Thomas Young
(1773-1829)
Thomas Young was a brilliant man throughout his life. At a young age of fourteen, he was familiar with Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. He was so educated in a variety of areas that his peers called him Phenomena Young. This Englishman found interest in languages, medicine, nature, and light. He did his studies in London, Edinburgh, and Göttingen, and practiced medicine in London. With his strong interest in sense perception, he was able to make many realizations and discoveries about the eye. For example, he was the first to realize the eye focuses by changing the shape of the lens, he discovered the cause of astigmatism, and he and Helmoltz initiated the three color theory of perception. In 1801, regardless of the uncertainty from other scientists, his double-slit experiment established that light was a wave motion, making his famous. Over the years, he gained new interests. He started studying Egyptology, and while he was one Napoleon’s expeditions he started studying the texts of Rosetta Stone. This in time helped to decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Some other interests that Young acquired over the years, leading him to more discoveries are surface tension, elasticity and energy. He even worked as a professor at schools, including the Royal Institution and Cambridge University. Thomas Young was a smart, well educated English physician and physicist. His love for his work and interests allowed him to make discoveries that help us to this day, and to be remembered and acknowledged as
“…a man alike eminent in almost every department of human learning.”
Lifelong Accomplishments
1773
-Thomas Young is born
1792
-Young decided on a career in medicine.
1793
-Presented a paper before the Royal Society in which he attributed the accommodation of the eye to its muscular structure
1794
-Elected to membership of the Royal Society
-After completing his medical studies at Edinburgh and Göttingen, he returned to London to practice but continued his scholarly studies at Emmanuel College, Cambridge
-His uncle died, making him financially independent, allowing him to pursue his real interests
1798
-Some investigations on sound and light formed the starting point for his theory of interference
1799
-Began his medical practice in London
-While attending medical school, he discovered how the lens of the human eye changes shape to focus on objects at different distances
1800
-Published his experiments on Sound and Light in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
1801
-Discovered the cause of astigmatism
-Young and Helmholtz initiated the three color theory of perception.
In this experiment, Newton placed a second prism 5 or 6 yards away from the first. At first, when the light passed through the prisms, his results were the same as the first experiment. However, when the prisms were moved farther away from the wall onto which the light was being projected, the light projected from the prisms became white again. When they were moved even farther, the light became colored again, but the color scale was inverted from the original scale. According to the accepted theory of light, the second prism changed the color of the light projected onto the wall. Therefore, Newton’s results once again contradicted the accepted theory of light. He also rotated the prisms to test if this would have an effect on the light, but it did not. Due to these observations, Newton concluded that light was in fact a combination of all light on the spectrum of light, not just a mixture of light and
Introduced the quantum theory- stating that electromagnetic energy could only be released in quantized form.
After he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1608, he was recommended by the principal of Magdalen was appointed tutor William Cavendish who eventually became the second Earl of Devonshire. Hobbes became part of the Cavendish family they were very close. In 1610 Hobbes accompanied his pupil to a trip to France and Italy. While in Europe he discovered that what he studied in Oxford came from what Europeans had learned. Thomas Hobbes then pursued to the classics which he has studied , before he went to Oxford and to which he has given much attention to.
In the time when he was studying medicine, he made a very important science discovery that started his career. One day at church service on Sunday he looked up at a lamp and the lamp was swinging on a long cord back and forth. Its swing was very regular and he used his own pulse to measure the sing. He noticed even as the swing grew shorter the amount of time for a single was the same. Later he went home and conducted many experiments with different lengths and weights. Then he concluded that the string length affected the swing. Soon he created the pendulum and used the same principle to make a pulsilogia which is a device that measures your pulse (Hightower 17-20).
...Optica and Dioptrice, laying the groundwork for all future optical discoveries to come. After him came Newton, who questioned the commonly held belief about light and discovered a fundamental property of how light worked and what prisms did. Fraunhofer had spent his whole life working with the same optical principles as Kepler. He performed the same experiment as Newton, but he explored further, and opened up whole new worlds of discovery. Today, we still use spectroscopy and Fraunhofer lines to determine what far off planets and stars are made of, and if it would be possible for life to exist on them. Thanks to the discovery of Fraunhofer lines, Niels Bohr was able to come up with his model of the atom, expanding our knowledge of how the universe works. All of these scientific discoveries were built on top of one another, and who knows what we will discover next?
Darrigol, Olivier. "The Analogy Between Light And Sound In The History Of Optics From The
During the years of 1665 and 1667 he worked out the essentials of calculus, he hit upon the crucially important optical law and most significantly grasped the principle o...
Newton wrote many laws and theories that still exist and are followed. Newton wrote a book on optics. Part of Newton's study of optics was aided with the use of a reflecting telescope that he designed and constructed in 1668 which was his first major public scientific achievement. This invention helped prove his theory of light and color. The Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope in 1671, and the organization's interest encouraged Newton to publish his notes on light, optics and color in 1672; these notes were later published as part of Newton's Opticks book.
Many of us take our vision for granted. We seem to accurately use our properties of vision with little effort or thinking at all. At times we often see things with our eyes and wonder how can this be possible?
Newton was also involved with telescopes. After his growing interest with light bending, he applied his knowledge of the reflecting and refracting properties of light and invented the first reflective telescopes. Newton's reflective telescopes vastly improve the clarity of images as well as escaping from chromatic abberration. In order to fully understand the concepts and ideas of how a telescopes work, some knowledge of simple optics are required.
Stemming from the first years of the 20th century, quantum mechanics has had a monumental influence on modern science. First explored by Max Planck in the 1900s, Einstein modified and applied much of the research in this field. This begs the question, “how did Einstein contribute to the development and research of quantum mechanics?” Before studying how Einstein’s research contributed to the development of quantum mechanics, it is important to examine the origins of the science itself. Einstein took much of Planck’s experimental “quantum theory” research and applied it in usable ways to existing science. He also greatly contributed to the establishment of the base for quantum mechanics research today. Along with establishing base research in the field, Einstein’s discoveries have been modified and updated to apply to our more advanced understanding of this science today. Einstein greatly contributed to the foundation of quantum mechanics through his research, and his theories and discoveries remain relevant to science even today.
"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921". nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
Griffin had been a brilliant young chemist and researcher, confined and unappreciated as an instructor in a small English college. His brilliance had led him to investigations in physics and the properties of light. It is interesting to observe that as his passion for experimentation and his devotion to pure scientific investigations accelerated. When he required money to advance his experiments in invisibility, he stole it from his father.
Of all the scientists to emerge from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there is one whose name is known by almost all living people. While most of these do not understand this mans work, everyone knows that his impact on the world is astonishing.
Born in 1564 - 1642, this scientist came up with a theory that led him to crate the law of inertia, this law contradicted Aristotle 's ideas of motion. He concluded that an object in the state of motion possesses inertia. Basically what he meant was that, "what is in motion stays in motion unless an object of equal or greater force acts upon it." Due to his vast studies of space, planets, stars and moons he had developed many theories, all by just simply using a telescope. One of his theories was that if he dropped two objects of the different mass, they would still fall at the same time. He later identified this as the "Law of Fall". By introducing the law of inertia, he gave Newton a start in the concept of force and