Groundbreaking experiments in physics - course description

General information

Course name	Groundbreaking experiments in physics
Course ID	13.2-WF-FizD-GEP-S19
Faculty	Faculty of Physics and Astronomy
Field of study	Physics
Education profile	academic
Level of studies	Second-cycle studies leading to MS degree
Beginning semester	winter term 2019/2020

Course information

Semester	3
ECTS credits to win	2
Course type	obligatory
Teaching language	english
Author of syllabus	prof. dr hab. Andrzej Drzewiński

Classes forms

The class form	Hours per semester (full-time)	Hours per week (full-time)	Hours per semester (part-time)	Hours per week (part-time)	Form of assignment
Lecture	30	2	-	-	Credit with grade

Aim of the course

Familiarize students with the development of concepts and methods related to the scientific research on examples of the most groundbreaking discoveries in experimental physics. In addition, the student strengthens his current knowledge and combines facts and phenomena from various branches of physics.

Prerequisites

Student should attend the courses of the first-cycle studies in physics.

Scope

- Eratosthenes measurement (297 B.C.) – determining the Earth's circumference
- Archimedes' principle (III w. B.C.) – the buoyant force in a fluid
- Galileo's Experiments (1600) – free-falling and rolling bodies down inclined planes
- Sir Isaak Newton (1665), Sir William Herschel (1800) – experiments on passing light through a prism
- Thomas Young (1801), Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer (1927) – the double-slit experiment with coherent light and diffraction of electrons by a crystal of nickel
- Michael Faraday (1831) – the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction
- Leon Foucault’s pendulum (1851) – experimental confirmation of the Earth's rotation
- Albert Michelson and Edward Morleya (1881) – empirical (not) confirmation of the ether theory
- Ernest Rutherford measurement (rok 1911) – discovery of the atomic nucleus
- Arthur Eddington’s measurement (1919) – gravitational deflection of light
- Otto Stern, Walther Gerlach (1922) – the quantization of angular momentum
- Alain Aspect’s experiment (1981) – Do objective properties appear during the measurement?
- George Lemaître, Edwin Hubble, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, Adam Riess i inni (1929 – dzisiaj) – rozszerzający się Wszechświat
- ATLAS Collaboration+CMS Collaboration (2012) – confirmation of the Higgs boson
- And what next? Research, plans, speculation ...

Teaching methods

Classes are in the form of lectures – illustrated with slides - when the student is encouraged to ask questions.

Learning outcomes and methods of theirs verification

Outcome description	Outcome symbols	Methods of verification	The class form

Assignment conditions

Students are assessed on the basis of essay writing. The teacher provides the list of topics a month before the end of classes.

Notes

Modified by dr hab. Piotr Lubiński, prof. UZ (last modification: 13-02-2020 17:56)

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