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Newton’s View of the world pp. 102-112
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rhirsch
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2011 5:25 pm    Post subject: Newton’s View of the world pp. 102-112 Reply with quote

Read Newton’s View of the world pp. 102-112

List:
What is the evidence that light is a particle? A wave?
What is different about Faraday’s and Maxwell’s approach to science compared to that of Newton?

Post your thoughts about how the work of each scientist might help in answering the project question.:
"The search for an answer to the question “what is light?” profoundly changed the discipline of science”.
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sthorne2012



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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The way Newton addressed the question of “what is light?” changed science because it basically changed the way people thought of light. He turned Aristotle’s idea that white light was pure on its side. I honestly had no idea what Faraday and Maxwell were talking about so I couldn’t really come up with any ways that they changed science. I hope someone else has some insight into this.
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tess



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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Newton's legacy is that the universe is predictable, and that secret to predicting the universe lies in elusive, but relatively simple rules. A "clockwork Universe" Maxwell validated the clockwork universe form of thought by finding four of those relatively simple rules. He found four simple equations that explained the behavior of electricity and magnetism.

I think we can defiantly say that both Newton and Maxwell changed science, but I'm not sure if we can say that the question "what is light?" did. yet.
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niko.suyemoto



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 12:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From the reading there was much evidence that light is a particle. For example, Euler recognized the difficulties with the idea that light traveled as a stream of tiny particles and made the analogy between the vibrations of light and the vibrations of sound. (pg 106) The most clear example that was given was the image of how light moves in waves withe the rippling of a rope. The electric waves move along the rope so every point along, the magnetic field is constantly changing.
I feel that all the findings of Newton, Maxwell and Faraday are connected, although they differ slightly. Newton was focused on the theory of colors and the color spectrum and how different colors are distinguished by different rays. Faraday was focused on electricity and magnetism and how moving electricity creates magnetism and vice versa. When he went further with his studies, he discovered that light could be explained with vibrations of the electric lines of force. Maxwell realized that there are other forms of electromagnetic waves that we see in visible light: heat and other radiation.
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kscrimshawhall



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 12:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree with Tess that Newton and Maxwell definitely changed science, but i'm still not convinced that the question "what is light?" had any major effect. What I keep coming back to is who we are hearing science from. Every scientist that was mentioned in this reading was prestigous and elite and people listened to their ideas because they were high up in the social ladder. This didn't change with the the questioning of light, so I don't the way science was studied really changed all that much either.

Also it is true that the answer to the question of what light is, brought along many new discoveries. But didn't every other major discovery? Why is this one special? Unless we're saying that every discovery fundamentally changes science, which I might actually be willing to buy.

I'm just being skeptical here, but I'd love to hear what other people have to say on why it did change science.
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mreilly



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 1:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Before I can figure out if "what is light" relates to science, I think that I have to expand and clarify my definition of science. In the reading I found Newton's definition of science to be quite intriguing. “The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation for them”.(104) The writer of the piece agrees that "this is what science is all about." By using this method Newton attempted to answer light related questions. He came to the conclusion that "white light is not 'pure' at all, but is a mixture of all the colours of the rainbow." (p.42)

I find Kates point that "every discovery fundamentally changes science" quite helpful in answering the question.

This dosen't really relate but I thought it was interesting that Newton named the seven colors and was the first person to distinguish rays of different colors.
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dylanh



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 1:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I might not be digging deep enough here, but I think Newton's search for light 100% changed science. This search caused Newton a ton of problems, and left him with a lot of questions to try and explain. This led to the scientific method! If Newton hadn't taken on such a huge experiment and idea to explain, I doubt he would have found the need for hypotheses and experiments. Newton was even later proved wrong by his own method (106), which turned out to progress science further and lead to wave lengths being a more accepted concept than corpuscular theory. So to summarize that ramble, Newton changed the discipline of science when his search for light led him to create the scientific method. (with some ideas from Hegel, of course)

Faraday is a bit more straightforward. He introduced and began to understand the relationship of electricity and magnetism. It's my understanding from the reading that his experiments and reasoning served as the building blocks for the electromagnetism Maxwell used to introduce the idea of "c", or the speed of light. Faraday also used "thought experiment," which I thought was pretty awesome. Faraday was much more of a thinker/philosopher to me than a scientist, because his thought experiments were just conceptual, not fact based. Although he provided great insight and was at least somewhat right some of the time, I still think he didn't follow the Newtonian scientific method enough.

Maxwell changed science by finding "c" in his search to explain light. "c" really tied together the relationship of electromagnetism and light, which allowed Einstein to do some stuff we'll probably read about later. I also think Maxwell took an important step Faraday did not: he used math! Marilyn mentioned in class that science is tied to math, so it really makes Maxwell revolutionary that he created connections between concepts with math, which seems to be sufficient evidence/proof in science.

also, I have no idea if any of this makes sense because the reading was so dense and I feel like I missed a lot of concepts. Hopefully its sort of on track .
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skohlberg



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Regarding the particle/wave question, I didn’t really find any solid evidence to support either of them... I know that they were both mentioned but I don’t think there was anything that stood out to me... If anyone has those quotes though id love to see them.


For the “what is light” question, the article talks about what white light is, and how light travels through different prisms, ext... But im not sure if you are asking scientifically what light is, or what these people thought light was? And im not sure how all of these three scientists are related, because I at least feel like they each added something to science, but completely different things. Like Newton talked about light, Faraday talked about magnetism and electricity, and Maxwell found “C”, but im not sure how all of these are related... Except for the fact that they are all science.
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edalven



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 2:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

kscrimshawhall wrote:
Also it is true that the answer to the question of what light is, brought along many new discoveries. But didn't every other major discovery? Why is this one special? Unless we're saying that every discovery fundamentally changes science, which I might actually be willing to buy.


Well Kate, maybe that's a argument you would want to pursue, but I can't help thinking that any response would be really really lengthy. I bet whenever a new theory comes up, it needs to disprove or replace an existing belief, which seems to resonate with Marx's revolution cycle. I've been having trouble distinguish between what I consider profound and not profound, but your logic here would say that every change is profound. I can understand that.

What I'm seeing is a frontier of science without a discipline behind it. (Granted today, the study of and theories surrounding light fall heavily under physics.) But Between Newton and Einstein, many chemists, astronomers, and other scientists as well as physicists were trying to figure out how it worked. Light was an easy thing to take for granted, so it was tough to observe how we observe everything. Maybe later on, Light could play into history. Because whenever we talk about the big bang, that seems like a distinct 'beginning' where somehow things started existing. If the big bang was an implosion, like a supernova, would this thing with infinite density produce light when it went boom?

I know Rachel disagrees with me, but I still see a great deal of synthesis of the disciplines, as these new discoveries are made. When we talk about atomic theory, is it physics or is it chemistry? How about QM?

Let me know what you think.
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bcusanno2012



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think the same ideas that have been troubling Kate and Tess have also been bothering me... I understand that the discoveries made about light obviously effected how later scientists understood and studied light, but the same would be true for any scientific discovery. I think its important to make a distinction though between "science" and "Science". Did the understanding of white light as in fact and impure mixture change the methodology and philosophy of Science?

We know that Newton's ideas on light were particularly influential to big S Science though, because "The important thing about Newton's theory of colours is not just that he was right, but the way in which he arrived at his conclusions" (102), essentially that Newton's methodology was different and influential in a significant way; that his work on light has impacted the way we understand Science as a whole not just one field of Science (in particular as many people have stated before me, with the induction of the scientific method). Can the same be said for any discovery? I don't know... but somehow I doubt it.

Also, some great definitions for science came up during this reading. Specifically I think the scientific method (described in detail on 104) is the methodology, but the purpose/goal/philosophy of science is to "investigate the way the world works" (105). And also on truth, "reality resides in the mathematical equations" (112).
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LiliaGaufberg



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 6:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Even after re-reading the text, I'm still having difficulty finding evidence that light is a particle...am I missing something? But the scientists that we read about in the text, especially Newton, Euler, and Hooke, seemed to contribute greatly to the idea that light is a wave. In the text, it says "Hooke also found that light does not travel in perfectly straight lines, but leaks into the edges of the shadow of an object placed in its path." (105) If light traveled in straight lines, the object would completely block out the light without it leaking around the edges. Euler compared the vibrations of light to the vibrations of sound waves, which helped him reach the conclusion that light travels in waves, just like sound. Newton "realized that each colour of light corresponds to a particular wavelength, and that the amount by which light bends when it is refracted or diffracted depends on its wavelength." (106) Newton's experimentations on color helped him formulate his ideas on how light moves in waves.

Faraday seemed to focus on the concepts of magnetism and electricity, as did Maxwell, although Faraday seemed to like conducting experiments while Maxwell had a more mathematical approach. Newton, on the other hand, focused on the colors that beams of light carry. I really like the analogy of waves rippling along a rope to represent light waves, as well as magnetic waves and electrical waves.

I've been thinking more about the project question, and while I think that the question "what is light?" contributed greatly to science, I don't know if I'd say that it changed it completely...I feel like Newton's experiments contributed most to this question. His discovery of the rainbow is much more tangible to me than Faraday's and Maxwell's work on magnetism and electricity.

Also...I was a little confused on what an ether is. I understood it to be basically the sky/the atmosphere/the universe...am I completely off base in thinking this?
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Knaideface



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 6:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree with Dylan that the question “what is light” totally changed the discipline of science, because our definition of a discipline is the methods and theory/philosophy of a given subject, and Newton created a new method through his study of light: the scientific method! And obviously the scientific method affected all fields of science, not just the study of light.


In response to what Kate, Tess and Bri have said about all scientific discoveries changing the discipline of science drastically, I am not sure if I agree. I could be wrong, but I don’t think EVERY discovery in science completely transformed the entire discipline. I mean, does the discovery of different blood types affect how scientists study physics? It may be a break through medically, but that’s all I see it being.



Like Sonia, I also think Maxwell and Faraday were very confusing, but what I understood from it was they both studied electricity and magnetism but also related that to light and it’s properties- as if the three fit into a category together.
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PeterLafreniere



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 6:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Because I don't have to take a firm stance right now, I AIN'T GONNA!

Newton was "the first person to express clearly the basis of what became the scientific method"(102) and he created the scientific method when studying light and colors. But I think that whatever large piece of nature Newton searched to explain, he would have devised the scientific method for. This might not matter, because he did create it studying light, and the scientific method profoundly changed the methods of Science. I don't have an opinion on that yet, those are my thoughts on it though.

Newton's approach to science seemed more like Darwin's (even though darwin was after newton) in that he wanted to prove through experiments and evidence. Whereas Faraday felt a bit more like Galileo, as he still experimented, but used thought experiments, which kinda feel like they don't count... Maxwell brought math into Science to help explain the truth around light, or to prove that light is a wave. I guess the study of light brought in mathematics, which profoundly changed Science, if it didn't really have math before it... My history of Science isn't very good.
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Jessica Santos



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am in the same boat as Sara right now. I am not clear on the wave or particle theories. I really had a hard time understanding them. I understood the triangular prism and how light refracts. The more it is bent the deeper the color (meaning deeper through the rainbow). So is that what the waves are? Its kind of coming together as i am writing this (haha). So red has shorter wave lengths because its refraction is closer and the opposite for blue? Another thing I am confused on is the color White, is it all colors or the absence of colors according to Newton, and all the other dudes?

If someone could address these questions on the earlier side that would be great because I tend to go to bed early. Thanks!!

And I would just like to point out that Thomas Young is a baby genius! I was amazed when i read about him.
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yliu2012@csw.org



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 7:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Newton, Faraday, Maxwell all changed the discipline of science. Before them, most of the philosophers (I am talking the philosophers in the readings that we had) believed that experiment was not essential to the process of finding the truth. They relied on senses or observation more than experiment. Their main goal was to look for cause and effect, such as Darwin, Kant. Both of Darwin and Kant somehow all talked about the causality.
But, Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell introduced science to the next level. They did experiment to find out the results. Newton invented the method of setting up a hypothesis, doing experiment, and finding the result. The process is still carrying on by modern scientists. Not only that, he proved the Aristotelian’s idea, which white light was an example of pure form, to be wrong by using prism, which was an experiment.

Faraday, later on even discussed about the conversion between electricity and magnetism. Moreover, he even came up the idea electricity and magnetism was the ‘lines of force’ (p.109). Before all of these new ways of thinking came up, the scientists, and thinkers could never think of the connection between electricity and magnetism because they could not see the existence of electricity and magnetism. Therefore, Faraday’s thinking was influential. The only problem in his study was that he could not prove it through mathematics.

Maxwell was the person who put Faraday’s idea into four equations. The inventions of the four equations was a big step forward in science because it introduced a another way of thinking- “as long as the equations correctly tell us how the system will change when it is disturbed in a certain way, it doesn’t matter how you picture the interplay of forced at work”(p.112). So, the science after Maxwell walled away from senses. The science after him was then about experiment.
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