Black Bodies And Quantum Cats. Tales Of Pure Genius And Mad Science

BLACK BODIES AND QUANTUM CATS Praise for Black Bodies and Quantum Cats “To Jennifer Ouellette, physics is more human and intriguing and less arcane than people think, as she proves with her smart and varied collection of stories from the farther reaches of physics, written with a light touch.” sidney perkowitz, Candler Professor of Physics, Emory University, and author of Empire of Light “I was so hooked by the end of the first chapter that I read it straight through. Black Bodies and Quantum Cats is a captivating look at how physicists think about the world. Even non-scientists may find themselves starting to think that way.” robert l. park, Professor of Physics, University of Maryland BLACK BODIES AND QUANTUM CATS TALES OF PURE GENIUS AND MAD SCIENCE Jennifer Ouellette BLACK BODIES AND QUANTUM CATS A Oneworld Book First published in the USA by Penguin Books 2005 First published in Great Britain by Oneworld Publications 2006 Copyright © Jennifer Ouellette, 2006 Foreword copyright © Alan Chodos, 2006 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978–1–85168–499–1 ISBN-10: 1–85168–499–9 Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India Cover design by Two Associates Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd., St Ives plc Oneworld Publications 185 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7AR England www.oneworld-publications.com Portions of this book were published as “Pollock’s Fractals” (Discover, issue of November 2001), “Teaching Old Masters New Tricks” (Discover, December 2001), and “Bubble, Bubble: The Physics of Foam” (Discover, June 2002). NL08 ILLUSTRATION CREDITS: p. 11 Nicolaus Copernicus Museum, Frombork; p. 19 Illustration by David Wood; p. 24 The British Library; p. 31 Illustration by Patrick Moore; p. 41 LIGO Laboratory; p. 48 The Bakken Library and Museum; p. 53 Adventures in Cybersound/Russell Naughton; p. 62 The Bakken Library and Museum; p. 75 Daniel Bernoulli, Hydrodynamica (1738); p. 96 Foyle Special Collections Library, King’s College, London; p. 99 Library of Congress; p. 115 Tesla Memorial Society of New York; p. 119 Adventures in Cybersound/Russell Naughton; p. 124 Museum of American Heritage; p. 131 Barry Truax, Handbook for Acoustic Ecology; p. 150 By permission of the Warden and Fellows, New College, Oxford; p. 151 Illustration by John Blamire, Brooklyn College/ CUNY; pp. 161–2 Illustrations by Paul Dlugokencky; p. 185 Xerox Corporation; p. 200 Stanford University; p. 204 NASA/Johnson Space Center; p. 211 Museum of Science, Boston; p. 218 Laser Center, Hanover, Germany; p. 227 (top) CNF, Cornell University, (bottom) CCMR/CNF, Cornell University; p. 241 Photograph by C. D. Anderson, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives; p. 255 The Library Company of Philadelphia; p. 284 Illustration by Paul Dlugokencky. For Cami, Emily, Kathryn, Morgan, and Ryan, may you always be curious about the world around you. Contents Foreword by Alan Chodos, PhD ix Preface xi 1 Renaissance Man 1509 1 Publication of De divina proportione 2 Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution 1542 3 Lens Crafters Circa 1590 18 Invention of the microscope 4 Good Heavens January 7, 1610 26 Galileo discovers moons of Jupiter 5 Gravity’s Guru July 1687 34 Publication of Newton’s Principia 6 Drawing Down the Fire June 1752 42 Franklin’s kite experiment 7 Trompe l’Oeil 1807 50 Invention of the camera lucida 8 Rules of Attraction 1820 9 Publication of De revolutionibus 59 First evidence of electromagnetism 9 Ingenious Engines Circa 1840s 66 Babbage’s analytical engine 10 Emperors of