What Bree mentioned about free will really resonated with me. It's rather frustrating that after so many scientists tried to nail down the behavior of teeny particles, like electrons and photons, that they still manage to defy those constraints and act 'weirdly.' In an electron cloud, or in a beam of light, or within a nucleus, sometimes things just come down to chance. It pains many of us that we can't know for sure where things are or whether they happen, and that probability reigns supreme. I'd say this is a pretty profound connection to history, in terms of fundamental behaviors within matter, and within ourselves, and really reminded me of Hegel's world spirit.
This quote amazed me in its conciseness. A nice summary.
"Planck had introduced quantum principles to save the laws of thermodynamics; Einstein had extended the quantum idea to light; Bohr now proposed to lodge quantum principles within the atom itself." (123) Here we see eminent scientists building on each other's ideas and rapidly advancing science. This is really cool! This is synthesis!
More along the lines of the project: It's so funny to us when we see theories of the past overturned. "Haha, look at those dummies, they really believed in this 'ether' nonsense! They couldn't let it go!" From a social standpoint, I'm really interested by the way people react to a paradigm shift, in the past and in the present. Science is a fabulous way to see revelations and revolutions. It's fascinating how dedicated these scientists and the general public became towards theories of the universe. What about us? I know the reading said that Relativity does allow room for something to potentially travel faster than light (at a constant velocity, not accelerating through 'C') but the scientific community right now is freaking out about these neutrinos at CERN, and the possible implications if the findings are correct. We didn't think that we had it all figured out, did we? _________________ "We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less." - Diogenes of Sinope
Bohr explained light in combination of wave and particle, with connection with electrons, commenting that electron exist in stabilized state that ‘can only radiate at certain energies’ (122). He claimed these stabilized electrons orbit in specific route. In order to electron to lose or gain energy, the electron needs to jump to another route. The energy needs to be gained or earned at one time, through emitting light??? Heisenberg thinks we can’t know the present unless we know the exact position of every particle. Because we do not know the present, we can’t predict the future but guess the probability? He also suggested there is limit in knowledge that we can achieve.
What Bohr and Heisenberg found are influential. Still, Bohr said ‘Physics concerns what we can say about nature’ (129), and again, as he said, words are abstractions (137). ‘What we can say’ is ‘what we understood,’ because we make statements based on our understandings. Understanding of nature was (and is) the goal of science (at least in my account). Seemingly, Bohr is following the succeeded discipline.
Bohr - Developed the idea of orbits within an atom which electrons jump to and from depending on the amount of energy added to the atom. I'd have to look back at my chem notes from sophomore year (if i still have them) but I THINK the orbitals are named s,p,d, and f orbitals? Bohr also developed the entire phenomenon that atoms contain electrons orbiting around a nucleus. Bohr's ideas changed the discipline of science because they created the structure of the atom that we know today. Atoms make up all matter, so knowing about how they work is very important.
Heisenberg - Took a very mathematical approach and, unlike Bohr, decided not to use models at all. He developed quantum mechanics - this focused on the particle/wave quality of light. The development of quantum mechanics made HUGE changes to science as we know it because it is still widely used to this day to attempt to explain the world that we still don't fully understand.
Schrodinger - His wave theory of matter: "Matter at the atomic level behaves as if it consists of waves." [(134) - said by the author, not by Schrodinger] I'm not going to lie, I didn't see his wave theory to be as changing to science as the ideas of Bohr and Heisenberg were.
I wish I wasn't so cramped for time tonight so that I'd have longer to think about all of this in more depth...hopefully we can go over each of these three scientist's ideas in class tomorrow? Oh, and just a side note, one of Bohr's ideas really fascinated me: "In the real world it is meaningless to doubt existence; the doubt itself demonstrates the existence of the doubter." (129) I absolutely LOVE this quote. It really got me thinking. What does everyone else think of it? Do you think that this statement is true?
And about the project question... I am answering no because I dont think that these findings changed the discipline of science any more than any other new findings in science did.
Sarah, I agree, and I think you found the perfect words to express why your answer is no. Every scientific discovery, big or small, has contributed to science, and as of now, I'd have to say that no matter how 'significant' or 'insignificant' a discovery may seem, I feel as though they are all equally important because they all help with our understanding of the world in one way or another. It's like when you're doing a puzzle; just because one piece in the puzzle is bigger than another piece doesn't mean it's more important; you need the small pieces just as much as the bigger pieces in order to complete the picture.
Joined: 18 Feb 2011 Posts: 27 Location: United States of America
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:52 pm Post subject:
I think that Bohr believed in changes. On page 127, “original work is inherently rebellious”. Through this quote, Bohr believed that each work had some kind of rebellion in them because each work was based on boubt of other’s work. Furthurmore, he claimed that change should regard as an individule process. Through expalination of the atoms transit from one orbit to another, Bohr also brough up an important point, which “changes of states within individual atoms are not predictable”(p.128).
For Heisenberg, he believed that mathmatics was a way of proving Science: “nature allowed only experimental situations to ocur which could be described within the framwork of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics”(p.136). From my understanding of this quote, Heisenberg believed that mathmatic should be the framwork of Science. I felt that since Newton, scientest had been focusing more on using formulas to solve and prove the claims or hypothesis rather than using senses.
For Schrodinger’s part, I don’t really understand, so I don’t really know how to connect him to science.
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