From the First to the Second Scientific Revolution

The Scientific Revolution

Two Main Threads of Physics

• Macro: Motion, Time, and Space

• Micro: Constitution of Matter

Aristotelian Physics

• World was divided into two realms

• Heavenly and terrestrial bodies separated by the moon in a geocentric system

• Above the moon: Perfect circular motions

• Below the moon: Everything is made of four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) and most bodies fall to the center of earth; heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones

Copernican Heliocentric Astronomy

Galileo’s New Physics

• Revolutionary combination of mathematics and experimentation

• Law of Inertia (circular)

• Copernican Astronomy with telescope

• Unified motions heavenly and on earth

Newton

• Three Laws of Motion

• Law of Gravitation

• Culmination of the Scientific Revolution

Physics by Late 19th Century

• Newtonian mechanics

• Faraday-Maxwell Theory of Electromagnetism and Light

• Atomic theory of matter

• Thermodynamics

Clouds on the Horizon

• Roentgens and X-ray, 1895• Becquerel and Radioactivity, 1896• Thomson and Electron, 1896• Marie and Pierre Curie and Radium, 1898• Rutherford and Transmutation• Max Planck and the Quantum Proposal,

1900