December 11, 2016 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Robert Millikan the Skeptic Ends up Confirming Einstein
The wave nature of light had well been established over decades of
experimental work and so Einstein’s proposition simply could not be correct.
With this firm belief and working hypothesis, Millikan started out
to disprove the first of the Einstein’s paper published in 1905.
It was an experimental work that required a decade of meticulous
experimentation and creating a clean polished metal surface of photo electrode
that Millikan described as “a machine shop in
vacuo”.
And guess what happened after nearly 10 years of laborious
experimentation?
Millikan’s experimental data ended up confirming what Einstein’s photoelectric
equation predicted.
His data showed that the incident light of even very low intensity
but beyond certain threshold frequency resulted in the emission of the photons.
On the other hand, light of even very high intensity and exposing
metals to very long duration failed to emit photons if it was below that
required threshold frequency.
This is one of the most splendid example how inductive reasoning
and theory generation works in physics.
Einstein’s proposed theory of quantum nature of light was firmly
established and was the beginning of a new revolution in physics.
Mathematics on the contrary works in quite a different fashion.
In contrast to the theories in physics, mathematics is replete
with theorems and axioms (and conjectures and postulates
How does a theorem building start?
I shall discuss the story of mathematics in the nights to come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night and my fellow cousin ape.
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, may I
suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:
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