 1905
Werner Heisenberg
(1901–1976)
A page from al-Khwārizmī's Algebra.
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
(1824–1907)
The first Bose–Einstein condensate observed in a gas of ultracold rubidium atoms. The blue and white areas represent higher density.
The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, famous for his ideas regarding fluid mechanics and buoyancy.
Gottfried Leibniz
(1646–1716)
Ludwig Boltzmann
(1844-1906)
Classical physics (Rayleigh–Jeans law, black line) failed to explain black-body radiation – the so-called ultraviolet catastrophe. The quantum description (Planck's law, colored lines) is said to be modern physics.
René Descartes
(1596–1650)
Chien-Shiung Wu worked on parity violation in 1956 and announced her results in January 1957.
Michael Faraday
(1791–1867)
A replica of the first point-contact transistor in Bell labs
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Johannes van der Waals with the helium liquefactor at Leiden in 1908
Computer simulation of nanogears made of fullerene molecules. It is hoped that advances in nanoscience will lead to machines working on the molecular scale.
Image of X-ray diffraction pattern from a protein crystal.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie
(1867–1934)
Star maps by the 11th-century Chinese polymath Su Song are the oldest known woodblock-printed star maps to have survived to the present day. This example, dated 1092, employs cylindrical projection.
Sir Isaac Newton
(1642–1727)
The Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The inscriptions on the edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE) display this number system being used by the Imperial Mauryas.
The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) is remembered for his development of a heliocentric model of the Solar system.
Daniel Bernoulli
(1700–1782)
A Feynman diagram representing (left to right) the production of a photon (blue sine wave) from the annihilation of an electron and its complementary antiparticle, the positron. The photon becomes a quark–antiquark pair and a gluon (green spiral) is released.
Richard Feynman's Los Alamos ID badge
Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1040).
Galileo Galilei, early proponent of the modern scientific worldview and method
(1564–1642)
Einstein proposed that gravitation is a result of masses (or their equivalent energies) curving ("bending") the spacetime in which they exist, altering the paths they follow within it.
A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor. Today some physicists are working to understand high-temperature superconductivity using the AdS/CFT correspondence.
A Newton's cradle, named for physicist Isaac Newton
The Standard Model.
Max Planck
(1858–1947)
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More recognized content
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Good articles
- 2019 redefinition of the SI base units
- Harold Agnew
- Samuel King Allison
- Luis Walter Alvarez
- Ames Project
- Elda Emma Anderson
- Antimetric electrical network
- Aristotle
- Astronomy
- Atmosphere of Uranus
- Atomic theory
- Avogadro constant
- Robert Bacher
- Kenneth Bainbridge
- Violin acoustics
- Hans Bethe
- Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics
- Francis Birch (geophysicist)
- Black hole
- Aage Bohr
- Max Born
- Bouncing ball
- Norris Bradbury
- Hugh Bradner
- Celestial spheres
- Robert F. Christy
- Clapotis
- John Cockcroft
- Arthur Compton
- CT scan
- Condensed matter physics
- Edward Condon
- Corbett's electrostatic machine
- Edward Creutz
- Charles Critchfield
- Marie Curie
- Joan Curran
- Cyclone
- DU spectrophotometer
- Harry Daghlian
- Deep Impact (spacecraft)
- Beryl May Dent
- Diffusion damping
- Dirac delta function
- Discovery of the neutron
- Dynamics of the celestial spheres
- Earth's magnetic field
- Ecliptic
- Albert Einstein
- Einstein–Szilárd letter
- Elastance
- Electricity
- Experiments and Observations on Electricity
- Ronald Fedkiw
- Val Logsdon Fitch
- Fizeau–Foucault apparatus
- Fizeau experiment
- Flerovium
- Floating Clouds (artwork)
- Force
- Foster's reactance theorem
- James Franck
- Franklin's electrostatic machine
- Augustin-Jean Fresnel
- Frisch–Peierls memorandum
- Frog battery
- Klaus Fuchs
- Galileo Galilei
- Joseph Gelders
- Geostationary orbit
- Geothermal energy
- Gleason's theorem
- Maria Goeppert Mayer
- Alvin C. Graves
- Gravity bong
- Otto Hahn
- John T. Hayward
- Hilbert space
- History of the metric system
- A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity
- Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz
- Interferometry
- International System of Units
- Mary Jackson (engineer)
- Brian Josephson
- Donald William Kerst
- Kilogram
- Laser Inertial Fusion Energy
- Ernest Lawrence
- Hilde Levi
- Joel S. Levine
- Liquid crystal
- Magnetic resonance imaging
- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 satellite communications
- John Marburger
- Leslie H. Martin
- Harrie Massey
- Maximum sustained wind
- James Clerk Maxwell
- Boyce McDaniel
- Lise Meitner
- Metric system
- Mobility analogy
- Molniya orbit
- Philip Morrison
- Nature
- Seth Neddermeyer
- Negative resistance
- John von Neumann
- Neutron magnetic moment
- Isaac Newton
- Newton's theorem of revolving orbits
- Nobel Prize in Physics
- Noctilucent cloud
- Adriana Ocampo
- Optical properties of carbon nanotubes
- PSR B1937+21
- Rudolf Peierls
- Bruno Pontecorvo
- Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
- Pythagoras
- Quantum mechanics
- Quantum Reality
- Quantum electrodynamics
- RaLa Experiment
- James Rainwater
- Norman Foster Ramsey Jr.
- Frederick Reines
- Representation theory of the Lorentz group
- George T. Reynolds
- Bruno Rossi
- Joseph Rotblat
- S-1 Executive Committee
- Safety of high-energy particle collision experiments
- Saffir–Simpson scale
- Matthew Sands
- Schiehallion experiment
- Glenn T. Seaborg
- Emilio Segrè
- Henry DeWolf Smyth
- Solar energy
- Steam devil
- Storm surge
- Carl Størmer
- Subtle is the Lord
- Leo Szilard
- Nikola Tesla
- Thin Man (nuclear bomb)
- Charles Allen Thomas
- Ernest Titterton
- Tropical cyclone scales
- Type II supernova
- Type Ia supernova
- Type Ib and Ic supernovae
- Stanislaw Ulam
- Universe
- John Clive Ward
- Waterspout
- Katharine Way
- Weak interaction
- Alvin M. Weinberg
- Wetting
- John Archibald Wheeler
- Schuyler Wheeler
- E. T. Whittaker
- Eugene Wigner
- Robert R. Wilson
- Wind shear
- Wind power
- Leona Woods
- Wow! signal
- Wright brothers
- Chien-Shiung Wu
- Wu Zhonghua
- Wu experiment
- X-ray crystallography
- Walter Zinn
Physics topics
Classical physics traditionally includes the fields of mechanics, optics, electricity, magnetism, acoustics and thermodynamics. The term Modern physics is normally used for fields which rely heavily on quantum theory, including quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, particle physics and condensed matter physics. General and special relativity are usually considered to be part of modern physics as well.
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Sources
- ^ 134340 is Pluto's Minor Planet Center number, assigned following its demotion from full planetary status in 2006.[1] "S/2012 P 1" is the format that would have been used without the demotion.
- ^ "Pluto is Now Just a Number: 134340". Purch. September 11, 2006. Retrieved August 19, 2014. CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
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