Daily Archives: May 5, 2008

Classic Physics: Light is an EM Wave

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Classic Science Paper: Otto Wiener’s experiment (1890) at Skulls in the Stars.

By 1890, then, scientists were interested in seeing whether similar results held for light waves: it seems that a number of scientists remained unconvinced that light truly was just another manifestation of electromagnetic waves! One big obstacle stood in the path of such studies: the smallness of the wavelength of light. Hertz’s radio waves had a wavelength of meters, but visible light has a wavelength on the order of 500 nanometers, or 500 billionths of a meter! Such distances cannot be directly observed with the naked eye, so experimental ingenuity was required – and Otto Wiener provided it.

(My own summary of some “classic” physics is progressing)

Odd Odds

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I have an odd sense of humor, bordering on the macabre. OK, it’s pretty much an open border and I visit there often, because I don’t need a passport.

I read the results of the Kentucky Derby and the unfortunate news of Eight Belles. But because I don’t really follow horse racing much and when I hear about it always seems to be about an injury to a horse and how you deal with that, what flashed through my mind (along with Gary Larson’s cartoon about veterinary medicine, where the chapter on horse ailments was so easy) was along the lines of

The 3-1 favorite, Big Brown, won the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby Saturday in commanding fashion, paying $6.80. Eight Belles finished second and paid $10.60, and later buckled, collapsed and was euthanized, which went off at 26-1 and paid $52.50.