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Notes on video lecture:
The Annus Mirabilis Papers of 1905
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on May 17, 2015 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Oswald, Brownian, vital, sugar, molecules, Trägheit, quantum, Teilchen, mundane, suspect, turmoil, patent, random, extraordinary, influential, motion, signaling, 1890s, squared, clocks, any, physics, heuristic, skepticism, false, Young, against, doctoral
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in 1905, Einstein, a 26-year-old              clerk, wrote five papers which changed how humanity views reality
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completely unexpected
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he certainly was a good physics student but up to this point had done nothing                           
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the five papers
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1. March 1905: light               
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"On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light"
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introduced the idea of the light quantum
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seminal paper in quantum mechanics
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dominated much of                throughout the 20th century
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a                    proposal
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was a particle theory of light
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went                the well established by this time 100 years previously when Thomas            set forth the modern wave theory of light
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but the wave theory of light dealt with light as it was traveling
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shown that some experimental results could be explained that otherwise could not be explained
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2. April 1905: size of                   
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"A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions"
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became his                  dissertation
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the most ordinary,                paper
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demonstrated the size of            molecules
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became the most cited paper
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not revolutionary but certainly                       
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3. May 1905: existence of atoms
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"Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten                 "
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explained a phenomenon known as                  Motion
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particles jiggle around in water
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early observes might have some kind of            force in them
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Brown showed that you can put almost        substance in water and it will be bumped around
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showed you could track the              of the particles
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developed the theory that explained the "             walk" of these motions
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made experiences which enabled scientists to verify this
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there was still much                      about the talk of atoms
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backed up later by experiments
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             was a skeptic of atoms (the professor whom Einstein's father wrote to)
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Einstein's paper changed what he believed was true regarding this topic
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4. June 1905: special theory of relativity
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"The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies"
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Einstein had friend at patent office
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talked about latest physics problems
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one of these talks made him realize that time is               
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Einstein was working at the patent office probably dealing with patents which had to do with time, e.g. with telegraph                    systems
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the synchronization of              was an important issue
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5. September 1905: E=mc²
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"Ist die                            eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?"
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an addendum to the June 1905 paper
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essential the addition was E=mc²
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energy = mass x speed of light               
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one has to remember that all five of these papers were written by an unknown, 26-year-old patent clerk
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each one had profound implications of how we understand reality
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did this in a time when his life was in               
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but he had been thinking of these issues certainly since the early           
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a mixed reception
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there were some early experimental results that showed it was           

Vocabulary:

heuristic technique, n. any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical methodology not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals, where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical ⇒ "Einstein called his Light Quantum Paper a heuristic proposal because it treated light as a particle even though understanding light in terms of waves had been established 100 years previously when Thomas Young set forth the modern wave theory of light."
Pre-Einstein Physics up to 1905
Einstein's Life Up To 1905
The Annus Mirabilis Papers of 1905
Dirac, Einstein, and Mathematical Beauty
Events, Clocks, and Observers