Miscellaneous Stuff for PHYS2040
www.yorku.ca/menary/courses/2040/misc/mod.html

"Physicists use the wave theory on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and the particle theory on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays."
WH Bragg (1862-1942)

"So what's the speed of dark?"
Stephen Wright


    Relativity by M. C. Escher


There continues to be a fascination with the German atomic bomb effort from World War II as evidenced by the May, 2022, article The elusive truth of Farm Hall. Below I discuss the play "Copenhagen" which made quite a stir several years ago. Now there is to be a play based on the so-called Farm Hall Transcripts [PDF]. These are transcripts of secretly taped conversations of the German scientists (including Heisenberg) who were interned at Farm Hall in England after the War. It seems to be an endless game to try to interpret from these conversations what the Germans did and did not know during WWII about making a bomb. The play Copenhagen by the renowned playwright and author Michael Frayn (he wrote "Noises Off", for example) which explores the occasion in 1941 when Heisenberg paid a visit to Bohr in Copenhagen. The intriguing question, of

Copenhagen Toronto Show
Martha Henry as Margrethe Bohr in the Toronto Production of Copenhagen- PHOTO CREDIT: SWD Photography
course, is "what did they discuss?" Some speculate that Heisenberg was trying to obliquely warn Bohr about the German atomic bomb project. There has been some new (Feb. 2002) light shed on what transpired through the release of some letters from Neils Bohr (see also New letters expose war-time secrets). There is also a "Heisenberg letter" which can be found at the Who Was Werner Heisenberg? site maintained by the Heisenberg family. There one can find a number of Heisenberg's letters and writings translated into english. There is also a resources page. The London version of the play saw very enthusiastic reviews while the Broadway version won several Tony awards! The play opened in Toronto in January, 2004. There were good articles on the show and Frayn in the Toronto Star and Globe & Mail. I saw the opening-night show on January 7 (which was great) and there were reviews in the Star and Globe & Mail. A panel discussion of the scientific and ethical issues addressed by the play happened on February 8, 2004, and I was one of the panelists. There were a number of symposia, both in Europe and the U.S., discussing the issues surrounding the play. For example, there was a day-long symposium on the play "Creating Copenhagen" at the City University of New York which examined the scientific and historical issues brought up in the play as well as artistic issues associated with the writing and staging of the play. Several of the presentations at this symposium were reprinted in the July 2000 issue of Physics Today including: A Historical Perspective on Copenhagen, The German Uranium Project, and Werner Heisenberg and Albert Einstein. There is also a nice bit of detective work by Jeremy Bernstein in The Drawing or Why History Is Not Mathematics from the journal Physics in Perspective. I also recommend the book by Jeremy Bernstein entitled Hitler's Uranium Club. The play was the subject for the University of Pennsylvania's 1999 Reading Project. At this site you can find a number of fascinating essays about the play written by both artists and scientists. There are also articles in May 1999 CERN Courier and June 1998 PhysicsWeb discussing the play. (There is another article by Jeremy Bernstein on Heisenberg's trip to Poland in 1943.) Finally, there are a recent (January 2010) set of remarks entitled Quantum imaging: Scattered observations on "Copenhagen" which offer yet another take on the play.

Over a hundred years ago (November 25, 1915 to be precise) Einstein submitted his paper on the General Theory of Relativity. Here are a few articles that commemorated this event:

There has been an increasing interest in science shown by artists and vice versa. which has lead to some interesting artworks - like those shown in the exhibit Signatures of the Invisible. There is also an interest from the scientist's side to see how artists perceive science. Towards this end, the British Institute of Physics commissioned the Rambert Dance Company to produce a new work to celebrate the achievements of Albert Einstein - Celebrating Einstein with Dance, Constant Speed (brochure) premiered in 2005. The originators of the project were interviewed in New Scientist.

Time is a particularly sticky problem and has been an obsession of philosophers and physicists since, well, since time immemorial. A nice overview is given in Time examined and time experienced (2018). The topic has generated lots of musings such as The Period of the Universe's Clock (June, 2020) [The PRL article is Physical Implications of a Fundamental Period of Time] and The origins of space and time (August, 2013). Einstein's Clocks (October, 2015) is a layman's discussion of the conundrum of time by Fermilab's Don Lincoln. Check out the essay entries (December 2008) to fq(x) - Foundational Questions in Physics and Cosmology on The Nature of Time. There is also a book by Dan Falk called In Search of Time: Journeys along a Curious Dimension about which the Ottawa Citizen said "Falk's book is what Hawking's A Brief History of Time should have been." Falk has also posted an essay on time travel which you might find amusing. In 2013, Lee Smolin also put out a book on time called Time Reborn which you may want to peruse. There has always been plenty of verbiage on that old chestnut, "Did time begin with the Big Bang?" Have a look at another video from Don Lincoln on The Big Bang Theory (October, 2014). There's also The First Second After The Big Bang (September, 2014) from the Universe Channel. An August, 2010 article Death Of The Big Bang, Or The Problem Of Time's Beginning also discusses the issue. Various physics heavyweights have weighed in on the matter in the past little while including Stephen Hawking on The Beginning of Time. There are several sites on how one experimentally examines such a question including Observing the Beginning of Time and Beyond Einstein. Finally, this is a question with a long history of theological debate. If you are interested in this kind of thing, have a look at "Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time" [PDF] or God and the Beginning of Time for a religious perspective. (I won't bias you with my opinion but would be happy to discuss it).

A number of years ago all of Einstein's scientific writings were made available online at Einstein Archives Online. English translations of his five famous papers from the "miracle year" 1905 are collected in the book Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics. Now (December, 2014) the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein including love letters, report cards, personal thoughts and experiences are available online here both in the original german and with english translations. There's a nice article about the release of the papers - Inside the mind of Einstein: 44 years of writings released online - from the December 6, 2014 Globe & Mail.

This is actually old, not new, but back in 2002 the electron double slit experiment was voted as Science's most beautiful experiment. There are some other great one's in the list as well as described in Here They Are, Science's 10 Most Beautiful Experiments.

There is a new American Institute of Physics site on my hero Rutherford. There is also the Rutherford site maintained by his biographer John Campbell.

There is a nice book by David Bodanis called E=mc2 (naturally) which dissects, in a very entertaining manner, each of the terms in Einstein's most famous equation. See also Fermilab Today from July 5, 2013 for another discussion of the famous equation. There are further discussions in Fermilab Today about "Proving special relativity" - episode 1 - Friday, March 21, 2014 and episode 2 - April 4, 2014.

There is a special issue of Nature on The Quantum Atom which explores "the origin and legacy of Niels Bohr's radical view of the nuclear atom, published one hundred years ago." We can now "see" the Bohr orbitals as discussed in Direct view of atomic orbitals (June, 2013), 'Quantum microscope' peers into the hydrogen atom, and A New Look at the Hydrogen Wave Function (May, 2013) or watch electrons in motion as summarized in Electron spectroscopy: Not just snapshots, real movies (July, 2013). There is also the theoretical question about how big atoms can be which is covered in Theoretical physics: Sizing up atoms.

The foundations of the quantum world are still hotly debated. For discussions of this have a look at: The Oxford Questions on the foundations of quantum physics (July, 2013), Science and Philosophy: A Love-Hate Relationship (July, 2013), and Einstein as armchair detective: The case of stimulated radiation (July, 2013). See also A Quantum of Solace - Timeless Questions About the Universe. Entanglement and the Uncertainty Principle are always hot topics. See, for example, Measurement Uncertainty: Reply to Critics (February, 2014), Proof mooted for quantum uncertainty (June, 2013), Spooky action gets collective (June, 2013), Quantum uncertainty not all in the measurement (September, 2012), Experimental demonstration of a universally valid error-disturbance uncertainty relation in spin measurements (January, 2012), Quantum theorem shakes foundations (November, 2011), and A quantum take on certainty (June, 2011).

Or how about the lowly photon. Read here for the unlikely origin of its name. It is still being studied, as evidenced by the July, 2013 articles How Stable is the Photon? and Detection of single photons via quantum entanglement.

You can read a reconstruction of a lecture Einstein gave on the equivalence of mass and energy in Pittsburgh in 1934. Included in

einstein lecture 1934
Einstein lecturing in Pittsburgh in 1934
the article this picture of Einstein lecturing that was in the newspaper.

See how Albert Einstein did on his performance review at the patent office in Bern for the year 1905.

Ride a relativistic rocket! Physicists at the Australian National University have created a computer program called Real Time Relativity that "allows the user to fly through a virtual world governed by relativistic physics." You can download the program from here.

I also highly recommend the book Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman who is John E. Burchard Professor of Science and Writing and senior lecturer in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book is a beautifully lyrical, thoroughly entertaining, and wonderfully short, meditation on time through the artifice of imagining the daydreams of Einstein in 1905. The book has spawned a theatrical adaptation, performed by Raleigh, NC's Burning Coal Theater Productions, which garnered very good reviews.

There is has always been a lot of contention about the central principle of the Special Theory of Relativity - namely, that the speed of light in vacuum is a constant independent of the source and receiver relative speed. Further, maintaining causality in Special Relativity requires that nothing can go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum and many attempts have been made to circumvent this, thus obtaining "superluminal" speeds. For example, see the article " Cosmic Laws Like Speed of Light Might Be Changing", where the possibility that the speed of light has changed value over time is discussed. A few years ago a number of experiments involving light propogation through dense media generated a lot of controversy and juicy headlines like "Light Pulses Flout Sacrosanct Speed Limit" (2002 - note the website), "Faster than a Speeding Light Wave" (2000), and "Laser Smashes Light-speed Record" (2000). Controversy also surrounded a paper in Nature bearing the innocent sounding title of "Gain-assisted superluminal light propagation." The abstract contained the line, "The observed superluminal light pulse propagation is not at odds with causality ..." although you wouldn't know it based on some of the media coverage about it. This is nothing more than the old group versus phase velocity confusion according to Bob Park in What's New.

The fascination with superluminal speeds is that it is related to the least understood subject in physics (and philosophy) - time. The onset of the new millenium produced a renewed fascination with time. You can take A Walk Through Time, a site on the evolution of time measurement from The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U.S. The article Seeing Faster by James Gleick in the New York Times Magazine gives a fascinating glimpse into how flash photography has changed our perception of time. The site also includes plenty of interesting links. There seems a particular fascination with time travel including "Time Travel" from NOVA as well as a site with "explanations" of relatvity and time travel.

You no longer have to take my word for it. You can read many of the original papers (in English translation) which are discussed in this course.

Not only has there been renewed interest in the speed of light but there has also been an explosion of interest in the brain of the man who made c a universal constant. You could see Samples of Albert Einstein's brain on display at the Mutter Museum in 2011. And Albert Einstein's brain continues to fascinate - in Hamilton (2015). In 1999, researchers at McMaster University concluded that Einstein really was smarter than the rest of us. Specifically, "the parietal region of his [Einstein's] brain, the area thought to be related to mathematical reasoning, was found to be 15 per cent wider than average." For complete coverage of the rather interesting history of the travels of Einstein's brain (after his death, of course), have a look at What Became of Albert Einstein's Brain? There are also a number of books on the travels of his brain including Driving Mr. Albert which was the cover review for the July 30, 2000, New York Times Review of Books (see also the review in the Globe & Mail) as well as Possessing Genius: The True Account of the Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain. The story is covered in Chapter 14 of Postcards from the Brain Museum. There's even a children's book called Nibbling on Einstein's Brain. Einstein's Brain is the source of much art including a 1994 documentary Relics: Einstein's Brain which chronicles the quixotic search for the brain by a Japanese professor, a folk album, and an art-science collaboration called the einstein's brain project.

Who says that relativistic effects aren't relevant to our everyday world! A while ago I put a link to Santa at Nearly the Speed of Light, the article "explaining" how the answer to that age old question, "Just how does Santa Claus get to all of those homes in one night?", lies in the Special Theory of Relativity. There was actually a challenge to the physics of the article which is gently responded to in Santa's World Revisited, an article in the May, 2000 issue of FermiNews, the newsletter from Fermilab, the high energy particle accelerator near Chicago. In the article is a link to a website where there are animations of how, for example, the Eiffel Tower would look if you passed by at 90% the speed of light. It's worth a look.

Check out the letter to the editor by Cyril E. Challice, Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary, that was in the March 2000 issue of Physics in Canada. It gives an interesting Canadian twist to the story of the observation of the wave nature of the electron by Davisson and Germer.

There are various online history "exhibits" from the American Institute of Physics including:
     Albert Einstein: Image and Impact
     Werner Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle
     The Discovery of the Electron
     A Century of Physics

You can also check out Heisenberg's first paper or read about Niels Bohr's letters to his family and his fiancee in the years 1910-1912 - Love, Literature, and the Quantum Atom.

The Experimental Evidence link from the Particle Adventure is a very nice web-based description of the experimental origins of quantum physics, and in particular of Rutherford's groundbreaking experiments on the structure of matter. There is also All About Light from Fermilab which, through a discussion of light, cover much of the course material.

In honour of the centenary of the American Physical Society, the journal Reviews of Modern Physics devoted an entire issue to reviews of physics of the twentieth century. The following articles seemed particularly relevant for this course:
     "A Century of Relativity" by Irwin I. Shapiro [pdf]
     "Historic Foundations: Quantum Theory" by Hans Bethe [pdf]
     "Experiment and the Quantum Effects in One-photon and Two-photon Interference" by L. Mandel [pdf]
     "Experiment and the Foundations of Quantum Physics" by Anton Zeilinger [pdf]

Also, there is a new journal concentrating on the history of physics called Physics in Perspective. The inaugral issue had an interesting article entitled "Why was Relativity Accepted?" [PDF] which gives some of the social and historical context of the times. There is also an article entitled "Dispersion in the Ether: Light over the Water" which concerns a history of the measurements of the speed of light. Finally, there is an interesting story about the history of the quantum called Planck, the Quantum, and the Historians.

There are a lot of good websites devoted to Einstein. Besides the AIP History site given already, there is Albert Einstein Online. There is also Einstein Revealed from the science program NOVA. The complete text of Einstein's Relativity - The Special and General Theory can be found here.

Here are some new results (biased by my interests, needless to say) from Quanta magazine, Physics Update, Physics World News, Physical Review Focus, PhysOrg Physics News, Science News, and other sites on topics related to Special Relativity and the foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

     Direct Test of Cosmic Acceleration - July, 2014
     Test of equivalence principle searches for effects of spin-gravity coupling - July, 2014
     Physicist suggests speed of light might be slower than thought - July, 2014
     Particle, meet wave: Optical qubit technique squeezes photons to bridge discrete and continuous quantum regime - July, 2014
     Entanglement between particle and wave-like states of light resembles Schrodinger's cat experiment (Update) - July, 2014
     Entangled clocks could provide accurate world time standard - July, 2014
     Optomechanical Sensing of Spontaneous Wave-Function Collapse - July, 2014
     Still Exerting a Hold on Science - June, 2014
     Space-based experiment could test gravity's effects on quantum entanglement - May, 2014
     Sending entangled beams through fast-light materials - May, 2014
     A quantum accelerometer is being built for navy submarines - May, 2014
     Research team claims to have accurately 'teleported' quantum information ten feet - May, 2014
     Scientists discover how to turn light into matter after 80-year quest - May, 2014
     Free Falling Matter Waves - May, 2014
     Tricking the uncertainty principle - May, 2014
     Physicist suggests some types of wormholes may stay open long enough to send a photon through - May, 2014
     Time's Arrow Traced to Quantum Source - April, 2014
     Liquid spacetime: A very slippery superfluid, that's what spacetime could be like - April, 2014
     Light Nearly Stopped in a Waveguide - April, 2014
     First discovery of double star that brightens during eclipse - April, 2014
     Reflecting on an Alternative Quantum Theory - April, 2014
     Thermodynamics Confronts Quantum Mechanics - April, 2014
     Philosopher untangles Einstein senility controversy - April, 2014
     Can you drive fast enough to avoid being clocked by speed cameras? - March, 2014
     QBism puts the scientist back into science - March, 2014
     Be here now - March, 2014
     Relativity shakes a magnet - March, 2014
     Certainty about quantum uncertainty - March, 2014
     Fundamental constants: The teamwork of precision - February, 2014
     Einstein's lost theory uncovered - February, 2014
     The standard model's greatest triumph - February, 2014
     The Dark Matter Poltergeist - February, 2014
     Accuracy of the NPL caesium fountain clock further improved - February, 2014
     An analysis of Einstein's 1931 paper featuring a dynamic model of the universe, Einstein's conversion from a static to an expanding universe - February, 2014
     Black hole bombs: Are they dark matter in disguise? - February, 2014
     Optical-lattice clock sets new standard for timekeeping - February, 2014
     Stephen Hawking: 'There are no black holes', Grey is the new black hole: is Stephen Hawking right? - January, 2014
     Einstein's curve ball - January, 2014
     Coming soon: Rydberg the movie - January, 2014
     Don't stop the quest to measure Big G - January, 2014
     New value for the Planck constant may hasten electronic kilogram - January, 2014
     Quantum-to-classical transition may be explained by fuzziness of measurement references - January, 2014
     Why Einstein will never be wrong - January, 2014
     Towards perfect control of light waves - January, 2014
     Pulsar and companions will put general relativity to the test - January, 2014
     Smooth or grainy? New paper reviews research on the grain of space-time - December, 2013
     Astronomers discover furthest gravitational lens - December, 2013
     Tales of 1001 Atoms - December, 2013
     How hypergravity impacts electric arcs - December, 2013
     New work gives credence to theory of universe as a hologram - December, 2013
     In a "Rainbow" Universe Time May Have No Beginning - December, 2013
     Collapse of the universe is closer than ever before - December, 2013
     What Can we Say about a Photon's Past? - December, 2013
     Expanding universe can emerge in remarkably simple way, scientists say - December, 2013
     Creation of entanglement simultaneously gives rise to a wormhole - December, 2013
     Teaching matter waves new tricks: Making magnets with ultra cold atoms - November, 2013
     Discrepancy in Neutron Lifetime Still Unresolved - November, 2013
     No qualms about quantum theory - November, 2013
     Teaching matter waves new tricks: Making magnets with ultracold atoms - November, 2013
     Physicists ask photons 'Where have you been?' - November, 2013
     Physicists reveal a quantum Cheshire cat - November, 2013
     Seeing a photon without absorbing it - November, 2013
     Relativity revives quantum secrecy scheme - November, 2013
     Uncertainty reigns over Heisenberg's measurement analogy - November, 2013
     Can an oil bath solve the mysteries of the quantum world? - November, 2013
     Rescuing Heisenberg - October, 2013
     A Tripod of Light - October, 2013
     What's Inside a Black Hole's Horizon? - October, 2013
     Testing times for relativity - October, 2013
     Hairy black hole could show gaps in Einstein's theory - October, 2013
     Rescuing Heisenberg - October, 2013
     Physicists prove Heisenberg's intuition correct - October, 2013
     Feynman wasn't joking: Modeling quantum dynamics with ground state wavefunctions - October, 2013
     Rethinking particle dynamics - October, 2013
     A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics - September, 2013
     Quantum quest - September, 2013
     A startling value for gravitation - September, 2013
     Cross-Country Time Keeping - September, 2013
     Can't Beat These New Clocks - September, 2013
     Classical vs Quantum - September, 2013
     An Uncertain Big G - September, 2013
     Quantum steps towards the Big Bang - September, 2013
     Iron in the sun: A greenhouse gas for X-ray radiation - September, 2013
     Theorists bridge space-time rips - September, 2013
     Quantum inverted pendulum: Control scheme dynamically maintains unstable quantum system - August, 2013
     Star's flicker reveals its surface gravity - August, 2013
     Ultracold Big Bang experiment successfully simulates evolution of early universe - August, 2013
     Physicist disentangles "Schrodinger's cat" debate - August, 2013
     Theory of Einstein's Proved Right - Again - August, 2013
     Another close look at "big G" - August, 2013
     Physicist proves impossibility of quantum time crystals - August, 2013
     NIST ytterbium atomic clocks set record for stability - August, 2013
     Big Bang Light Reveals Minimum Lifetime of Photons - August, 2013
     Black Holes + Wormholes = Quantum Answers - August, 2013
     Closing in on Einstein's window to the universe - August, 2013
     Faster Than the Speed of Light? - July, 2013
     Experimental quest to test Einstein's speed limit, Testing Relativity Using Earth's Motion - July, 2013
     When fluid dynamics mimic quantum mechanics - July, 2013
     A proper understanding of the Davisson and Germer experiments for undergraduate modern physics course - July, 2013
     What if quantum physics worked on a macroscopic level? - July, 2013
     Attractive force arises from black-body radiation, say physicists , Blackbody radiation induces attractive force stronger than gravity - July, 2013
     Gravity Makes the Universe Classical - July, 2013
     Fundamental Constant Doesn't Budge in High Gravity - July, 2013
     A Distant Second - June, 2013
     A cloak in time - June, 2013
     Niels Bohr between physics and chemistry - May, 2013
     General relativity passes a new test - May, 2013
     Photons test quantum paradox - April, 2013
     Black holes, quantum information, and the foundations of physics - April, 2013
     Edmund Stoner and the Bohr atom - April, 2013
     Getting around the 'uncertainty principle': Physicists make first direct measurements of polarization states of light - March, 2013.
     In praise of weakness - March, 2013
     1932, a watershed year in nuclear physics - March, 2013
     Back to the beginning of quantum spacetime - March, 2013
     Black hole found spinning near the relativistic limit - February, 2013.
     Free-Falling Interferometry - February, 2013.
     Playing quantum tricks with measurements - February, 2013.
     Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past - April, 2012.
     Are you certain, Mr. Heisenberg? New measurements deepen understanding of quantum uncertainty - January, 2012.
     Neutrons revive Heisenberg's first take on uncertainty - January, 2012
     Sun puts relativity to the test - September, 2011.
     Time Travel without Regrets - February, 2011.
     Relativity starts your car and Relativity Powers Your Car Battery - January, 2011.
     Relativity comes down to Earth, Relativity with a human touch - September, 2010.
     Einstein, Bohr, And Ultimate Reality - August, 2010.
     7.3 Billion Years Later, Einstein's Theory Prevails - November, 2009.
     A 21st century Rutherford experiment - November, 2009.
     Quantum Mechanics: Do the Wave-particle - June, 2009.
     Exerting Better Control Over Matter Waves - March, 2009.
     Physicists Create Millimeter-sized 'Bohr Atom' - March, 2009 and June, 2008
     New Insights Into Quantum Mechanics: Unlocking Mysteries Of 'Blinking' Phenomena Of Fluorescent Molecules - July, 2008.
     Optical Clocks Get Better - April, 2008.
     Short Light - March, 2008.
     Unprecedented Spectroscopy Using the Best Ever Ruler for Light - January, 2008.
     High-Intensity Photoelectric Effect - December, 2007.
     Relativistic Thermodynamics - October, 2007.
     Time and Time Again - June, 2007.
     The Shortest Light Pulse Ever - May, 2007.
     Slowed Light Handed Off - February, 2007.
     Einstein's Little Machine - September, 2006.
     Existence of Atoms Reaffirmed - June, 2006.
     Best Direct Test of E=mc2 - January, 2006.
     Superluminal Ultrasound? - October, 2005.
     Why Do We Reside in a Three-Dimensional Universe? - September, 2005.
     Fibres Control the Speed of Light - August, 2005.
     Light May Arise From Tiny Relativity Violations - June, 2005.
     The First Direct Measurement of Recoil Momentum - May, 2005.
     First Evidence For Entanglement of Three Macroscopic Objects - March, 2005.
     New Look for Classic Experiment - March, 2005.
     Evidence for Quantized Displacement - February, 2005.
     Looking at Electrons Without Touching - January, 2005.
     Is Special Relativity Wrong? - December, 2004.
     Good News for Causality - November, 2004.
     Pionium Atoms Arrive en Masse - October, 2004.
     Clock Synchronization With Entangled Photons - September, 2004.
     The World's Smallest Atomic Clock - September, 2004.
     Newly Created Antihydrogen Atoms - August, 2004.
     Light Wave Outlasts Itself - May, 2004.
     ASACUSA Enters a New World of Precision - May, 2004.
     A Tiny Solar System After All - April, 2004.
     Physicists Move Closer to the Quantum Limit - April, 2004.
     Switching light on and off - December, 2003.
     Super-cool detector spots single photons October - , 2003.
     Biomolecule behaves like a wave - September, 2003.
     The Relativity of Time - September, 2003.
     Malleability of Spacetime - September, 2003.
     Light-Speed Submarine - July, 2003.
     Lorentz Symmetry Stays Intact - March, 2003.
     A New Limit on Photon Mass - February, 2003.
     Lorentz Violations? Not Yet - February, 2003.
     Topics pre-2003

Although the actual material covered in the course ends in 1925 with the birth of quantum mechanics, the various topics are still "living" issues in the sense that scientists continue to ponder and probe the foundations of relativity and quantum theory. The following is just a sampling of "web-accessable" papers from the arXiv e-print archive. [Be warned that these are NOT refereed papers so some of the conclusions reached here could be, and probably are, utter nonsense.]

The World Year of Physics 2005 spawned many websites and articles including;
Canadian site
American site
UK and Irish "Einstein Year" site
Sci-Philately
Quantum Diaries
Special Events
       Beyond Einstein World Wide Webcast (past)
       Einsteinfest at the Perimeter Institute (past)
Einstein Websites
       Einstein - Image and Impact
       Einstein's Big Idea
       Einstein's annus mirabilis 1905
Special Journal Issues
       Nature - 1921 Issue
       Physics World
       New Journal of Physics
       Symmetry
       The Physics Teacher 2005 Issues
Special Conferences
       Einstein's Century
       Beyond Einstein
       A Century After Einstein
       Physik seit Einstein


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" ... the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the laws of mechanics hold good. We will raise this conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be called the Principle of Relativity) to the status of a postulate, and also introduce another postulate . . . namely that light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body. These two postulates suffice for the attainment of a simple and consistent theory of the electrodynamics of moving bodies based on Maxwell's theory for stationary bodies."
Albert Einstein - "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies"
Annalen der Physik 4, 17, 891 (1905)

Last update - January 19, 2010
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