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Re: historical physics (a bit on the long side - sorry)



Where are the experimentalists and observers in your historical
development, Allen? You list:

Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, Aristarchan, Copernican, Tychonic, and
Keplerian models

but you don't mention Tycho, Galileo or Bradley. You continue with

... Newton ... Hooke ...

both of whom were fine experimentalists, but you only comment on their
theorizing. Surely Galle's discovery (based on Leverrier's patient and
laborious reduction of accurate data taken by Herschel et al) must be
accorded some credit for validating the model.

With the energy concept we want them to have a really hard look at
phlogiston / caloric theory, and to try to poke holes in it.

That surely cannot be done without recourse to experiment. Count
Rumford? Helmholtz? How on earth could a student be expected to poke
holes in a statement about Nature without observing?

In quantum mechanical development you mention

...PE effect ... Planck ... Einstein ... de Broglie and Shrodinger ...

but never a word about Hertz (who discovered the PE effect) or the
experimentalist (I'm embarrassed - I don't remember) who detrmined
its detailed nature. You go on:

... Maxwell ... Planck ... eightfold way to predict the existence of
the omega minus ...

That last really hurt. You didn't mention Alvarez, who demonstrated
the existence of the omega minus. The scientific community thought
his contribution was pretty important. He got a long overdue Nobel
Prize nominally for that accomplishment.

I know, I know. This is all pretty ambitious.

Not half ambitious enough in my view. Students who go through this
course might well misunderstand the role of empirical science. In my
opinion experiment and observation should be given at least equal
time in such a course if students are to understand how science
really developed. You didn't name a single empiricist in your summary,
and you named thirteen theoreticians, some of whom made important
observations you did not mention (e.g. Ptolemy).

I only point this out because it probably did not occur to you that
your development is quite unbalanced. That is probably because most
textbooks present it that way. If you are starting anew, you might
be able to correct this traditional problem.

Leigh