physics: Birth of Modern Physics

By the late 19th cent. most of classical physics was complete, and optimistic physicists turned their attention to what they considered minor details in the complete elucidation of their subject. Several problems, however, provided the cracks that eventually led to the shattering of this optimism and the birth of modern physics. On the experimental side, the discoveries of X rays by Wilhelm Roentgen (1895), radioactivity by A. H. Becquerel (1896), the electron by J. J. Thomson (1897), and new radioactive elements by Marie and Pierre Curie raised questions about the supposedly indestructible atom and the nature of matter. Ernest Rutherford identified and named two types of radioactivity and in 1911 interpreted experimental evidence as showing that the atom consists of a dense, positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Classical theory, however, predicted that this structure should be unstable. Classical theory had also failed to explain successfully two other experimental results that appeared in the late 19th cent. One of these was the demonstration by A. A. Michelson and E. W. Morley that there did not seem to be a preferred frame of reference, at rest with respect to the hypothetical luminiferous ether, for describing electromagnetic phenomena.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Particles, Energy, and Contemporary Physics
• Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
• Birth of Modern Physics
• Advances in Electricity, Magnetism, and Thermodynamics
• Development of Mechanics and Thermodynamics
• The Scientific Revolution
• Preservation of Learning
• Greek Contributions
• Modern Physics
• Classical Physics
• Bibliography

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