Script 1: History of physics

Physics is one of main branches of science and has the most influential impact on the understanding of
our surrounding universe. For people who do not have any knowledge of physics, it is like a miracle that
today we are able to comprehend the phenomenon occurring in the universe and humans have
discovered and invented so many devices that we use in our daily routine and we are not aware of the
ingenious mechanisms that are implemented to build these devices. So, to be able to understand how
nature works, why and how something happens, we have to get into the amazing science of physics. The
question is how we get to all these incredible inventions, what is the history, the series of events, what
were the thoughts in the minds of people who discovered and build these things, and how do we get to
this point in just a few centuries that now we have built cars, airplanes, industries, computers and so
many great inventions that control our today’s life. So let’s get back into human history and explore the
influence and expanding understanding of physics.

Long before the notion of the word science, there is been the concept of philosophy. The perspective of
thinking was very different in the beginning. Greek philosophers were interested in existence of this
world. They used to think about stars, planets, day and night, the behavior of fire, water, air, light. In this
effort of understanding the existence of this world, we are mentioning some of them. These
philosophers started from astronomy, wondering about the motion of sun, moon and stars.

Thales of Miletus is recognized for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world and the
universe, and instead explaining natural objects and phenomena by theories and hypotheses. There are
two theorems of Thales in elementary geometry, one known as Thales' theorem having to do with a
triangle inscribed in a circle and having the circle's diameter as one leg, the other theorem being also
called the intercept theorem. Thales’ hypothesis about the nature of all matter – that the originating
principle of nature was a single material substance: water.

Anaximander (a student of Thales) realized that the Earth floats free without falling and does not need
to be resting on something has been indicated by many as the first cosmological revolution and the
starting point of scientific thinking.

Pythagoras has commonly been given credit for discovering the Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in
geometry that states that "in a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of
the squares of other two sides. He was the first to teach that the Earth was spherical. Pythagoras's
biographers state that he also was the first to identify the five regular solids.

As Socrates did not write down any of his teachings, secondary sources provide the only information on
his life and thought.

Plato was one of the devoted young followers of Socrates. Plato associated each of the four classical
elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid (cube, octahedron, icosahedron,
and tetrahedron respectively) due to their shape, the so-called Platonic solids. The fifth regular solid,
the dodecahedron, was supposed to be the element which made up the heavens.
The theory of Democritus held that everything is composed of "atoms", which are physically, but not
geometrically, indivisible.
Aristotle divided his universe into "terrestrial spheres" which were "corruptible" and where humans
lived, and moving but otherwise unchanging celestial spheres. Aristotle believed that four classical
elements make up everything in the terrestrial spheres: earth, air, fire and water. He also held that the
heavens are made of a special weightless and incorruptible (i.e. unchangeable) fifth element called
"aether". The Aristotelian explanation of gravity is that all bodies move toward their natural place. For
the elements earth and water, that place is the center of the (geocentric) universe; the natural place of
water is a concentric shell around the earth because earth is heavier; it sinks in water. The natural place
of air is likewise a concentric shell surrounding that of water; bubbles rise in water. Finally, the natural
place of fire is higher than that of air but below the innermost celestial sphere (carrying the Moon).  it
can be observed that, as Aristotle stated, heavy objects (on the ground, say) require more force to make
them move; and objects pushed with greater force move faster. Aristotle implies that in a vacuum the
speed of fall would become infinite, and concludes from this apparent absurdity that a vacuum is not
possible.
Archimedes principle stating that a body completely or partially submerged in a fluid (gas or liquid) at
rest is acted upon by an upward, or buoyant, force the magnitude of which is equal to the weight of the
fluid displaced by the body. He discovered the laws of levers and pulleys, which allow us to move heavy
objects using small forces and calculated pi to the most precise value known. His upper limit for pi was
the fraction 22⁄7. This value was still in use in the late 20th century, until electronic calculators finally laid
it to rest. He also made a water screw which is like a corkscrew within an empty tube. It can pull water
up from a river, lake, or well.

Ibn-ul-haithem is known for his exceptional work in the field of optics. He explained the nature of light
for the first time and declared it a form of energy. He was also aware of phenomena of refraction and
also invented the pin hole camera. Ibn-ul-haithem described the working and internal structure of eye.

Al-Beruni discussed the measurement of earth, shape of earth, the movement of sun and moon. He
determined the longitude and latitude of earth and worked out the circumference of earth.

In Copernicus' lifetime, most believed that Earth held its place at the center of the universe. The sun, the
stars, and all of the planets revolved around it.  he proposed that the center of the universe was not
Earth, but that the sun lay near it. He also suggested that Earth's rotation accounted for the rise and
setting of the sun, the movement of the stars, and that the cycle of seasons was caused by Earth's
revolutions around it. 

Galileo had dropped balls of the same material, but different masses, from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to
demonstrate that their time of descent was independent of their mass. This was contrary to what
Aristotle had taught: that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones, in direct proportion to weight.
Galileo proposed that a falling body would fall with a uniform acceleration, as long as the resistance of
the medium through which it was falling remained negligible, or in the limiting case of its falling through
a vacuum. He also derived the correct kinematical law for the distance travelled during a uniform
acceleration starting from rest—namely, that it is proportional to the square of the elapsed time
( d ∝ t 2 ). Galileo put forward the basic principle of relativity, that the laws of physics are the same in
any system that is moving at a constant speed in a straight line, regardless of its particular speed or
direction. Hence, there is no absolute motion or absolute rest. This principle provided the basic
framework for Newton's laws of motion and is central to Einstein's special theory of relativity.
Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician famous for his laws of physics. He was a key
figure in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. Newton's first major public scientific achievement
was designing and constructing a reflecting telescope in 1668. In his book, Principia, Newton offers an
exact quantitative description of bodies in motion, with three basic but important laws of motion. A
stationary body will stay stationary unless an external force is applied to it. Force is equal to mass times
acceleration, and a change in motion (i.e., change in speed) is proportional to the force applied. For
every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s three basic laws of motion outlined
in Principia helped him arrive at his theory of gravity. Newton’s law of universal gravitation states that
two objects attract each other with a force of gravitational attraction that’s proportional to their masses
and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. These laws helped
explain not only elliptical planetary orbits but nearly every other motion in the universe: how the
planets are kept in orbit by the pull of the sun’s gravity; how the moon revolves around Earth and the
moons of Jupiter revolve around it; and how comets revolve in elliptical orbits around the sun. Newton
theorized that white light was a composite of all colors of the spectrum, and that light was composed of
particles. Along with mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, Newton is credited for developing essential
theories of calculus.
J.J Thompson, an English physicist and a Noble Laureate in Physics, is credited and honored with the
discovery of the electron, which was the first subatomic particles to be discovered. Thomson managed
to show that cathode rays were composed of previously unknown negatively charged particles
(electrons), which he calculated and inferred might have smaller bodies than atoms and a very large
charge-mass ratio.
Ernest Rutherford is regarded as the father of nuclear physics. He was the first to propose that an atom
is comprised of a small charged nucleus surrounded by empty space and are circled by tiny electrons
which later, became known as the Rutherford model. He is credited with the discovery of protons and
hypothesized the existence of the neutron.
James Chadwick, a British physicist was awarded the Nobel prize in 1935 for his discovery of the
neutron. Bombarding elements with neutron can result in the penetration and splitting of nuclei
generating an enormous amount of energy. This way, Chadwick’s findings were pivotal to the discovery
of nuclear fission and ultimately the development of the atomic bomb.
Coulomb is best known for what now is known as the Coulomb’s law, which explains the electrostatic
attraction and repulsion.
Georg Simon Ohm discovered the law named after him, known as the “Ohm’s Law” which states that the
current flowing a conductor is directly proportional to its voltage and inversely proportional to its
resistance.
Michael Faraday was a man devoted to discovery through experimentation. He was famous for never
giving up on ideas that came from scientific intuition. When he thought of an idea, he would keep
experimenting through multiple failures until he got what was expected. The list of his few noteworthy
discoveries is Discovery of Electromagnetic Induction, Discovery of Benzene, Laws of Electrolysis, Gas
Liquefaction and Refrigeration.

Thomas Edison invented the carbon rheostat, discovered incandescent light, invented the motion
picture camera, invented the fluorescent electric lamp, discovered Thermionic Emission.
Henri Becquerel was a French physicist best known for his work on radioactivity for which he won a
Nobel prize. As a result, the SI unit of radioactivity Becquerel is named after him. Marie Curie was a
chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel
prize. She is the only woman to win the Nobel prize twice in two different fields. She is most famous for
the discovery of elements Polonium and Radium.
Max Planck, a German Physicist, is best known for his proposition of the quantum theory of energy for
which he was awarded the Nobel prize. His work contributed significantly to the atomic and subatomic
processes.
Wilhelm Rontgen, a German physicist, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a
wavelength range known as the X-rays. 
Rutherford described an atom as consisting of a positive mass at the center surrounded by orbiting
electrons. Neil Bohr suspected that electrons revolved in quantized orbits. Having suspected this, Bohr
worked on Rutherford’s model and proved that it wasn’t possible for electrons to occupy just any energy
level.
Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American Physicist who created the world’s first nuclear reactor. He is widely
known as the “architect of the nuclear age” and the “architect of the atomic bomb.” He won a Nobel
Prize in physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment. He also made significant
contributions in the field of quantum theory, statistical mechanics and nuclear and particle physics.
Photon, also known as light quantum is a minute energy packet of electromagnetic radiation. This
concept originated in Albert Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect, in which he proposed the
existence of discrete energy packets during the transmission of light. Albert Einstein was best known for
his General and Special theory of relativity and the concept of mass-energy equivalence which is best
known from the equation E = mc2.

Quantum mechanics (QM; also known as quantum physics, quantum theory, the wave mechanical

model) is a fundamental theory in physics which describes nature at the smallest scales of energy levels
of atoms and subatomic particles. Classical physics, the physics existing before quantum mechanics,
describes nature at ordinary (macroscopic) scale. Most theories in classical physics can be derived from
quantum mechanics as an approximation valid at large (macroscopic) scale. Quantum mechanics differs
from classical physics in that energy, momentum, angular momentum and other quantities of a bound
system are restricted to discrete values (which is called quantization); objects have characteristics of
both particles and waves (wave-particle duality); and there are limits to the precision with which
quantities can be measured (Heisenberg uncertainty principle).
The latest theory in physics, in an effort to overcome limitations of quantum theory, string theory is
introduced, a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced
by one-dimensional objects called strings. It describes how these strings propagate through space and
interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an
ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the
string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the  graviton,
a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum
gravity.
So, now you know how the field of physics has progressed so much and why it is of importance to learn
this amazing science of physics.