To Newton | To Darwin |
112 The Bible According to Einstein The eighth book of Chronicles, called
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The New Testament 113
Chapter III: The Eighteenth Century Now at the beginning of the eighteenth century did Newton, the mighty scientific prophet, propose that light might be made of particles. But others disagreed. And a battle between those who thought that light be particles and those who thought that light be waves. This battle over light would last two hundred years. Chapter IV: The Early Nineteenth Century And in the year 1800, scientists placed certain chemicals in jars, which reacted and produced electric flow. Thus chemical energy was converted into electricity the battery came into being. The moment marked the beginning of electrochemistry. And scientists began "to play" with electricity and chemicals in many ways. And some ways seemed mysterious. And for example, when electric currents ran through water, water was divided into hydrogen and oxygen in the form of gas. Thus man began to split the molecule by using sparks.
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87 This is called the inverse square law. See the Book of Classical Physics, Chapter XI. |
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114 The Bible According to Einstein
Chapter V: The Unification of Electricity and Magnetism And in the year of 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted announced that electric current flows produced a magnetism the mechanism of magnets seemed like mysticism. Then André-Marie Ampère turned wires carrying currents into magnets: Parallel wires with currents flowing in the same direction were attracted to each other, while parallel wires with currents flowing in the opposite direction repelled. And it was hypothesized that magnets were created by microscopic currents the hypothesis would someday be accepted as a truth. And the difference between electricity and magnetism thus began to blur.
____________________ 89 Electric and magnetic fields are discussed in Chapters XI and XII of the Book of Classical Physics. |
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The New Testament 115
And in the year of 1884, it came to pass that Heinrich Hertz reformulated Maxwell’s four equations in their modern form. And the fundamental symmetry between magnetic and electric forces was made manifest at last. Chapter VI: QED Now in the year of 1887, Hertz by accident discovered the photoelectric effect, in which electricity is generated from the surface of a solid by striking it with ultraviolet radiation.91 And further observations produced a pair of puzzles. And the first was this: If the frequency of ultraviolet light was low, no current from the surface flowed. And this was true even if the ultraviolet-light intensity was substantially increased. Now the second puzzle appeared much later, after the discovery of the electron. And it was this: The energy of charged electrons emitted from the solid depended only on the frequency of ultraviolet light and not on its intensity intensity controlled instead the number of emitted charges.92
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90 Thus the principle fathers of classical electromagnetism were Maxwell, Faraday and Hertz. Many units of measurement are named after scientists: amps after Ampère, ohms after Ohm, hertz after Hertz, etc.. See the New Testament Book of Basic Units. |
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116 The Bible According to Einstein
Then in the year 1905, Albert Einstein proposed that electromagnetic radiation was composed of packets of fixed energy each packet was a photon. Now this idea resolved the two photoelectric puzzles: When the frequency of ultraviolet light was low, then the energy of its photons, too, was low; and such photons had too little energy to knock electrons out of atoms in a solid. But when the frequency of ultraviolet light was high, then the energy of its photons, too, was high; and such photons had sufficient energy to knock electrons out of atoms. And as for the second puzzle, it was resolved as follows. When ultraviolet light was of higher intensity, it contained more photons available to strike electrons. Hence higher-intense ultraviolet radiation produced a higher current.
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94 For an explanation of quantum theory, see the Book of Quantum Mechanics. |
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The New Testament 117
Chapter VII: Electroweak Unification It was the decade of the 1960’s. It was a time of revolution. And it came to pass that Steven Weinberg, Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow unified QED with the weak force.97 And the electroweak theory thus was born at last. Now the theory predicted the existence of three heavy particles, the W-plus, W-minus and the Z. Now for some physicists, it was a prophecy, which although incredible, just had to be. And fourteen years later in the year of 1983, an accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, produced the predicted heavy W-plus, W-minus and the Z. Chapter VIII: Electromagnetic Technology98 Now what were the twentieth-century technological wonders generated from electric and magnetic science? Water flowing through dams could be converted into currents flowing in a wire. Energy could be obtained by inserting a pronged object in a pair of holes in household walls. Filaments encased in glass could give off light sufficiently bright to light rooms and roads at night. Humans thousands of kilometers apart could talk with one another by speaking into hand-held devices. A crate could keep a chamber cold enough to maintain food. Another kitchen apparatus could cook food on a surface coil or in a cubic cavity. An even smaller box could heat food by striking it with microwaves. Humans could listen to beautiful sounds on disks by placing them in a seemingly mysterious device. Or they could go to auditoriums with rows of seats to watch screens with images and voices. Humans could be transported in apparatuses with wheels simply by pouring liquid in a hole and turning keys to make them start. Bird-like structures with several hundred passengers inside could be made to fly through clouds. Messages, on the backs of unseen waves and emitted from tall towers far away, could pass through buildings, air and walls and be detected with a box inside a home to yield images and sound. And artificial arms could maneuver to assemble cars in factories.99 To ancient man, these inventions would have seemed like mysteries.
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97 For more on particle forces as well as the W and Z, see the Book of Subnuclear Physics. |
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118 The Bible According to Einstein
And the twentieth century held more marvels.100 Children played with toys that floated, flew, walked or talked. Boxes containing microscopic chips and tiny wires were used to calculate and think. Probes were propelled to outer space to spy on the Moon and distant planets. Images of inner bones were made by passing unseen rays through human bodies. Likewise, with magnets, pictures of organs or the flow of blood in the body or the brain were made. Artificial human parts were implanted and made to function like their real counterparts. A person with a faulty heart had a device inserted in the chest to help him keep the beat. Another module in the ear made the hard-of-hearing hear. Electric shocks sometimes restarted hearts which had, for several minutes, stopped. To ancient man, these would have seemed absurd. The hard-of-hearing were made to hear. The dying were given longer lives. Among the stars of night were man-made spots of moving light. The invisible was made, in certain cases, visible. That which produced no sound was heard. The non-living were made to move and think. Were these not miracles?
____________________ 100 To us, these things may seem commonplace; we have become use to them. One should try to imagine how a person of the eighteenth century or earlier would have viewed them. |
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To Newton | To Darwin |